A Stressfull Week

I haven't been having this much stress due to work for such a long time already. I have been working at my current workplace for just a bit more than 6 months now. Usually it's just quiet days, even if there's many tasks, it is still manageable. Probably due to the fact that I have no mass production mode pressure yet. Honestly, it was a breeze 90% of the time.

But this week really got me so stressed out that I have to resort to morning coffee. I have been living without morning coffee for so long already but due to a case happening involving my operators, I broke my morning coffee "fasting". 

I have been thinking about the incident for the whole week and I still can't get over it. I have never felt so useless and incompetent at work before but they have made me felt just that. The fact that I was near them when the fight happen and I didn't manage to stop them. And the very fact that, part of the reason why the fight stemmed was due to my work arrangement. 

I have been getting the feeling that they didn't really regard me as their supervisor and the respect wasn't there but honestly, I don't care much. As long as they did their job, I am cool. But I guess, I am wrong. I need to do more. I am aware that respect is earned so I'll have to put more work into it. 

As I am writing this, I am just having flashback of not only the incident but also all the talks surrounding it and ughhhh I hate it so much like seriously. Dah la kerja lain pun banyak, and then they add MSG like this, it's really has been one hell of a week. Hopefully next week is better insyaAllah. 

We Really Don't Know Things

Bismillahirrahmannirrahim. 

Not so recently I went to a school junior's wedding and I went there with a senior whom I have always adored in my school years because of how kind she is; and her Quran recitation is super sweet btw!

When chatting with her on our journey to the wedding venue, I realized that we really don't know things and we can't predict life. And no matter how we try to be careful in what we choose to do, we might in end up in situation that is so bewildering. A life that was calm and beautiful might took a sudden downturn and went south and we might feel like we are drowning in all the overwhelming feelings that burst as the situation just unroll. 

We also might think that we have got all our bases covered, we have prepared things for our life to the "flowery" path, but really, life isn't all that pretty and we have been told by Allah this. This is the life of test, a place where we will get tested with either things that we have, or we don't have. Things that are abundant, or things that is absent in our life. And those who will taste the sweetness of rewards in the hereafter is those who always remember Him despite everything that comes our way.

Talking to her also make me realize that, we really don't know what people are going through behind the smiles that they gave. People might seem okay, people might seem happy, but we don't know that behind that façade, hide a hurt soul. And because we really don't know things, it is also the reason why we need to be nice and be kind to people for your kindness might be the thing that give the light for them for the day or the very reason for them to feel that life is worth it, no matter what might happen in life. 

It also makes me reflect of my life, and how I have lived and felt it when she asked me this "What are you living for now? What gives you joy?". For a moment, I was silent. I was struck by the fact that I am blessed. He has tested me and He has given me relief. He gave me grief, but there was abundance of love that held my life together. Our day to day life might not be beautiful or happy all the time, so is sadness, we don't feel it all the time... Sometimes we go about our day not feeling anything, and just went on to do our routines as usual. But even at that, how can we say that we have not tasted Allah's mercy everyday, to every second of our life. 

We have a lot to be grateful for, there will not be enough Alhamdulillah to utter if it's actually wajib for us to do that for every blessing that we get everyday even if we don't feel particularly happy on the day. We have a lot to raise our hands in dua for, and for that, may Allah always call us to Him and take us in his Rahmah. 

May Allah gives my beloved sister the happiness that she is searching for, may she find relief. And may Allah mends the broken and replaced the lost with something that so good that it brings her not only happiness on this Earth, but also be the means for her to get Jannah in the hereafter. She will not read this, (and no one is reading this anyway), but I love you sister, lillahitaala. You deserves good things, and may you find the solace that you need, insyaAllah. 

Keon Listen to: Podcasts for Woman

This year, one of my resolutions is to reduce my hours listening to music and increase both listening hours to Quranic recitation, Dhikr & Salawat and podcasts with good content. I have been listening to many podcasts and I wanted to document some of those that I love. For below list, mainly for the ladies.

The Aida Azlin Show

Unswtnd + Unfltrd

Voice Hug

The Sumi Show

Head Over Heels

Girls That Invest

My Eyes Turned Green

I recently listened to these podcast episodes. In the #50 Jealousy episode, they touched mostly on jealousy in different forms of relationships and in the #42 FOMO episode, they talk about FOMO stemming from social media. While the theme of these two episodes is different, they touched on jealousy, envy. 
My favorite part of both has to be when the hosts contemplate where their jealousy comes from because when they talked about that, it made me investigate where mine is coming from. While they were discussing this, they discussed a few factors.

