Me

At the end of my teenagerhood, I was used to being the center of attention and being popular. I was a model son, a model student, a model social king, a model speaker; a model in religion; as viewed by others: a perfect person. I was the pride of my parents and the focal point for everybody else creating jealousy and envy.

However, around 6 years ago, my life started to change a bit. I was no longer an example for everybody to see. In this past time, I moved out, I’ve took part in vices, tried things I was forbidden to do, developed a mental condition, renounced my religion, and finally got the chance to express myself.

I was expecting for my family to distance themselves away from me as I was no longer the perfect son. Nevertheless, I found out that extended family members and family friends were sifting through my reddit account, my Instagram, my Facebook and so on and was way more popular than I have ever been. What was unraveled was a completely different somebody, one who has changed: no longer the perfect Ahmed. The attention came back as rumour mills and quite some drama, which people love so much.

it makes me feel strange that the most frequent visitors to my website are family members overseas, employers and recruiters. That’s not exactly the kind of people I want to read my stuff but then again, this blog is an opening to the deepest parts of me and it’s enticing.

Online, it’s a completely different story. I’m absolutely unimportant. No one cares about me, I’m just someone hiding behind a website and a blog that appears to most people, a babble of nonsense. We are dreaming of popularity but maybe it’s not the best thing.

I desperately throw my content on all the social media accounts that I have only to drive little traffic. Whatever projects I’ve done are just becoming passion projects for me, not something that others care about.

My blog doesn’t have a direction, it’s just my mind going crazy and throwing up inspiration that randomly comes to me. My blog is me and nothing more. I’m one of the billions of people on Earth and the several millions who have a website. I’m starting to realize that I’m nothing special, why would anyone care about what I have to say?

In the real word, I might be generating a lot of buzz because of certain life choices that I made or exposing conditions that I have. However, online it’s a completely different story: I’m nothing. Just a dot.

I’m sure many bloggers and website authors can relate to me. There’s a pressure for popularity but it’s in vain. No one cares that Ahmed El-Hajjar wrote about his change in career or why he was angry that day.

To my many friends who blog, vlog, stream and so on, I feel your pain. You want to express your freedom but there’s no one to express it to. If someone else has posted the exact same content as you, their stuff might have become unstoppable and viral because of connections they have to a certain industry or perhaps survivorship bias.

I have almost 40 blog posts that is aimed at a large audience but in reality, I’m just talking to myself. This has been more than 3 years of shouting on my side and silence on the other side of the door.

It might sound that I’m frustrated and I’m angry though the dryness of my text doesn’t help but I do feel anxious. What I wrote are subjects that people don’t care about. I started looking at every post, every sale, every view as a passion project.

Inside me, I feel this innate pressure to become big like the others but that doesn’t seem to be my fate. At the end of the day, this is for me only and there’s a select few who have joined me to see what a random stranger on the Internet thinks.

I’ll soldier on and keep at it keeping my expectations at the bottom. It’s just me.

Working from home: my hate and my insanity...

The whole COVID-19 pandemic has caused a paradigm shift in terms of what working is going to look like for a long time. Even when things are back in control, we'll still find ourselves being home employees. Employers are taking advantage of this to perhaps save money on office costs  Many venues are closing because their response to COVID-19 has put them into abject poverty or even in bankruptcy. Restaurants, coffee shops, gyms and other places that thrive on a large customer base to function are closing; especially the small ones. 

Working from your domicile means all the home distractions are available to us. I hear of friends with low workloads using Caffeine or Amphetamine to give the illusion that they're working while in reality they're taking naps, watching shows and gaming. My current job is more fast paced and I don't have that luxury though admittedly I've slacked off a bit.

There's a contrast between sitting next to your manager and staying at home with all the freedom you want. You can pretend to work and extend deadlines making your work seemingly more difficult. I noticed my coworkers including my teammates taking their time on tickets that normally take 2 days done in 2 weeks instead. Everyone is playing the lie.

The isolation is something that drives me really nuts. The few meetings and no real interaction makes for a very lonely experience. Instead of walking to a friend’s desk for some help, now you have to send emails and schedule a meeting.

I was hoping to find a way to have company through a shared office space. However, I was alone there as few dared to put themselves at risk. I didn't have the company I was looking for to discuss random subjects and have that human interaction. Worst part, it was unusually expensive no matter the location. It would make things hard to afford things.

I haven't tried coffee shops but these seem more busy. Apparently, these kinds of locations increase creativity and production due to the chatter, less distractions and of course your boss not staring at you. Universities might be a good location too but it seems no one is going there.

What pains me so much is how much time we spend at home because of remote work. Although I argued in my first blog post that we work too much, we'd at least have more time for walks and whatever else refreshes us. However, an extra 8 hours at home just seems too much for me. We’re trapped because we have to be online all the time and our bosses expect instantaneous responses, otherwise they might think we’re unproductive. I try to do things outside of home when I can but it's hard during these lockdown days.

I'd like your opinion on how you cope with working from home and how you stay sane stuck in front of your laptop at home without any breaks. Leave comments.

Isolation...

These uncertain times have driven me nuts. I’m stuck at home no what I’m doing whether it’s working remotely or talking to loved ones. All you get is virtual interaction, but it’s not the same. You can’t feel people vibes behind a screen, it’s just a flat representation of them.

I have to stay home all the time. I want to see my family and sometimes I take risks even though I shouldn’t see them. I’m tempted to go to my friends’ domiciles. I want to give gifts but they might be contaminated. I don’t know.

