2012 - last lap

Bismillah.

It's the 4th of December 2012. We are in the last lap for year 2012. We may or may not have achieved our targets so far but there's still a small window of opportunity InshaAllah.

I am targeting and hoping to do 200 posts by year end InshaAllah. It's just a small personal thingy. Not that quantity means more than quality but we should aim high so we don't fall too low. That's a cliche no doubt, but it's still important. In his article on 'Why you need to write every day', Jeff Goins said, it's not about writing a lot, it's about writing often and we must become comfortable with failure. The manifesto is that we don't write to be read and adored. It's just plain writing. 

Writing bite-size blog post has been a good mental exercise Alhamdulillah. It's one way to de-stress. What have I learned thus far? I have learned to write, re-write and rectify repeatedly. That it's ok to make baskets of grammatical errors so long as we strive to improve and learn. Life is about work-in-progress and kaizen (continuous improvement). I was once publicly mocked because I didn't know what mangrove was. Yes about ten years ago, didn't know that word, can you believe that? Heh...heh. But knowledge is subjective. Some years after that incident, I encountered an American at uni who didn't know what gnostic was and I earned a distinction beating a dozen of native speakers. Alhamdulillah.

Needless to say, we don't have to have the answers for everything. Don't have to know everything. And it's ok to say: I don't know, tell me, teach me.

Oh just realized tomorrow is someone's birthday. Many of the books from which I have been quoting on this blog were a present from this old friend of mine - a collection which started about a decade ago. Alhamdulillah for all the generous people around us. [Err...anyone giving me anymore presents? : ) ]

Before I click publish, I understand that our readers here must have felt like being on a roller coaster. The emotions of today's blog entry could be so dramatically different from yesterday's. But we all learned that a believer is overcome with 40 states a day. And we embrace all of them sweet, bitter, bitter, sweet. 

Interestingly enough, my first proper story book when I was 8 was called 'Pahit tetapi manis' (Bitter but sweet). And yes, 2012 has been bittersweet. Life is bittersweet.

Let's just savour this last bit of 2012.