The first painting
You'll always view your first painting as ugly, but it will be the most important piece of your career as an artist.
This is the first ever article I’m publishing on this platform. Not my first attempt at writing, but the one I’ll remember. Let’s go through some basic questions.
Why am I doing this?
“Start with why” is something that I learnt from Simon Sinek through this YouTube video, where great companies and individuals have clarity on why they do the things they do.
From the book Good to Great by Jim Collins I also learnt that:
You don’t need to have some grand existential reason for why you love what you’re doing or to care deeply about your work. All that matters is that you do love it and that you do care.
So combining these two, I’ll start with why I’m doing this.
I grew up in an environment where my dad isn’t always at home due to the nature of his work, my mom is a full-time housewife, I’m the eldest son (second child out of eight; I have an elder sister). Given this setting, I assumed the role of a “second dad” for my siblings.
Whenever there’s family matters to handle, I will work hand-in-hand with my mom to take care of it. Things like bringing my siblings to the clinic, making sure that the doors are locked before we all go to bed, going out at night to buy dinner for them1, fixing their bicycles, wrapping school textbooks at the start of the year — these bits and pieces of life grounded me into becoming a caretaker of those around me.
In addition to that, when I was around the age of 14, my mom started sharing with me her life stories. She shared her past traumas, things that were stressing her out. I spent countless hours listening to her, absorbing the emotional weight of every situation without being able to do anything, mainly because:
Those things happened in the past and she was just sharing to get them off her chest
I was a teenager and it wasn’t my place to meddle with adult matters
Those things were new to me, I wasn’t equipped with the right wisdom to handle those situations or advise her what to do
The emotional weight grew over time as I listened to her more and more. There’s a sense of powerlessness that built up in me with each conversation. My mom is the person I care for and love the most.
How could those people do those bad things to her? I wished I had the power to stop them. I wished for her circumstances to be better that she didn’t have to go through those painful moments.
At the age of 15, I went to a boarding school and during that time my mom and I had a weekly routine of chatting on the phone at night. I wasn’t allowed to bring a phone to the boarding school, so I had to use a public phone, one that you rarely see nowadays.2
I vividly remember the night that I finally broke down, crying endlessly while talking to her. I kneeled, while holding the phone receiver, not caring at all about other schoolmates that walked past me, drowned in the misery, sadness, and powerlessness of not being able to protect her.
That night became a turning point for me, solidifying my character as a caretaker — not just in the physical and logistical sense, but also in the emotional sense.
Since then I’ve grown even further as a person. I’m 37 now, turning 38 later this year. I’m comfortable listening to the stories of others. I’ve built the knack for allowing the people that I talk to to feel comfortable to open up to me, especially in a one-to-one setting. I’m well aware of how comforting that can be, to have someone listen to you and share the ephemeral emotional space in that moment.
So this is me, taking a stab at being true to myself while figuring out how I can take care of the people around me even more.
The trauma during my upbringing is now a superpower that I’m channeling as a motivation for me to keep trying, to keep failing.
This article is my first painting. It’s raw, it’s ugly, and I intend to become better at this as I work my way through to build my own set of audience — people that resonate with my personal values and want to make the world a better place, one person at a time.
Where do I draw my inspiration from?
Many. I figured that the best way to shape the kind of person you want to become is by learning from others.
When I was 15, my English teacher (may his soul rest in peace) said that if you wanna be good at English, you just need to read a small paragraph every day without miss. Read anything. The paragraph can be small. It doesn't matter. Back then the advice sounded trivial. It wasn’t until many years later that I realised there are several things packed into that simple hack: consistency, training of vocal cord, exposure to new vocabulary, removing the fear of the language, the power of showing up to yourself.3
At the age of 21, I had a mentor who asked me what’s the difference between Mahatma Gandhi and Adolf Hitler? He said that both of them are master manipulators — they know what to do and what to say to get what they want. He taught me the essence of deciding the kind of person you want to become. A knife is harmful in the wrong hands, but it can be used to cook a delicious meal in the right hands.
From 2006 to 2016, I was obsessed with the Apple brand and took the time to study Steve Jobs and the Apple business as a whole. I went down the rabbit hole to understand the company values, business model, stayed up late to watch product launch presentations and WWDC keynotes4. The phrase “stay hungry, stay foolish” from his Stanford Commencement Address stuck with me. His death in 2011 made the speech even more poignant and aptly inspiring.
In my second year of boarding school, at 16, I had a roommate who was mature way beyond his age. We spent a lot of time together where he explained his every move. He was the vice president of the students’ body. He opened my eyes to what it is like to operate with high degree of emotional intelligence. He set me on the path of studying the field in depth. The following year after I finished school I picked up three of Daniel Goleman’s books: Working with Emotional Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence, and Social Intelligence.
There are many other examples that I could share with you, but I’ll save them for the future in the right context.
What is my ultimate plan with this?
The answer to this question is multifaceted.
Financial
I wish to make a living out of this. I don’t know in what way this will grow into. I’ve seen several examples of online writers: Ben Thompson’s Stractechery subscription model, John Gruber’s Daring Fireball sponsorship model, Dan Koe’s one-person business model. These are all based on writing and can be expanded into video, podcast and online courses. This is a discovery phase that I’ll have to go through to find out what works for me.
My parents are getting older, and I have family members and close friends relying on me for financial support. My childhood trauma of powerlessness that I explained above is a source of motivation for me to figure this out. It’s critical.
Self-development
Becoming better is a good thing. As cliche as that sounds, I want this endeavour to be a way for me to improve myself. I get to be true to myself, grow at the same time, build my own set of audience, feed into my need to feel powerful (borne out of the powerlessness).
I once read On Writing Well by William Zinsser but have never really put the knowledge from the book to good use. Perhaps it’s time.
Digital footprint
I want to leave something behind for the people that matter to me. In my absence, the work that I produced, be it the written articles or videos will become something that they can hold on to — an everlasting guide through the things that I shared, and my way of living. Through my work, I hope that they will understand me better, for whatever it’s worth.
Am I using AI to write?
No. All articles are written by me. I will use AI tools to spot typos, grammatical errors or incongruence in my writing. I may use it for brainstorming ideas, but not for writing. This newsletter is an extension of my brain, and it will continue to be so. If ever I’m using AI tool to generate a content, I will be transparent and label it as such.
In a world chock-full of AI-generated content, human-produced materials will become even more potent. It’s a strength.
Why should you care about me?
You shouldn’t. I aim to advocate for self-improvement through introspection, which means that the primary audience for my writing is me.
The paradox of such intent is that by me laser-focusing on self-introspection, you get to indulge in the inner workings of my thought process, which in turn will allow you to reflect upon your own experiences. It’s powerful and win-win.
Humans have a tendency to project their own experiences onto those of others. You’ll be drawn to reflect on your life as you explore mine.
What’s next?
All great painters in history, dead or alive, started with the first painting. The first painting isn’t their greatest, nor the most beautiful.
I first dabbled with blogging about ten years ago — I paid for subscription on WordPress, bought a domain name, and wrote a few articles but I struggled to find momentum.
This is my first article on this platform. My first painting. It’s ugly, as it should be, and I aim to become better at it.
This was before food delivery era.
This was in 2003, four years before the iPhone was released in 2007.
I could unpack this into a separate article on its own.
I live in Asia, so those live-streams are usually in the middle of the night.