PhilAsify 101

Note: Though this article is directed towards Muslims, it applies to everyone in the realm of dating, those looking for love and coming up unsatisfied etc. Staggering Statistics: - More than 50% of marriages in America end in divorce (Source: New York Times) -Cheating and casual no string attached premarital sex are at all time highs. (Source: USA Today ) Is dating against the Qur’an? Believe me, I have spent many nights racking my brain trying to figure this one out for myself back in my teenage years. I yearned for that one magical verse or explanation that makes everything clear.  Let me break the suspense by saying that I have yet to find that one verse. The good news is that my search has given me a much better understanding of this difficult question. My findings brought me to the realization that dating is a process which occupies a great deal of your emotions and tempts you physically so fast that you don't realize what hit you.  To put it bluntly: It sucks out...

Note: Guess who's baaack! I know what you're thinking. I've had this ridiculously huge gap between updates. I know I've been MIA but life has kind of gotten in the way of regularly posting. Don't expect this to be a normal thing for now, but I really wanted to just come back because I had such a great thought that came to mind during this blessed month of Ramadan that I wanted to share it in blog form.  While up at night during one of the last 10 nights of Ramadan, I was thinking very deeply about Allah's generosity. Like, man, oh, man, it's crazy how much we can underestimate that Allah is Ar-Rahman (The Most Compassionate) and Ar-Raheem (The Most Merciful). Let me elaborate. Good Deeds vs. Bad Deeds So one night before bed I was talking to my little 5-year-old son about Allah and how generous he is. I had already been telling him in bits and pieces about good deeds and bad deeds and how there's an angel on each of our shoulders: one that ...

Holy criggity crap. Boy, has a lot happened since I last posted here. I took my quarterly laziness hiatus from blogging and when I returned, Donald Trump became president, Dave Chappelle came back to television and Glenn got his head bashed in on The Walking Dead. I'm glad I'm taking a seat. Things are getting crazy and rather than be in on the action and share my thoughts and opinions and rants like everyone else has been doing, I've been laying low and just focusing on getting accustomed to my new work schedule. However just because PhilAsify hasn't been churning out fresh content doesn't mean I haven't been writing. In fact, soon after the election I went into hyperdrive mode to finish publishing my very timely and relevant first book, Vicegerents: The Divine Responsibility, The Importance of Muslim Civic Engagement and Social Responsibility .  It's available right now on Amazon so please feel free to check it out (It's only 99 cents). It's a smoo...

So here marks another one of my unexplained hiatuses from blogging. What a big surprise. While I tried to hold myself to writing weekly through thick and thin, I just couldn't write until now because I was in the middle of a transitional period. I was hired for a job! Alhamdulilah (All praise goes to God). More than one actually so, of course I was really busy. I wanted to check back in to give you that update and tell you all that things can turn around on a dime, bad times don't last. There I was struggling for months unemployed, just barely making it and the future was totally uncertain. I didn't know whether I'd have enough to pay the rent at the end of the month, I didn't know when things would get better. But that just reminds me that it's not my job to know the future. I'm just a player in this script of life and I can't turn the page until I get to the bottom, when everything on the current page has played out. That's on Allah's ti...

For some reason this title  can't help but make me be reminded of Randy Orton's entrance theme: But I digress. This is not really the video I wanted to share with you, the video below is. I came across this video on YouTube a couple of months ago titled "Overcoming Negative Inner Voices" and boy was it tremendous and really made me ponder life and just how your mind is the biggest thing holding you back from achieving the life you want to live and do the things in life you want to do to be fulfilled. Here I will post the video and then come back with my thoughts after the jump.

So I didn't get to write an entry last week. Big surprise huh? Aside from being consistently inconsistent, your trusty old PhilAsifer is also consistently getting hurt. This time it wasn't a phantom injury from coach potatoing it up, however. I decided to dust off my sneakers and played an impromptu game of pick-up basketball. Here's some news for you: I Injured myself, AGAIN. I injured myself because I'm out of shape. Meaning I'm overweight at the moment. Meaning I'm too overweight to be playing basketball.  Hey But Wait a minute, Asif, look at this! Maaaaan. Number 1) That guy is about 6'10. I'm 5'6 on a good day. Number 2) He's DEAD! (RIP Escalade) He died from heart disease which I'm positive had to do with his unhealthy weight. and Number 3) Thanks a lot for making me feel like a schlub when even immobile obese heavyweights can ball better than me.  Back to the subject at hand. What I mean by being too overweight to pl...

