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 |  To celebrate my love for writing. |
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Home of the ramblings of a troubled soul who has a lot on his mind and believes in the power of words to be the best anesthetic. One can wish for no better reason to write than to soothe a troubled soul. Writing is not a, mere, hobby; it's an exercise that keeps one in the right state of mind by getting rid of all the junk that they've got stored up in their heads. Just like our homes, our minds need to be cleared of junk every once in a while. Some achieve clearance through talking, some through concentrating and some through...writing! ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
On this day in 1854, Anthony Faas of Philadelphia, PA, was granted the first US patent for the accordion. He made improvements to the keyboard and enhanced the sound. Do you play or have you ever played any instruments? If not, what's one you'd like to learn? Bonus Points today for sharing a favorite song of yours with us that names any instrument in its title. A music lover, admirer of arts and someone who can differentiate between the many string instruments; it's hard to imagine such a person as someone who's never even touched a musical instrument in their entire life, right? Well, if you do try to imagine it, remember the name: Naveed! Yes, I've never even touched a musical instrument in my entire life, let alone had an opportunity to play it. Music is something that I can only listen to admire and never create, sadly. A reason might be that, here in Pakistan, music isn't given the status that it deserves. Children aren't encouraged to learn at least one musical instrument, as they are in the many other countries of the world. Perhaps that's why there aren't many talented musicians representing Pakistan on the international arena. But that doesn't mean that there are none. There are some very capable and internationally recognized instrumentalists from Pakistan, but in most cases, music is a part of their family's heritage. Instrumentalists from Pakistan, belonging to non-musical backgrounds, are rarities, nowadays. Anyways, the fact of the matter is that I didn't get a chance at learning a musical instrument, despite of the many psychological and creative characteristics that they develop in a person, especially a child. But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't want to learn now. I've been thinking of purchasing a guitar lately, although I like a piano more but it's too expensive for me, lol. I really want to learn to play an instrument, guitar at the moment, so that I can understand music better. And also because I want to be a bit more like hozier, lol (I'm already letting my hair grow wild, hitting the gym and I'm tall too. All I need is a guitar...and a proper beard and I'll be the brown Hozier, in my dreams  ). Then I can pretend to be singing 'Take me to Church' in front of thousands of music lovers chanting my name like "NAVEED! NAVEED! NAVEED!", when actually I'm just taking a shower with a guitar in my hand and frightening the demons there with my horrendous, heavy voice . Oh! And a song with the name of a musical instrument in its title? There's only one that comes to mind: "When my guitar gently weeps" by the...*wait for it*... THE BEATLES! |
I just spent the bulk of the evening reorganizing my WDC portfolio a little bit. I do it maybe once or twice a year. How often do you organize yours? How do you have yours set up? Are your folders arranged in any specific order? Guide us on a virtual walking tour of your port. Never! I've never reorganized my portfolio during my entire time here at WDC...willfully. The only time that I made a folder and added some stuff to it was when it was a requirement for the 'Rising Star Challenge'. Other than that, I can't recall any instance when I'd tried to, or worried about, how my portfolio looked. I just add stuff there as I write it and my poems, short stories, articles and essays are just a jumbled mess there. A reason might be that I'm, literally, a procrastinating king. I really have to will myself to do stuff. Another reason might be that my entire life is messed up. From college to studies, from physical to spiritual, from my eating habits to my mood swings, from my personality to my emotions- everything about me is volatile. So, in a way, it's a good thing, I guess, that my portfolio is a true reflection of who I am: disheveled, unorganized, uninteresting and messy. But you are bound to find something...interesting in my portfolio if you invest some time in it, lol  It doesn't really matter, I think, if my portfolio looks good or not, to be honest. It's not like it gets lots of viewers anyways. |
Vincent Van Gogh said, "If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint', then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced." What is your 'you cannot ____' voice always ragging on you about, and how good are you at silencing it? The fear of not being able to do something is, indeed, very demoralizing. The idea of not being able to sing, play, paint or anything else that a person might want to do is enough to bring down the spirits of even an angel. But the path of overcoming this fear is fairly simple, if not easy. You just have to start doing it and the fear of not being able to do it begins to recede. For example, if you're afraid to speak in public then what do you do? You simply (not easily) go to the podium and deliver the greatest speech that this world's ever seen or heard, right? When it's about the voices saying that you are not good enough to do an act, at least you have a road in front you to gradually suppress and ultimately shut these voices up. No matter how tough the road might be, at least it's there. The biggest