Billy Joel Archives

It’s 6 AM on a Friday. And the regular crowd shuffles in.

Today is the last day of the financial year and as someone that has built a life surrounded by work, I think this is a time to pause and reflect on how the year gone by was. And what would I want to do in the next.

PS: This is an exercise that I would typically want to do at the end of the calendar year (and I do – I make lofty goals (see this) and then I miss those by a large margin) but since the last few months have been like a whirlwind, I just did not get the time to sit, pause, think, reflect, act. So I am merely doing this after three months!

Wait. The post is not about the year gone by. Or the plan for the future. It’s about what I plan to do right now as I let my mind wander and I type out those wanderings.

Lets see what I end up writing. I will write for exactly 45 mins. It’s 6:10 now. And I will stop at 6:55 or post that.

1/ Oil pulling is not that bad.

I recently started with it. I am not a regular but as soon as I wake up, most days I wake up, pee, rinse my mouth and pull oil. I dont know why it’s called pulling cos all you do is take a spoonful of oil and swirl it around your mouth and then spit it out.

No, it’s not as yucky as it sounds.

Plus I’ve had bad teeth (I can’t eat from the right side of my jaw – cavities) and I dont like to go to the doctor. So, I am trying these desi nuskhas.

So that.

2/ Piano Man

Billy Joel’s masterpiece continues to be the track that I really wish I had written.

3/ Personal Branding

More I talk to people, more I think I need to help people build their personal brands. Heck, I want to build mine first.

While I know the tenets (I wrote this guide to personal branding before it was even a word), the inputs, I dont know what causes someone’s brand to blow up or not. I mean I’ve been doing everything that I would recommend to others (posting consistently, adding value, picking a niche (I have stayed away from this for the longest but I am now tending towards a few things), taking help from ghostwriters and all that).

But I haven’t been able to scale mine. Not sure how I would scale it for others.

Thoughts?

4/ Money / Financial duress

It’s payday and today is the first time when I would miss paying my people on time. I haven’t been able to because all my money is locked in some stupid project and I dont know what to do about it. I mean I will get it back sometime in May but it will make me miss the payments.

So, sad.

5/ WordPress

I need to find a way to get someone really cool that knows how to do magic on WordPress. I do have a friend that does my WordPress things for me but he’s no magician. He’s good. He gets things done. But he’s not someone that I could just say, “kar de” and magic happens.

In a creative business, you need to be able to write well, design well, code well (not a facebook kind of webapp but basic, simple pages) and communicate well. I think I’ve been able to achieve all these but code.

Writing I can do. I have C for that. Prak. Others. I am lucky that I can communicate fairly ok. With design, TBH, luckily I have been able to manage it with Canva, V, AK (please subscribe to her newsletter), some freelancers and others. But with code, I dont know.

Any help? Tips?

6/ Growing up

The other day I met a new friend who’s also a client. Let’s call him Z. So Z sees me at work and in life in general. And I’d like to believe that he knows me well.

The other day, he told me a few things that have literally shaken me. Lemme make a list of those. In no order.

Significant other – the world knows I dont have one significant other. I have close friends, business partners and my team. Z said that at the age of 40, it’s cool to be a vagabond and all that but as I grow old and I am no longer surrounded by people that I care for (they will have their own life eventually), I will not know what to do.
Entrepreneurship – ever since I can remember, I have wanted to blow my trumpet and row my boat (preferably a yacht and if not that, then a dinghy for sure). I think I’ve been doing that since 2014 now. Plus, freedom is the number 1 value I chase (thanks Ankesh for helping me reach this expression). Now, Z tells me that he does not see an entrepreneur in me. And I take his words seriously. He is after all a man who knows how to spot people!
Grooming – everyone knows my lack of attention and focus on how I dress and how I look. I remain unkept. I refuse to wear shoes. I am bad to a point that security often doesn’t let me into my own building complex! Z is of the opinion that I must be better.

He called me, “The most unorganised organised person in the world” and I think I agree. I need to remove this un-organization from life.

Anyhow.

The point is, in his eyes, at the age of 40, I am a failure. And while I may feel like that deep inside but I may not want to agree. I have been able to reach a point in life where I find enough work and money to survive. I am at a place where I choose how I spend my days. And while it may not be creating a far-reaching impact anywhere, I think I am at a great place in my head.

