Here’s a transcript (sort of) to go with this video, where I explain why I haven’t uploaded any new videos in a little over two months. In a way it also explains why I haven’t posted anything to my blog in a while, but my blog posting frequency has been sporadic at best, so I digress.
Video Transcript (Paraphrased):
Hi! Welcome to Shriviews. It’s been a while since I made a video and I wanted to talk about that before making any other videos. It’s been over two months and a lot has happened since then.
I tried recording this video a week ago and I decided to re-record- it’s like I’d forgotten everything about speaking to a camera. It was a lot of starting over, a lot of pauses, a lot of looking away from the camera… but I just had to get in front of a camera and go through the motions for it to come back to me. It helped shake off the cobwebs. Almost like riding a bicycle.
Anyway, the main reason is that I moved to a new city in a new state for work. It took a little while to set up my new place and get settled in. I even have this new backdrop that I thought would look cool for videos- let me know what you think about it in the comments.
Another important reason is, as I’ve mentioned in previous videos, that with all that’s going in in the world, especially in the past few weeks, it’s difficult to bring yourself to create something. Sometimes the best thing to do is to be quiet, to listen, and to learn.
So that’s what I’ve been doing this past couple of months. I have a few ideas for videos and blog posts that I’m thinking about at the moment. Let me know what you’d like to see me talk about in the comments.
Until next time, take care, stay safe, and remember: for every action, there’s an equal and opposite distraction. Goodbye!
We live in unique and interesting times. One of the effects of the times we live in is the need for working from home. While it looks pretty straightforward on a surface level, there are certain implications on productivity and creativity, that need to be discussed.
Please watch, and let me know what you think in the comments!
I talk about these issues in my latest video. To summarize it briefly:
Since there is no spatial separation between the home and the office (they are both in the same place), there needs to be a temporal separation (you need to separate work and non-work hours)
It’s perfectly fine not to be able to be creative in times like these. The current times are on everyone’s minds, and there’s an innate expectation in a lot of people, that staying at home will usher in a creative renaissance, an expectation that isn’t coming to fruition, which leads to frustration
The key is to know to give yourself time. Staying at home gives you the illusion of having more time for yourself and your pwn personal endeavors than you really have. So go easy on yourself, and cut yourself some slack
If you liked this video, make sure to hit like, and subscribe to my channel.
I uploaded my first video on February 9th, 2019. In the year that followed, I’ve learned a lot about the process of video creation, and it has influenced my creative process in more ways than one. In this video, I talk about the main takeaways from a year’s worth of videos.
One takeaway was that only 30% of the people who watch my videos are subscribed to my channel. If you’re reading this and aren’t subscribed, please go ahead and hit that subscribe button!
The top 2 countries where my viewers reside are India and the United States. It is tough to think of topics that both audiences can relate to, but I try to mostly talk about my experiences living in the United States as someone who moved here for higher education and to begin their career. I am open to more suggestions though!
Related to this point is the fact that different audiences want different forms of content. Some prefer longer form (20 minutes and above) content, while a lot of others prefer shorter content (3 – 5 minutes). This is corroborated by my retention statistics. On average, people tend to view about 3.5 – 4.5 minutes of the video before they tune out. The solution to that, of course, is to make the videos engrossing enough that people stick around and to ensure that the videos don’t go on for too long.
An effect that making videos has had on me is that it has rejuvenated my creative process. Writing for videos requires a directness that the written medium doesn’t always need.
Those are the 3 major talking points in the video. I hope you watch it, and I also hope you suggest some topics for me to talk about in the future. Here’s to more years of making videos and writing blog posts!
As a video content creator, I’ve always been interested in trying out new things, and dabble in new formats. I felt like it was time to explore interviewing someone. I had a discussion with my colleague Shasank “Shank” Nagavarapu, where we discussed the latest trend in the US Car Market, which is the trend towards buying Crossovers or SUVs instead of traditional family Sedans.
