Checking the rear-view mirror, but focusing on road ahead
Life as one big road trip
I once imagined life to be one long road trip. Just like driving, we need to keep our eyes on the road ahead. Find a route to get where we want to go but always move forward. The road is long and bumpy but we’ll get by. What lies ahead is never certain but once in a while we need look behind through our rear view mirror and make some sense of where we passed. We might have people joining us for the ride but at some point, they will leave.
Through a limited perception of life itself that we can make out from our 5 senses, each experience is only defined to how we perceive it. What we might think is a bad experience, might have some blessing to it but maybe only presented to us on a later time. And for me to be here synthesizing my thoughts, being able to articulate and write using my sense of sight and touch is a miracle in itself which we sometimes take for granted.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” — Steve Jobs
As I look back through my rear view mirror to all my past pursuits, I’ve never really had a straight career path when I first started working. The ideal scenario was always to graduate from a top university and slowly climb your way up the corporate ladder in a specific industry. Although it might have been great to follow that route, mine was never linear but that doesn’t mean I gained nothing through these experiences.
I was lucky to start my career at a time when the government wanted to push the creative industries within Singapore. As part of it, i received a seed fund to start my own “creative” business. Fresh from school, it was liberating swimming with the sharks without any idea what I was in for. And to make ends meet, I worked my ass off on different odd jobs while running my business. From a cook to a valet driver, a designer to a seamstress, whatever came my way, i took it on.
How did the business went, you may ask? Not really as how I wish it could be. Although I achieved the desired outcomes to the funds, the business never really took off. I was left with my random work experience in search of a “job”. My education background was in engineering informatics but I was determined to work in the creative industries. At that time, the two was completely from two different worlds for me. From then, I started finding my place in a market of hopeful graduates looking to climb their own ladder. Once, i was designer working with Flash and the next moment, I was liaising with designers on SEO but mainly, most of my work was in the arts or media industry. Alongside, I was still running as a promoter and an artist for electronic music in Singapore. From exhibitions to parties, we setup many side projects to fuel this passion.
Seemingly random, my past experience does link up when i connected the dots backwards. Always trusting my guts, these pursuits are instinctively led by 3 common drivers.
— I’m fascinated on the impact of technology.
It really started with my passion for music. The echoing snares of an old Dub classic paved the way to my love for electronic music. I’ve always been fascinated to how a purely analogue sound wave through can transform through circuitry with layers of effects upon design.
And upon the new millennium, I was introduced to new media arts. Although the arts has given me a deeper purpose for my works, the struggles are true. It was hard to earn a living as a practitioner.
Although my background in informatics helped built the foundations to understand how the digital world works, I was never really a software engineer nor was I an arts practitioner.
— I’m obsessed with creativity.
The arts opened my world to appreciate beauty and to think conceptually. Just like how the artist go into a state of flow and gets lost in their work, I too can easily get lost into the process of looking through different views while we find patterns to set a narrative.
Instead of practicing on a craft, I begin to curate more and more projects that gave me a chance to work with many creative practitioners, from artists to musicians. Whenever an opportunities come knocking, I’ll push myself to design a project around it. I’ve always believe creativity as the art of creating, not only limited to aesthetic value but the process of designing. However, I was never really a curator nor was I a designer.
— I live by collaboration.
While working odd jobs, it showed me different perspectives on how people actually work with each other which then help build my sense of empathy. Some of my best work was developed through working with people. While I slowly left practising my own craft, I learned to develop my leadership style of bringing the best out of people by motivating and enabling them by giving them a platform to do their best work.
Great work comes only in isolation or collaboration. — Tim Walter
Constantly finding a balance, I’ve learned the joy of letting go of your own creative expectations and witness the beauty that lie in the process when people collaborate. From an initial seed of an idea, the output is moulded as we collaborate and feed off the energy of everyone’s contribution.
Life’s meaning is presented to us in moving visuals.
In my pursuit to find work that resonates to me, I began to appreciate the incidents from my past and how it has mould me today. We need to trust our instinct and stay hungry in our pursuits. We all get lost sometimes but our drivers will always be there as a guiding compass.
Always seen as a jack of all trades but master of none, now I begin to see how I got here. As the line between creativity and technology starts to blur, the business landscape demands more generalists, instead of specialists in a shifting multi-faceted world.
Through the years, despite the different types of work I do, I’m most passionate in enabling people to take a positive experience to their lives. Since our stay here in life is definitely temporary, I want to inspire the people around me to appreciate the world around them by designing positive experiences in a meaningful way.