7/ Calendaring

I have 6 calendars that I manage on a day-to-day basis. And I am unable to manage all of those. There is no app that I can do a two-way sync with. Especially when they are on different platforms (Gsuite and Microsoft Teams). Any tips for that?

8/ Startup

I really really really really really… infinite times want to do and experience something that scales. To a billion people at least. If not more. You know, think Facebook. 4 BILLION people use it. Think Paytm. Almost a billion users. Think mobile phones. 4 billion. Modi. 1.4 billion. SRK. More than 1.4 billion. I can go on!

I have to have to have to think of something like that. I have no clue what it’s going to be. But I need to find something. I have been in this stage since I was a child. This discovery. I need to find a problem statement and move on.

And no, I dont want to do this because I will make money while I do that. I want to do this to be able to experience what it is like to manage that many people with that kind of width and move an entire company in one direction. I want to chase that experience of uncertainty, I want to know what it is like to lose sleep over lives of so many people. I want to know the bliss that you probably get once you’ve made that dent!

Come on, universe! Can you NOT see my desperation? And hunger? And the pain at the inability to do this? 🙁

—

Oh, its 6:55 and I think I’ve run out of steam.
Plus I need to get ready and get going.
More later.
Dunno when.

Over and out.

7:33. Andheri. Woke up groggy. I don’t know why I am tired. Maybe it’s the exhaustion from all the work. Or from the stress. I can’t figure it out. But whatever it is, there is no cloud per se on my head, except the bodily exhaustion. So I think I am ok.

Wait. Maybe it’s because someone close, someone I care about is struggling with depression and I am unable to help. Every trick in my bag seems to have failed. Of course, professional help is being sought and I am sure things will be ok soon but I feel so helpless that I don’t know what to do. These are the times when I wish I had a magic potion that would just make the pain go away at the snap of a finger.

So that.

Coming to how I spent yesterday. Went and met AR and it was amazing to see the progress he’s made with his work. When I first met him, he was a two-person hack-shop that could do anything and manage everything. Now he’s got a team of 12 people that he can’t seem to fit in one office and is growing on a daily basis. And, he does good work! Really. Funny, on one side I have someone struggling to even eat right. And on the other, I have another that’s growing on a daily basis. Life is funny. I just hope I can keep my head sane. I thought I was the anchor for everyone that I am close to. But I now realize that I am anything but that. In neither case – when they’re not doing good they don’t come to cry with me; when they’re doing great, they don’t come to celebrate with me.

I hope the point am trying to make is clear. I am not cribbing that people don’t want me around in their lives. The point is, I am unable to contribute, help

So in terms of good things, I managed OMAD yet another day. And I managed more than 10K steps for yet another day. So, yay!

I just need to keep going. I am reminded of that thing about streaks (I think it was popularised by Seinfeld) where all you do is ensure that you don’t break the streak. Maybe starting today, I will add that to the morning pages As of today, here is where I stand on things that I want to track…

Morning Pages – XX (will count at some later date)
#aPicADay – XX (will count at some later date). See altsaurabh
10K steps a day – 1
OMAD – 1
#noCoffee – 1 (even though I haven’t had in a while)
#noCoke -1 (even though I haven’t had in a while)
#book2 – 0 (I need to start on this!)

I am resetting the counter on Coke / Coffee, even though I havent had for a while.

So that. Oh, the track of the day is Billy Joel and his magic with Piano Man.

More than the music, singing, and performance (in this video’s case), I think the lyrics of the song is what makes it immortal. There’s so so so deep and such a clear articulation of the human condition that I can’t find anything else that comes close. It talks of things that people do, think, fake, dream, imagine, and more. It talks to me about people and their real, hidden lives that they are afraid to bring out. It talks about people on the sidelines (like the Piano Man) that are silent observers that can see through the BS that we make up in our heads.

The track to me is an inspiration. That I don’t want to become any of those people in the bar where the Piano Man is playing. That I want to be able to write as well as that. That I want one of my pieces to go out in the world and create a lot more impact. When I heard this for the first time, I thought I can kill myself if I could write and release a piece like that. In fact, I have a lot of similar tracks that I am so inspired by that I want to create and then hang my boots.

So that! Phew! That was fun to belt out.

***

So I think this is it for the day. I am supposed to wear pants today. And tomorrow for that matter. Hope I can survive the heat and muck in Mumbai. Will report tomorrow.