         

Jealousy that come from ingratitude
There’s jealousy or worse, envy that comes from our own ingratitude. When we failed to be grateful to Allah for all the blessings that He has bestowed upon us. And that’s why when we see what He has given to others, the envy comes. If there’s a cure that I can think of is to do a lot of tasbih and tahmid. Say Subhanallah, say Alhamdulillah. And we also need to realize that Allah’s ‘package’ for everyone of His servants is different and every ‘item’ in the ‘package’  is for what’s best for us. We need to have a thankful heart that is always saying tahmid to him for all of the bounty that He has provided us with. I felt this creeping up way too much when I scrolled through Instagram, I felt jealous seeing other people's lives that look good in my life especially when they got something that I wished for. But I forgot that Allah has given me so much improvement in mine compared to previously and I failed to be grateful for His present for me. Ya Allah forgive my ingratitude. It is a bit drastic, but I end up uninstalling Instagram altogether because of this (also it’s because I mindlessly scroll way too much so I need to cut my social  media time). Alhamdulillah, it has made my heart more at peace and more focused on the goodness of my own life that He has given to me. 

Jealousy that come from arrogance, superiority, entitlement

You know when we feel like we are better than someone but they got better things? And they are happier? That’s when our heart is really ‘sick’. Arrogance is the sickness of the heart that is dangerous because with it, we will not enter Jannah. 

وعن عبد الله بن مسعود رضي الله عنه عن النبى صلى الله عليه وسلم قال‏: ‏ “لا يدخل الجنة من كان في قلبه مثقال ذرة من كبر” فقال رجل” إن الرجل يحب أن يكون ثوبه حسناً ونعله حسناً‏؟‏ قال‏: ‏ “إن الله جميل يحب الجمال الكبر بطر الحق وغمط الناس” ‏(‏‏(‏رواه مسلم‏)‏‏)‏‏.‏

'Abdullah bin Mas'ud (May Allah be pleased with him) reported: The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "He who has, in his heart, an ant's weight of arrogance will not enter Jannah." Someone said: "A man likes to wear beautiful clothes and shoes?" Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said, "Allah is Beautiful, He loves beauty. Arrogance means ridiculing and rejecting the Truth and despising people." [Muslim].

Riyad as-Salihin 611

https://sunnah.com/riyadussalihin:611

Honestly, I am so afraid of this. I don't know how did I let my heart to grow sick from this but whenever I realize this sickness is in me, I can only turn to Him and seek for His forgiveness and for Him to remove ANY of this wretched feeling in my heart. I am no better than anyone else, I sinned a lot and without Allah veiling it, I'll be looking and smelling rotten from it. And I also realized that, when we have arrogance, we will have this sense of entitlement that when we see what other people achieve, we get the sense of "Eh hey, I deserved that too" when you don't really know what the the other people had to go through to be where they are now. For this one, I seek refuge with Allah from the arrogance of my own filthy heart, ya Allah, please remove this sickness from my heart. 

Jealousy that come from low self esteem

I also realized that feeling jealous also come from low self esteem. We saw people achieving great feat and we stayed at where we are and we started feeling jealous because we don't own up our own life. Again, it's because we didn't feel grateful with we have and we felt that we are 'small' because we don't get those shiny, extravagant, lively life that people are living. It's really important that we learn to appreciate our own self and how far we have become instead of putting ourselves down comparing our lives with others and end up feeling jealous. We are where we are for reason and we must make the best of it. And we also need to realize that on social media, we only see good things. Very rarely people showcase their weaknesses, their Achilles heel, their vulnerability for people to see (and for good reason as well, because if you want to show that, show it to the Almighty because he is al Jabbar). We see good things and our knowledge is limited on that and Allah know what they have went through and what effort they have put it to get what they get.

To summarize this, to not be jealous of others, you really need to be grateful with what you have and realize that you are already given to you what is good for you. And this is where I will end this reflection from pondering about jealousy after listening to these two episode.

Why Am I Excited to Finally Turn 30

First decade of my life, I have the best years of getting scars over failing off the bike cause I was riding it a tad bit too fast. Got my knee scraped over falling while running, playing catch with friends. Played in the rain countless times and sometimes got a fever from it. Make my own roundest bat from random wood that we found, make my own kite from old newspaper and fly them high up the sky (and get mom angry sometimes because her thread has gone MIA). Used my body to the max to play; badminton, roundest, galah panjang, zero point, lubang tikus, cop tiang and many others. Sang my heart out in the playground, competing to see who sounded the best. On a slow day, we played paper planes, osom, enjet-enjet semut, batu seremban, tutup tin and 5 perkataan. Wow, the list is really endless and I spent so much time outside. We will only come back to the house when it’s getting dark or until Mak be like “BALIKKKK”. My favorite memories from childhood gotta be when my dad and I sneak out for errands. Because I was the only child at that time that could converse a bit in English, whenever my dad wanted to bring me out alone, he would whisper-talk to me in English haha. My parents also brings us to the waterfalls/streams a lot when it’s not the rainy season. We would be like “Abah nak pergi Salu” and if he was not working, he would make time to bring us to play. In short, I have the best childhood one can ever ask for. Alhamdulillah. 