problem is when you're dealing with voices that tell you that you cannot BE something. "You cannot be what you dream to be" is what my voices scream to me, daily. They say that dreaming of being something more than a finance graduate is wishful thinking. They scream that you'll be like all the other graduates of your batch. They tell me that you, too, will be an apathetic, money making, family guy who does nothing in his life except chasing money like a lunatic chasing the moon, while the world around him (especially his country) burns and rots in hell. They tell me that I, too, will be caught up in constructing my personal heaven my entire life, while the under-privileged burn in our collective hell. They tell me that my existence will be no more than a liability for this earth- without any meaning or significance and full of empty pomp. They tell me that I will be whom I fear to be, a corporate slave- making money predicting models my entire life, no matter how much I might dream of being something more or different. How can I fight these voices? I can't- no one can. There's nothing that I can do to not fear the probable, for let's be honest, it IS probable that I'll be what I've described above. It's how finance graduates are taught to be and end up being. Making more money using money, spending entire days making more money and spending the rest of the time advising on money is, pretty much Finance 101, no? Finance graduates aren't just taught to earn money; they are taught to chase it, love it and worship it. To be someone different than what I've just described, one would need immense support from those who matter, and you don't get that in my case. Everything in my life is forcing me to be that person whom I don't wish to become. "Study philosophy? Be a teacher? Try and be a professional writer? Try and play a hand at changing how your country is when you are lucky enough to leave it? Are you kidding me? Quit being an idealist and so full of yourself. Quit thinking that you can change anything. Quit believing and quit dreaming." This is what I hear voices around and inside of me screaming at me, sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly and sometimes emotionally. And, trust me, you get told something a little too often, you start believing it no matter how much resistance you might put in. "You cannot be what you dream to be." The only way to silence this voice is to become what you want to be, but that can sometimes take an entire lifetime, if you're lucky. So, in the majority of the cases, the voices win and dreams lose. The same goes for me too. The fact that I'll study, work, earn, marry, have kids, earn some more, enjoy a few years of retirement and die seem more and more probable, while the dreams just seem to slip away into oblivion with every passing night. |
What's your favorite way of passing the time when your internet connection is interrupted for an extended period of time, especially when you had a lot you planned on taking care of online? Or, if you prefer- real talk- how addicted to the internet are you? Economists like to talk about things in terms of necessity and luxury. So, is internet a necessity or a luxury in today's world? The answer's simple and obvious: internet is a necessity. Gone are the days when the internet was considered a luxury and something that you could do without. Whether it's college or work, shopping or billing, music or...feeding cats (weirdly) internet has become a part and parcel of our everyday lives. The only people who call internet a luxury nowadays are either delusional kids who believe that they won't fall for it when they grow-up, just like love (and believe me, they're in for a rude awakening ), or they are simply a case of hypocrites who deny the necessity of internet as they write on their blogs that exist only on the internet. I guess that I've made my point!So do I use the internet? Hell yes, I do. I'm a college student who writes and learns philosophy and psychology from lectures on Youtube. I'm a music lover, who is as addicted as it gets to it (Coldplay, Hozier, Sam Smith, Sia, Ed Sheeran and Samvel Yerviyen, if you were wondering). I use the internet, A LOT! But am I addicted to it? Hmm...that's a tough question. On the face of it, I am, ain't I? I mean, I spend almost half of my day using the internet. How can I not be addicted to it, right? But actually, the answer is no, I'm not addicted. You know I had no internet for almost three days a few weeks ago, because of a fault in the connection. Some would expect that my life would have come to a complete stand-still because of it, because, come on guys...how can a twenty year old survive three days without internet in 2016? Well, I did and I wasn't even bugged by it. I was the calmest person at my home actually, lol. You wanna know how I passed the time? There was no college, so there weren't any assignments due, thankfully. I wrote on MS Word, like always, and used an actual thesaurus instead of a virtual one to aid me (it wasn't that tough at all ). I read "How the Mind Works" and "A History of Western Philosophy" when I wished to study Psychology or Philosophy. I also listened to the songs saved on my phone, all day. In short, I did everything that I usually do. The only difference was that I did it without the internet. That was when I realized that while I'm addicted to writing, psychology, philosophy and music, I am not addicted to the internet. |
