The Roundup: 01

A new series: monthly musings and current faves.

The Roundup is a new series I’m starting to share some personal reflections and some things I’ve been enjoying lately.

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This month was the beginning of the new year and I had high hopes of starting off on the right foot. But life is not always as picturesque as we envision. I was scatter brained all month. I had a hard time organizing my goals and prioritizing tasks to make progress towards them. I created a monthly habit tracker (turned out pretty cute) but not very functional. The daily habits were misaligned with my goals and I didn’t keep up with most of them.

Jun

, from Strategic Sunnah, helped me reframe how to approach my short and long term goals. That gave me more clarity on what daily habits I should focus on to get me to where I want to go. I created a new habit tracker for the new month which will hopefully keep me more on track. If you need help with goals setting, I would highly recommend checking him out!

In other news: I was tired of dragging on my drive test and wanted to finally get my full license. So I shoved down my fears of snow, slush, and ice and I booked my test for the beginning of January. Besides, once the roads are cleaned, after a snowfall, driving is as smooth as ever, right? I had to book a couple months in advance and didn’t know what the weather would look like on test day. It hadn’t snowed in a while though which consoled my concerns. But Subhan’Allah, the very morning of my test, it snowed a lot and my test got cancelled. I sagged with relief that I didn’t have to drive in weather I didn’t feel comfortable in. In hindsight I shouldn’t have rushed to book this test and definitely should’ve practiced more to feel more confident. But this little moment reenforced my trust in Allah, that He would never put me in a situation that wasn’t right for me.

Nothing else eventful happened this month, but I wanted to share some reflections about some other things I’ve been learning and doing.

Podcast

I really enjoy listening to podcasts and I hope to explore new ones this year, Insha’Allah. But I can’t replace some tried and tested podcasts that feed my curiosity. I listened to an episode of Huberman Lab this week and learned some things about gut to brain communication through the Vagus nerve. There are neurons in the gut that sense the presence of sugary foods and send signals to the brain which impacts how we feel. Inter-organ communication in the body is so complex and there's always more to learn, so I had fun learning about another gut to brain communication. I’d love to know anything interesting you’ve learnt this month!

Thumbnail

I’ve been noticing my design skills improving over the course of me making thumbnails. Since I enjoy this part of posting a lot, I thought I’d share some reflections about it. My favourite thumbnail this month was for 'The Scholar in You'. I had a good time playing around with the fonts and word placements. I enjoyed adding little details with yellow to pull it all together. My least favourite was 'Pouring Into One Another'. I had a really hard time coming up with a concept. In the end, I didn’t love how it turned out and I couldn't figure out how to fix it. If inspiration strikes me again, I might redo it. I'd love to know, which one was your favourite?

Substack

There are so many pieces I loved reading this month. I can’t share everything, but I’ll share this one I really enjoyed "A letter to the sun" by

Abdulrahman

. This piece highlighted the beauty of something so obvious in our lives that we often overlook. The way it was written gave me a new light to see the sun and beauty in ordinary things. Do give it a read!

A letter to the sun

Books

I created an intention to read more this year and goal to accompany it. I’m aiming for a book a week with both fiction and non-fiction titles, Insha’Allah. I hope this series will help me stay accountable to this reading goal, Insha’Allah.

I haven’t read much this month, but I’ve heard the hype and I finally started reading Broken by Fatima Bala and I'm about half way through. I can't give a full review without finishing it, but I have to say, I’m really enjoying learning about Nigerian culture and was surprised to learn about how similar their wedding culture is to Desi traditions. The religious struggles and cultural diaspora from Muslims living in the West is very relatable. I’m grateful that we have some literature that better reflects and represents our experiences. I can't wait to finish this book and hope to see more books with genuine representation. I'd love to know, what've you been reading lately?

source

That’s all for this month’s reflection, I hope you enjoyed this and would love any feedback you have about things you would like to see here. I’m always looking to explore new ideas, so if you have any book, podcast, or Substack recommendations I’d love to hear it. If you have any design tips to share with me, I’m ecstatic to hear anything graphic design related.

I’d love to know, how was your January?