Writing is a tool for processing

This newsletter had a rebirth into a different format and then it ceased in the subsequent weeks. The last post was exactly 2 months to date.

In this two months of joining a new job. On the personal front, I had fallen extremely sick for couple of weeks. It was brutal. The sickness took a week to subside and couple more for me to completely recover. Also, spent more than a month hopping around big cities. Culminating with a family celebration last month. All in all, enough reasons to slack.

This was followed by 2 weeks of fixing the reading habit to attempt to distill some nuggets worth sharing.

In this process, I got social proof acknowledging my public writing. It kind of worked against my writing of new posts and this newsletter(I don't track opens). All my writing over the past 2 months is within a notion database for work.

I had to unpack everything I was learning. The best way to go about it was writing everything I learnt into a document and open it for feedback. Writing/typing it down into a document is my way to thinking through it. It helps bring clarity to thought. Quality of thought becomes obvious once you put it on a paper.

If I want to be understanding about my situation. Then, I could frame it by saying that my curiosity quota was filled by work things. New role, team, region and product.

But, if I want to be critical. Then, I could frame this as a failing of sticking to habit of writing. Whenever, I don't write things down. I stop processing things. I start doing the lazy work of talking to people and sharing stuff.

What prompted me to attempt to write this post was a scrappy post by Visa himself. If you are reading this newsletter for a couple of issues. He features frequently. I thoroughly enjoy his musings and the way he goes about writing it.

In Stray clippings #01 he writes his frustration of not able to post much on his own newsletter.

..i’ve been doing a lot of thinking though. i wrote a thread recently about my thinking about the essays I want to write, circling around the topics of wretchedness, polite fictions, media, cursed artifacts. Part of me wishes these essays were completed already, so I could feel the relief that comes with getting them all out.

Even though my body was sick. My brain has been actively mulling on some of the things. Especially, about my previous domain of operating, agriculture. Maybe, it is PTSD or maybe it comes from the conversations I keep having with founders still in pursuit.

While, even I share the frustration of Visa about getting posts out. I wanted to shed some light on what are in the draft.

I am currently writing an answer to the question, "If given an opportunity to run an agri-business by big corporate?". This was again an inspiration that came from a newsletter writer, Ted Gioia. "If I run a major record label" because he is Jazz music reviewer.

The next one is about the off hand comment people in agri-tech keep saying when it comes to role of our government in Indian agriculture. "They should get out of subsidies and invest in infrastructure for farmers".

If you know me even a little. Such rationale and motivated decisions is the reason why we are in the current state in the first place. That is where I stand. I am sure, there would be some smart chap who would have said the same thing about fertiliser adoption being a critical component just like infrastructure, now.

The solace in my public posting is that no one reads them. I might get cancelled after writing these post by the entire community. But, you got to do what you believe.

Round up

Over the course of last 2 months. I re-published some of the essay that I had written on agriculture to the LinkedIn community that follows me. I am not sure how many of them read through them. So, I thought it would be only reasonable to do it over here as well.

I did a masterclass with Network Capital on the nudging of my good friend Himali Saini . The following two links are the two parts of talk and deck that I presented in the master class.

Master Class Part 1: Startup experience

🚨 The essential nature of moving agri commodities makes the agri-logistics businesses inessential.

Master Class Part 2 : Produce Markets

🚨 Hard earned lessons of building marketplaces in produce trade if summed up to single sentence. “Buy and sell grade wise”

It resonated with one of the experts and gurus in agri-space who personally DMed me and said "don't stop posting such stuff". We both may have some contrarian views baked in ground reality. "These are my words out there", he concluded.

It just made the entire ordeal of typing these essay into the void worth every bit for yours truly.

Links that resonated

Not sharing any readings for this issue. Instead, wanted to link you to a source called Flowstate.fm

It helped me focus multiple times in the past while writing including for this post. Next time, you are in a crunch mode and need to type a banger note to communicate your ideas. Pick an album and get writing.

The album that was in the headphones while writing this post is from Alex Boman

Sign off

This post is all about scrapping the crumbs in order to share something and also make it valuable to you.

Which brings me to the title of this issue. In the course of two months I believed that I had become a writer. I had few successes through it. I got lazy with rigour of posting regularly. Mistakes happen. Who am I kidding. I am no writer.

I am just an average joe going about writing my way into rooms instead of doing an MBA.

Signing off till the next time,

Vivek, writing more than hoping to write.