K's Weekly # 1
I use to write a newsletter called K's Weekly a few months ago. I shared it with a lovely bunch of my netzian friends like you. It was my way of keeping in touch with my tribe. It had nothing to do with neither news nor a letter so it was weird for me to call it a newsletter. So I just called it as K's Weekly.
My excuse was to write my weekly learnings from living life as a maker and share it with my tribe with a greed that may be a thing or two may make sense to someone somewhere.
I diligently wrote it for 10 weeks and then I stopped.
Are you wondering why I stopped K's weekly in between?
Simple answer is life happened. In all honesty, too much life happened. It was hard for me to keep up with my commitments when life was happening so I had to make time for SOS in my calendar.
While I throughly enjoyed writing every week, it was hard for me to keep up handling stage 4 cancer and 20+ more items at the same time. Now I guess I can squeeze in 20 mins to bring back K's weekly again. Not that life has changed a bit from 2020 just that my resilience to life has changed and I have become even more stronger. Thanks to the special year 2020 🙌
A shower thought occurred today. As I am writing a weekly series format in my blog here and that typically ends on Saturday so why not make sunday like a special sundae. So I am experimenting with bringing back K's Weekly here.
I use to share learnings from being curious, doing experiments, excitements, and books from the life in a week. This week being a really special week, let's get started again.
A talk that gave a tectonic (not just a shift) validation inside me is below. If you are a creative soul you must listen to this.
If you are a reader then here you go with the notes from Shane P.
This week I am reading Working Backwards and I can't tell you how much I am loving it. A book I wished was available to makers one decade ago.
I cherished every bit of my time in Amazon and this book is a sum of everything I learned the hard way. When you don't have one big advantage, you must summate all small advantages is one big lesson I learned in Amazon and Jeff B is right about it.
Not all of us have one big advantage. Read this and change your thinking patterns forever.
One big pain I felt this week is my credit card bill. May be it has been this way for a long time but I felt it this week. I looked into the item list and I realised it was all my USD purchases of courses from across the globe.
While i have my immense gratitude and respect for all creators our there, I was feeling a pinch inside me thinking about my friends in low dollar countries like me.
Education will become impossible for makers in developing countries. Once again it will become elite and the level playing aspect of internet gets robbed. Don't get me wrong. I am a big supporter of meritocracy. Creators must get paid but just that consumers in low dollar countries can't just afford.
I just shared my pain and I got a number of responses and DMs post a tweet. It was the first time my DM was buzzing and I felt the resonance in my fellow makers across the developing geographies.
This message left a deep scar inside me and I wanted to do something about it.
India cannot afford USD. Just got my credit card bill and it is running in 6 digits from just courses, subscriptions and more. Not sure how many can afford 🤔
— Karthi (@karthi2209) February 22, 2021
This is making me wonder, we need INR affordable version of everything quality for makers 🧐
I thought about it for a day or so and came up with a biggest gear shift of my career. I decided to work on building a maker's community full time.
For the first time I am not caring about IKIGAI and just going with just my conviction. The more ANDs I add it is gonna be not the right thing for my tribe. I have enjoyed IKIGAI for almost a decade now. Time to give back.
Going with my heart...
— Karthi (@karthi2209) February 25, 2021
Building the @teammakersguild (NGO) full time this year. Starting March.
Yeah,
It is not the most profitable project.
It is not in my circle of competence.
It is not adding to my business portfolio.
But I strongly feel we need it. Let's do it 🎉
Now that I have decided to build a community for makers I just cancelled all projects of 2021. I am gonna do only one thing for this entire year (time box).
This decision energised me inside and I can't wait what could be done with this possibility. For the first time I understood the word CALLING. Wish everyone could hear, feel and act when the calling calls.
I will share my learnings and progress week after week as things roll.
It has been an amazing and meaningful week at my end. I must say it has been one of the most significant weeks of my life so far. How has yours been my friends?
Until next week,
K 🎉