Breaking Point

I have to apologize for the recent silence and lack of progress in my various projects. My mind hasn't been wired properly for a while now and going to difficult and troubling times. I mentioned before that I'm bipolar schizoaffective and borderline but my symptoms have reached their peak in somewhat recent times. I was promised that my illness would be a prodrome to grow bigger and bigger and they were absolutely correct. My onset of thirteen years ago never hinted at me that I'd be battling a monster that vies to be victorious over my frailty.

This is a very sensitive and personal subject for me and it's guaranteed to make me vulnerable and a target for all sorts of missed opportunities. However, I'm at a breaking point where I just can't hold in the tears anymore. I have to spit everything out in the most embarrassing of places, my blog. At the end of the day, I'm a human being who's going through some tough challenges and if this is a point of judgement for you, please move on and don't waste my time. At least I'm brave enough to put this in public for everyone to learn about.

The subject is graphic both emotionally and physically so I'm going to throw some massive trigger warnings here for those who hold trauma or are so neurotypical that thoughts like these never entered their minds. If you fear seeing a drop of blood coming out of your body or the most painful thing you've ever had was broken nail, this is not for you. In other words, if you've never suffered and take everything for granted, we're just not going to vibe.

My account starts with something in the present. Permanent marks and cuts on my arms that will never heal. I'm not ashamed of them nor do I regret committing the act. It has become part of my story giving a glimpse into who I am and the pain that I had to endure. I've had the bravery this fall to wear short-sleeves for all to see and had people courageous enough to ask me questions about it. It doesn't take much to explain other than admitting that it's self-harm and that 80% of my kind engages in activities like these.

A select few have asked me why I would do something like that. My answer was always the same: because I had to. It's impossible to feel emotional and physical pain at the same time, so this act provides me with consistent relief and distraction from what's going on inside my head. Never has blood looked so tantalizing to me seeing it flow down my arms spoiling my blanket. In my naïve years of teenagerhood, I though that something like that was just so stupid, but now I have total respect for it and fully understand how necessary it is.

Last weekend, I developed a panic attack because I knew I was about to have a psychotic break. No matter how much I was trained to recognize them, they still scare the shit out of me knowing that soon, my reality will melt and I'm going to be in a strange world. The delusions became so real and the paranoia started to hunt me down. I watched the world getting foggier and foggier and losing track of the real world becoming derealization. Imagine yourself not being able to trust your thoughts anymore and everything fading to obscurity revealing a new existence that even a bad trip on psychedelics can't recreate.

That night, my delusional self was keeping me away from my treatment. I thought that something mysterious took over me and that magic will banish it to eternal suffering. However, I had to do what they call opposite action, a very difficult technique that is ingrained in your psyche so deep learned in Dialectical Behavioural Therapy. I struggled to convince myself to get off my couch with all the colours swirling everywhere and swallow giant doses of antipsychotics. It took five hours to regain my consciousness, so to speak, and end the day with bedtime. I was still afraid.

So that's what happened recently, but the cocktail of symptoms has been presenting me with surprises and put me on the path of relapse. A mixed episode out of nowhere collapsed onto my taking me over along with the dreaded short shots of emotions from borderline personality. However, this one wasn't going to be covered by massive doses of Seroquel, it was going to last and for the past few months, I've been in it. The darkness is seeping in dimming even the dimmest of lights, I just can't anymore.

My functioning and cognition took the biggest hit, the thing that I value the most in my mind, is starting to fade away. There's no trigger, it's just the genetic switches that keep being turned on, one by one, and it seems like it's still growing. Every night, I dissociate because of how hopeless I feel and realize that I just had another empty day of nothing. It hurts, a lot.

Throughout my career of mental challenges, I would get lapse of relief, thinking that whatever combination of medications has settled me down. Sometimes it was relief but other times it was just a hypomanic episode giving me the illusion of a cure.

Where I am now is a painful but empty existence. There's nothing inside me, I feel nothing but a void. There are emotions but I can't feel them except through the filter of borderline, and my mood swings are just something to witness through the state of the world around me. Every morning, I start hallucinating and it ends when I go to sleep. However, my symptoms still haunt me in my dreams because the nightmare is both when I'm awake and when I'm asleep.

But, I'm trying to be hopeful and care-seeking. I want to get better and resume my life, but it won't be an easy path. The expression 'live day by day' is insipid and an extreme insult for me, because you can't plan a mental illness like that. The episodes last weeks and months, with no end in sight even if you are aware that there will be finality, but only for that episode. Because, another one is lined up for me.

