Week 1 // First week reflections

Bindhu and I have decided to start something. It’s definitely some thing but it is not clearly defined yet. Our tentative name for it is Project Pathalogic. The Patha- part of it is from our last name. We’re also both fans of logic. The obvious similarity to the word pathOlogic (which describes something compulsive or obsessive) is mere coincidence. Mostly.

We’ve had our fair share of ideas over the years. Some have come to fruition and reached a broader audience than just the inside of our heads but most have died on the vine. I suspect this is true of all ideas (and is a good thing). Not everything needs to see the light of day.

We’ve decided we want to put out more stuff into the world, more frequently and in a way that allows us to support ourselves. This is a complicated endeavor. On one side, we’re going to be battling the familiar demons of getting left behind, not doing enough or not contributing enough to society. On the other we get to tap into that sweet life force that allows us to keep working on projects that interest us. Questions naturally arise. Are we not going to make enough money? Are we going to look back in 3 years, 5 years maybe 10 years and be filled with regret? Possibly. But I have an overwhelming feeling that we probably won’t.

This is our forum to publish the happenings (and mishappenings) in our adventure to make a living.¹

source: https://x.com/visakanv/status/1108823903248351232/photo/1

This week

Enough preamble, let’s get to this week’s update.

Our first task was to really zero in on the area that makes sense for Bindhu and I to invest in. Completely unsurprisingly, we had far too many options - from financial planning to health & wellness to b2b SAAS. All the cards were on the table but in hindsight, music has been the defining theme of our lives and something we’ve had fun doing together for decades.

This week’s brainstorming + todo list

One area that could provide an immediate return on effort is to start a Music Together location in our area. They offer very early music play for parents and kids (infants/toddlers and above) and the program seems right up our alley. It aligns beautifully with our shared vision that music is meant to be played together. It’s not just about highly skilled artists on stage, but everyone’s living room being a stage. Bindhu got the Director application submitted and we’ve got an intro call with their team late next week. Shoutout Asha for introducing it to us and we’ll provide more updates soon.

Another area of investment is on publishing more. This would be in traditional ways (finding a community here to further our Carnatic instincts) or newer mediums (Instagram, YouTube, Spotify). Might have to start a podcast (our first one we recorded a couple of years ago was never released). It’s definitely something we both enjoy doing. Bindhu and I are committed to pushing each other to release more so future updates will have links to stuff we do. For now, this song from our childhood brought back a ton of memories when we were jamming to it earlier this week. I hope you enjoy it.

Finally, we played. We haven’t played music together in years so it felt good to know we can still have fun and sound alright. We were fortunate to train during our youth and I’d like to think we have good taste. Unfortunately having good taste but being out of practice makes for a fairly rough sound. Right now, we’re focused on suspending judgement, trying to figure out what we can play and publishing what we feel good about. It took us a while just to set up the instruments we hope to play together on but we’re getting there.

1. Making a living is such a strange phrase. When Bindhu and I had fairly well-paying jobs, we were *technically* making a living. But … I personally felt like I wasn’t living. I really enjoyed parts of the job but for the most part it felt like a grind. Sometimes I’d grind for a few years, look back and be satisfied but not most of the time. And then Covid hit and I launched Rhythm Guru with Nritya. Now that was living. It didn’t last long but it was highly impactful to see something that had just been a thought, verbalized and realized. The seeds were sown. Bindhu has gone through a similar journey over the last two years and so here we are.