Bismillah (in the name of Allah…)

I haven’t posted anything in a couple of days and seeing as my days aren’t that busy (my average summer wake-up time is like 1:30 PM, and that’s being generous) I feel as though there must be something else behind my lack of production. Truth be told, I have been trying to get something out, but after reading what I wrote, I absolutely hated it. I tried editing and re-editing, but there was a fundamental flaw. In English class I was taught to edit in the order of content, style, then grammar (because fixing grammar will never make up for sub-par content,) but trying to change the content and style didn’t help fix the post. So I sat and thought about why what I wrote sucked, and then I realized that though I was saying what I wanted in the way that I wanted (with reasonable grammar), I wasn’t doing so for the right reason. I had lost my sense of purpose, so in a way I had to edit my intention (Muslims you know you love that word.)

God-willing that post will come after this one when I’m satisfied with it, but I thought I’d share some insight on what writing that post made me think about (some crude form of self-metablogging.) Or for you pop-culture fans, a bit of blogception. In the about section (gotta love shameless promoting), I talk a bit about how writers have to have a feel of context, audience, and purpose, but only 3 blog posts in and I feel like I am failing on knowing my purpose. And I think that you, my dear readers, are the cause of my folly (just kidding, but no really though…bear with me here.)

After writing the first two posts, I got a lot of positive feedback Alhamdullilah (all thanks and praise be to God) and I was feeling really good about myself. I expected like 50 views max, but since wordpress.com (shameless promoting again, what up!) does a really good job of tracking views per day per country (it’s insane, I really do recommend wordpress,) I could see that within 1 day I had over 300 views! I was pumped until I realized that someone who clicked on the home page, then about, then home page counts as 3 views. Nonetheless, I still felt proud of myself and I got a little self-conscious, or really self-conscious about the blog.

So that brings us back to me hating my writing. With a little taste of solid readership (you lovely people) I was trying really hard to impress who I thought would be reading, instead of staying true to what I wanted to say. So that is why I am writing this post. As a reminder to you, Naj (that’s the endearing way I address myself in emails, but more on that later,) to be genuine. Especially because when you aren’t genuine, it really shows in your writing.

Happy [genuine] Reflecting,

Naj