Back to the Roots
What's your background?
Where did you grow up?
What did you like doing as a child?
What did you finally choose as a profession?
... and what are you doing today?
Most people (including myself) tend to live in the future: the holiday or trip that's coming up. That promotion. The house we're saving or the job we're looking for. Any dreams which have a firm place in our minds and hearts, but, are not fulfilled yet. Achieving them in the past was - at least somewhat - predictable. The factors were a fact.
However, in times like these, where we deal with a lot of uncertainty, and where facts become factors, it can be powerful to not live in the future, and instead, reconnect with our roots.
In my case, I remembered that making music really got me through some difficult times - puberty, emotional upheavals, and the likes. So I went back to what I originally studied - classical piano - and started to practise again. It was painful. Realizing and remembering lost skills is not something to be taken lightly. Still, reconnecting with ones' inner abilities and passion is one of the best rewards to get through a stressful time.
My creativity helped me to see things differently and get a new perspective: for the first time, I not only played the piano but actually composed an entire piece as well. You can listen to it here:
It even inspired some friends who (as their creative hobby) had taken up video making and movie production classes and used the music in their creative outlet here:
What's your activity or passion that helped you to get through a stressful time?
A project started perhaps, but never completed?
An old, rekindled hobby?
A deepened skill?
"Modern times" - the title I've chosen for this newsletter - to me means an accelerated pace of everything: the way we see the future, how technology automates and innovates itself, our ability to become aware of new opportunities that simply weren't there just an hour ago.
I invite you to share your experiences and perspectives and to grow together into the unknown, the uncertain, but with strong roots and a presence deeply embedded in our human values which we're living today.
Principal, Turaco Strategy LLC | Fractional CRO/Board Advisor 3MERA | Leader RMAIIG AI Ethics SIG | IBM Alum
4 年A great launch to your newsletter Toby! I am subscribed and plan to read your articles and participate when I have something worth contributing to this important conversation. Until then, thank you! For sharing your truths and asking the questions that need to be asked right now: What drive us? What latent passions have these times surfaced and rekindled? Where do our passions and tendencies to be creative or productive take us? What do we hear when we take the time to listen and what do we see when we look in the mirror and then at the world around us? What future can we imagine for ourselves, our communities, our planet? I look forward to participating in this newsletter and the challenge you loosely framed with the your questions!
?MPLANTOLOJ?, ORTODONT?
4 年Congrats Toby,You make us feel relaxed and happy with combination of art,nature ,music,technology ,science and lots of life time for now and future we spend in life.Tthank you also for the piano feast.we are looking forward to hear You.
Thinker | Speaker | Problem Solver. Startup advisor, Lecturer, Technology x Behavior expert, Information overload crusader
4 年Hi Toby, nice music! You're right, this is an excellent time to attend to old passions. Over here I reverted to Woodworking and Programming, two old hobbies I'd neglected for years... right now I'm learning to code for Android in Java (the last language Iearned was C++... years ago). And I'm learning to learn in a new mode - no more reading the book first; you experiment, mess up, then go to Stack Overflow to find out why...
Chatbot Enthusiast bei Cognigy
4 年Toby thanks for sharing this. I think Corona is a game changer as it will change the way how people apply to jobs as it separates the crowd into 2 groups, those who used their time and those who didn't. The upcoming most important question for a job interview will be 'What did you do during Corona?'. Netflix will be the wrong answer(if not applying to Netflix), as it's important to show that your creativity is flourishing when it's unleashed. I've spent 3 hours of coding per day in average since the beginning of Corona just for private projects and now I'm in the midst of creating my own SaaS ERP No-Code Building Kit Solution
Fully support!