Earthbound

As much as I love indie hacking and making digital products, marketing on online channels, chatting with people on Twitter, sometimes everything is too online. Everything happens through a screen. There’s no physicality. It often feels abstract, intangible. Distant or isolating even, as much as I enjoy the creative aspects of it.

That’s why my consulting work with local non-profits is so precious. The work helps balance me out.

Like how, just a few days ago I was working with my non-profit client, at one of their community-based centres right in the heart of residential estates in Singapore. We conducted a short handicraft workshop for some community mothers, teaching them a how to fold ribbons into a keychain. It’s a way for the non-profit to engage their beneficiaries, and provide respite or support.

It was a typical weekday evening, in a commonplace community space, running a handicraft class. Talking to people like they’re my neighbours. Making something with our hands. Joking around. Seeing the typical buzz of people coming in and out of the centre, parents and their kids.

Nothing out of the ordinary. Very everyday life sort of thing.

Yet there was something comforting and beautiful about it. It was beautiful to experience that. That beauty of the everyday.

I always walk away from my work with non-profits feeling more solid in my steps, more earthbound, more connected to this place where I call home.

It grounds me in a way that indie hacking doesn’t.
And I love that balancing function.

As much as I want to get to ramen profitability and beyond for my indie products, I doubt I will ever completely stop consulting for non-profits. Not because it gives good money, but due to this grounding effect.

That beauty of the everyday.