Gigyasa Project Turns Three: Dance of the Shadows

If you want to follow the series:-> The Birth of Gigyasa Project ->> Gigyasa Project Turns One

When pursuing our real calling feels terrifying, it feels comforting to embrace the shadow calling. It acts like a palliative.

I discovered writing around 2005 when I started writing love letters to my girlfriend. I remember the heady feeling when I found for the first time in my life that this writing thing is such a drug.

An enlightening drug, to be more precise.

Which drug gives you a high while you are at it and makes you feel briefly enlightened at the tunnel's end, even if it's an uncomfortable truth about yourself you just discovered a while ago? When I completed my engineering in 2007, I knew one thing. And that wasn't mechanical engineering. I wanted to be a writer. But the troubling fact of the matter was this. I was a terrible writer. And so while I kept writing online as my experiment of self-discovery, I took up a shadow calling - Consulting.

In "Turning Pro", where I first encountered the concept of "Shadow Careers", Steven Pressfield writes,

“ That shadow career is a metaphor for our real career. Its shape is similar, its contours feel tantalizingly the same. But a shadow career entails no real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us.”

Consulting is a comforting dream of shadows if you want to pursue the secret life of a writer. It equally chases truths (and fantasies), its goals are equally indirect and depending on how you approach it, it can be at best, an intellectual adventure or an existential therapy session or at worst, an eternal ego trip inside the comforting prison of your cherished beliefs.

Because I feared being a writer, I took a safe way out. I decided to decouple the writer as an identity from writing as a process.

In doing so, I discovered something extremely fascinating: When you keep the noun separate from the verb (and pay more attention to the verb), writing becomes WAY MORE generative and fun.

“Are you pursuing a shadow career?

Are you getting your Ph.D. in Elizabethan studies because you’re afraid to write the tragedies and comedies that you know you have inside you? Are you living the drugs-and-booze half of the musician’s life, without actually writing the music? Are you working in a support capacity for an innovator because you’re afraid to risk becoming an innovator yourself?” - Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

I may be an agritech consultant, investor in a few agritech startups, agritech analyst, agritech researcher, digital storyteller, content creator, digital agriculture consultant, or product management consultant to a few non-agritech startups.

If I look in the mirror and ask myself - In doing what I am doing, what am I really doing?

W.R.I.T.I.N.G

I like to think of my free-agent career, starting from 2019 , as one-year "eras". There is no other word to describe how momentous it has been in my life journey.

Explorer Era: 2019-20 was about getting high on the free part of free agent. It was an era of discovery, idealism, travelling new shores of Central America, and trying new things.

Survival Instincts Era: 2020-21 was about surviving the pandemic, giving a TEDx talk , discovering an equanimous state (shantam) with being a free agent, discovering the relationship between price and value (when I tripled my newsletter subscription rates), and taking the lesser travelled road of a consultant who doesn't equate time with money.

An-Odyssey-to-my-Roots Era: 2021-22 was about dunking deep on Agribusiness Matters , a pilgrimage to Switzerland to discover my dharma as a global agritech consultant, studying dharma and purusarthas in the ongoing experiments to discover what it means to be an Indian, the difficulty of being dharmic amidst her civilizational aspirations in her 76th year of Independence, and starting my learning journey as an investor in agritech .

What will the fourth era of the Gigyasa Project be, when I complete three years of being a free agent this September?

Can I take the real risk of being a writer, fully knowing the dance of the shadows? You can never dance with the shadow, let alone dream of banishing your shadows. But can you pay attention to your shadows and see where your light is coming from?

When I?quit my full-time job ?as an?agritech product manager? in 2019, in hindsight, I wanted to become a venture capitalist?who will back my pet ideas?in the power-law world.

(Credits go to Daniel Vasallo who first introduced me to this metaphor, which rewards you handsomely upon deeper reflection.)

“Anytime you have outliers whose success multiplies success, you switch from the domain of the normal distribution to the land ruled by the power law—from a world in which things vary slightly to one of extreme contrasts. And once you cross that perilous frontier, you better begin to think differently.” - Sebastian Mallaby, The Power Law        

Who else could I expect to sponsor my living experiments to?discover freedom and meaning ?in an age of runaway?Climate Change? and discover a life that is replete with all the four juices of a meaningful life - Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha?

In an uncertain world that is waking up to a climate crisis, I want to chase?maximal interestingness ?with a portfolio of small bets in the enchanting worlds of culture and agriculture and increase the odds of making this lifestyle choice financially sustainable.

Agribusiness Matters began in 2020? as a small bet to observe and track the ongoing developments of the agritech universe, outside the?reality distortion field? created by VCs and agritech founders and hopefully discover leverage points? to transform the food and agriculture system.

Today, it encompasses the range of work I do as a consultant, investor, researcher and analyst.

Outside Agribusiness Matters, when I look at the bigger picture of Artha flows that I am activating through my Gigyasa Project, it looks something like this. Presenting to you my portfolio of small, interesting bets in culture and agriculture.

The fourth Era of the Gigyasa Project is going to be titled: Turning Pro

1) Agribizmatters.com domain has been booked. I am moving my newsletter from Substack to Convertkit. I plan to bring several informational products, courses for agritech entrepreneurs, and also other experiments (read as sponsored deepdive) I plan to do under Agribusiness Matters. I want to get my Agribusiness Matters T-Shirt and cap and learn to flaunt it. I have been trying to hire few research interns. That should be finalized soon.

For the first time, I am writing an agricultural policy document along with a veteran in this space for a particular region and it could be an interesting doorway to play bigger infinite games under agriculture.

2) I want to be a Youtuber. I have been an amateur in the creator economy and going by the signals I see, it's going to be a great time to build content on Youtube. My focus will be on a niche domain: System Thinking to build food systems of the future. Today, everybody talks about seeing agriculture from the lens of systems. How do you practice systems thinking in agriculture?

3) What I discovered in my experiments to embrace writing as a verb, without necessarily holding on to the noun of a writer is priceless. I want to teach the world how to use writing as a powerful tool of self-discovery. I want to build an online cohort course titled, "Write Your Way to Enlightenment". The course outline is ready.

4) I want to grow Dharma Newslette r and do interesting experiments with it. I have spent 100 weeks so far studying Patanjali Yoga Sutras. "The Hero with a Human Face" book is slowly maturing and taking shape. I want to take a traditional route to publishing this book. Let's see.

Few days back, during a meeting with an agritech founder, the founder asked me, "Venky, where do you see yourself five years from now?" I blanked out.

In the past, I am used to answering these questions based on what I knew the interviewer would love to hear. However, on that day, being true to myself, I completely blanked out.

"I don't know."

Living the life perched on the edge of the power law teaches you to honestly acknowledge "I don't know" and try various things. As I turn 37 this year, I feel, nothing could be more worthwhile than doing this.

Thank you for Reading!

If you would like to support me in pursuing this journey, there are several things you can do.

1)Hire me or recommend me for consulting gigs!

2)Become a research patron (third option when you hit subscribe) either under Agribusiness Matters or Dharma and Dharmasankata

3) Share with me your wisdom on how to make this business philosophy work. Teach me new skills. I have been doing a course on design. I need to build my YouTubing skills, delegation skills to manage interns and so much more.

4) Wish me Good Luck!