Enlightenment...

Its just a single moment. It changes your whole life, and you don't realize it until you start picturing the consequences. Many people don't really take advantage of this and continue doing whatever they're doing. The few who do, take a big risk, but also take the chance to be really happy.

Its that moment when it finally hits you; you need to be doing what you really love. You can't do anything else. All the time you've been doing whatever you're doing, whether its your job, your way of life, or anything else, is just the normal thing any average person in your society would do. And so you follow along; you get a normal job just like everyone else - the higher you are paid is a measure of how successful you are, whether it brings along with it more stress and less free time, or otherwise. You get into that routine, the typical life-style set upon you by society, following the invisible rules that have been placed upon all of us. As you grow up your dreams start shrinking, getting smaller, and then it reaches a point where they don't keep getting smaller, but instead start to fade, all the way till they dissapear. Thats how our lives are.

But today I had the moment. I was driving around, and it hit me. It was a flash, a second, a miniscule moment of enlightenment, and now my life is not the same. I know what I need to do. I want to follow my passion, and do what I love for a living, not work a pointless job in a fake organization. Its a tough decision though, and not a lot of people manage to get out of the regular routine. Many hide from the idea, and continue doing what they are doing. Its a scary place. Be secure doing whatever you're doing, or go full throttle behind your dreams, and risk being broken down for the chance to be finally happy and content.

My mood is so calm and peaceful right now. So enlightened. Its the biggest step and the biggest challenge i've had to go through in my life, but I will make it. I believe I can, I know I will. The world is mine.

Hung up on the Past?

This "Facebook" thing is pretty crazy. I mean, i've tried all the other social connection utilites like myspace, Hi5, etc, and i'm sure other people have as well and know how they work. But this week has been a total mind trip.

My life has pretty much been unstable, moving around from place to place. I was born in Kuwait, raised in London, then moved back to Bahrain for a few years. Went to London again for a few more, USA, then back to Bahrain, and then to UAE for college. Spending a few years in each place, you start making friends, getting closer, and suddenly the time comes when you have to move and suddenly lose touch with everyone. You have to start making new friends, forgetting about old friends etc, and with time your chances of getting in touch with them get much slimmer.

But last week someone added me on Facebook. I didn't know who it was at first but kept looking at their photo, and it took about 20 seconds or so for it to sink in my head! It was someone I knew from high-school! Considering I graduated in 1997, its been almost 10 years, and from the looks of it, we've changed! Then I found a few other people, and soon, we were all looking at old photos of us back then in excitement!

So comes my turn, I decided to look up every single person I know. If I add up all the friends i've had over the years, i'm sure they're many! But to actually get in touch with all of them again? Thanks facebook. And just seeing old photos you didn't even know existed in the first place from back in the days, thats just something else.

I just got in touch with people I haven't seen, or heard anything about since I was 13! And they actually reminded me of things I didn't even know about myself! Weird huh? I've looked in my drawers and cupboards for old photos, and i've found hundereds! Will be scanning them soon for everyone to see. Should be a mind trip for everyone!

Always feels good getting in touch with old friends and old memories; personally for me, i've been hung up on these friends every time I left one place to go to the next, and although it was probably on a subconscious level, this feeling was there. I guess I can finally lay my memories to peace. Its such a cool thing, this facebook stuff, or whatever networking program you use. Enjoy it!

Another thing. Take photos. Take photos of you and your friends everywhere you go, even if you're not the "photo-taking type". They might not mean that much to you now, but when you look back at them 10 or 15 years later, you'll understand!


** This blog is in no way affiliated with, or sponsored by Facebook! However, they are very welcome to sponsor me if they like! **

Question of the year:

I read this question somewhere; really made me laugh!

Whoever came up with it is either totally deranged, or a total genius! Anyway; if we record noise (from anything, noisy street, shouting etc), we can play it out loud when its quiet, to make the place noisy right?

Ok... now heres the question:

Can we record "quiet" and play it really LOUD when it gets noisy??




!!!

Random Rambling...

A bunch of things...

So i'm back in Bahrain now, got a lot of things going on. 1st, i'm applying for jobs here and there. I've been called for a number of interviews, some for reasonable jobs, others for jobs which are not so reasonable. Seriously, if you were a Human Resources manager of one of the largest banks in the country, and saw that someone had over 6 years of work experience, with his latest job being managing a full bank branch and directly supervising 17 people, would you call him up and offer him an entry level job as an after-hours data entry person? (ie. you copy numbers from a paper onto a computer). I really don't know how to respond to these people. The thing is, when I ask them if they've actually gone through my resume, they reply with "Yes we did! We think you're very good!". Ah, ok, because I thought my skills, experience and qualifications weren't really up to the standard of your "data entry" job.

Anyhow, on another note, i've actually started directing my own movie. Yup, that's right. I'm gonna be a movie director. I guess its the free time thats getting to me, but besides that, I wanna do something different for a change. First movie i'm going to release will be a little bit of a satire on Bahraini people's lives and how each one of them seems to have more loans than they can handle. Hopefully if that goes well I will be directing another movie with a more twisted plot. Think a bit of Pulp Fiction, mixed with Fight Club, Sixth Sense and The Usual Suspect. Yes, its going to be a bit of a mind twister. Also in the line is a Bahraini Fast & Furious. Anyhow, should be fun, i'll let you all know as they are completed.

