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 Well, not so much fun and leisure as...get some damn writing done, you fool! |
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A while ago, I attended a writers' workshop and the lady who hosted it told us all to go away with this bit of advice - to write for just ten minutes a day. I was determined to go ahead with it and I did...for two days. So today I remembered that I'd resolved to do so and I whipped out my journal and wrote for fifteen minutes. I'm typing out pretty much the same thing that I wrote earlier, with some differences. I find I can go a lot more in-depth when I'm typing than when I'm writing by hand. Writing by hand is such a chore! I've struggled with loneliness a lot throughout my twenty-nine years. I struggled with it when I was the only one home with my mum when I was a teen and everybody else had other places to be. I struggled with it after marriage and when we moved into our own house for the first time. I struggled with it after my son was born and I felt torn between pursuing my writing and being a good mum, because my culture seems to indicate that a woman has absolutely no chance of living her own life - or at least, she has no chance of attaining any goals she hasn't already attained - once she has children. I feel it occasionally still, even though I get so little time to myself nowadays that any alone time is simply awesome. I've tried to come to terms with the idea that being alone isn't a bad thing - and a lot of the time, it isn't. My friends don't live nearby so I don't get to see them often, and even when I do, I feel like there isn't much depth to our conversations. I'm surrounded by people who do not think like me, who do not share any of my interests and hobbies. I feel like I've become desensitised to isolation. Loneliness is my preferred way to be. I walked into my college cafeteria at lunch today and it was the usual hubbub of activity. Youngsters walking around, chatting animatedly, shouting across the room, laughing, eating, socialising. I could recall how that clamour wouldn't have bothered me ten-twelve years ago, when I would have been one of the youngsters talking excitedly with her friends. But, as this moment, I just found an out-of-the-way little table and sat down. I watched the crowds for a while, wondering why it was only at moments like these that the sense of isolation became so strong. In the middle of a crowd, I feel most alone. |
| 23:37 The prompt for today asks participants to find 5 songs about vacation and pick one to base a vacation on. In all honesty, I am damn tired. The only reason I bothered to blog was because I didn't want to let down my over-a-month blogging streak. The entry might not be very long but at least I did it. I don't really listen to songs much - those that I do listen to are usually of a religion nature. Nothing about vacation in any of them, as far as I'm aware. I'd search for them but I'm struggling to keep my eyes open as I write this - I just cannot expend any more energy on anything other than getting to bed. It was Eid. I've been up since morning and got five hours of sleep last night. Anyway, I'm going to call it a night. I'm so tired so I can barely keep my head up as I type this. 23:44 ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| 22:19 Design my own week-long cruise, you say? But I've never been on a cruise! The closest thing I have to this is watching Disney's Suite Life on Deck and...yeah. If I could go somewhere though, I guess I'd like to go to Saudi Arabia. The Muslim heartland! It's like a distant dream to go there. I guess from there I'd like to go to Jerusalem as it hosts one of our holy sites. Then maybe Turkey and, from there, Italy. I've always wanted to see Venice! That would be one hell of a cruise! 22:35 the only reason I took so long to write this entry was because I got lost on Google Maps. Who needs to go on a cruise when you have the world in the palm of your hand?  ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| 16:01 I'm currently sitting in a hospital waiting room, awaiting my turn with the phlebotomist. You know what's a good place for a vacation? Anywhere that isn't in a hospital! I just had a blood test last week and they want another one! What a pain! Moving on, if the timings of my entry are a bit off, it's because I might have to stop halfway to go and give some of my precious lifejuice away. They're vampires, I tell you! Vampires! ...Moving on once more, my ideal vacation would be to actually stay at home...without my husband or child there! What a treat! Unfortunately, it doesn't happen very often. I'm still holding out hope though that my husband will take the little one with him when he goes to Pakistan next month...Or was it the month after? My memory is not what it once was - too much useless junk stored up there, perhaps, clogging things up and making it hard to shift things around. Back to the prompt, I would love to travel. I did my bronze Duke of Edinburgh's Award (the expedition bit of it anyway) and a handful of us went trekking through Welsh countryside (with one memorable stop at a beach). It was beautiful! I absolutely loved it (although the walking got to my arthritic legs at the time). And it was so out of my comfort zone! I rarely get out of the house nowadays. I guess I should step out of my comfort zone a little more and go and see the world. My view of it right now is shaped by the many global atrocities that seem to be on the news every other day (if even!) so I'd love to be able to take in the beauty and experience the more humane side of humanity. If only. 16:13 Guess the wait for the queue is longer than I thought it would be! |