My condition has taught me to be strong and forced me to become resistant of the ramblings of my mind. I can't get them out of head, or even ignore them, but just let the demons live inside my head and have the party they so badly want. I've brushed death and literally met it a few times so I know what it's like on the other end. I've learned to keep myself safe but the thoughts will never leave me, not even for a day.

On the other hand, I can't let myself submit to my circumstances but I have to cope with them in the best way possible, even if it means hitting the pause button for a while.

You can’t afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected.

Us denizens of the Internet have become familiar with concepts that were foreign more than a decade ago, one of the most that causes the most influence is going viral. There’s so much variety on the web with content providing the impression that anything could essentially make you rich. However, hidden behind the curtains of survivorship bias is a massive community of people that practice art and express their creativity in a way that’s absolutely thankless.

Due to the accidental underground nature of an artist’s work, it’s unlikely that they will make any dough out of their production. Seems like in order to practise their art, they need a reliable but remedial job to pay the bills. Unfortunately, the nature of that kind of work is energy depleting zapping any creative juices needed for the concentration and initiative to produce content. Let alone something of high-quality that doesn’t exude fatigue.

Turns out, for most of us, we can’t afford to be artists, authors and creatives. Having full control over your processes comes at a cost of uncertainty and instability of money supply.

I was a deluded believer at one point that what made things so popular was the quality of a project. Eventually, I realized that it’s not the best work and most original that makes it to top, but rather the mediocre. Luck plays a big part in climbing the ladder in addition to slick marketing. The creatives with eccentric personalities often fail. Why?

My walks across the web has exposed me to obscure concepts that I found serendipitously. It was exciting to find a new favourite music track only to discover that the video accompanying it to have only several hundred of views. In fact, seeking refuge in Spotify divulges no result for which to add to my library. Going back to our question, what makes things fail? I have the impression, as some others have taught me, rather than through my own intuition, that what ‘makes it’ is something that fits the most common denominator.

These include things like food where tasters spend weeks finding the bliss point, or a pop artist using the same chord progressions over and over again; with lyrics they probably didn’t even write. Or perhaps another sitcom with yet another ironic love triangle with predictable outcomes and endings so obvious that spoilers are not even warranted.

I grew respect for many of these artists and people who radiate originality. Writing another exciting book or a low-budget movie with a more esoteric story. Rather than feeding themselves, they are feeding us, unintentionally, or even unwillingly. They bestowed us with gifts that fit our niches so we can distance ourselves for yet another mediocre work.

Some of these types have divulged the differences between being unknown and popular. Many have revealed to me that if they get big enough, their fans’ expectations of a constant stream of content puts them on a production treadmill. As a result, turning their passion into yet, another job.

Many creative types, and arrogantly putting myself into that bucket, hope for some kind of impossible miracle of some type of passive income that will keep us alive with much initial effort but eventually getting big enough to put it aside but give us a positive cashflow.

I can see my projects present hints of tiredness of the obligatory 8 hours and I see it everywhere too. The inertia of the energy is no longer there anymore. What they had time for before moving out have become an insufferable chase for free time that simply cannot be filled with anything else of lifelessness.

Although I can throw the idea of donating to someone you like, it results in absolutely nothing. Even very popular, say bloggers, don’t get much money from donations. Ads and sponsorships work, but my inclinations whisper to me that it’s not kosher. Going back to my first blog post, I alluded that the nature of our jobs no longer matches its own output when it comes to money. I can’t think of a solution because abuse will be rampant. Say we introduced a pension for artists, it will be used by the same people who defraud for disability pay or early retirement.

The only thing I have right now is thankfulness and gratitude to the many obscure artists who keep me entertained and for free. I don’t want to sound cheesy and say that you’ll end up somewhere and to work even harder.

However, you have been so late and never attempted to defend yourself. Think of the world’s unions protecting workers in order to keep their job a bit more sane. Lobbyists have the power to push governments to submit to them. Too bad nothing like that can exist for my most loved makers.

There’s no judgement for the popular ones, but I implore that those who work white-collar jobs to have a bit more respect for something they take for granted. Endlessly rich CEOs, don’t look down at someone who is trying to make their voices and guitar solos heard on stage. If you don’t want to help, and I bet most of you wouldn’t even help yourselves, at least, give their content a chance. Take a break and admire, there’s much love in there. They are the true evangelists.

I believe it would be a very interesting topic to gather up ideas on potential ideas that would allow people to express themselves without having to suffer too much from the universal grind. Leave comments below.

