Splash No. 65
Make Yourself Useful
When I was little, I would watch my mom work relentlessly. It was rare to find her in a moment of rest. If she wasn’t cooking or cleaning, she was doing laundry or looking at the bills, or something else like that. She wanted to make everyone happy, even if that meant making a difficult dish that was a lot of work, and that she wouldn’t have a chance to sit and relax for hours. Every time we would visit my nani (maternal grandmother), I would see the same thing. To me, they were magicians that would turn time and effort into amazing meals and an incredibly clean house. As I grew up, I found myself copying them and looking for ways to be useful around the house, even if it was just tasting their food.
I think I’ve carried this mindset my whole life. I remember that I would sometimes help my favorite teacher in 4th grade with filing papers and other miscellaneous tasks because it made me feel useful. Whenever I’ve been able to be useful, I’ve felt valued and important.
This semester, I’ve had a weird schedule that gave me several days off a week, where I would spend my free days relaxing and working on classwork at a leisurely pace. Even as I started to dedicate more time to my job search and get more things done, I didn’t feel very fulfilled. As I’ve picked up more responsibilities in the last few weeks, such as a part-time gig at Exposure and helping out with the GT Design community, I’ve felt that I’m being useful once more, which has made it so much easier to get things done. When I have the motivation that what I’m doing is helpful or useful, that task becomes more relevant and interesting in nearly every way. This is exciting since I realize that I have a strong capacity to help people when I no longer need to focus on myself like I need to during the job search.
Soon, I hope my life’s work will all be for others and I can maintain a level of attention and respect for everything I do!
Drops of the Week
where I *drop* recommendations of cool things this week
Article
“Is Social Media Addiction in the NBA Out of Control?” by Tom Haberstroh- it makes sense that many young NBA players are addicted to social media, and it’s interesting that it’s a challenge for teams to figure out how to combat it. Maybe everyone else can take some cues from how they address it.
Book
Originals by Adam Grant- interesting book on“originals”or people who come up with new, inventive ideas. It’s a good read to understand creativity and disprove many myths associated with creativity.
Album
No Rain, No Flowersby Sabrina Claudio- I really liked this album! Sabrina Claudio started her career uploading music to SoundCloud that blew up. This is her recently released debut album.
Thanks so much for reading! If you have any comments/concerns or fan/hate mail for me, you know how to reach me (links below).
Love,
Nikhil