Obsessed about a limited number of things (eight of them)
I’ve decided to be obsessed with 8 things for the next 10 years. 8 is an arbitrary number I chose to keep the scope of this venture actionable.
The intention of this project is that I focus on these 8 things in an extreme enough way to see what I find out of all this.
Like any good essay, this is an attempt for me to keep track of my progress.
And again the context is decisive.
In the past what I have experienced is that no matter what I wrote I would always find myself being lethargic and bored out of my mind at whatever writing I was doing.
I was being productive churning out 1000 word written text every day to build a writing habit but it was all gibberish and after one hundred days of doing that I asked myself what I was doing, it was making no sense.
And so, one day, the girl that I had a crush on asked me to write an essay for her, she must have heard that I liked writing and stuff and I went out of my way to produce something that was better than whatever I wrote in the past.
Here the context was different, someone was going to read my work and I wanted to make sure whatever I made should reflect the best version of me in this person’s mind.
Normally I approach my writing from the ontological state of being of a total loser. That most of this stuff is trash, that I need to get better, but this is my current competency so there is a long way to go etc.
This context was not exciting, not empowering, I did not wake up in the morning thinking, “woohoo! I get to write some stuff today, it’s gonna be lit!”
or something like that.
It’s all relative.
Einstein once said, to a question on what relativity was, that when you sit on a burning stove, 1 minute feels like an hour but when you are speaking to a beautiful woman 1 hour feels like a minute.
Hence I want you to create a context for your next work that is powerful for you.
For instance, for me writing on medium daily is a crazy thing to do.
I mean what the hell am I doing writing every day?
I can’t possibly come up with consistently good blogs every day, it’s me failing every day almost like I have put myself in my personal hell.
But then again I could tell a different story. What if, a few years down the line, I discover something new? I find that I have built a kind of writing style or my essays seem to be able to dig deep into my psyche and consistently produce gold…
I am writing for myself as much as I am writing for you dear reader.
And what I imagine is that whatever I write would one day be seen as Leonardo Da Vinci’s journals are seen today maybe?
That sounds almost hubristic but there is a point.
To be obsessed with writing for so long that I make a point that writing every day, to keep digging on what it takes to write a good essay would help me come closer to make and give something to the world that makes the world that we live in a little more beautiful maybe?
I don’t really know what it looks like but it sure does feel exciting to be on that journey.
feels like an epic adventure.
You know that cliche phrase, whatever helps you sleep at night?
Well, what about something that makes you want to jump out of the bed every morning what would that look like?
So hence I have picked 8 things to obsess about for the next 8 years.
It’s not like it’s going to be one thing per year oh no,
it’s going to all happen simultaneously.
First and foremost it’s going to be my digital art.
As I mentioned before and I keep mentioning again, I am obsessed with making art and I am committed to making 1000 daily digital paintings.
I have done so for 445 days so far, and there’s been a lot of progress. Once I reach 1000 days I am gonna bump it up to 10,000 days. Currently, I am only using this software Krita for making digital paintings. Soon I will graduate to 3D modelling and sculpting with Blender and then I shall add interativity to it with the help of Godot. It’s been a little slow for my liking but I am going to keep this up and keep digging till… I don’t know whatever I discover out of doing this. I see that keeping a kind of goal in mind actually limits what I can create. The point is to stick with this one thing long enough that I create something amazing just for the fun of it.
It could be a massive AAA video game or it could be a large scale animated movie or it could be a graphic novel. I am not sure.
All I know is that I am making digital art every day and I shall soon be using Blender to make even more complex pieces of digital art and then soon I shall be making more of it in Godot. This is what wakes me up first. I am excited to see what I can draw next.
Currently, I have been obsessing over making faces, portraits and stuff soon I shall be doing figure drawings and detailed anatomy. To capture that human essence on a canvas.
My work right now is a little stiff and lifeless, gesture drawing will help me make it more alive and what I see is that I am close to making it almost renaissance like when I add backgrounds with perspective, foreshortening limbs then I shall add light and shadow work on them.
Furthermore, I will work on making realistic reflections and light diffusion patterns too.
This would give me ample motivation to start working on Blender with it’s robust rendering capabilities and I might head on out to make 3d work. Maybe then I shall even add gratifying to it using Godot. I am seeing this complete thing as one thing. Also to make compelling environments a rich understanding of architecture would be important so I will work on that too.
The next thing I am obsessing over is making YouTube videos. It’s the same deal there too, I am focusing on making 1000 videos on youtube and reaching a certain amount of subscribers and for that, I need a kind of plan. In any case, the intention of making YouTube is that I always wanted my own comedy tv show and this is it.
I have been sorta working on video essays and stuff so far but mostly I have been stressing stand up comedy on it.
Maybe as I go further I shall even explore travel vlogging and whatnot.
But most importantly what I intend to do is to make it a full fledged daily show where I have fun and make people laugh.
Maybe once a year I could have live stand-up comedy events too with 1000 or so people.
That’s the dream.
I am using a green screen for this, and I have some interesting background effects going on, what may happen is eventually my digital art and my videos overlap. Whatever content I make I may need a team to help me work on these.
The third thing I am obsessing about is writing powerful and compelling essays. To get my writing to a top tier level.
The only way forward is the practice but then I would also need to read a whole lot more, maybe obsessively.
What I imagine is writing 1000 blog posts every day each of more than 1000 words maybe I will have enough material to turn all of that into a solid book. Or maybe a series of books.
I intend to work on fiction as well so that I can convert them into movies.
Again these will also overlap with the above stuff.
My art, my comedy and my writing together combined to create a trifecta of impact. The Mohith impact! woohoo!
The fourth thing I am gonna obsess about is what I guess I would call being a JEDI MASTER.
I’ve got no better way to say it.
So this is more of a spiritual quest. Going on an intensive meditation practice where I meditate one hour twice per day. So far I’ve been able to pull of 20 minutes of sitting in silence, I need to pump those numbers up.
To this, I am going to add a Yoga practice where I do the Surya Namaskara (sun salutation series of poses) and do a full-fledged Yoga workout on a daily basis.
Also included in this is Tai Chi practice since I have evidence and the reason to believe that it has a lot of benefits.
I am also keen to add to this in the future martial arts, like Aikido, Capeorea, Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu and more.
What I see in obsessing over this is to have exceptional mind-body control and to be able to dominate any physical challenge.
I also see a possibility that I go on a bout in the MMA trained in martial arts and feel that tension in the cage.
I got inspired after I read the book “ The professor in the cage” where an English professor learns MMA and talks about what makes men fight. Fascinating stuff. I believe meditation is the foundation for becoming a martial arts master and I intend to master it. To add to all this I shall also be doing 5 push-ups and 5 pulls ups every day to build that atomic habit.
The next four things are:- Physics, Comedy writing, Poetry and Business.
It’s a bit distinct from the YouTube obsession I put up there.
I’ll talk about that in my next blog.
Stay tuned.
