Competition is Relative

I’m in my third year of college, and I’m just starting to study what I want to: the Internet and social media. As excited as I am, ten minutes ago I could feel a migraine coming on from all of the tabs open in my Google Chrome window.

A cacophony of thoughts:
How am I supposed to retain, let alone read, all of this?
Where do I focus?
How do I apply this?
What’s the point of me doing this?
What do I do with this knowledge?
Why can’t I just be in college forever?
This is too much.
This is so competitive and it doesn’t even have a name yet.
I don’t think I want to write a book. Or be a professor.
I want to do something.
Why do all of these jobs sound monotonous?
Should I be doing a specialized internship to build credibility?
God, please don’t let me end up in a cubicle.
But if comes to the street or the cubicle, God, I’d be more than happy for that cubicle. Amen.

Sometimes, I allow myself a moment of panic.

Criticism: I’m specializing very early and by doing that, I’m putting “unnecessary” pressure on myself.

Yes and no. This pressure is very much necessary. This is the time in my life that I am deaf to the word “moderation” when it comes to my education and my future. Quality of life is very important to me today, which is why I make sure to spend time with family and friends, exercise, and take time to relax. But I also think of my quality of life after these years of education pass. I could be in school forever, but I know I don’t want that. I also don’t want to be drowning in loans, determined to find EXACTLY what I want to do, and consequently do nothing at all because, well, I’ll forever be in search of the nonexistent ‘exact’.

The fact is, most of my generation will have a few careers in their lifetime. Not just one like our parents and grandparents. My professor told me that.

These are my years to build up ammunition. I give less time to worry and more time to learn, engage and progress. The details will get figured out along the way. I’m specializing more than I was a year ago, but there is a whole field to be explored and so much room for innovation. That’s what really drives me when I think about my future: innovation. There’s very good possibility that my future careers are ones that can’t even be comprehended today.

Query: Islam?

copyright: trey ratcliffe

Google query: american+islam+blog

The top site claimed to share the “truths” of Islam. It was more like Fox News on horse tranquilizers, unfortunately. Preaching the opposite of Islamic Extremists, this blogger was equally frustrating, disappointing and scary. All I was looking for was some Muslim-American perspectives on things, but I guess I used the wrong keywords.

It is difficult to be a Muslim today. It is difficult to be a non-Muslim today. To watch repeated clips on television that equate bombs, deserts, and havoc to Islam—as if the equation is that simple. That ruthless. That archaic. But how can a few video clips drilled into our retinas over the last nine years define an entire religion that over 1 billion people follow? 1 billion other people that we don’t see in those heinous video clips.

Google query: islam+blogs

This time, I found some groups and individuals who wanted to share first-hand knowledge of Islam. There were articles about how different people felt about the hijab. There were blogs about how people reflected on scripture in the Qur’an. I felt more educated about Islam than attacked. Anger didn’t emanate out of my laptop screen this time.

It was easy to be understanding to the different perspectives, even though as a Muslim, I didn’t agree with all of the Muslims or the non-Muslim reporting on Islam. For a rare and precious moment, I didn’t feel attacked and hated the moment I tried to learn something concerning my own religion. Go figure, but I am scared of extremists and terrorists too. I also have nothing in common with them.

Islam is being talked about every day. It’s important for Muslims and non-Muslims to engage in the dialogue because this is how we can learn from each other and about ourselves.

General query: What do you know of Islam?

Loneliness Resides in the /dis/Comforts of Home

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I just had the most fantastic urge to get on a plane and leave the country. I wanted to walk out of my suburban house and have the weather be a perfect 82 degrees, exactly the way it looked at dusk. I wanted to get in my car with a small carry-on and drive fast and hard to the airport. To fly to Europe, even though I’ve always thought of the whole escape-to-Europe/rite-of-passage shenanigan as pretty blase.

Being in an unfamiliar place and losing yourself (literally and figuratively) in the foreign language is calming and invigorating all at once. But I’m confused, because I have nothing to escape. I haven’t felt this way in years and the only times I did were when I wanted to escape. Maybe the whole point is that I feel I have nothing.

I mean, I have family. I have friends. I have school. And I have work. But I’m not actually doing anything. I don’t make the effort to go on bike rides (example), my excuse being I have no one to go on them with or no where to go. I think I am tired of being alone, more than I am tired of being in the place I always have. I am tired of the feeling that the friends that I have don’t fit anywhere but the places that they do: parties and over-inebriated moments.

I feel locked down but no one is keeping me here. Of course, if I announced I was moving (or, more rationally, travelling) to some random place all at once—my family would deduce I was crazy and of course, dissuade me. And, if I even went to ‘some random place all at once,’ I was still be: alone. I can’t even think of one person who I’d really want to come with me. But I have this boredom-drunken idea that loneliness does not exist in unfamiliar places where mysteries are waiting to be discovered.

What about the mysteries waiting to be discovered here? Part of me knows they exist, but a larger part of me is too lethargic to go looking. Alone.

The disfunction of home and loneliness is just too much to bear some days. But loneliness and foreign lands? That is a dynamic.