You can view the playlist here, or you can click on the links below.
Part 1 goes into explaining the trend and the key factors behind it.
Part 2 dives deeper into the key trade-offs people make when they decide to go for an SUV or a Crossover.
Part 3 concludes the discussion with a chat about the future of the US Car Market.
Let me know what you think in the comments! I would appreciate any constructive feedback.
As always, please subscribe to my YouTube channel, and follow Shasank’s work on his website, nomadunplugged.com.
One of the things I haven’t talked to you guys so far is that I’m a craft beer fan. I really like finding out about local breweries, trying out what they have, and occasionally go out of my way and hunt for a beer that’s hard to find, or a seasonal exclusive. I wanted to talk about how I started this journey as a beer hunter.
Check out the video I made on this topic, and as always: like share, and subscribe.
The story of how I decided to get into craft beer
My story as a craft beer enthusiast began in the summer or fall of 2015. I was a 23 year old in grad school and it was just another weeknight- kicking it, shooting the breeze with some friends, some 90s Bollywood music on the TV, and of course, some run of the mill beer. The beer in question was a Corona which wasn’t particularly good, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
I still get video clips of 90s music starring Bobby Deol.
Anyway, I remember I hadn’t had the best day, and I was hoping to put it behind me. Unfortunately, this unwinding time wasn’t going as well as I had hoped. The tunes on the TV were mostly b-movie fare that my friend put on because they thought it would be funny in an ironic way (it wasn’t). Also, I was texting a girl but it really wasn’t going anywhere- you know when you’re trying to have a conversation with someone and there’s just no substance, and you feel like just typing out words on to a screen and nothing has meaning? It was one of those dead-end conversations.
But I was about to put all those worries behind me, I had a beer in hand, a Corona, (no lime) and in just a few moments it was going to help me take the edge off and unwind.
…and the beer had gone bad. It tasted funny and it smelled like skunk. As I sat there, thinking about all the things that had gone wrong, I just kept saying to myself, “There’s got to be something better than this.” I looked at the TV and I said there’s got to be something better than this, I looked down at my phone and I said again, there’s got to be something better than this, and then I looked at the bottle of Corona, the icing on this cake of misfortune, and I said
“There’s GOT to be something better than THIS!”
When I went back to my room that night, I decided I wanted to change something, starting with something simple, like the beer that I drank. Thus began my journey as a craft beer enthusiast.
Getting more into the enthusiast space
Shout out to Sun King Brewing, the first craft brewery I went to.
So I began to do some research about beer- watching videos, reading books about history, how it’s made, and the different types of beer that exist. I went to local breweries and started trying to chat up the employees there about the different beers they had and what went into them, I even have a spreadsheet where I write down what I think about all the unique beers I’ve tried.
All of this made me think about the enthusiast space in general- how you go from having a cursory knowledge about something, and how over time you learn more about it and there’s always just more to learn the deeper you dive into something.
My friends didn’t share this enthusiasm at first- they thought I was being a bit of a snob when I started bringing my own beers to parties. In time I was able to show them the way, though- now they too source their libations from the local brewery, by the growler, and sometimes even by the keg.
Serendipity
Being an enthusiast is all well and good, but sometimes it helps you in ways you don’t expect. A couple of years ago, I was giving a job interview at the company I work at currently, and my to-be boss asked me what I like to do for fun. At that moment, I decided not to give safe answers like reading or writing or being outdoorsy, I simply told him I was a beer enthusiast, and started talking about the experiential qualities of beer and how beer isn’t just beer, that it’s so much more. The gamble worked, it really resonated with him- turns out he was an investor in one of the major craft breweries in Columbus!
I like to think that the answer helped seal the deal for my employment.
In conclusion, I think that fateful night in 2015 was one of the turning points of my life in a bizarre way. Life takes unusual turns sometimes, and you never know how certain things will end up working with other things in synergy. I guess that’s what they call serendipity.