Hey gang. A little bit late on my goal for a weekly post, that's because I'm still trying to figure out a way to make a decent living as a freelance writer. As I expected, it's no walk in the park starting out.  Before I even lost my job , I was looking into freelance writing as a possible next career option because my job hunting had fallen into that terrible catch 22 conundrum. All the writing based media jobs I wanted were looking for someone with 2 to 5 years experience and there I was wasting my life away shuffling papers at a tax firm NOT GETTING EXPERIENCE. Freelancing looked to be the best option to 1) write , 2) build a solid body of work with a portfolio and 3) eventually get noticed by those same media based jobs that were denying me because of  my lack of experience. Getting into the freelance writing game, I faced pretty much the same trouble because I needed to show experience as well and show that I've written and had things published in various are...

So for over the last week or so I've been getting over a really painful hip injury. A sharp, nearly unbearable pain has been shooting from my right hip, making it hard for me to lift my leg, walk or even get into bed without groaning in agony. Sleep has been terribly uncomfortable and I had a few days of sleepless nights because of the stabbing pain and discomfort caused by my ailment. At first, I thought it was just some freak injury and the pain would disappear in a couple of days after implementing the RICE method. When the pain didn't go away, I went to look up the injury online and listed the symptoms to find out that it may very likely be a hip strain which is typically a sports injury or caused by a fall. So what was the cause of my hip feeling like crap? Nothing. I have no friggin' clue why it's been hurting like the dickens. I haven't been outside playing sports in Houston's sauna type heat, are you kidding me? It's hotter and more humid than...

I'm a little over two months into my freelancing career change and at the moment it's not going all that well. I haven't been hired for any steady jobs and the jobs I have been hired for haven't paid all that well--though I'm grateful to have gotten them, something is better than nothing. However, I am in pretty good spirits and I am learning a lot about freelancing and a lot about myself. I still couldn't be happier and I am positive things will get better. I have been listening to podcasts and reading blogs and articles about how to make it as a freelance writer and it's mind blowing how a lot of these folks share my mindset when it comes to college institutions. All of these freelancers want the same thing: they want to be their own boss, run their own life, make money the way they want to make it without being a slave to a corporate paycheck. So Naive I was... Sooo not worth it. Keep your diploma, I'll take that money back. I WASTED four y...

An interesting theory on Procrastination and How To Stop it From Killing Our Goals So I was procrastinating all week when it came to figuring out what subject I was going to write about this week and while trying to avoid brainstorming I came up with a brilliant topic: procrastination! While mindlessly scrolling my Facebook feed--my go-to procrastination tool in my unproductivity utility belt--I saw an article post entitled,  " 9 ways to stop Procrastinating on Your Screenplay ". Interestingly enough, that is exactly what I've been doing!  Seeing as how the article was relevant to my exact situation, I gave it a quick look-see and was fascinated by an insight about procrastination that was articulated in a way that I have never heard before:  "Procrastination is ultimately a fear of being judged". Suffice to say, I was intrigued.

Yeah I know what you're thinking. It's the middle of 2016 and I'm just now writing about the election. So I'm jumping into this a little late alright? Being on hiatus for so long, I have to play catch-up on a lot of hot blog topics so here goes. First, a disclaimer. As the title says, this is a guide for those who despise politics. I would be one of them. Trust me, I've tried to get into it and feel like it's my duty to be at the very least be informed but cot' damn I can't stand the garbage! As a child, I used to think that I just needed to get older to care about politics and that soon enough I'd be watching CNN all day like my dad does but NOPE--almost 29 years old and still can't stand CNN, C-SPAN, and all the talking heads blowing hot air either lambasting political leaders or being engaged in a circle jerk. This is my good faith attempt to breakdown the election and the candidates and the implications of the upcoming election(wh...

Hey everyone, your favorite PhilAsifer is back at it again to give you a quick update in regards to my absence. So I couldn't keep myself to a consistent writing schedule AGAIN, but this time I have a pretty valid number of excuses.  First off, Ramadan has kinda put a pause on my blogging. With it being a month of spiritual reflection and trying to devote more time to the Qur'an, PhilAsify 101 had to take a backseat.  Plus some of the topics I've wanted to touch on are political and worldly issues and I didn't want to get into that stuff during Ramadan. Secondly, I've been trying to focus more on my freelance career and establishing myself. The best way to do that is to put myself out there and find work and deliver top notch quality writing. That's not an easy task so I had to put my regular blog posts on the shelf that way.  Lastly, I have had other writing projects and developments that were more pressing. For example, I finished writing an E-b...