The second decade, the adolescence, the entahlah period. I have always been the child who kept things from her parents. There’s one time when I scraped my knees from falling down. And it actually got infected to the point the pus is actually covering my knee cap. I can’t even bend my leg from it, but I did not say a word to my parents until they actually noticed that I was walking funny and brought me to the clinic and I still have a scar from this. Well, this became worse in my adolescence. I was in the boarding school so you can imagine how little I talk to my parents. Aku bukanlah jenis budak yang akan bergayut dekat public phone tu everyday. Entahlah now that I try to remember what I actually did in those year at Igop, I’ll be like okay what?  I wouldn't say I didn't learn anything from school. Tarbiyyah aku kebanyakannya bermula daripada Igop. Cuma it didn't stick until after I left. And since I sucks at being friends, I don't really have high school friends that I can still call close friends now (it's totally me btw). So bila aku recall the years in Igop now, I always ask myself like what did I do wrong? I did great in term of grades, I had fun during schools doing some silly stuff. It is a defining moment of sealing off my character building time tho, and it sealed me off as a withdrawn and unpassionate one.

Came the third decade, my chaotic 20s haha. Which I wrote a whole blogpost for, my 20s.

And now, it’s time to cruise the 4th decade and being in the 30s. To some, turning 30 is dreadful. While for some, it is an excitement. And I am in the “Excited 30” camp. Since last year, I was already like, I CAN’T WAIT TO BE IN MY 30s! The reason are honestly nothing grand but first and foremost, insyaAllah, God’s willing, I will finish paying off my debt in 2026. Both my car and MARA eduloan. So I’ll be left with only my medical card and hibah as my monthly financial commitment. With this, I can finally carry on my plan to make a big career shift to something that is more skill based. I am now fixed on hairdressing but this might change. In any case, I don’t want to do white collar job anymore. Penat jaga orang, penat perah otak. I rather perah otak doing writing. Which brings me to my second goal to achieve in my 30s. 

I want to write. Me updating my blogs after being dormant for a long time got to do with this plan. I want to get used to write again. I want to pour my heart into words. I want to turn the scenarios in my head, my imagination and even the dreams in my sleep into paragraph after paragraph, scene after scene. I have always loved writing but I have been keeping it at bay because I sucks at time management before and I keep giving excuses, so yeah, no more of that and more of executing. I have learnt in my past decades that if I want something, I have to keep it going. 

Since I will be having significantly lower financial commitment, I can finally save more for travelling insyaAllah. For this, I am planning to move back to Ipoh after I finish paying off my debts so that I don’t have to spend money to pay rent anymore.(Let’s stay with the parents haha). InsyaAlah, it will be a way for me to be closer to my parents and help them when needed as well, may I become a child that has the patience to deal with my ageing parents. So the plan is travel and parents. GAHHHHH I AM SOOO EXCITED!!!

And the most important focus in my 30s is finding peace and accepting who I am as a person and striving to improve myself as a Muslim. I definitely goof around a lot in my 20s and it is time for me to now turn back to Him, running to Allah and seeking His blessing. I want to fall in love with Rasulullah, I want to submit to Allah and be steadfast on His path. I want to read the Quran, do tadabbur and understand the tafseer. And so I have a lot of lessons to listen to, a lot of readings to do. And I want to use my 30s focusing on these instead of using my time to watch entertainment. I won’t be able to cut it off fully but I want to use significant 80% of my time to ‘reach’ Him and let it be 20% of time for the duniawi stuff. I want to taste the halawatul iman and I have to strive for it and from what I have learnt in the past 3 decades, in this 4th, insyaAllah I wil use all of the lesson, be it good or bad, to be better in this 4th. I want to be 30 and close to Him. I want to be 30 and finally be free. Free of fear of judgement, free of FOMO, free of anything that’s been holding me off to be freer and better. 

I might not know everything about life, but I know better than before and I hope with all the knowledge, life lessons and experiences I’ve gained, this decade, my 30s will be the best time of life, yet. If my 20s is all about me searching for fun and finding a footing in adulthood, insyaAllah in this 30s, I will use my time to be myself. Ease for me ya Allah, allow me to be the best of me.