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"Happiness is real only when shared - Into the wild"

A movie, song, person, or even few words make such a difference in the kind of person we are. What are we? Nothing different than a lump of mud on potters wheel and each experience we have mold us into the person we are. The same conversations i remember having with someone trying to tell them how you cant force a change in the kind of person you are you will never be what you wish to be. They tried.. I think they failed or just gave up, or even forgot about it. This time am not talking about people. Instead i am looking at my self in mirror (no not literally as that will just remind me that I need to shave and cut my hair) and trying to understand what all might have changed since I last wrote which happens to be almost one year back on Sept 12 2010. Well writing after one year is not easy. Though i wrote a 13 page colloquium paper on what is design and yet failed to find answer as usual the task to write is difficult not because there is nothing to write but there is too much and you don't know where to start. A friend, now in Indian Navy calls it "the piggy bank effect". Very creative theory he has. Thoughts in mind are like coins in a piggy back, if the piggy bank is full it is difficult to remove one thought without breaking it open. If there are very few coins then you can manage to remove it very easily(kids do not try this at home, its possible trust me.. that's all you need to know if you curios). Same is  with thoughts. Too many thoughts in your head, you cant think where to start. Same thing happens when you start your blog, so many things to say that you don't write at all for few days. but then comes a day when you forget everything and write.

There is a chain of thoughts running in your head. If you cant stick to it and don't shift from one thought then maybe you would still be writing about what you started off with. but that is not the case with Mr. Cuboid. I forget about what i was writing and go in to a topic totally different. Maybe that is why i could never understand what design is even after writing that colloquium and also thinking about it for years. Now i have a slight hint though about what design could be. If to define what is design now, I would say "design is everything.. at the same time design is nothing." Yes i can define design like that because I have written a paper on it. You have not. Design is the most prettiest thing you can think of, and design is the bullsh*t someone made you pay a bomb for. If you ever in a situation where someone asks you, "What is design?" Then take my advise and practice this in front of mirror(here literally mirror). First look that person in the eye and make them feel that you are wise, then give a sly smile and walk off. Yes! that is exactly what design is. Now that we know exactly what design could be we can analyse things like designers(oh so cool they are) do. 

Advantage MITID, The Design Process

Not really. More than design process its the interaction design course that helped in thinking like this called mind mapping. Named this section the design process just because it looks nice with bold serif font like a heading for some news paper. So what is this mind mapping? its exactly what I been doing whenever i write but never realized. You start at one point and then you follow your chain of thoughts and keep writing things till you run out of time or there is no space left on paper. This helps you map your thoughts and also shows you the problems that lie deep within which you would never realize. It helped me realize the connection between 'people in my institute not interacting and not being inspired' and 'dogs in the institute'. Yes mind map helps you analyse things in a way nothing else does. This is why designers get to be in italics, design is about looking at things differently. 

So why did i talk about this mind map while i started with talking about change in one year and not able to write? 

I was trying to understand what could be the reason that I cant(now couldn't) write. I came to a possibility. MUSIC. Oh music is much more awesome than designers so it gets all caps. So what is the connection between the music you listen to and writing blog? Here is an experiment you can try. Listen to some different music for few days and then see if you think in the same way as you did before. Music with lyrics(if you can understand them) is much more effective. Songs like people communicate to us. It molds us in the person we are. Some say people should not judge you by the kind of music  you listen to but then you ARE what you listen to. Likes and dislikes also depend on people we interact with. Everything in this world is so connected to each other. The butterfly effect is/can not be a myth. On thinking I saw that there was a huge change in the kind of music I listened to and the people I was close to in past one year. The whole thought process has changed. The approach to same situation is different. Tiny things which we never think about change us as a person. Small things get stuck in your head forever. Today itself I remembered one such thing which I saw when i was probably 5 or 6 year old. It stays in your head. If I do a mind map i might be able to understand the link between decisions I took till now and that tiny thing which was nothing but 4 mirrors as inside of a cube. 

I am about to graduate soon from this institute. The last semester which is industrial project is going on. After  this the society waits for me. Searching jobs and living a corporate life. that is the future not too far. I am not worried about it. That shall happen. I will be a designer. Was it the right choice to do design? Yes nothing else would be better. Design has not just given me possibility for bread and butter but also given the opportunity to think and analyse things(life included) at micro level without being called crazy. I can always say its occupational hazard. Design gave ability to link things. It also gave me the strength to face world and also gave some of the most awesome people i will ever know in my life.

Nostalgist

where am I?

So anyway, this is what I was saying. I had lost connection with myself and I kind of realized maybe it is because I haven't written for long time. Then for past one week I tried to write but just could not get in this flow. Then i tried to understand what went wrong and this is what this post was about if you skipped the long post and jumped to the end para to get the essence of it. Now you can lie to me and say you read the post. 

I also illustrate and have a new liking for typography these days.

I've got this life
I'll be around to grow
Who I was before
I cannot recall

                     -Eddie Vedder (Long nights, Into the Wild)