Looking back, looking forward...

Some reflections on a nomadic year.

Hello guys,

Hope you are well. I’m doing okay, Alhamdulillah. I really am. This is not to say that life is perfect, far from it - I have enough problems to worry about. But you see, for whatever reason, I feel a strange sense of sakeenah (tranquility) that all will be well.

There are a few things I could write about today. I had thought of one or two ideas worth deliberating more about in this newsletter. But none of them really matter. So instead, I shall share some reflections. Thinking out loud, you might call it.

You see, on a phone call with one of my mentors last week, he said, ‘AbdulHameed, you are really blessed to have all these experiences. But you will only appreciate them if you take out time to reflect.’

He also mentioned that he thought I could do more to share some of them. This is odd, you might think (as I thought). Don’t I already reflect? Don’t I already share?

Well, I do. But my sharing (as he saw) is more times than not very calculated, very well thought out. a in group a, b in platform b. c at time c, d in place d. Not everyone deserves to know everything. Also, the challenges with public sharing of personal experiences (especially in a structured manner) are twofold.

First, the cost to sharing. This is both tangible, for example, the several hours I spend putting together this newsletter, and intangible, like the opportunity cost or cost to my mental health, which are much more difficult to quantify.

Second, the fact that people actually read it and might act on it!!

Haha this should be obvious when you create personalized content for pseudo-public consumption. But, it catches me off guard all the same. It may not be super difficult to share stories and ideas because you can plan around those, but the ripple effects of anything you put out on the internet are much more unpredictable.

There is always a trade-off, but sharing for me creates more value than it consumes - for now, at least. And my conversation with my mentor initiated today’s reflection.

Anyhoo, leggo.

Rethinking everything

I think there are two scenarios in which you rethink everything. In times of crises and when you travel. Every big crisis - financial challenges, job/career distress, heartbreak, death of a loved one, etc - comes with an opportunity to do things differently.

It might be extremely difficult to process this in the moment (as you would be overwhelmed with distress x grief), but if you are fortunate, you also see the opportunity to make changes.

Your morning commute? With covid and Zoom, maybe it’s not so necessary to get up at 6 am after all. You lost your amazing job? Maybe it’s time to finally make the entrepreneurship leap you have talked about for years. Your partner passed? Maybe you should move to a smaller apartment. Or even a different city, who knows?

And the same thing happens with travel. Your roots are suddenly disrupted, and you need to build new ones. All the regular activities in your calendar change. Your food and shopping habits change. What you do for leisure changes. Suddenly, there’s a blank slate and the opportunity to rewrite your story.

When I moved to South East Asia five months ago, my housemate (a really chill Korean guy) only had two rules. Don’t lose the keys and don’t mix up the trash.

The first one is fairly straightforward, replacing a lost key can be fairly stressful anywhere in the world. But sorting the trash even inside the apartment was something I would have to get used to - plastic here, paper here, etc. It was something I had to rewrite into my personality.

I have repeated this process several times in the past months, asking myself which parts of Hameed were valuable and needed to be reinforced, but also which parts of Hameed were no longer necessary and needed to go.

For example, I’m a big hugger. This is something I did not quite appreciate previously. But when I realized at some point last year that I had gone four months without a hug (smh isolation + lockdown in Europe), it hit me.

I love to hug people! And so I decided to more actively hug my friends when I saw them, covid be damned!! 😂

Things are never as good as they seem

A few months ago, I read the statement, ‘Things are never as good as they seem. But things are also never as bad as they seem.’

Words on marble.

And in the last year, I have had to think about this statement numerous times. Our human brains are wired to categorize people.

Amirah got a promotion, her life is so amazing!

Bill Gates is the nerd x intellectual guy type, he can’t possibly cheat on his wife.

Ade got a fully funded PhD scholarship. He has no financial worries!

Ahmed plaits his hair, he’s not a boring person!

Even worse, we like to categorize life events.

When something bad happens, life is so terrible. It feels like there is nothing left to be thankful for. And when we receive some great news, we are on top of the world. Cheeee!

