Hello from the other side

It’s been three months since I left my full time job at Microsoft to spend more time to do things I want to. I keep getting a lot of questions on how this change had been? How I spend my time? Do I now watch Netflix all day? Is it still green on the other side, etc . I wanted to answer these, share a couple of learnings and wave a hi !

The first change that I noticed is - I now have a healthy relationship with time, I love having a fair control of knowing exactly what I want to do at a particular hour of the day which could be at 5 AM or 2 PM. I started expending it more intentionally, (not really slow or mindful - leaving those choicy words to the guru-fluencers ) by doing one thing at a time and a set of things in a week with focus. My attention is not at loggerheads with time, it feels a lot less tired from not running pillar to post, trying to consume, process, produce, communicate. I have set times for each of these activities and hence ~80% drop in my # of phone picks. Cases of “Smondays” have gone to 0. Quantitatively speaking the past three months have been more busier, I read more books(Peter Mathissen's Snow Leopard is now a favorite) and watched hardly any TV, and it felt way lighter on my head . Of course there are times when I cede to time- not knowing if it’s a Tuesday or a Thursday, but hey, not complaining :-)

Secondly - the circadian rhythm of my schedule is starting to settle. In the spirit of not losing structure a full time job gives me, I started defining OKRs for myself on what I wanted to accomplish. This helped me have quantifiable goals. On a daily basis, I spend around 4-5 hours of time “doing” which involves making things on the potters wheel or surface decorating them and about 3-4 hours of planning+ learning - which is thinking about new designs, how to execute them, learning new/efficient ways to complete my workflow.  

It’s been a great start to the break, I had my fair share of learnings . In the month of January I set out a very aggressive target of making 100 mugs and bowls to get perfection on forms. While this was a productive and measurable goal, I could have done this differently - which is to focus only one form completely and not try to be 'productive'. I needed to remind myself that I was here for the joy of creation and not meet KPIs. A quarterly OKR is more suitable for the art form I pursue within the constraints I have (clay takes time to dry!, shared community space, kiln accidents, unexpected glaze behavior, humidity in the studio etc).

Over the next few months my focus will be on how I can combine an ancient art with technology, as I venture into areas like 3D clay printing and tool making. I will be documenting this journey on my instagram accounts ttps://www.instagram.com/vemuceramics/ which is exclusively pottery & https://www.instagram.com/svemu/ - where it is life, universe and everything :-)