We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Deepali Bhandari. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Deepali below.
Deepali , appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?
To be able to answer this prompt – one must seek to find out to explain –
What is creativity? A quick search on the web can result in many close attempts to define the term. However, the term ‘combinational creativity’ caught my eye. While most definitions tried to equate creativity with originality, this one rested on the foremost fact that “Creativity” is vastly overrated. On the other hand,
Combinational creativity is the process of combining old ideas to come up with something new and it can be 1. Problem-driven, 2. Similarity-driven, or 3. Inspiration-driven.
Therefore an idea need not be artistic or world-changing to count as creative.
That realization dawned upon me many years ago, when I conceived of “ideasAny” a web portal that allows users to upload projects that they have conceived and have taken to completion. Today, the web is overflowing with such meeting grounds, where makers and inventors can post their projects. We saw the rise of the gig economy. An alternative way of generating income is when most of us had to work from home during the pandemic. ideasAny LLC predates “Etsy”, and Pinterest. It took me two years to design and code for the product, from start to finish. It was a challenging exercise to juggle between a full-time job and the side passion that I wanted to bring to fruition.
The next obvious question is –
Why is being creative important?
The human race would be wiped out by now but for its creative ability to solve every daunting problem that got hurled at it. For instance – Bold steps are now being taken to capture carbon from the air – to save the planet from the effects of climate change. Personally, when we decide to be creative, a step away from the daily rigamarole, we’re able to experience unbounded freedom, timelessness, flow, and energy in ways that life looks less clobbered than ever before.
Maya Angelou – “You Can’t Use Up Creativity, the More You Use the More You Have”
Now the answer to the actual question “How does one keep creativity alive?”
The digital world that we inhabit is constantly demanding our attention, in a way that is indicative of the fact – that if we do not tend to it then we shall fall behind in the race. In the following paragraphs, I seek to explain the habits that I have inculcated to stay creative and productive.
1. On a daily basis, especially early morning hours I like to devote quiet time. This often ends up in a long run or attending to plants on my small patio. But there is a constant iteration in these activities. Pushing physical boundaries, I will choose harder running paths. But some days decide to take more scenic routes. In my garden, this year I shall be experimenting with the new compost that my newly purchased carbon-neutral food cycler machine is spewing out.
2. Sleep hygiene and a healthy diet is probably the only constant habit that I adhere to religiously. This was not at all, my modus operandi when I was young. A choice to lead a balanced lifestyle ironically has gifted me the freedom to go off on tangents of creative explorations. In other words, I practice unstructuredness in a structured framework.
3. Possessed with boundless curiosity I love to travel to new destinations, the slow way. Again, we have to allow ourselves to truly wander, making up the itinerary as we go. A lava fluid painting class on the Big Island last year was a delightful unplanned activity that I was fortunate to indulge in.
4. Lastly, I am indebted to my family and friends. They always seem to have fostered and supported my ideas, without their unconditional love, life would be very boring. So positive reinforcement can go a long way!
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I grew up in New Delhi and finished Mechanical engineering in 1995. I got married in 1996 and moved to the United States. We lived on the east coast. I finished my master’s in computer science at the University of Pennsylvania and joined Celera Genomics to build a “Genome Browser” for the Human Genome Project. Human Genome Project is one of the top 6 Innovation projects in the past 2 decades, opening a whole new field of personalized medicine. We later moved to the west coast when my husband got a faculty position at the University of California, San Diego. In 2002 we were blessed with a baby boy. As they say, life hit us, and we got extremely busy, navigating and embracing what came our way. We also constantly traveled back and forth between India and the US to visit family. Just two different worlds and I always felt like I wanted to bridge the cultural gap.
