01 "What am I doing here?" and more

My Substack equivalent of "Hello, world".

What am I doing here?

It’s possible I’m not here a lot - maybe writing is exciting for a week or two and then becomes yet another new pursuit that went from “to do” to “doing” on my Trello board before it is unceremoniously deprioritized. But I’m rooting for future-me to write some more.

“How do you spend your time?” / “What do you love to do?”

This seems like a good place to start. Notice how these are two very different questions. The answer to the first is easy enough - I live in New York City where I work in the field of data/analytics and play guitar in a couple of bands. I guess that’s supposed to sum up most of what I do. Over to the second question. Strangely enough, there is enough of an intersect between how I spend my time and what I love to do, so let’s dive in.

At work, most aspects of analytical projects are equally enthralling to me - defining a business problem or objective as it relates to an analysis or deep-dive, data-transformations and charting in R (with recurring and often frantic visits to Stackoverflow), occasionally wrapping the analysis around a UI to deploy local data-apps (I use “shiny” ), and summarizing the “so what?” in executive-speak on documents or slides. A great workday is when I’m writing code with purpose and bringing order and automation to workflows via “analytics frameworks” as I call my data-apps. An even better workday is overcoming a new challenge, something I’ve been experiencing increasingly more since my recent move to a sales function in ad-tech.

There is more I’d love to do with data but I’m pretty content with the demanding needs of my day-job. In future, I’d love to find the time and headspace for more deliberate writing. With over a decade in data - and having worked in a few companies and industries across three continents - I like to think I’m uniquely positioned to offer a wide perspective on guiding principles for data practitioners, or metrics and measurement ideas for modern organizations.

Over on the other side, about three or four inches away, my right brain buzzes happily, occupied with music and music-adjacent projects. The most thrilling pursuit is to play to an audience with a live band - ridiculously fun!

One of my bands - "Damn Glad” - have been around since before I was born, and amongst the four of us we represent the start of four consecutive decades - the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s! We spend most Fridays bunkered down in our drummer’s factory / jam space in Jersey City (he builds bamboo studio furniture) where we rehearse existing and new material, record free-jams, and hear stories of an old New York City, rich with culture and vibrance. My favorite throwback has to be our drummer Jeff’s nostalgic recollection of the mystique of 48th street in Manhattan, back when it was known as Music Row. From what I hear, the likes of Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix casually strolled up in record stores, and the regular guitar-haunt Sam Ash would close their doors when they came in to try out guitars! (Having lived on 48th street for two years, this story has been particularly disquieting given that all I saw around there were banks and apartments!). The band used to describe themselves plainly as a “rock band”, but I like to think we’ve evolved into a bit more of an “ambient rock” vibe, given my penchant for atmospheric guitar tones.

Gig Posters for Damn Glad and Nullius (2023):

My second band, “Nullius” (pronounced noo-lius) plays progressive metal music, which admittedly is my second favorite type of music after progressive rock (and also the only kind of metal music I like!). Modern prog rock / prog metal music is characterized by atypical song-structures, changing time-signatures, a ton of textural sounds in addition to the usual guitars, bass, and drums, and unexpected changes in tonality or mood. Often the same song will ebb and flow between softer and heavier elements. In Nullius, we’re all similarly aged, normally distributed between the mid-20’s and 30’s, and primarily rehearse in Brooklyn. In fact, we played our biggest show yet just yesterday (October 15th, 2023) where we opened for a major British / American progressive metal band! Good things lie ahead for both projects, and I’m excited to start recording newer material this winter.

And then there’s my slow-paced YouTube channel, where I foray into live-looping with my guitar and pedals, prog rock covers, and the occasional guitar-pedal review. This has allowed me to get really deep with both audio and video over the past few years, particularly during the COVID lockdown in 2020. Over time I’ve moved from mono to stereo audio-recording, incorporated real guitar amplifiers and effects, and extended video to multi-cam recording to be able to cycle through close-up and wide-angle shots. I’ve even started creating a custom soundtrack and accompanying video footage as an intro to videos. As you can imagine, this self-indulgent project is slow, and at best I release 5 - 7 videos a year. I’m grudgingly exploring vertical video formats, but video-editing has been less-fun than everything else in the mix. Still, this is a worthwhile exploration, and makes for a lot of fun when things fall in place.

Despite being relatively busy with work/data and music, I still can’t shake off my pursuit of new adventures / hobbies / conversations / experiences. In fact, I’ll admit I have maybe four Trello boards, a couple of physical boards at home, and countless lists sprawled across notepads and diaries. I’m also actively trying to read more non-fiction although I usually can’t resist new sci-fi (Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin is next on my list!).

Well, we’ve reached the end of this blog / note / scribble, and this is going to have to do as my “hello, world”. Perhaps I’ll be lured back, who knows. Maybe next time I’ll go deeper on one of the brain-pleasers I’ve described above, or ramble on about an exciting new hobby (I did just receive a motorcycle permit!). I might even go on a tangent and bore you with my top 5 lists, enlist my grandiose plans to live in Europe, or explain why a band called Porcupine Tree are the best-sounding modern rock band you will encounter (think: a hi-fidelity Pink Floyd with a splash of metal).

It’s possible I’m not here a lot. Still, I’m rooting for future-me to write some more.

-Anand
pronounced “ah-nun”

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