Don’t Be Perfect, Just…

It’s been a while since I blogged, so as I sit here having my yoghurt with honey, I thought of posting one of those random ramblings just in case something useful comes out. One thing about bloggers is that when they take a hiatus, one thought keeps nagging at the back of their minds, “You haven’t written in two weeks, so your next post must be WOW! It must ROCK!” That thought puts more pressure on them and naturally extends their break, because whatever they write – or half-write – isn’t good enough for a post, and so they’d rather not publish it. I have to admit that I can be guilty of that as well. But one way to face the resistance is to just aim at publishing a bad post. Not horrible. Aim for mediocre. Just don’t aim for perfect. That way you’ll break the hiatus, overcome inertia and -hopefully – gain momentum.

I guess this is today’s message. From the short length of this post to its incomplete title, my message is, “Don’t be perfect, just try your best and you’ll be surprised.”

Did you enjoy UAE’s weather last weekend?

Resonance

 

“There was something about resonance that bridge my two worlds and brought them together. In physics, resonance is the tendency of a system to oscillate with a greater amplitude at some frequencies than at others. It explains phenomena like glass breaking at the right – or not – pitch. Electrical resonance explained how radio frequencies can be selectively received.

The concept of resonance was so simple yet so powerful. Push a swing at its natural frequency and it oscillates at its maximum and you have a happy child. Resonance also explains my love for writing – and reading. Do yo sometimes read a book and find that one line that resonates with the beats of your heart, and you figure, “Yes, maybe it was this one line that I had to go away with.”

And there are times when I write and I know  my words will shake someone somewhere, because that’s exactly how I felt when I was writing them. All I needed was someone whose “natural frequency” was similar to mine.

Shadows and Light

“A certain darkness is necessary to see the stars.” 
Appreciate the role of challenges in your life, as they are not there to crush you completely. They are there to help you grow, to let the light within you shine, as darkness creeps in. Everybody experiences dark moments every once in a while. It’s a natural way of life. To fully appreciate joy, pain must be felt. To truly appreciate success, one has to fall a couple of times…or more. Ask a child who keeps on falling over and over again before they can properly walk. They teach us that, “Failure is not falling down; failure is staying down when you have the choice to get back up.”  

 

Live Blogging from yet another wedding

I am at a wedding so naturally I’m blogging since that’s what I do in weddings when I am not tweeting or whatsapping.
I had to come to this wedding “on behalf of” my mother because she couldn’t make it. The awkward part of it is when people walk up to me and say “hi” enthusiastically only for them to walk away and for me to wonder, “Who was that?” Usually my mom is around to tell me who it was, and she can be quite patient about it since I have a malfunctional face recognition system and I might ask the same question about the same person every single event.
But the interesting thing is to be surrounded by Swahili speakers in Dubai. Feels like I’m stranded in a mini-Mombasa island. Except that’s slightly inaccurate because the people around me might actually originate from Tanzania or Zanzibar for all I know.
But isn’t it cute when the young girls actually wear identical dresses without making a big deal about it? So what exactly happens to women when they grow up and suddenly they don’t want to be seen wearing the same thing as another attendee? Is it the need to stand out or to be the most talked about, hoping the uniqueness of the dress would become a useful factor?
As for me, I just search for the table at the corner and focus on my phone/food hoping nobody would embarrass me with “do you know who I am?” remembering the last time it happened in Kenya, the person was actually my dad’s half-sister. Yet another awkward moment.
P.S. Sadly my phone is running out of charge.

#Bestof2012 Ahechoes Posts

So the year is coming to an end, and I would like to take a few minutes to thank everybody who has been visiting this blog. With all the stuff online fighting for your attention, it is an honor that you’ve been spending some time here, so thank you very much. Thank you for your comments, likes, shares and retweets. I’ve been going through some of the comments that my friends have been sending me, and there seems to be a pattern, can you find it?

Person (A) on Facebook says, “long time no talk, but recently started reading more of ur writings and they are really good. i just want to thank you that some of ur writings i find them helpful esp to tough times in life. keep up writing and think of colletcting ur blog posts and put them in a book.

Person (B) shared my stuff on twitter, with the message, “write a book someday “

Person (C) on Linkedin said, “Write something, like a novel or maybe a children’s book for starters (JK Rowling!)”

So until I get to that, I’m listing below some of the top posts for my ahechoes.wordpress.com compiled for new readers. Some of these were actually published in 2011 but they still made the “most read” list of 2012. Enjoy!

1) The Masks People Wear.

2) How to Stop Hurting Too Much.

3) Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish, Stay Curious. 

4) On Introverts. 

5) Sands of Time.

