This blog post celebrates a personal milestone with the launch of Perfectly Imperfect. It unveils three cartoon characters Nut Cracker, P Leader and Spark Plug, representing ADHD, Leadership, and Entrepreneurship called the Ales, inspired by the author’s love for a chilled ale. I explore how ale fermentation parallels personal growth and introduce Extrapreneurship as a means to blend unique qualities.
Congrats that you have made it so deep down into the website. I am in high spirits as writing this blog is a momentous experience for me.It ties one more knot on my gift to myself – Perfectly Imperfect, and I am excited to share it with the world.
Cheers!
To celebrate this moment, and as I was thinking about spirits, I decided to share a secret behind the origins of three of my favorite cartoon characters – Nut Cracker, P Leader and Spark Plug. I collectively call them the Ales, an acronym for ADHD, Leadership and Entrepreneurship, the qualities that they symbolize.
While Perfectly Imperfect is meant for anyone, it does help to have a basic knowledge of ADHD, Leadership and Entrepreneurship. But (in a nutshell) what I write about is essentially my own brand of perfect and imperfect ADHD, Leadership and Entrepreneurship qualities (Ale qualities) that I have visualized as Nut Cracker, P Leader and Spark Plug: The Ales, who together with a few of my favorite real life people and many more pixies in Oh Landia inspire me to discover more about myself through experiments (Cool Moves) and find the best ways to blend these Ale qualities into a powerful force that will help me achieve my goals. I call this perfect blend of my Ales my Ex-Factor.
What’s with the Ales with a big A and ales with a little a?
Let’s talk about the Ales first. Their individual names and team name were chosen after a lot of thought spent on capturing visuals of me doing something I love (besides cooking). Name finding, as opposed to name calling and naming dropping, is tough. But I can promise you, finding your unique branding is tougher.
This is what I did. I settled on answering my name questions the easy way: What do I do to relax after a hard day’s work, or to celebrate a good day or just to let my hair down? The output of the tricky Q&A session, which I did on my own steam, was the birth of their individual physical features and names (these,I think are self-explanatory!). But being a team player, I needed my Ales to act like a team. I knew this would be tough as each of them is a character in themselves. At the same time, I also knew that the best way to bring together a motley bunch is to give them a team name and a few goals.
Soon it was time to get creative.Since I could decide what I wanted to call them without having to get approval from anyone, I decided to use a naming process inspired by studying beer. Yes, it’s what I actually did! I love to study beer (especially when it is in a glass!). And living in Denmark I am spoiled for choices when it comes to a good beer;so I tend to study them a lot.
While I love beer, honestly if given the luxury of being offered a pilsner or an Ale, I will go 4 out of 5 times for the pilsner. Beer is more a ‘workmanlike drink’,though I admit I enjoy a good ale too.But for some strange reason,I seem to consider enjoying ale more of a ‘special occasion than an everyday experience’.
Before the ADHD mind wanders off on a new tangent, back to high spirits, and ales with a little a. As I was getting to know my real-life Ales more intimately, their individual and collectively bubbly nature reminded me of an invigorating glass of cold beer, jumping out of a glossy magazine or even in my hand waiting to quench my thirst. Excited, I went a bit nerdy and read up about beer brewing. I could have actually done this decades ago as my grandmother’s house in Bengaluru was opposite the largest brewery in the city (maybe country, even) and in Copenhagen I live very close to the old brewery.
Anyway, better late than never.I read a bit about the ingredients that go into a beer and visited a few gardens in Copenhagen where they are grown. But it was the fermentation process of an ale that caught my attention. Why?
Because I read words like “the fruity, distinct and robust flavors of an ale are defined by their ‘dna’” (I made this up) and that this also determines the impact an ale leaves on the connoisseur. These three happy and powerful ‘flavours’ fitted perfectly with what I hoped my Ex-Factor would be like. Simultaneously, as I read more, I realized that ales also undergo a ‘slow fermentation’ process and that the flavour and colour of a good ale is not only linked to the ingredients that go into it,but the skill or craft of the brewmaster.
Ok, (Slow = Patience x Hardwork x Skill x…..). I accepted that this was the formula I needed to master the craft and ferment, or to use a more elegant word ‘blend’,the perfect and imperfect qualities I possess in my brand of ADHD, Leadership and Entrepreneur and craft my own brand of Ales.
The formula seemed to work as luckily, many of the basic ingredients of the Ales and at least one variable in the formulacome naturally to me. But to get the most out of my Ales and maximize the output of my formula, I had to learn a new craft that I called Extrapreneurship. This is when the buzz I occasionally get after imbibing one too many ales, kicked in and in a stupor (though not drunk, but mesmerized by the power of the Ales), I started to imagine the craft I called Extrapreneurship that helped me to create Oh Landia and my pixies of Oh Landia.
Together we enjoy innovative experiments or Cool Moves to blend my Ales with my goal of living the life I know I am capable of.
As each day passes, I enjoy exploring Extrapreneurship, and learning how to craft my own metaphorical brand of an Ale. An Ale brand that best suits my lifestyle and spurs me to discover new exciting horizons.
As I sign off, I admit that I enjoy Extrapreneurship, but right now it is a one man show and I hope I can soonwelcome more craftsmen to help me craft my blend or blends of Ales. I am confident that as like-minded people and people with similar perfect and imperfect qualities we will enjoy interacting with each other;and together we will make each other and the world smile.
Cheers, and I hope you enjoy my Ales.