Late actor Bob Denver (known for playing Gilligan on the tv show Gilligan's Island ), who would've celebrated his 82nd birthday today, once said "You know, I have no worst experiences." What do you think? When have you had to turn a potential "worst experience" into something positive? You're a sum total of your past experiences. This is what I've come to believe in recently, after putting in A LOT of thought. I wouldn't be the person that I am today if the things that had happened to me in past didn't happen. For example I wouldn't have fallen in love with Philosophy if I hadn't been studying Finance (yep, that's the truth), I wouldn't have started writing if I didn't have issues with being social and I wouldn't have joined writing.com if I hadn't lost a few friends. The point here is that, almost, everything good about me today is a result of whatever had happened to me in the past. What do you think was my reaction when I realized that Finance wasn't my thing? What do you think my reaction was when I had problems fitting in and socializing with people at school, college or university? What do you think my reaction is, even today, when I have trouble expressing feelings for someone? What do you think my reaction was when I lost friends, one of whom actually meant something to me? What would be your reaction to all of this? You'd be sad, period! You'd regard these to be the worst things that can happen to a person. I did the same. But now that I look back at all of these and more life experiences of mine, I don't find any of them to be the worst or even bad. It's because they all resulted into the present me- the person that I can be proud of. I wouldn't trade my writing skills for the world, let alone that friend whom I lost. It's almost as if those bad experiences seems necessary, even good, now that I look back at them. My advice (though I'm too young to be giving any) is to let go of unnecessary emotion. It's unnecessary emotion, I feel, that makes us dwell in the past without realizing what that same past has made us into. When we let go of emotions and events, once we start thinking on what those events gave us and when we start looking at the future with an optimistic mind instead of believing that a 'worst event' destroyed everything good about our lives without giving us a choice to move on, we'll realize that 'there are no bad experiences'. Edit: There are certain events in some people's lives that are beyond expressions. Only those of us, who are not among those unfortunate few, have the audacity and foolishness to say say things like, "There are no bad experiences". People, like me, are not qualified to write on such a topic. I've understood that now. |
CES 2017 (Consumer Electronics Show) opened this week in Las Vegas, Nevada, and here are some of the weirder items on display and potentially coming to a store or online shop near you. Any thoughts or opinions on any of the items? Anything you might be interested in? Well, I'm a really non-tech person to say the least. I don't support the idea of having too many gadgets to make our lives easier for us. I mean, I'm not a cat lover, but why would you need an app to feed our cat, even if you're worried that you might not get the time to do it? What happened to that 'cat love' forcing you to get back home early from work and, in the process, making you spend some quality time with your cat. With this, you can never be home, but still have a cat? I mean, of what use is that anyways? Now people can be completely carefree about their cats, because they're sure that the app will feed it. Way to go technology! Also, what do you need a device taking pictures of the insides of you fridge for? Why can't you just make a list, like billions of others do? See, I think that we all try so hard to save time, but we have no idea of what to do with that saved time. It's almost as if we're saving time to take to our graves with us, lol. Relationships are being undermined because we can just send a text instead of meeting that person in-person, because a text saves 'time', doesn't it? So, I don't think that I'll buy any of these for myself, even if I had the money to That being said, I really love tea, as in, I REALLY love tea. And I know the struggle of not having perfect tea to drink, every time. So, if someone could be kind enough to gift me one of those '42tea smart cube' machines for my birthday, I'd be really grateful. Whatever my beliefs about technology may be, I can't say no to a birthday present now, or can I? |
Develop a new New Year's Eve tradition. It can be serious or humorous; possible or impossible. Wearing a hoodie, going out and drinking booze is, perhaps, the oldest and the most common New Year's Eve tradition. I'm no different from the masses, folks. Every year on New Year's Eve, I put on my hoodie and go out to drink. But booze is just not my thing, so I prefer blood instead. Yes, you've heard it right. I drink blood on New Year's Eve. Why, you may ask? You won't believe me if I tell you, but I'll give it a shot anyways. I'm 120 years old, folks. You see, drinking Mermaid blood every year grants you immortality. So, I go Mermaid hunting every New Year's Eve to a lake to the south of Karachi. There are a lot of mermaids there and some pretty ones too. I suck it dry once I get my hands on one. "We could have a future together. She's so beautiful." I think as I suck its blood dry. "But a man's gotta live too, no?" the thought instantly comforts my hurting conscience. Mermaid blood tastes good too. It needs a bit of salt, sure but other than it's perfectly fine. The only problem is that it's REALLY dense, so it takes a bit of an effort to swallow. Sometimes, it even clings to my throat. I really don't like it when that happens, lol. After I'm done with my...well...business with the mermaid, the job's only half done. I'll live for another year, but I'll look like a 120 year old. Who wants to live with the skin of a dead tree, strength of a dead guy and the age of a corpse? Not me, that's for sure. It's because Mermaid blood grants only half life, so my job's only half done. I spend the rest of the night devouring beauty, strength and age. Have