| 23:00 It's been a busy but lazy day. I had a cake order and spent the majority of the morning dealing with that. I was standing for so long that the old back pain started to flare up. I was exhausted - not that I'm not right now. My nephew was over too. I didn't get to check things off my checklist until just a couple of hours ago - I took some time to have a nap just so I won't be falling asleep when I do my long prayer in a little while. And I feel like the biggest jerk because I was mean to my kitten. I caught him wandering about on the kitchen table and it drives me nuts. He's still small so he's only recently learnt to jump from the floor to the table, although mostly he relies on chairs that haven't been pushed in. Anyways, yes, I need to calm down and understand that one cannot discipline a cat like a child...not that I'm doing very well in disciplining my child. Basically, I scream a lot. My God, wouldn't it be so damn relaxing if my voice just goes for a few days? Maybe I could learn to stop breathing fire down his neck for every little thing he does wrong. Or maybe I need to get out more. Or maybe he needs to get out more. Away from me. My husband will be going to Pakistan soon so I'm hope he'll take the little terror with him. It'll be good for both of us. And that's a wrap. Time to pray. 23:13 ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| 20:37 Progress today Will be even slower than usual as I'm writing one-handed on my phone. As is family tradition, the whole family has gathered at my parents' house for a Saturday get-together. I feel like a useless lump when I come here - I barely move from the sofa. At least my brain isn't suffering because of a never-ending stream of videos, since I've banned myself from YouTube. Hurray for small victories. The fast opens in about thirty-five/forty minutes. I had a little nap and have yet to do my late afternoon prayer...time is running out! 20:47 ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| 16:08 The 30 Day Blogging Challenge is over. I'm thinking I'll take on the unofficial June challenge too. It's a good incentive to continue what I'm doing so why not? Since there is no prompt for this entry, I'll just regale you all with a tale of...my ordinary mundane life. Yay. It will be Eid soon. It felt like Ramadan barely started and now, a blink of the eyes later, it's almost through! Eid has really been a disappointment these past few years. We've made it all about food and visiting the same two relatives we visit every year. When I was a kid, we'd go to visit relatives in other cities and it was so much more...celebratory. I took a lot of breaks so even though I haven't written much, that's more than ten minutes! 16:22 ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| 10:55 Woo-hoo! The month is nearly over! It's gone by so quickly and now I have so many more entries in my blog! I will try to keep up my ten minutes of writing a day but I don't think I would have come this far with it if it hadn't been for this challenge. My favourite prompt was probably the one where I had to explore something about which my opinion had slowly changed over time. I had a bit of in-depth self-reflection there and got some good stuff, I think. The most rewarding aspect of this challenge has been to continue it every day and maybe make some new discoveries about myself. Not many of those, but I think I've had a couple :) Okay, five minutes done (with some dithering thrown in for good measure) and I'm not sure what to write about. My back hurts? That's old news. I'm tired? Meh, also old news. I'm writing! Yes, I'm writing every day! It is a stupid fanfiction that I'm writing, true, and it's also plotless drivel, true, and a romance (which is not something I excel in), true, but I'm writing! I'm trying to come up with a plot as I write but it's rubbish. But I'm rolling with it. I now feel inadequate about writing without thinking up some sort of plot...although, clearly, this hasn't stopped me. I'll keep working on it. Nine minutes! Come on, clock! Change! I demand you change! Come oooooooooooooooooooon!  YAY! 11:05! ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| 22:36 I'm a bit confounded by this prompt. I have to come up with four prompt ideas and then choose one of them to write my entry around. So my prompt ideas are... 1. Explore dependence (on anyone/anything, about how/why/etc.) 2. What is resilience and what does it look like for you? 3. Our judgement can cloud our views and stands in the way of seeing the truth. But are there times when casting our judgement is beneficial in any way? 4. If you could learn another language, which one would it be and why? I'll go with the last one, because if I start digging for the others, I might be here for hours and nobody's going to read a blog entry that takes hours to get through. I'm learning four languages right now (I'm not yet proficient in any of them and if I continue at the rate I'm going, I never will be). I'm learning Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, and Italian. The last of these is not like the others, you say? You would be right. I'm only learning Italian because I got a distance-learning course for it like ten years ago and I never finished it but I still have all my material so I wanted to get back to it. I started learning Italian back then because my favourite anime at the time, Katekyo Hitman Reborn!, was about a mafia family and it was so quirky and fun that I love it to this day (though I probably wouldn't call it my favourite since I don't think I have a favourite anymore) and the characters are still fresh in my mind. But I do like Italian. It isn't very hard since it has a lot of similarities with English and I find it pleasant to speak and listen to. I'm sure I've talked about my half-assed language learning before so I won't go into detail about the individual whys and hows of the others but I would like to mention that languages fascinate me. It's amazing how there are so many differences between every race/ethnicity's way of thinking but it's also incredible that, despite these differences, we still have so many similarities. For example, in English we have the old saying "kill two birds with one stone" and, in my mother tongue (which is a dialect of the Mirpur region of Pakistan) I've heard my dad similarly say "ek tir dou nishaniyan" (literally "one arrow two targets"). I haven't studied languages in any depth, though I want to. I blew my chance when I was in college - I believe I got an E in my overall English Language A Level. Miserable. But oh well. I didn't have much of a desire to learn back then. I do now. Somewhat. Maybe that's what I can look into studying once I've finished my counselling course. 23:01 ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| 08:22 The short answer? No. The long answer? We can try. I suppose for people who mete out justice, objectivity is a necessity. They have to learn it. It's required of them. But in everyday life, I don't think even they are completely unbiased. I think it would take some kind of superhuman to be unbiased in every situation. In everyday life, it's often the case that we only hear one side of a story, right? We either don't get to hear the other side or forget that there is another side altogether. Generally, I'm talking about incidents that have happened between friends/family members and some unknown people. Example: Friend: "The bastard cut me off, didn't see him coming out at all! Nearly hit him!" Me: "What a douchebag! There are some really stupid people on the road!" Meanwhile, the "douchebag" in question could be relaying something similar to his friend: Douchebag: I thought the bitch was miles away so I pulled out! Next thing I know, she's right behind me and honking like mad! Douchebag's friend: Must have been an idiot. There are lots of those around. There you have it. I have lots of biases. When I'm talking to people, a lot of the time I tend to just blindly agree with what they're saying because I either don't have the courage to voice what I really want to say, or I'm not very interested in the conversation. I'm trying to change but it's difficult. I do have lots of topics that I'm passionate about so I will voice my opinions if I disagree strongly enough. Also, religion plays a big part here for me too. I don't like listening to people gossiping. In Islam, it's actually a sin to speak ill of people when they aren't there (it's also a sin to speak ill of people when they're there but I think it might be a bigger sin to do so behind someone's back) so I try not to indulge people when they do so. But, as mentioned previously, a lot of the time I just go along with what they're saying if it's a personal issue and they want to vent. I never consider in those moments that the party being talked about might have their own version of events. This has been educational! 08:41 ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| 09:13 The prompt today asks how I honour those who have passed away. Islamically, you can send prayers for the deceased if they were Muslim and ask that their sins be forgiven and they be granted paradise. Culturally, we hold massive family get-togethers on the anniversary of the death of a loved one and offer prayers and have a meal as an extended family. The two are not to be confused, since cultural norms tend to rise even from a religion that prohibits making up new norms in the name of the religion. In religion, we human beings are as split as we are in anything. Even more so, perhaps, which is a pity. ...I've run out of things to say! If I'm honest, I always get a bit nervous when talking about religion. I'm no scholar so I could be wrong and I don't want to be wrong because so many people already have a negative view of Islam. I don't want to add to it in any way. My religion is one of peace and kindness and I want to promote that because those are the aspects of it that appeal most to me. I had to go to my son so I took a little break but I think I can safely say I did ten minutes...maybe. I was hesitating a lot 09:28 ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
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