Omar El-Etr
Throughout the past few years, I've been having discussions about periods with many women in my life. Their experiences (which sadly have mostly been negative) have inspired me to write this piece. By doing so, I’d like to shed light on things I wish I’d learned earlier as a dude to spare them some of the gratuitous suffering.
In a life that inevitably spins out of control, it brings my heart so much tranquility knowing that I have an immutable constant—my daily salah. My prayers ground me; they put me at peace; and they help me manage my anxiety. Although many of us struggle with praying regularly in general, it still is practically easy to do when we're in the comfort of our homes. The challenge here is more on the spiritual/religious side than anything else. When it comes to praying outside, however, that challenge is compounded by practicality.
Today, Ola Farouk will have made it for half a century in this world. Still, she looks 15 years younger and has the spirit of a 25-year-old. I wanted to make this day very special for her, but we’re 6,894 miles apart. So I figured, why not dedicate a blog post to her beautiful soul!
I cannot tell you how many people I've spoken with who just dread the thought of doing the dishes. Every time I tell someone that I love doing the dishes, they look at me with the utmost bewilderment. Yet, when I begin explaining why that is the case, they start viewing it from a lens that makes the idea more palatable.
As a Muslim living and working in a non-Muslim country, navigating my religion and spirituality can pose some challenges. That only means that I should rise up to these challenges and work on finding solutions. In this article, I talk about how a simple chat with my manager led to two prayer rooms in my company's new headquarters.
This blog is meant to be a place where I pour down thoughts about any and everything that I would like to share with the world. I have no idea where this will take me, how frequently I will post, or what my writings will be about, but it's really about time I stopped overthinking this and just start writing.
Good designers must always be avant-gardists, always one step ahead of the times. They should–and must–question everything generally thought to be obvious.