The Roundup: 03

Ramadan and Eid recap and some other reflections.

This month I discovered that a haircut is a metamorphosis to a new life. More so if you do it yourself. I felt a devilish delight at the crunch of my red scissors shedding an old identity into a new one. It sliced through the stifling of life and unlocked my inner strength. The agency I have over my life is more than I think but it requires taking actions and risks.

I was audacious for giving myself a 90s layered cut with bangs for my first time being a hairstylist. But a few YouTube tutorials later, and I had the confidence of a hairdresser seasoned with years of experience. I was excited by the thrill of this challenge laced with the risk of botched hair. We've all heard it before: growth happens outside of the comfort zone. Even something as simple as a fresh haircut gave me a fresh perspective on life. I realized that every time I've tried something new and different, I unlocked better parts of myself. That's my goal for this month: to push myself to do new and difficult things, Insha’Allah!

Substack

I reflected deeply on my own post this month: In the Zone. I shared a diagram about how we experience low moods when the challenge level for an activity is well beneath our skill capacity. It made me realize that a big reason for my current stagnation is that I haven't challenged myself to learn any new skills or build any new habits. This makes my days and weeks blur together, without micro-milestones to look forward to. This month, I want to pick up some new activities and set milestones to track and reward my progress, Insha’Allah.

In The Zone

Books

I shared that I listened to the audiobook for Stolen Focus by Johann Hari this month. The first half of the book was great, packed with research and personal stories exploring different ideas about the patterns of losing focus and how to regain control over it. The second half of the book is where things started meandering. To preface, the author of this book is a journalist by profession who wrote sociopolitical commentaries for newspapers. In the second half of the book, he began talking about how tech companies are the culprit for our diminishing focus. He proposed solutions about changing the business models of tech industries and governments so they may better preserve our focus and aid us towards our goals. Though that sounded like a lovely solution, I'm not interested in waging war against tech giants and these solutions had no practical applications for me to improve my focus. Needless to say, I lost interest in the book and stopped listening to it halfway through. Also, upon further investigating the author, I discovered that he has been penalized for serious cases of plagiarism, fabrications, and misconduct repeatedly through his career. So overall, I don’t think it’s worth anyone’s time to read.

I do want to get into reading more fiction though, I’d love any recommendations for clean adult fiction books!

Podcast

I haven't listened to much this month, just a bit of tafsir from Bayyinah TV. But I did watch bits and pieces of Dr. Mike's podcast on YouTube shorts and I like that he's not afraid to call out purely capitalistic practices and products in the health care industry. So I am enticed to listen to his full podcast episodes, Insha'Allah.

I also started watching Dr. Omar Suleiman's Barzakh series a little late into Ramadan. I was initially scared to watch about death, but Yasamine shared how much peace it brought her about her grandmother recently passing away. It inspired me to check it out and I learned so much about life after death and made me feel less afraid for it. I hope to earn the beautiful life of the barzakh akin to Jannah and to meet the prophets, sahabas and my ancestors, Insha’Allah. I would love to meet people from different time periods on this Earth and learn about how different their world was from ours!

I'd love to know, is there anything you're looking forward to in the barzakh?

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I wasn't feeling very inspired to create content this month and wanted to focus on my connection with Allah. I struggled with this a lot this Ramadan and I feel like I could've done more. But ibadah shouldn't curb by the end of Ramadan, and I hope to make up for it by building on the new foundations I laid this month to continue to grow closer to Allah the rest of the year, Insha'Allah. I hope to share more of this journey, Insha'Allah! Anyways, I liked the thumbnail for Snooze or Suhoor this month, how about you?

Eid Mubarak to everyone, I hope you all had a blessed and fun Eid! I had a really good Eid Alhamdulillah! I loved my dress and even got khussay¹ this year! I was so happy about them since I’ve been wanting khussay for so long but they’re hard to find in Canada. I got a scrapbooking journal as an Eid present and I'm so excited to explore this new craft, Insha’Allah! Other than that, I went out with my family for dinner in the evening and had some yummy food! I would to read about how everyone celebrates Eid, so let me know in the comments!

That’s all I have for this month, see you all in the next one, Insha’Allah!

1. A Pakistani flat shoe.