TRUST ME I KNOW WHAT I'm DOING

As always, thank you for listening to the show and for passing it along to your friends and family and for rating and kindly reviewing. It’s very much appreciated, and I;m so grateful. I was thinking about the effort and seriousness that goes into what we do and what we accomplish. A lot of achievement requires focus and attention on what’s in front of us and harnessing what’s inside of us to get there. And yet, it’s likely just as important and often a lot of fun to take a moment to observe what’s around us and even reflect on our own activities to realize the beauty in what’s odd and quirky and funny and tickling and even flat out absurd. In 1969, when my dad was leaving India on a plane for California embarking on the unknown, the gravity, anticipation, and urgency of settling and succeeding were certainly upon him. But the book that he packed to read on the plane of You Said It cartoons by R.K Laxman featuring his famous ‘common man’ certainly brought the comfort of satire and observational humor to a long journey, a reminder that that the relatable is what truly connects and often inspires us. So it’s been equally comforting to enjoy and appreciate the cartoon stylings of artist and illustrator Anjali Chandrashekar. Anjali is an Indian who now lives in New York, and her visual storytelling spans pluralistic explorations of gender, culture, and identities to amusing observations about the eccentricities of human behavior. She is passionate about using her art to further social movements. Her work has been recognized by Forbes, the World Economic Forum, and The United Nations. Having spent nearly a decade at the intersection of design, technology, strategy and innovation in the corporate environment, she now spends her days contributing cartoons to The New Yorker and illustrating everywhere else. I personally have found her work to be disarming, clever, human, and often hilarious, with content that speaks to everything from trying to fold a fitted sheet to never finding the sweet spot that allows a hands free faucet to turn on in a public restroom, to that perfect timeliness of chaotic thoughts that find us exactly when trying to find peace through shavasana. We had a chance to catch up to share a conversation about it all, from the power of observation, to the anatomy of creating a cartoon, to storytelling through her unique art form. But since we were chatting last month right after new years and after I noted a cartoon of hers about the joy of fresh enthusiasm and fresh promises at the gym, I started by asking her if she had any of her own new year’s resolutions…