Hey reader,

 

Since a year and a half, I’ve been little proactive with recording music and writing blogs and sharing it over a global platform so that it can reach out to my friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. I’ve been recording and sharing music over SoundCloud and Blogs at WordPress. 

 

Every post brings me new learning, advice, suggestions, critics, praises, and opinions in the form of feedback. As per the Macmillan Dictionary Blog, the word feedback is a combination of the verb ‘feed’ and the adverb ‘back’. In its current form, feedback is a relatively modern word, having been used since about 1920 to describe the noise produced by a piece of electronic equipment and only since 1955 to describe comments about how well or how badly someone is doing a task.

 

Unfortunately, we live in a world, where getting honest feedback is a nightmare. Adding to that, people will visit your post is nothing less than a celebration at itself. It takes several days of thought to actually push yourself and take the first step to actually get onto something over a global platform.

 

For music, it takes around 30 minutes or more to set up my small workstation, followed by hours of recording and then clearing the clutter, removing noises, adding few effects, exporting, and uploading. For blogs too, many people have asked where do I get these topics from, its all from the daily life, but getting a topic and writing about it is different. Giving your voice to the topic with the views and ideology you possess, to frame it that it doesn’t hurt anyone, to write it, edit it, fill with examples, and search or write for related quotes, it takes efforts! 

 

Once done, every artist, big or small, is eager to listen to the first response, the first feedback! Copying the links to all the chatboxes, to all the close circles, one for the friends, one for the family, one for the office, and so on…

 

 

 

There is some part of the audience, which I personally love. Not because they praise me for my work or motivate me, but just for the honest feedback they give. The way they say it’s crap if it’s crap, and praise when it deserves praise. This is what that always keeps me moving with all the good-bad-ugly work I do. Here is an example, from the feedback of the first book that I wrote recently.

 

 

 

This is to thank the sender and many others who have always been the honest responder and helped me in improving. 

 

However, the feedback is not the honest one always. As I said, there is only a small part that does it. Rest is the one that is a floater. A group that either looks at the link (the one that took your hours to create it) and marks it as a watch or check later and never gets back to it, or, looks at the link and ignores as it doesn’t matter, or looks at it and doesn’t open it but responds with a positive feedback. 

 

The same group goes off the daily social media meme show and shares the shit-work of artists that have gone viral with their verbal/singing diarrhea but they are too busy that single link as they don’t have free 5 minutes. But, they are supportive, as they will always give the pieces of advice to quit the job and do it mainstream (without their support). Though it doesn’t require any examples, to name one, with the last post, I did an experiment. I dropped down the post for hours after sharing the link. Interestingly, I received a thumbs up for the post that doesn’t actually exist. Well, I knew that I am good but that good, I wasn’t aware of. Dear readers, fake praises are like a virus, not to the person who is being praised but to society.  Praise helps one to repeat work, no matter it’s good or bad, just repeat it. We don’t need the examples of shit virals across the internet storming every other day. 

 

Honestly, I was stunned. I knew about the fake praises existence but from the source I received, it was disappointing. That moment, the topic for the next blog was decided, and as a learning, I have reduced the circle to share the links I have put hours on. I’m happy with a lesser audience but an honest one, Quality of feedback over the quantity because this is not something to get the views or money, it’s a payback to the society.

 

 

Interestingly, while gathering the ideas for this topic, I came through this amazing video from one of my good friends. In this video, Shahrukh Khan, who doesn’t require any introduction, explained beautifully about the hobbies that we possess. I would request you to watch this video, however, for an excerpt, I will share a few lines from my favorite part of the speech.

 

 

 

 

On this friendship day, with this blog, I wish the best for all the hobbies I and we all have and hope that we will take good care of them and help them nurture.

 

– Navneet