routine – Metropolitan Muslimah

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

Wowsies. I actually did a challenge and completed it! Yay! It is the Boho Berry December Challenge!

Just click on the picture to know what it is all about. I’ve linked it to Boho Berry’s site regarding the challenge itself. I’m psyched to share my answers to the challenge right here.

Firstly, of course, I would like to thank my husband, Beedin, for supplying me with the notebook in which I did the journalling challenge.

It is just a small pocket notebook with blank pages in them, which proved useful in letting me doodle here and there. Thanks, Bee!

Secondly, I copied the list of topics in the challenge so I didn’t have to refer to my phone each time.

Yeah, I had a little fun handlettering the title but as you can see, I clearly lack spatial awareness. Just crammed the entire title up there on the page.

Next, I proceeded to do sort of a cover for the challenge. Was inspired by Amanda Rachel Lee’s December 2018 Bullet Journal set-up. Have a look at the following video.

Now have a look at my doodle. Bwahahahaha! So far away from her creation.

Then I went ahead with contributing to all of the topics.

1. Introductions

2. 2018 in Three Words

3. Favourite Memory

4. Biggest Accomplishment

5. Biggest Challenge

6. This Year, I…

7. Time Well Spent

8. Successes

9. Could Have Gone Better

10. Money Well Spent

11. Progress Towards Goals

Not going to share a sharp image of the above as I feel those goals are quite personal. But you can see them anyway if you put in the effort. HAHAHAHAHA!

12. New Skills Learnt

13. Breakthrough Moment

14. Smart Decisions

15. Good Habits Formed

16. Bad Habits Broken

17. Unfinished Business

18. Theme/Word for 2019

19. Start Doing

20. Keep Doing

21. Stop Doing

22. Out of My Comfort Zone

At this point of sharing, I believe I became less retrospective and more prospective instead. I think this topic should cover an event in 2018 where I got myself out of my comfort zone. Instead, I recorded what I would like to do in 2019 that would take me out of my comfort zone. But for the record, yeah, going on The Mummy ride for the second time sure was a step out of my comfort zone. All done for love’s sake! Hahahaha!

23. Setting Intentions

24. Something New

25. Self-care

I’ll just continue the sentence here: to…remain soft and smooth all year round.

26. Contribution, 27. Education & 28. Career

Once again, these turned out to be less retrospective than they were supposed to, I feel.

29. 2019 Will Feel Successful If…

30. Top Three 2019 Goals

31. Lessons Learned

There we go! Finally Huda has successfully completed a challenge! Yippy!

I must say that doing this exercise really helped me to have better ideas on how I’d like to plan out my 2019 Bullet Journal. I was really forced to sit and think through some of the topics. You can try it and you will also find that it can be tedious in certain aspects, especially when you are forced to think quite hard on life questions that you would sometimes prefer to leave unanswered. Muahahaha!

I hope everyone reading this would feel drawn to journalling and picking up similar challenges and more importantly, complete them. It would really organise your thoughts better and help you see your life from a different angle and reassess it.

Fun fact: It took me 40 minutes or so to do up this post, mostly in snapping the photos of the entries and positioning them under each heading. I wanted to start on my 2019 Bullet Journal but I’m starting to feel burnt out from just doing this post.

Yes, I have been feeling burnt out from doing little tasks recently. I think my depression is worsening but the reality is, I can never get it checked.

Because no one would believe me? Not sure. But I think it has been so overly glamourised that I much rather not deal with it.

Simple things have become so difficult to do. I take a longer time to do things that can be done in a minute or even a heartbeat.

And I feel so downright tired all the time.

Or maybe it’s just my diarrhea.

Welp.

And Allah is Ar-Razzaq, the Total Provider. – MM

In the name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful.

Hi there! Nothing much happened for the past 30 mins of 15 December. Just that I’ve begun a new hair and facial routine. It’s getting more real now that I’m going to be a bride in less than five months from now so I really have to start prepping my skin for the big day.

