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- Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn
Dear you,
Yesterday marked the first day of Ramadan and for the last couple years, I’ve shared my resolutions with you. Here’s a quick recap in case you missed it.
2022
Limit music
Complete 2 hours a day of NAK’s 10-day Arabic challenge on Bayinnah
Wear a kurta for social iftars
For the worldly, I’m too muslim. For the muslim, I’m too worldly.
2023
Read 4-5 pages of the Quran’s translation after each prayer
Only a person who is convinced that the ultimate reality comprises far more than the observable environment can attain to belief in God and thus a belief that life has meaning and purpose.
2024
My friend said that Ramadan always comes around when you most need it and I couldn’t agree more. I’m hoping to do two things this month:
Listen to M.A.S Abdel Haleem’s translation of the Quran on my drives to work
Clean up my diet and be intentional about what I eat at suhoor and iftaar
I’m pretty lucky that I have a solid group of childhood friends to go through Ramadan with and be able to ask dumb questions like “chewing gum whilst fasting - yes/no?” For the record the answer’s no…
🎲 Wins and Losses
W - In other news, in the past few weeks I managed to finally set up my own linktree. I’m trying to get the product team to add basic social icons for apps like medium and goodreads but maybe less is more? Let me know what you think.
To explain my bio, “from the valley” refers to the valley of Kashmir which truly is paradise on earth. And a bunch of google searches will tell you that “chasing the sun” means following your big dreams but I actually stole it from my first BetterUp coach’s bio. She was a surfer and former luxury fashion marketing director based out of New York that made me appreciate Sydney for what it is. Now I associate chasing the sun with surfing at dawn at Sydney’s northern beaches and planning my day between sunrise and sunset.
L - I applied for The Award School after missing the application deadline last year and sadly didn’t make the cut this year. Award School, sponsored by Meta, has been running for 40 years and is considered the premier creative school in Australia. I suppose I applied to add some credentials to my profile, hard launch @archivesbyazam and form a creative network with the best of the best in the advertising industry with the likes of M&C Saatchi and co. Not that a portfolio would strengthen my application next year but I do want to be more hone my writing and video editing skills over the next 12 months and ultimately lean into my superpower of storytelling both at work and creatively.
⚖️ This past week in numbers
⌛️ Screen time (Mind)
I still think it’s crazy I spend more time on my phone/mac than I do at work (46 hours albeit over 7 days). On average it’s supposedly 6.5 hours - 2 hours on social apps, 1 hour on “productive” apps and the remaining half split across maps (30min), creativity (12min), reading (9min), entertainment (6min), health (2min). The math ain’t mathing…
One thing Stephen Schwarzman and I have in common is that email is our favourite app
🍎 Step count (Body)
Almost 10k steps a day over 29 days. Clockwise the icons are essentially being at home, sleeping, working, commuting, socialising, eating, walking, shopping, exercising etc.
🕋 Prayer count (Spirit)
It goes up and down, 2 weeks ago I was at 5x a day consistently, last week things got busy so it dropped but am optimistic this ramadan it’ll go back up. If you haven’t already download the Salam prayer app - it’s way better than Muslim Pro and ad-free
💬 Made you think
What you seek is seeking you
With all that being said, goodbye summer and hello autumn (or spring if you’re in the UK/US). Wishing you all a blessed month of fasting ahead. Feel free to reply with your Ramadan resolutions or what you liked most about this letter! See you on the other side.
Till next time,
Azam
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