I wanted to bring Indian artisanal creativity to local San Diego markets. I wanted to start small – selling at the farmers market in Solana Beach. Going in I knew this would be a very personal journey and I would figure things out as I go along. We started selling carved wooden blocks and it was a pure accident that Beverly Hartgrave from Spanish Art village in Balboa Park found us. She bought the wooden blocks to use to imprint on clay blocks to fire them into spirit totems. We have been friends ever since, later I went on to design and build her e-commerce website, spirit-totems.com
During the lockdown, the markets were closed for a few months, and even when they did open, I could not go lest I risk the health of my parents-in-law and my mother who were living with us, as travel was restricted too. That led us to launch ‘ideasAny digital marketing where we provide search engine optimization and growth in social media following to drive sales for customers like ‘Kogei Gallery’ which specializes in Japanese home and fashion accessories.
We are constantly working with local artists to promote their art. We do pop-up events to invite them to teach their art as part of the ‘ideasAny workshop’ series. In the past, we have hosted Leather provisions, Gourmet M chocolates, and Sara Winston for shibori dyeing. In March of this year, we will learn how to make resin jewelry with dried flowers from the garden with Lora https://floraandthesun.com/
We continue to sell at the Solana beach farmers market every Sunday 12-4 pm and have recently started at the Vista Farmers on every second Saturday of the month. Our customers love block-printed cotton textiles, brass + thread jewelry, and leather embroidered shoes from India. They keep coming back for more. We get local customers and there are a lot of tourists as far as from Britain who always bring back with them handmade souvenirs from India from our shop.
So yes sometimes it feels like a candle burning on both ends working on weekends, and as a full-time software professional during the week. But so far I am able to strike a good balance, staying nimble and nourished on both sides of the brain. Could not ask for more!
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1. Staying realistic. Retail is a saturated market already. I started with low inventory. I wanted to test the response to Indian textiles and colorful shoes. This also worked in my favor because managing it from the content management system, is a lot of work from taking product photography to making it available on the website.
2. Staying frugal. It is not penny-wise and pound-foolish. The destiny of the side business was never to surpass my main passion which is computer science and my primary profession. Simple things on principle for example we like to do is to make our own business cards using leftover gift paper or hand-sewn carry bags with scraps of cloth. It serves both purposes – a nighttime activity that can satisfy when one needs a break from the screen and a drop in the ocean effort towards environment conservation.
3. Spreading the word – Most creative people are not akin to talking about themselves. It’s like the art or their work should speak for itself. Shopify, MailChimp, and Square – are all great tools for digital marketing. They also come with monthly subscription fees and if that is a dent in your budget, you can do selected promotional ads using Facebook or Instagram. Being aware of the demographics to whom your product sells can govern the social medial platform you want to choose.
What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?
One of the most impactful things that my parents did for their children is to never expect something of their children that they did not expect of themselves.
And what do I mean by this?
Both my parents taught us to believe in ourselves and work towards our goals, in ways that were not driven by external circumstances. I still remember my father always telling me in Hindi “aaram aaram se” — meaning there is no rush, take your time. I suppose I learned the lessons of frugality and resourcefulness from him. He grew up in India which used to depend on foreign imports to feed its population. But government policy and breakthrough scientific work by Indian scientists has now made India one of the leading producers of Wheat in the world.
“Luck is no chance –
It’s Toil –
Fortune’s expensive smile
Is earned – ” — Emily Dickinson
He advocated learning hard skills and not becoming complacent. He believed in taking calculated risks and having an alternative route ready. That meant not fast decisions, but sound vetted decisions that led to sound outcomes for his team and family.
Our mother on the other hand was the one with artistic flair. While in Japan, she taught her neighbor friends English while learning the art of Ikebana – a style of flower arrangement. At the age of 50, she launched freshflowerindia.com a website that supplies one-of-a-kind bouquets all over India. She is 72 with multiple health issues but loves to hand knit and hand embroider. She gifted me a hand-embroidered blouse last year,
The life they modeled for us, our parents passed on the best gifts to us which we hope to pay forward now.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ideasany.com
- Instagram: @ideasanycontact
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideasany
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/ideas-any-san-diego
