An idea is the beginning of almost everything
.>>This Synchoblog, also began its life as a germ of an idea, about a year ago when I started very detailed online interview sessions, with a senior feature journalist, Melissa Randhawa, about my transformation from an adman to a painter. That too focused on spiritual subjects like love, god, and soul, while living in Dubai, for the past two decades. Dubai is known for its materialistic opulence, and not for intellectual pursuits and such endeavors like mine on a full-time basis. Not preoccupied with making a quick buck in a real estate deal or swinging some mega-deal, is an anomaly, but there are exceptions to every known concept or situation.
Still, time is at a premium and is hard to find, particularly for an idea, that is not earth-shattering and would be hogging a whole lot of energy to take it to some acceptable level of implementation, at least for my personal satisfaction.
“Should I do it, or leave it be, for a better time and space”, I would think to myself. Why do I want to spend hundreds of hours, on a blog, which may or may not be useful for the people it was meant for?
Without reaching any conclusion, I contemplated a few weeks before even beginning to give shape to the rough idea, by writing a few posts randomly of the thoughts that occurred, as I typed, usually in the early hours of the morning.
When and idea keeps nagging, explore it
Finally, I decided to give in to this nagging urge to do it, which I recognized, as the “art attack”- the word I coined to recognize the feeling when something has to be done, whether I have the resources (in this case the time). or the expertise to do it. It just becomes too difficult to get that nagging feeling of pull that comes from within. There is a Rumi’s verse, which he probably wrote while experiencing a similar state. “Respond to every call that excites your spirit”, he wrote in the context of being fearless, in the face of expression of love. I read this line probably in the early nineties and it provided the validation for my impulsive nature, and I adopted it as a personal philosophy of life. It did serve me well at times when that call led me to some place exciting or worthwhile.But at the other times, I had to suffer because of the lack of well thought course of action, or a good reason to do so.If you are going to climb and mountain and have already figured out the hardships you will face to do it and still want to do it, then it’s a serious call. Otherwise, it’s a random impulse, much like the desire to munch on the big bag of potato chips, which is going to end up in regret and make you remorseful about why you strolled into the supermarket, to begin with.
Ask Yourself some tough questions
The big issue in my mind was that there is enough content already online, freely accessible by Google or Bing (and now chatGPT too), why would anyone care to read the blog of a former techverstising* dude, who is rather reclusive and only indulges in social media, as an event-based activity to connect with friends.
I couldn’t see why I should focus outside the areas of my core competence and practice, art painting and design for many years. Well, that’s when two other thoughts from my mental repertoire came to my aid. The first was the line that I heard in an audio lecture by Wayne Dyer, perhaps a couple of decades ago, “Don’t die with your song inside you”, he said, while narrating the experiences of his youth when he first read this line in a book given by a relative of his. The second is a thought system, which I subscribe to as a matter of habit, over the years “Move out of your comfort zone if you want to do anything worthwhile” it says. Both these thoughts when combined with the fact, that much of my life has been shaped and formed by the knowledge, I gained by reading and listening to others, provided me with a third leg to make this idea stand on its own.
That third good support was- “Isn’t it about time, I started to give back to the world, duly processed and expressed authentically, from my point of view, good or not so good, doesn’t really matter. I don’t have to worry about being unique or having something to say that no one has said before, because, lately it has become almost impossible to come up with any absolute concept or an idea that has not been already done in some shape or form. I thought all I have to do is to be authentic, write totally from the state of flow, from my heart, and then let it go to the press (the wordy kind) without many revisions and corrections.
First Make a Decision – Then Make it Right
Now all I needed was a fourth support to make reach the decision. That is working out the Logistics and decision to go through the grind, which may be many months or years as a result of the decision to do it. In my experience, every decision that you make to go towards something, you are also making away from something else. That’s why decisions are the most important form of thinking, that determines the trajectory of any Endeavour, and of the individual making it. And that reminds me of a comment, which I heard from Rattan TATA, chairman of the TATA Group) make in an interview. He said,” You don’t make right or wrong decisions, you just make decisions, and then make them right by persisting and staying on course”
He said this in the context of a huge venture, when his industrial group ventured into a very competitive industry of passenger cars, with the biggest globally experienced giants like GM, Toyota, and Mercedes. Later his group bought Range Rover and has a substantial chunk of the market share.
Thinking the logistics through till the end goal
The second part of the fourth support was the logistics, which really meant how will I approach it in the implementation stage. Will I engage a web design company, and give them the written text with some images and ask them to manage and maintain a blog for me, or get down to doing the nitty gritty myself?
Though, I know from experience, it’s best not to do everything yourself and engage other people’s expertise, when needed. However, after taking all crucial into account and discussing the project with a few web development companies, I concluded, that it would not be practical for me to be dependent on any outside company, and would have to update my own web-building skills. This decision, I calculated would cost me more in terms of time but will be more helpful in sustaining and growing the concept.
Once the decision was reached, I then started to write and collect at least a hundred posts and make some sketches to accompany them by October, when I had to travel to New Delhi, In November they launched chatGPT, and I was amazed at what it could do and the blog idea seemed totally waste of time, with the Tsunami of content which would flow out in the post-Chat GPT phase of the internet, presumably turning many content creation and marketing companies on their head, literally. I could have abandoned the project, at this stage and moved to chatGPT, for an AI-powered art and creative counseling project.
But here was an opportunity to stay unique while being human, when everyone was trying to board the trAIn to the eternal Nirvana. In the seventies, when there were no computers, and everyone still yanked on the mechanical typewriters, with the clitty clutty sounds, we were told that when the computers arrived, the work will get a lot easier. Today, I look around and see people working at a much more furious speed, with all the machines to help.
In the pre-computer age, we had to compete with other humans and now we have to compete with intelligent machines too.
In any case, I intend to focus on the human abilities of creativity and thinking through ideas, and solving other philosophical dilemmas, which AI can provide too, I am sure. But they will be coming from a machine, and automated algorithm, and will feel like birthday greetings from AI as against from a real human friend, till they bridge that gap too.
In the first phase of this blog project, we will be completing about a hundred posts, starting with twenty-five, to begin with, by the end of the year till we develop the critical mass of backlinks to the site and the search engines start to take it seriously.
Thousand and One Nuggets of Inspiration
The goal is to make a thousand and one posts by the end of the next year 2024. Let’s see, how this project evolves, We will be sharing the progress of the Syncholog, and whatever important learning that happens behind the scene. So that you can benefit from the learning and ideas that I will accrue in the process.
If you have read it till here, then rest assured, you are a similar creed as us.
Don’t smash the subscribe button, as they say in some of the youtube videos, but connect with us, with your creative energy, and that subscribe button will send love to us. Be rest assured you will get that back from Synchoblog Team.
P.S.: My next post will be on what this blog is called the Synchoblog.
Painting & Writing is good because you get to discover what lies within you, that needed to pop out on some surface, for others to see.