Much discussion flourished on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32487190

Has Social Media Made Us Lazy Consumers?

The subject of the morality of social media has been done to death. We all know that it can help find organ donors but also has increased the incidence of depression and suicide in young people. I have the impression that these avenues have transformed us from researchers and content creators to consumers.

Most of us don’t do fact checking when reading newspapers or scrolling through Facebook feeds. People are vulnerable to believing everything they find as the Internet makes it so easy to not only misinform but also catalyse rumours and even legends. Anyone can write anything on the Internet with just a Tumblr account no matter how untrue it is. It creates the occult to mass hysteria. It’s amazing how mundane things can become viral based solely on drama.

Proper knowledge comes from multiple sources rather than a single individual posting about how Egyptian hieroglyphics indicate that the world is ending next year. Production value is high and an excellent narrator can make anything enticing. People just like to consume and spread facts no matter the fragile the source. I see this all the time with friends and family. Our minds are incredibly naïve and vulnerable to the occult and mysterious.

I’m guilty of this sometimes where I post a question on Reddit hoping to get answers on things that I can simply find with a Google Query, with a list supporting evidence and diverse sources. People do this on all forms of social media rather than do the research themselves. Most people respond with their anecdotal stories rather than posting something written properly with references.

I realized that I don’t want to use these forms of media because they don’t add value to my life or make me more intelligent. My reflections started when a phone company representative trying to sell me an expensive plan with unlimited data. I found myself quickly reflecting on this on a whim and told this person that “I’m not stuck to my phone”. It’s rare that I end up using more than 500MB of data per month and most of it stem from phone calls, navigation, going through my todo-list and a bit of browsing.

This never came to my mind a decade ago that we would become a vacuum for content. On the roads, on the bus, in class and of course on the bed, I saw people tantalized by social media content. From Instagram feeds to endless Tik Tok videos and Facebook. Scrolling, scrolling and scrolling over and over again. I was amazed at how much insipid and honestly useless content that people are hypnotized by.

In the reality we are living today, people don’t verify facts simply spreading them around creating conspiracy theories and even ideas that are quite dangerous. My peers, my friend and family often get attracted to some post with something ridiculous and I have to shatter a video or an article by actually doing some research to see if the claims are actually true. Usually not only do they seem untrue, but the claims are exaggerated and unbelievable to me, in other words, too good to be true.

I’ve been trying to escape these websites but the material is so enticing and it can be consumed endlessly. So much content that you will never be bored. It becomes an addiction finding myself checking these sites over and over again. It’s harder than I thought.

Humans are pretty smart but we tend to believe things that are superficially intuitive rather than the uncomfortable truth. Our dire need to know something means that we make arguments from ignorance. We have high regards to our human biology because the unknown makes us feel queasy. However, the frailty of our species is often forgotten and we realize that we need more effort to make sure our minds is full of useful facts and deep understanding of subjects.

I have seen myself transform from a content creator to an endless consumer. I’m trying to push myself hard to make things again and there’s a lot of learning to do. It’s just we want things presented to us in a Tik Tok videos rather than actually following a proper recipe.

Failures

The FreeBASE (2011-2014)

This was the first project that gave me the illusion that somehow I was going to be big. The FreeBASE was a video game console built with the off-the-shelf parts that played free games and media. The swath of open-source games and freely-available content made the console quite the tantalizing concept. However, despite all the effort that went into design, cost estimation, prototyping, marketing and even building a team; this project lead to nowhere.

The most obvious flaw was in the business model. How do you make money when everything is free except for the console? Unlike other manufacturers like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft, we couldn’t sell our system at a loss and recuperate them with licensing fees since we had no licensing of any kind. This poor business idea and inability to market the system properly meant that the first step was failure.

FreeBASE was a project destined to fail and never exist in it’s designed form. I remember spending hours learning Blender to design a compact system that used regular off-the-shelf x86 components. Unlike our bigger brothers, we couldn’t put everything on a small PCB and call it day; putting it in a tiny box.

I wrote a blog post about this that’s no longer on this website due to long hiatus in blogging. I spoke to a friend who was closely involved with me in the project and we agreed that the system was designed on an emotional basis. The imaginary walls that we encountered put a stop to our tracks.

We, as a team, didn’t feel like we learned our lessons from this project, and were destined to do more mistakes in the future. It’s not enough to fail but understand where the failures came from. Despite this project being dead for a long time, I don’t feel like I learned my lesson.

There’s even a stupid promo video that was made for this blunder.

