Leap Walking

Just found out my article was mentioned in Moleskinerie. So, welcome – readers from Moleskinerie!

I find that it’s almost impossible to do anything without penning down my thoughts in a physical diary or journal of some sort. I now have about four ongoing journals I keep notes on, and I didn’t think it was necessary to put everything down, but now I do.

Why Blogs Don’t Always Work

My initial reluctance to keep a journal was driven by the fear that I wouldn’t use it – simply because I would end up putting my notes on a blog, or on a wiki, or on twitter, or on little text files that I could sync across multiple computers using Dropbox (you can see where this is going)… and that would cause my £14 moleskine left there to collect dust – a thought that just drives crazy.

So, I initially toyed around with the idea of having a blog take care of that. Except that I have more than one blog, each addressing specific types of interests I have. Sometimes, the stuff I think about doesn’t quite fit in anywhere. Also, they need to be organized and polished a bit more before it comes out as a blog post.

Then, there’s the issue of private thoughts. Stuff I don’t want people to know. Or stuff that I’m still sorting out in my mind and I’m not quite done with them yet because they’re quite ephemeral and end up forgetting about them. A public blog won’t be good for that. And I don’t like the idea of protected posts.

So, I opened a private blog. But that didn’t work either, because I needed a computer to do that – and worse, a blog format is almost always linear – and trying to do doodles, sketches and arrows all over the place on a blog is possible, but difficult. I realized that my thoughts were pinging back and forth so often that writing it out as a blog post wasn’t always the best way to express what was going on in my mind.

Minimizing the Paralyzing Fear of not being able to control your own Destiny

Then I was about ready to give up, except that I often worry a lot about life so much that it gets me depressed, and there was just too many things I was trying to sort out in my mind, so I finally got down and started writing stuff down on paper. And doing that just solved my problems.

It wasn’t that I needed to write it down – but getting my thoughts out and putting it on somewhere permanent like a piece of paper was so liberating, it was like a huge burden being lifted off my chest.

And it didn’t just work for personal stuff, either. In fact, a lot of the stuff I worry about is about ideas. Like, how best to communicate something to my boss, or planning the next steps for my next sideproject, or calculating the cost of financing my dream home or something like that. Stuff that gets you depressed when you try to sort it out in your mind without any kind of external assistance, even if they were fairly stimulating when you first thought about them.

The Right Tools for the Job

I drew up a simple diagram (actually took me a good hour) that describes how I view the different tools come into play, and how they help my thinking process, in general. While I still blog a lot to get my thoughts out, there’s a certain threshold I find myself struggling to get past, and this is how I end up using different tools to support my “thinking” needs.

Where I start really depends on what kind of message I’m trying to convey, and what type of output I’m trying to produce. If it’s something public, that I wouldn’t mind feedback on – then a blog or a public twitter message does the job nicely. But if it’s something more conversational (either with myself or personal friends), then I tend to use closed-off communities, or a private blog. Then, there are just other things that are way too complex to be pushing around using blogs or comments on social networking sites, then I ought just to pull out a piece of paper or my journal and start sketching or scribbling notes.

Other folks might do it in different ways, but this sort of works for me for now, and I intend to stick with it. I am starting to believe that writing unpolished scribbles and doodles doesn’t mean that I’m disorganized or incapable of communicating my ideas. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I find that it’s actually part of my communication process, and that it’s a skill that gets better over time.

I dreamt that I was interviewed for a job by Google a few nights ago. I had this impression that Google was the sort of intelligent, caring, but serious tech company that I could be comfortable contributing to the world through and with. I think this was a way  my mind was responding to the fact that there are increasingly fewer and fewer companies who are really looking out for consumers.

Social Media reveals that the world is more ugly place than you thought it was

Maybe this is the curse of social media – a few million voices speaking at the same time, against a few seemingly large companies, who are seen as singular entities that can move in any direction at the blink of an eye. All this talk about how Apple is screwing up the App Store, how new Palm Pre ads are really creepy, and how Flickr is really starting to lose it makes me think no company is ever safe anymore, but senior executives continue to push the ball.

But my dream turned a bit odd as I was given a tour of the offices, and they seemed overly convoluted and the people a bit off. It was reminiscent of a time when I was working in an old-fashioned Malaysian company a few years ago who refused to do things better just because the old ways seemed to be more convenient. The scene played out like a battle between two worlds I’ve been trying to reconcile for the last 10 years.

The solution is to get better at solving things the way we’ve always been: with politics

Maybe I’m being an ideallist, but I’m afraid of working with people who aren’t open to new ideas, and solving problems. Actually, worse – I’m afraid of people who won’t change, for whatever reason. But then, I’m quite like that as well. So it seems like it’s all going to pot.

And I’m guessing politics must’ve been the oldest profession in the book. Which means to say that I’m going to have to learn the art of negotiation, persuasion or whatever else it is people use to get stuff done.

And I don’t think getting hired by Google is going to make it any better.

My wife and I used to live in a fairly large apartment overlooking a lake. It had a huge hall, a full kitchen, 3 sizable bedrooms, and a decent store room. By Malaysian standards, this was considered to be somewhat of a luxury for someone at my age, but at the same time – it was owned by my parents who willingly let us live there and have us pay them back whenever we had the means.

It was comfortable, no doubt, but it was hard to say that it was home. The hall was quite empty because we couldn’t afford to furnish it. We didn’t use the swimming pool and gym as much as we’d like. The only thing I really miss about it is the convenient parking space, which offered shelter from the rain. It was hard to say we could afford a place like this.

Outward looks can be deceptive

Now, we’re in London, in a small rented studio about a third the size of the previous apartment, and we both feel more at home here. Maybe it’s because we both made the decision to live here on our own, and that we’re both paying for the rental of the place, and we’ve still got a bit of room to breathe in terms of spending.

I find that I do more homey things, like cook meals at home, and vacuum the floor, and rearrange the furniture, and decorate the place. I feel, for once, that I am in control of my living situation, and that’s quite a breath of fresh air.

Satisfaction comes from inside you

I think that all of us yearn for a place to belong, somewhere along our adulthood. There’s something about enjoying the fruits of our labor, and a home is quite often the place that one does that. Somehow, with the apartment my parents provided us, it felt a bit like a short cut, and somehow that didn’t sit right with me.

The reason I’m saying this is because I’m constantly re-evaluating my life. What is it that truly makes me satisfied? With consumerism often choking out what’s important to us, it’s good to step back and count our blessings. No, we might not be at the top of the game, in the eyes of someone else – but inside us is what really matters – it’s really not faking it, and it doesn’t go away.