I can’t host my meetup anymore. Other meetups that I join are all online instead of being around a table. My part-time driving job has come to a halt because everything non-essential has been closed and people are trapped at home. I get no riders and I’m scared they’ll pollute my car with the illness. Your appointments are virtual too, and even worse sometimes on the phone. How are they going to see your facial expressions and body language to know how you really are. How will they feel your pain when all you have is sound.

Going outside is scary, it feels like a taking a risk everytime and I have to admit I’ve taken big ones. It makes me anxious. People don’t seem to know how to protect themselves or others. Few have read what the experts have recommended to us. I feel unsafe because the rules aren’t being followed.

You never know when someone has it, maybe I do but I’m not reacting to the monster. Someone else may be the same but the reaction on me might be severe enough to send me for admission.

People with conditions are getting tired of all of this. Even healthy people are developing anxiety and stress because of this mess. I want my life to go back to normal and everyone does too. Even health care workers are getting sick of all the extreme protections they have to do, and even with that, people get hit with it anyways.

The timelines are uncertain and picking the wrong time might cause everything to spread again. Maybe in a few months, or next year, no one can give me an idea. How do we control something that spreads so quickly.

Scientists are doing their research to find treatments and other forms of protection from this disease. Yet it is not something that is discovered in a few months. There’s a ton of paperwork and trials needed to get things approved. It’s not going to be tomorrow.

I can’t put on my calendar when we’ll all be free again because no one knows when.

A closure on my past...

I’ve been haunted by my own past for so long. It’s not something I wish the reveal but I believe it’s finally time to put it aside and leave it only for only opportune moments when it’s warranted. I’m a drama queen and sometimes I talk too much about it, but in reality, it’s a balance between past and future.

My thinking patterns often revolve ruminating about the past with the inability to let go of what happen. Feelings of anger, regret and sorrow haunt me again and again. I subject myself to pain that I felt beforehand and no matter how hard I try to bear it, it hurts just as much as it did before.

Sometimes life presented me with surprises that I didn’t expect. Events and happenings that I would have never pictured in my past self. I can never tell if it’s emotions, my circumstances or just people that cause me all this pain. Actually, it’s an intangible mess of the way our world works. We clutch onto controlling it but the truth is, we are submitting to it. Philosophers have constantly argued on who’s the master of our fate: us or the Universe.

The past ten years have pushed my patience to the limit and made me realize how vulnerable of a person I truly am. I always assume that people have good intentions and it comes back to bite me. I hold steadfast onto hope until the very end despite all signs to the contrary. As a result, the anguish holds me down as I try to recollect the pieces of hope that just shattered in front of me.

I was lied to and accused of being delusional to statements that turned out to be vivid and looked past into the future. I was assigned titles I didn’t deserve and convinced of having things that I did not possess. I became so desperate that I desired to end my misery in any way possible.

When the whole adventure was put to end, I realized how bamboozled and how unduly tested I really was. Gullibility was my weakness and it drove me so far into psychosis. Disbelief made me blind to the obvious evidence that something was indeed wrong and a conspiracy was hidden right under my nose.

I’ve learned my lesson: I should listen to my gut. Toying with emotions are a sign of weakness and leave someone into insanity. I regret not following my intuition as it may have saved me from being abused and tortured. Next time, I need to submit to my unconscious mind.

I have chosen to change as much as I could in my daily life; every detail. I’m trying to gain a new perspective on life, one where the past is on the floor. A new chapter in my life has started where the pieces of the puzzle are starting to fit again.

Anger...

After some deep thought, I decided to finally write something about myself, but I’m keeping it vague on purpose until I get more comfortable with myself. I can’t keep a veil of perfection hiding what’s inside me. I’m broken, flawed and troubled; that’s the truth. I can proudly cope with this big mess and function like a ‘normal’ person, but I have to hide everything and pretend nothing is wrong with me.

A few years ago, I learned that my primary emotion is Anger. It’s not aggressiveness or the desire for violence, but rather a tightness in my chest caused by memories that still haunt me. It’s self-criticism, self-hate, self-everything. I never know how to express it but one odd thing it does is make my creativity explode.

The past week I’ve gone through a swath of emotions ranging from sadness to disappointment to discomfort to anxiety to depression and everything in between; mainly due to recent life circumstances. It exhausted me so much that I became emotionally numb, but in an odd way: able to feel negative emotions but not positive ones. I’ll just say it’s a chemical problem than emotional or cognitive.

My past life circumstances have been against me and the bad memories are really starting to seep in. I hate myself for it and my capacity to ruminate endlessly about it. I’m programmed to see things in a dark light and any lightness is simply dimmed until it is simply obscurity. Why?

People tell me to think happy thoughts but it’s not in my capacity. My brain isn’t wired for optimism but rather pessimistic anxiety. I’ve developed my own coping techniques but they only numb the pain rather than get rid of it.

Yet, I know why I am angry and I’m not going to talk about it. It’s going to spoil my image of ‘perfection’ that the world has taught me to keep. I reveal my troubles to so few people and the stigma behind them scares me so much. Help is everywhere to deal with it and I’m seeking as much as I can.

I’ve been dealing with a monster for over 10 years now. It’s stuck with me for the rest of my life. I know I can cope, but sometimes the emotions get to me and all I want to do is seclude myself.

One day, I’ll write about what’s it like to be me, but it’ll be buried under a swath of prepared blog posts so it’s not the first thing on my page.

Get ready to read away…