NoteBox (2014)

Another attempt at fame that went into disaster at very last moment with a kickstarter campaign that never took off let alone published. The idea was a modular laptop that used off-the-shelf parts that would allow customers to design their own system with crazy ideas such as a DVB-T tuner and even a software defined radio.

It even went to point where I actually built a prototype that was fully-functional, a laptop made with my own hands. The failed kickstarter campaign was full of details up to a concept drawing and all sorts of other details that I wouldn’t even think of now such as our implication in the open-source world.

I’ll admit that near the end of the project, I got too scared to continue. I realized that it was too much to swallow especially being an individual project. The fear let me to giving up and realizing that I didn’t actually have the resources to make this possible with the biggest challenge was making it as depicted by the concept drawing, and yes, there was one, the I actually drew with my very hands.

Flight Simulation (1998-current)

I feel in love with aviation after my first ride on a plane. I wanted to relive those memories somehow and soon discovered there was something called simulation. When I was young, I got a hold of a copy of Flight Simulator 98. I was too young to take things seriously and the aircraft bundled with the game were incredibly simplistic. As I grew older, I started buying addons for the game which were more study-level but I was reasonable: just two of them, an airliner and a single-seater. However, my collector mindset kicked-in and I bought so much addons that I never ever would use all of them.

My goal was to prepare a YouTube channel with various adventures flying different kinds of planes. However, I never had the energy or the will to actually learn the procedures and practice. It was always a dream and bought a bunch of equipment impulsively like a podcast-quality microphone and an HDMI recorder. Soon after they were sold on classifieds.

Later on, I was really impressed with X-Plane 11 and bought a dozen addons for the simulator some not even being installed in the first place. Out of all the addons bought, I haven’t learned a single one of them.

My dream is to know a plane inside-out and fly on VATSIM with the correct procedures and ATC phraseology but it’s still a pipe dream.

I think about this ‘project’ quite often but these days are more and more full and I don’t know if I’ll have the time to learn unless I neglect say work.

Eventually, I deleted all the installers for FS2004 and lost my precious collection that will be a mess to recover. X-Plane 11 is currently installed on my system with all of the addons that I purchased. The last time I started that thing was several months ago. A unread collection of FCOMs, tutorial, QRHs, checklists all remain unread on my tablet.

Reading (1996-current)

School taught that the most sacred thing in the Universe was reading, something that I didn’t disagree with. As I went by the years through elementary and secondary school, I was made to read more and more books. However, they were all fiction and that left a very sour taste in my mouth. The last book I read was The House of Spirits and I promised myself to never read a novel ever again.

Little did I realized that I was missing on a pile of knowledge that is hidden within these pages. I bought a tablet, got the eBooks I wanted (Library Genesis) and only sat the first night reading a book. After that, it never happened again and I haven’t made progress ever since.

I’m intimidated by long running tasks for some reason no matter how small the tasks are divided in. When it comes to read a book, I make the biggest excuses not to do it, usually going to sleep. I have a list of books that I want to read but I feel like I have failed myself so much.

Personal Website and Related Projects (2013-current)

This one bothers me a lot. What started as my portfolio to show off, I wanted to grow into a window to myself. I started this blog which has been pretty active and kept cleaning up my website when it got messy. The centre of attention was this blog but I soon realized that no one read it. I’m just a nobody on the Internet and no one cares about what I’m thinking about or why I’m angry that day. My life isn’t exciting with a world full of travelling or anything like that. This was on purpose, but not having a niche that my blog-mind focused set me up for failure.

My projects also never caught on. Counting on what archive.org has shown from my past, I probably have had a total of 15 projects many of them thrown out or in unliked sections of my website. Several incomplete and code removed from my GitHub. My resume makes me seem like I’ve done a lot and even though it’s true, they’re not in the complete state that they’re perceived to be in.

Even the projects that on their way to fruition are unpopular. The only way I make myself feel better is by telling myself that they are ‘passion projects’ only done out of the love for whatever medium I’m expressing or what I’m trying to sell.

The store page has not led to a single sale yet. No one listens to my online radio except me. My suggestion boxes and emails have not received a single thing in their inboxes.

No matter how much I yell on social media and plant my website on anything that allows me to put a link, I get nothing in return. I’m screaming at a door of an empty house. I wrote about this before, but I’m just a dot in the sky. Seen but easily forgotten. I consider this website a failure but it’s not going down.

I’m deeming myself as a failure, a really big one; I’ll never grow and will never learn from my lessons.

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.