Platonic Inspiration and me

Varun Jain: In search of some real inspiration, a believable obsession, an interesting enunciation and a dedicated imagination. Profession: Derivatives Trader Education: B.Tech IIT Kharagpur Am blogged @ www.seraphic.wordpress.com Reach me @ [email protected]

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IMAX 70mm maximalism

Gemini created this overlay of common film formats alongside the in-the-news Imax 70mm. There is an enormity to this format that, I suppose, only auteurs like Nolan could do justice do. Unless of course it becomes the new standard. New technology gets adopted this way so won’t be a new thing, but begs the question of what cinema means and provides to us harried souls.  Nolan has described it…

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On Tinkering

Been a while since I wrote something here, so I just thought I will come back to write a short post. I’ll write this using AI, but not using AI to draft the content as much as using AI to transcribe my speech. I am using Wispr Flow because why not? To some extent, most of these AI tools seem to bring in an abundance of content, and it pretty much stops at that. By itself, these are pretty…

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#100 100,000 words!

Milestones are a good way to keep yourself on track.  Building tangible, discrete milestones into your plan helps you celebrate step-victories and stay energized about the long road ahead.   At work, what this means is to draft some checkpoints that lets you track, measure, assess and also celebrate the mini victories and keep your stakeholders involved and informed. It’s typical of multi-year…

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#89 It's the little things

The little ones make it look easy.  The intrepid sloths, or the tall oaks, or the mighty caterpillars, or the febrile squirrels make it seem obvious.  And the awakened amongst us, knowingly or unknowingly, turn it into a joke.  It’s the little things. It’s always the little things. The things you should pay attention to. People call it by many names with their evolved human concepts. It’s the…

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Days are long, years are short

Parenting feels like this. Days seem like never-ending chores and coping mechanisms that keep our nerves on alert. And yet, before we know it, years go by, they are taller, more vocabulary and point of views, and they continue to shed their mannerisms we came to cherish. The untidy rooms and the toy-sprawl seem an irritant, until they aren’t there anymore. And suddenly they seem to come alive in…

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What gets missed

As we ponder over the state of things, and envy arrives, what gets missed is the presentiment of loss that pervades subsequent observations. It’s hard to come back from it. But come back we must. The present is here, and for the taking. It’s not lost. But despite the siren calls, it does not seem to suffice for most of us. I wonder why. The evidence is there, so is the overpowering reportage.…

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#88 On roots and collective memories

It still surprises me to realize that so many of the dilemmas we face as we age are questions that human beings have mulled over ever since we could reason or think. These existential questions are a product of our choices, cultural shifts, and external influences which in them may be unique, but the questions they ask are not. It’s the realm that philosophy reigns over, but often gets…

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#87 Bewilderment

I finished Bewilderment a few days back. It’s an easy read by an author – Richard Powers – whom I have really come to like. There is an emphasis on the world beyond that of humans that his novels embody and reading his sentences seem like a meditative stance against the chaos in the world around us.  I got hooked on him after reading The Overstory – his Pulitzer Prize winning novel that led to a…

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These aren’t material

When we get mad at them for chewing their sleeves, for biting their nails, for running away from a formation, for coloring outside the lines, for playing with their food, or using colors everywhere, why are we really mad? It might be better to take a pause and wonder if it’s them or its us. Kids are learning the ways of the world. And the ways aren’t the right always necessarily – it’s just the…

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#86 On celebrating outcasts

There was a boy in my school who was the first ‘rebel’ I may have ever met in my life. He pummeled his time in school with a streak of nasty and gross pranks and irreverent ticks that annoyed students and teachers alike. Wild eyed, girthy, with big frame glasses. He was fair, very fair – as if from a foreign land. And somehow, he used to drive a scooter to school. A scooter, at his age. I used to…

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#85 On Starships and Mecha-zillas

I don’t quite remember when and how science became an interesting topic for me. In fact, I suspect it never arose naturally enough because, as a general unwritten rule, getting good grades in my middle and high school meant that taking science (versus commerce) was the default choice. But, as with most things, a lot of these choices we make, have a way of self-reinforcing itself. And so, over…

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#83 Sense of humor

We can have a sense of humor and maintain/deploy it at all times, irrespective of the various situations we may find ourselves in. This does not mean we are not serious about the actions we need to take. But it does mean that whatever decisions we take, actions that come out of it, and the results therein, can be taken with humor and with levity. I am getting around to the fact that the…

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#82 What should you focus on at work?

If you work in a typical job, what should you focus on – getting ahead or getting familiar? The difference between the two is the former is relative, while the latter is intrinsic. There is no right or wrong answer, as much as there is the idea of identifying which one you want and sticking to it. If you oscillate between the two, then you are handicapping yourself in your quest to focus. And…

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#81 We shape our tools and our tools shape us

Ever since we learned to shape tools to curate the environment around us, we have been shaped by our tools in turn. When we invented fire, we started preferring cooked meat. And over the years, our canines evolved as a result. So, fire changed our dental strength. When we sharpened the stones for hunting, we grew increasingly comfortable hunting other animals. But we also started to hunt each…

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#80 How to communicate effectively

Allegedly, we have evolved in lock-step and often aided by our need to communicate. Our words have shaped us, continue to shape us, more than we let on, much more than we realize. Words have the power to hurt, to defeat, to rejoice, to entertain, to excite, to motivate, to startle, to arouse, and so much more. Words are the symbolic representations of our emotional world. The words we use make…

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#79 Conditioned animals

Conditioned animals When our emotional brain 🧠 responds without the aid of prefrontal cortex (the watch tower) we behave like conditioned animals.  Or, to put it bluntly, like a Pavlovian dog. This conditioning is basically a trained response, that has evolved over thousands of years. A typical reptilian brain. And this means we transition to a fight or flight mode pretty easily.  This, in the…

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#78 Making progress

It’s so hard to keep up with a habit, even when you want to. Life, as they say, comes in the way. And other things take a priority. But as long as you have a general awareness of how to get back on track, they say all is good. And to be kind to ourselves when that happens, which happens all too often, in order to give us the space for us to indeed come back to the habit if it is important to…

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