Picking New Hobbies

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"My hobby is to pick new hobbies"

My creative brain requires rewiring every now and then. In simple words, I like to learn new things, read new topics, build habits...I am always on my toes striving to be a better man, a kinder person who does good deeds. Ah! a tough goal, I know! But, I'll keep at it. 

While we were doing our M.Des, our profs gave us a lot of different materials, assignments, theories, designing practices to shape our brain to become better in the creative and research process so that we could think differently, do something unique, build new designs...and more. But, it's not since the M.Des, my brain has been trained to be creative ever since my primary school, DAV where I learnt new art techniques from my drawing and clay modelling teachers. Actually, I believe that I was born as a creative soul thus leading me to like the art classes. I have always been good at drawing since childhood. Sadly, my explorations lie mainly in the creative side of mine; I wish that I was that open towards my eating habits or ready to explore new dishes. 

Anyway, the hungry brain of mine keeps asking for more knowledge to process and I love serving it new things every now and then :D I have taken up multiple interests in my life in the past like drawing, painting (that's different, yes), clay modelling, model-making, DIYs, papier-mache but if you observe, all these are sort of under the same umbrella.

More recently, I started exploring other areas like reading different genres of books; I always enjoyed self-help and motivational genres like The Alchemist, The Monk Who.... but lately, I tried learning reading other genres like Psychology and Behavioural Sciences and as these turned out to be quite heavy topics so I couldn't read several books but I certainly read many and they even helped me grew as a user experience designer.

In 2017, while I was Jaipur I did two more experiments with myself - One, to let my hair grow long. The second was to build some muscles. I did succeed in growing hair till they touched my lips from the front and I loved them. For the other experiment, I joined a gym and grew some decent muscles on my shoulders and chest but I couldn't bulk up like a hulk or gain extra inches over my thin waist as I was expecting. Sadly, my ectomorph frame is to be blamed. I was actually able to convert my fat into muscles thus gaining extra muscles without gaining much weight. But, one thing that really happened nicely was that I had grown 6-pack abs :D I didn't get those rocky biscuits abs but those were somewhat more pronounced than washboard abs. And, the good part was, they were visible without me having to squeeze my stomach. I wish I could share a photo here :P  Well, the best part of this exploration is that I still possess the abs :) even when I write this article. 

In 2018, when I joined i2e1, I got my passion for books back. The smart and intelligent colleagues were the motivation. It always helps you grow when you are with good and like-minded folks. And, with all those IITians in the startup, I felt energized. Satyam, Prashant, Vertika and Gaurav(GB) became my reading partners with whom I would discuss new books, my learnings. In fact, travelling on Metro with Prashant also helped me learn new things. We both would discuss books, lessons while we would travel to Dwarka from Saket. Every day, on both sides of the journey, I would read a book. I was never one of those who would put earphones in the ear to listen to music or watch movies or stupid forwarded videos or scroll social media feed. I had a desire to learn and to grow and I knew books were a great friend. That year, with almost 40 minutes of reading every day, I completed 17 books. Alongside, I picked up Rubik's cube as a hobby. Sandy, another colleague at i2e1 would always keep a cube on his desk, One day, I asked him to teach me, Rubik's cube always fascinated me during my childhood. I have always had many Rubik's cube at my home but I never knew the trick and would rely on luck to solve 3 faces at max :) Sandy gave a lesson for around 20 minutes, and I was into it. Another game for my creative brain :D I learned Rubik's cube in a few hours. And, today, I can solve it in just over a minute's time. Along with the standard 3x3 cube, I can solve a 4x4 and a Megaminx. Now wherever I go, I always keep the cube in my bag. I solve it while sitting in the office while attending meetings and while travelling in the cab. My next step on the ladder is to solve the 3x3 blindfolded. Fingers crossed!

Recently when I joined Gartner in 2019, I kind of left all my previous experiments behind, unintentionally of course! I don't work out as often. I rarely read books. Actually, I didn't find colleagues with a similar reading interest in Gartner plus my travel mode changed to a cab from Metro thus the shaky roads prevented from reading books. So, I could read only one and a half books in the last year. But, I picked two unique interests this time. One is music. Another is architecture. I got interested in music as I always wanted to play an instrument but was afraid of it. I bought a flute, I couldn't play it and dropped it. Then, I picked Ukulele. Learnt music theory, open chords, bar chords, strumming patterns. Now, it's been over 9 months and I can play the ukulele quite decently; I can play and sing more than a dozen of my favourite songs with difficult strumming patterns. Now, I can play chords without me having to look at the instruments- tuned my muscle memory! I can catch the strumming pattern of songs by listening although, I haven't reached the stage of picking chords. While learning, I also learnt the chords of the guitar so I know the guitar's chord diagrams as well. All it should take me to play the guitar is approximately a few days just to get the knack of the muscle memory of its finger positions. It's great to have learnt an instrument, I always wanted to play the guitar while I would sing. I wish I were a better singer. Phew! Once things get better and we get to go outside easily, I plan to buy myself a guitar to learn another instrument.

More recently, I started to learn about architecture. Having 9 architects in a batch of 20 M.Des students, I knew some of the other things about architecture but I never showed great interest in it then; I wish I did and learnt more from my friends. But, any way I have sort of started to take more interest in architecture and started learning different architectural styles, revising my materials and colour theory lessons, sketching buildings-houses etc, made a Pinterest board, installed SketchUp in my laptop... But, I still need to dive deeper into this ocean. I am not as deep as I am in music these days.

I wonder what keeps me going but I enjoy the process of acquiring new hobbies. Actually, I can add another interest to my list which is picking up new languages. Having always enjoyed Telugu movies, I had started learning Telugu from the subtitles. When I joined IIT, Kiran, Sravani, and Tarun became my best buddies, I learned a lot more of Telugu from them. I can now speak a few sentences, I can start conversations and interpret the topic for like 5% of the time. Besides Telugu, I tried to learn Tamil and Kannada too but never learnt them that well beyond some words. Actually, I would love to learn Malayalam too given how musical it sounds but it's the most difficult south Indian language. Most recently, I am trying to learn Korean. After watching several K-dramas on Netflix, I felt interested in their language and culture. I am still at the level of a few Korean words though.