I think life is a lot messier than that. There are so many peaks and valleys in so many different parts of our lives happening all at once. Things that make our lives perfectly imperfect. Calm storms. Dark days, bright nights.

Just a few months ago, I was more financially comfortable than I had ever been, wa lillahil hamd. And when you’re in that headspace, you tend to imagine things would stay that way forever. But one message last month changed everything. I knew immediately that my savings would evaporate and I would be operating at a financial deficit for a while. And that’s okay.

On the flip side, I remember feeling frustrated and down in November/December last year. At that point, it seemed like nothing could possibly go my way. I even reached out to an older friend to ask, ‘I’m so tired and my self confidence has taken a hit. How did you survive this? What do I do now? How do you keep on going?’

After starting with ‘my brother, na so we see am’, she did her very best to help me keep my head up. Amazingly, it took maybe two weeks after that call for all my anxiety to disappear. My biggest problem was solved, and much sooner than I could ever have imagined in a ‘best case scenario’.

We laugh, we cry. We love, we lose. We rise, we fall. We live, we die. And somehow through all of it, that statement still holds true.

‘Things are never as good as they seem. But things are also never as bad as they seem.’

Navigating between the push and pull

For anyone who makes a significant life decision, you would spend some time in limbo, trying to figure out a balance between the pull factors, which tie you to your previous experiences, and the push factors, which drive you forward in your quest for change.

For me, it was no different.

One classic example is my professional background. Trained in school as an Engineer, I had decided long ago that I would have nothing to do with the profession. So, my experiences in the last few years had been intentionally far from the typical Engineering spaces as I tried to navigate my way to business and management.

But the funniest thing kept happening. The further away I went from the Engineering folk, the much more my background was appreciated. In a New Business Ventures project just a few weeks ago, the team nominated me as CTO (Chief Technology Officer).

I was exasperated.

‘I know nothing about running Technology! Guys I’m trying to run away from Engineering!’

‘Hameed you know a lot more about it than the rest of us. You have to be CTO!’

It even happened when I interacted with someone in the local startup ecosystem here.

‘Where do you think you can contribute?’

‘I would love to work in Strategy or Business Development. I can do some stuff in Product Management as well.’

‘Sadly we don’t really have those opportunities now. Oh I just remembered you have a Mechanical Engineering background. We need a lot of help setting up the factory and you’re perfect!’

Sigh.

This happened a lot more in other areas of life, even in terms of my physical location. During my application to one of my favourite companies in the world, I had to choose three locations and rank them by weightage and order of preference.

I think I gave Dubai 60%, Riyadh 30% and Lagos 10%. As is clear, I did not want to work in Lagos! 😂

But guess which of the offices promptly gave me a call back? 🤡 🤡

For me, there has been a clear push to continue the nomadic life, getting new experiences and rethinking x reshaping my life along the way. But from the company’s perspective, it is a different story.

To them, here is a highly talented, well educated young professional. If they could place him anywhere in the world, placing him in his home market would make the most sense. He requires no Visa sponsorship, has no need to learn a new language, already has a network to tap into, and can take advantage of the local expertise and effects to make genuine impact in the role. It’s a no-brainer.

And so I have spent many of the past months swimming against the tide, where the tide is my very own background and experiences pulling me back.

There are many things left unsaid. And if I were to do justice to reflecting on my recent experiences, I would probably write more of a book than a newsletter. For today, this will do.

The task for myself and you is to take stock of our experiences so far, even when many aspects of the future are very much uncertain.

Alhamdulillah robbil alameen.

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Hameed

** Jara content:

رَبِّ أَوْزِعْنِي أَنْ أَشْكُرَ نِعْمَتَكَ الَّتِي أَنْعَمْتَ عَلَيَّ وَعَلَى وَالِدَيَّ وَأَنْ أَعْمَلَ صَالِحًا تَرْضَاهُ وَأَدْخِلْنِي بِرَحْمَتِكَ فِي عِبَادِكَ الصَّالِحِينَ

“My Lord, grant me the power and ability that I may be grateful for your favors which you have bestowed on me and on my parents. And that I may do righteous good deeds that will please you, and admit me by your mercy among your righteous servants.” - 27:16

Have a great week. 💫