you ever wondered why the same woman isn't crowed Miss Universe twice usually? Well, that's because I and Miss Universe, usually, have a date on New Year's Eve and we feel such a great connection that we become one, whether she likes it or not. Next comes strength. I've been trying to find and devour John Cena for almost twelve years now, but I just can't see him. So, I have to make do with my gym partners, sadly. I hope that I can see him next year, so that my current partner lives to see another year. Searching for a new partner is hard work. I don't sync well with people anyways, so devouring those with whom I do sync just makes things tough for me. I've been twenty for ten years now. You wanna know how? That's because I devour a twenty year old every year to finish up my...tradition. I love being twenty. It has the right balance of maturity and novelty, I feel. But it's been ten years now and I've gotten bored. So, I'll devour a twenty five year old next year and see how things turn out. I should start experimenting a bit with my life now, I feel. I'm not going to remain One hundred and twenty forever, or am I?  So, after having...dinner, I have a good night's sleep. You gotta let the food work its magic too, no?  |
On this day in 1994, figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed on the right leg by an assailant at Cobo Arena in Detroit, MI. Four men were later sentenced to prison for the attack, including rival skater Tonya Harding's ex-husband. If you had to resort to some kind of evil shenanigans or trickery in order to increase your chances of winning this blogging challenge, what would be your plan of attack? Well, that's easy. I'd just befriend the host of this competition, Fivesixer   . A host who's a good friend will increase my chances of winning, no? No, I'm sure it wouldn't, for Fivesixer must already has a lot of friends here  . Still, psychology seems to suggest that a judge is more likely to award a participant if he's heard of his name before. So, Fivesixer remember my name, brother. Pretty please? Other than that, I could, perhaps, ask a friend of mine, who's a much better writer than I am, to write my daily entries for me. Considering the quality of work she produces, this will definitely up my chances. These are all good ideas and I came up with them solely because of the prompt. Don't blame me if I really do win this, people |
| Home! The mere sound of the word is enough to make one filled with warmth, comfort, love and peace. Home is our sanctuary- the place where we take cover from the cruel world. Home is the place where this world is closest to perfection. But I've got a strange question: Where is this home? Where do I find it? Well...this question's a strange one, isn't it? The very fact that I'm sitting on a comfortable chair as I write this piece on my computer is proof that my home is in an average neighborhood of Karachi. But here's the thing: It just doesn't feel like a sanctuary to me. To me, its a place where I put on a mask and am rarely myself, not because I'm forced to but because I feel that I have to. And that brings me to the question: Is home just a set of walls and nothing more? I'm not trying to be unthankful here. I'm grateful for having a roof above my head, a house to live in and family to care for me. But the thing is that I'm not at peace, even though I'm 'home', as are most people, I'm sure. My body is certainly at peace on this comfortable chair, but my soul, or mind or whatever you may call it, is far from it. The closest thing to perfection for me is the idea of peace and home is where you find peace. One might find it in a palace while the other in a cottage. That's the thing with peace, you see? But then, if I'm not home then where am I? I think that I, like the majority, am on a path- a path to find peace. Peace with myself, my thoughts, my mind, my body and my existence. But where might I find this peace? People seldom find it in this world, if you ask me. They spend their lives searching for it and they perish, only to be replaced by a new set of mongers. I, like a million others, am just a link in an unending chain. I believe that this world is too...lucrative for an ordinary man to find peace here. The only sanctuary, or home, for a person like me is at the end of the road, it seems. The idea that I might be greeted with peace and comfort, just like a driver is after a long day's work is comforting. The road might not offer peace, but the afterlife, if there's such a thing, has been promised to be really peaceful for those who have been good on the road. And even if there isn't such a thing, the idea of death, the very idea of inexistence, sounds pretty peaceful, no? |
What's one place in the world you have yet to visit, and have absolutely no intention of ever, ever going? Why are you so adamant about never visiting? Well...this is tough to answer for me. I've never, really, despised a place so much that I'd have such a bad opinion of it without even giving it a chance. I'm not hateful, lol  I've tried to be smart, creative and witty to answer this question, but I couldn't come up with a worthy answer. So, the 'Bermuda Triangle' would have to suffice, lol. The little knowledge that I have of it suggests that its a place of no return- once you get there, you never get back. Some say that the place is mysterious, while some say that there's no mystery at all. Some say that it exists, while some suggests that it isn't even there. This discussion is better left for the scientists, but if such a place does exist I wouldn't want to fiddle around it, no matter what the skeptics have got to say. Would you?  |
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It's true how we know that people will come and leave from our life but at the same time, we are never prepared for it.