I’d like to end by repeating a quote often attributed to Benjamin Franklin:
“Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy.”
I uploaded a life update video to my YouTube channel recently, and I wanted to write a companion post for it. I moved to a nice apartment a few days ago, after three years of living next to a very large university campus.
When I moved to Columbus, I didn’t give myself enough time to do a proper “apartment hunt”- I had to make a decision within one week, and not having any friends or family in this new city added to the challenge. I bet on there being plenty of housing being available near a campus area, so I set out to search for one near the campus of the Ohio State University. Sure enough, I found a few and made a quick decision. It really was quick- I took a Greyhound bus from Indianapolis to Columbus in the morning, looked at about 5 apartments, picked one, gave them my application, and took the evening bus back to Indianapolis the same day. I moved to that apartment about a week and a half later.
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I was just out of grad school at that point, so all my stuff fit into the back of a minivan. I moved once, and I had a brief idea in my head that I’d move into a nicer apartment sometime the subsequent year. Well, life happened, and I ended up staying there for three years.
The apartment itself was good enough- the building was constructed in the 1950s and the interior was renovated, so in places, it was retrofitted to be contemporary, but the main framework was more mid-century. The real issue I had was the location. In my hurry to find a place to live, I had forgotten to have a look at the surroundings. I’d chosen an apartment with windows facing a busy street, right next to at least 5 campus bars, and within walking distance from a gigantic football stadium.
Humble beginnings
For the next 3 years, I couldn’t escape the vagaries of campus life, even though I’d already graduated. I heard the drunken revelry of loud college students. I heard the babbling rants of drunk drifters and vagabonds. I heard every passing car on the street, and every skateboard on the sidewalk. I heard the game-day tailgaters and their loudspeakers blaring country music and top40 pop from morning through the night, every boisterous shout of “O-H” followed by every equally enthusiastic “I-O!”. I even heard the wannabe boy racers with their speaker systems cranked up to the highest bass setting, and my ancient windows rattled to the beats of trap music each time those speaker-towers-on-wheels passed by.
Despite all these sounds and the resultant disturbances in my sleep pattern, I continued living there, for a myriad of reasons. One was laziness. Every time renewal season came around, I began to half-heartedly look for places to live, but was discouraged by the lack of options in the time frame I wanted and was also discouraged by how I’d have to pay more than what I was paying at the time. Then there were also all the things I’d have to do, like move or change utilities, and of course, move all my stuff, which I had much more of and wouldn’t just fit in the back of a minivan anymore.
Another reason was that I had a protracted visa change process from a student to a work visa, which really pushed plans of moving several months down the road, and I had to stay a little longer as a result.
I ended up just waiting till the decision was made for me- campus apartments are highly sought after by students, and they immediately snapped mine up after I didn’t renew my lease in a few days after the renewal period started. That’s how I finally set in motion the plan to move to a new place- something I’d had in my to-do list since 2017.
I realized how overstated my fears were about the logistical aspects of the move after I began the process a few months ago. Porting over utilities was mostly online and a bit of being on hold on a customer service call. Canceling services wasn’t as much of a headache as I thought it would be.
The actual physical move wasn’t bad either- I was able to get help from a couple of friends (thankfully I was able to make friends and luckily some friends from grad school have moved to the Columbus area since I first arrived here), and renting a moving truck was simple enough.
What I got from all this was a great sense of “Why didn’t I do this sooner?”. Hindsight is always 20-20, but this does tell me I need to stop thinking of hypotheticals that are in my own head sometimes, some unknown obstacles that exist only in my mind. Perhaps I should stop waiting for decisions to be made for me, perhaps I should stop simply continuing to exist in the status quo because of the comfort that exists in certainty and deferring decisions and actions.
In the end, I’m just glad to finally able to live out a desire I have had for a long time. A nice apartment, a lot more peace and quiet, and the fact that it makes me feel like I’m more of a “big boy”, now that I’m completely untethered from the campus lifestyle.
ShriViews 