Other wedding-related updates will be that we have secured the date, time, and solemniser for our wedding last night. I didn’t get my top three choices and I guess, it was meant to be that I had to choose someone quickly yet at the end of it, I feel rather satisfied with my choice. So Alhamdulillah for that.

In case if you’re wondering who it is, I managed to pull a snippet out of MUIS’s ADIL’s website.

romm3 — Source: https://www.muis.gov.sg/adil/About/our-murabbi.html

It’s sort of a full circle for us because le fiance really wants to go to Kaplan to pursue a diploma in IT and that man graduated with one albeit in a different field. I went to PERGAS before, which led me to frequenting Masjid Kassim a lot back then and that man is an Imam there.

Like I said, perhaps it was meant to be.

So that’s another matter settled. It’s like we’re dealing with one matter every month nowadays. Next month, we’ll be heading to ROMM for document verification and statutory declaration. Basically they really want to ensure that we are who we claim to be and that we are within the right frame of mind for marriage. Forced marriages are a no-no in Islam so they will ask the bride if she really wants to marry the groom and vice versa. They are also particular about the person marrying the bride off, in my case, my father. He also needs to be of sound mind and judgment. They also want to ensure that polygamy doesn’t happen without the knowledge and consent of the women involved, especially. Hence, the need to declare our status clearly and truthfully. For those who have to pay maintenance to their ex-wives, they also have to declare the amount and produce the divorce certification. Marriage is a huge responsibility in Islam so it is pertinent that both sides are made aware of each other’s backgrounds and that both sides are willing to be married and are under no compulsion and the marriage has to be officiated and witnessed by mentally sound people who resonate the religion’s ethos.

So that’s that. A little bit of information for all to know about Muslim marriages. Well, at least for the ones in Singapore.

On to other updates in my life…

I am sad to say… I haven’t been doing anything I planned to do. Yep. I will admit that.

I have also yet to touch my now-super-dusty Quran. Huhu.

HOWEVER!

For some reason, I have become very thirsty lately, especially when I have my menses. So I’m happy to say that I have been drinking at least one cup of plain water! Huzzah!

I’m hoping to increase my intake of plain water to two cups next month!

Speaking of habits, I really want to have more time. How do I get more time? By waking up early.

I used to be good at it. Setting resolutions in 2016 really helped me a lot. But for some reason, I just lost the momentum.

Well, actually, admittedly, after I got to know Beedin, all routines just went out of the window. HAHAHA! That’s because we were staying up all night talking, getting to know each other. We still talk at night quite frequently during his break time since he’s working as a Night Filler and I often get the closing shift, reaching home late enough to stay up for a chance to talk to him.

Buuuuut if I want to have great skin, I need my beauty sleep on top of increasing my plain water intake. I decided to go for a little motivation from YouTube:

I like the way she presented the topic. Really easy for me to relate and it’s useful and insightful. Props to her.

So now that I’ve gotten all the tips, the only thing left to decide is the time to wake up.

Because I’ve been struggling with the wake-up time, especially now that I’m working shifst. 5am is just not realistic if I work closing shift. On the other hand, I can’t afford to wake up at 6am if I’m working the opening shift because I need to be out of the house by then! For herself, she varies her wake-up time on weekdays and weekends. Should I do that too; vary my alarms according to my shifts? Or is it perennially better to set a constant alarm to acclimatise my body to a routine?

I think I’ll try the dual timings. The problem with setting a constant alarm is that my mind will go, “WTF WHY AM I WAKING UP EARLY WHEN I’M WORKING LATER ON IN THE DAY, I WILL BE DAMN EXHAUSTED”. And then I wouldn’t wake up early. And then it’s back to square one of lousy habits/routines.

So the timings will be 5am for opening shifts and 6am for closing shifts and off days.

Okay, so that’s settled then!

In order to see if this will work out, stay tuned for a post from me later at 6am onwards! It’s 1:35am now. I should be able to get some sleep. Laters!

And Allah is Al-Matin, the Steadfast. – MM