It’s been quite a while since I’ve written an update on my work / school / thesis / life more or less because I’ve been so incredibly consumed by its intensity so far. However, it’s not a reason for me to stop writing on my blog that’s meant to be my personal diary. I’ve always loved diaries. I started keeping one when I was in Iran for a few months — this is me in grade 4. Then when we came to Canada it took me a while to get back into the idea of writing reflections of my experiences. I got back into it after my best friend in highschool, who was an inspiration to me since we met, gave me a book and signed the inside with encouraging words to keep me writing poems and memories.

So, I’ve been writing way before blogs came about and I keep a sketchbook full of words and notes — I call it my thought book. This blog on the internet is just an extension of what I have already been doing but now it’s exposed to the world because I think a) it’s important to share your life and experiences, b) it’s important to use the internet in a positive way and c) why hide anything? I’m an honest genuine person and you will see that when you meet me in person, so why should I not share my process and progress in life with the world? Sure, I can put up a bunch of links to cool sites and reflect on the news, but that’s not who I am and that’s not what I see as my purpose of keeping a blog. I collect thoughts; I collect ideas; I collect information and I collect designs. I highlight and highlight and I connect and connect. I talk and talk and I share and share. I love and love and I give and give. Whatever it may be to you — it’s me. So me to you is whatever you see, feel or remember from what I leave behind for you.

A diary is precious — it’s the process of your life. Documentation gets you far and archiving gives people proof of what you’ve done. The only way you can down track anything in your life is if you document it. You can take photos, record videos, audio, draw, paint, build and of course WRITE.Memory is not something that exists — it’s something that gets documented and becomes history. History is only legitimately history if it’s archived, otherwise there is no way anyone will every have any proof to show that that, whatever it may be, actually existed.We have free space; we have access to information; we have freedom of speech; freedom to broadcast ourselves; and we have the world in our hands. What’s the problem? We don’t use it to its full potential.

There is no more NEW — the NEW is working with what is there to do something with meaning, with empathy and with purpose to solve all the problems we have. Sharing is great — but lets share our methods to problems; lets come together and be real about our weaknesses and honest about our love.I’ve been going through a lot and learning so much this year — hopefully I will take more time to reflect on them and document them on my blog as I continue with life.If you check my site out in the new year, I should have all sorts of new things to show so you can see what I’ve really been up to.

page 43, Small Change, Nabeel Hamdi

‘Best’ means most excellent, most suitable, most desirable, something which surpasses all others. It is an ultimate state beyond which there can be little improvement, at least for now. It differentiates between talents hierarchically, and therefore unequally, and assumes single standards. It normalizes ambition and desires, differences in need and ideas from place to place, people to people. And, because it inspires envy, it undermines the self-respect of ordinary people. According to Sennet, ’self-respect fades when we respond to the example set by others’. In this sense, he quotes from Rousseau’s The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality:

He who sings or dances the best, he who is the most handsome, the strongest, and most adroit or the most elegant becomes the most highly regarded; and this is the first step towards inequality, and at the same time towards vice.

how do you love something-
when you don’t know what it is
that you’re loving?

can you love it-
that thing that’s just a feeling?

the feeling that you love-
isn’t it just a feeling?

or is it-
it?

it’s gone now-
so what do you love?

do you love for it to come back-
to your heart?

for your heart to feel it
again so you remember
what it is that you love;

what is it?

music?
music of feelings
in your heart?

that’s what you love;

you love your heart
to dance to the creation
of your eye’s mind;

so keep playing it.

I’m not a painter.
I love art and I love looking at colour especially when it’s painted.
I love it when it’s not a visual representation of a physical thing.
I love the music of it; the way it doesn’t mean anything unless you make it mean something.
Something in me told me that I should get up and paint.
So I listened to that thing and did it.

It is my first time painting without anything in mind to paint.

I just grabbed my 5 year-old paints and smothered the one canvas that had been leaning on my wall beside my bed behind my hung clothes for…oh, I don’t even know when.

It felt good.