6) 9 Traits of Successful People

7) Dear Single Ladies

8) When Failure is a Success

9) The Road Less Traveled 

10) Losing Your Person

Why This Blog’s Stats Will Continue Struggling

So recently I have been pondering on my Blog’s statistics and how it seems to be making turtle-like progress, remaining as nothing but a speck in the blogosphere. The fact that I write out of passion and not out of an attempt at popularity helps keep this thing alive, because if it comes to the statistics, they pretty much need CPR every once in a while.

Upon reading a summary on The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, it pretty much helps me contemplate on why this blog will continue lurking in the shadows, evading popularity as much as I do. Malcolm argues that one of there are three main factors to determine whether an idea will tip the balance and become exponentially popular is known as Law of the Few.

The Law of the Few says that an idea can become widely popular when it is endorsed by a few important types of people. Gladwell describes these types as Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen. The main thing about these people is they have the charisma, the connections and the trusted position to spread the idea across several fields.

So the fact that I’m an introvert who feels more comfortable expressing myself behind a screen, a username and a password doesn’t exactly help much. I spent the better part of my life trying to extend beyond my comfort zone when it comes to people and friends but the only thing I got was pain from both “family and friends”. And since it’s really hard for me to forget considering I keep a detailed diary of just about everything, I came to the conclusion that I’m tired of holding acidic memories in the vase of my heart because I am the only one who gets hurt (or who remembers the pain) so my natural inclination is to avoid people as a preemptive measure to avoid creating more acidic memories in the first place.

But I digress. Going back to the statistics, I’m happy with whatever statistics I have got because if there’s one thing that I have learnt as an introvert it’s to appreciate the quality of a relationship and not the quantity. And I like the fact that I actually know many of my readers.

According to Dr Wikipedia, As of Feb 2011, there were over 156 million public blogs in existence. Among that much noise, it’s very easy to completely disappear, for after all this is just one speck in the blogosphere, one drop in the ocean or just one brick in the wall.

It’s actually a privilege to have people take some time out of their busy schedules to actually read what you have to say.

So if you’ve read this far.

Thank you.

Overview of April and May’s Posts

So I’m hoping to pick up the habit of writing an “overview” post every other month for the sake of my occasional readers.  The most recent post I put up was dedicated to Syria and had information on how to donate, “Bleeding Syria“.

A friend of mine called me the other day and said why my posts sounded “sad”. She called to check up on me, and it seemed interesting because during the course of the discussion I figured out that the posts made her feel her pain. And that’s how I tend to measure the success of my posts; how many of the posts resonate with people, and whether people can relate to them such that it induces an emotional reaction within themselves.

I posted on relationships with “Acidic People” and I tried to answer the question, “Who’s Your Person?” only to figure out that I have more experience losing my persons over time in “Losing Your Person.”  There was a post discussing events in our lives and learning to deal with them in  “Corrosion, Life and Three Little Words” and how sometimes we think our lives may be crumbling down around us when in reality it’s just “Crumbling Up.” There was also a post on zoning out and where I go in “This is where I go, when I go“

Furthermore, we spoke a bit about violence; first in the “Irony of School Shootings” and then in “School Violence” discussing the act of violence against Lujein in a school in Abu Dhabi.

Finally, there were some mundane discussions on Facebook or Twitter , Graduation and “TCA After the Storm” .

Overview of June’s posts

So the month started with a background story to “The Day Akela Died,” giving out some information on what inspired the story. Also I provided a sneak peek on what stories would be coming up soon inshaAllah. If you haven’t received your copy, make sure to check it out here.

Then we discussed a bit on The Masks People Wear, and that brought on a lot of comments from readers who connected with that post, leading to a compilation of comments on The Masks People Wear – Comments. Then I disappeared for 11 days and returned with a post that was not exactly that popular titled the Effects of More Facebook-Like Inventions. The topic came up once when my friend and I had one of the longest chat ever that stretched to the wee hours of the morning. But you can tell from the many comments – or lack thereof – that people’s interest was not piqued enough…or maybe, people other than RetireWannabee didn’t have anything to contribute with.

The next post was Passionate about Your Work? and people did have a lot to say on that one. Following that was a transition from job issues to relationship issues on Relationships Worth Fighting for and Family Worth Fighting For. And finally the month ended with some productivity tools to help you keep track of things such as time, goals, religious obligations and writing, in 6 Cool Tools to Help You Keep Track.

It has been quite an interesting month I must say and even though I wasn’t as productive as I should have been, but reader’s contributions on my blog made up for that. Thank you all for continuously supporting and sharing this blog. Thank you for all your comments, and emails, and twitter retweets.

The journey is not over, and if you’re wondering what I have planned for next month inshaAllah, check this out…