More things in the pipeline include my webpage; i'm working on a final version full webpage; should include things like links to my movies (if they are ever full produced), links to Bahrain information, things to do here, some of my projects, online businesses etc. It's a lot of things in one. I actually wanted the domain name www.ammar.com but that seems to already have been taken by some French dude back in 1997. Dammit. Please if you read this go to his website and send him emails about how he should let go of that domain name. Alternatively if that doesn't work, I need a creative domain name; please make some suggestions? If I like the domain name you can win one dollar. Yup, one full dollar. No joke ladies and gentlemen! I have now opened up the chance for you to win a full dollar, only on http://ammar456.blogspot.com. How often do you get a chance like this?

What else.. Well, i've been hit by a bit of a flu the past few days. Bahrain weather isn't exactly what you call stable, and sometimes its like 4 different seasons in one day. Anyway I got hit by a hot day, followed by a cold day, then it got very dusty, and all of a sudden shifted to very humid. Thats like the perfect recipe for the flu. Anyway, i've been home the past few days just lying down, not really doing much.

I guess that's it for todays blog, but let me leave you with a photo I just found. It's me when I was a few years old. I knew I always had that "gangsta thing" going on (what with all the hiphop music I listen to) but I never realized it went back to since I was a kid, lol:

Wassup???

Sorry for the rotten quality; I managed to take this with my cell-phone camera. Ah, cell-phone camera's, both a blessing and a curse. But anyway, thats another story.

Thanks for reading!

The Curse of Having a Job

It recently dawned upon me.

Since I graduated from University, the obvious aim was to get a job. That's just how society works; you get an education, you get a job, you earn a living. Some people also get a further education, then a better job, and so on. But thats a restraint society has placed on us. Its not a formal restraint; nobody tells us we HAVE to do it. But we all know we need to, otherwise where on earth would we have the money to survive? And the thing is, this job kills us, whether spiritually, creatively, or any other way, it does something to us.

A few people make it out of this situation; whether they are born rich and don't need to work, whether they manage to open up a business and something they love, or whatever it is. But the reality is that most of us are stuck in this frame of mind of having to have a normal job.

Don't get me wrong; i'm not the kind of person who is a lazy bum and wants to do nothing all day - that's not the point of this blog, and I don't want to promote hate for your job. After all, it pays the bills.

But..

Here's the thing. Back in school and in college, I was probably the most creative person there. I had a wild imagination, and would start thinking of ideas to come up with things like my own movies (home-made of course), music production, remixes, books, whatever it was. Stuff most people can do if they had any free time. However, since I graduated, consecutively each job I took was more stressful and time consuming than the previous one. And slowly, with the long working hours, the stress, the dying brain cells, the hair loss (from pulling it out of course), any creativity and imagination I had started to slowly drip away.

I didn't directly realize this of course. You just get sucked into the job world and it becomes your priority. Not family, not free time, not you hobbies, and not anything else. You live to work. That's how it becomes. You have no accomplishments in life besides, oh I did this at work, I did that at work.

So anyway, if you read the blog below this, you will realize that I decided to leave my last job on a whim. Went to the US and stayed there for a while with my wife, doing nothing much in terms of career, but a lot in terms of reworking my creativity, bringing my imagination back. It's not like I did it on purpose, it just happened when I had nothing to fill up my time and mind 24/7. So I came up with ideas of filming my own movies, creating my own music, etc etc. All sorts of things people would enjoy doing in their free time, but would never have a chance. You leave work tired and don't feel like doing anything.

At first I was pretty upset at not doing anything, no job etc. I did in fact get a job but it wasn't working out too well so I just left. I felt useless. And my wife kept telling me, you need this, think of it as a vacation, calm down. But I kept kicking myself for not doing much. All through this time the ideas started coming back; I can do this, I can do that etc.

So now i'm back in Bahrain 6 months later, and applying for jobs. Obviously there is a lot of free time to fill, so through the creativity and with my mind refreshed, i've managed to come up with a bunch of ideas. I'm actually directing a movie right now; me and a few friends started filming a few days ago, and these aren't any useless old movies. No. They're movies with strong messages hidden under the comedy and acting. And i've started making music again. I've been writing this blog for a while now. All this since i've left my work.

Don't confuse the fact of being bored and having nothing to do with not working. Work kills your creativity. Being bored is just, well, being bored. I've gotten a lot of free time, and time away from work to engage my mind in other things, things I haven't thought about for a while. But you know what, it feels good. I feel a bit younger now, and I feel a lot better.

Stay tuned, i'll post my movies and all of my other productions here in the near future, as they are completed. This does feel good. Its a much better feeling than coming back from work after a long day of stress, and slumping down in bed, or on the couch, and not wanting to do anything for the rest of the day.

My next job won't be so stressful. Just something to bring in some money. It won't take over my life, even though i'll work very hard at it. Just keep a look out for my other accomplishments.