when i grow up

in the last few weeks, i have started my own business. it is a fledgeling company, but it has already taken off in ways i could not have imagined. and i think the main reason for this is because finally i have a job for which i feel immense passion.

i have always been a writer. but now my profession matches my calling, and that is a wonderful feeling. what is even better is that i took this upon myself, made a change, started something. i actually put this situation into being (with a little help from my friends, of course. support from friends and family is perhaps one of the most valuable entities on earth.)

every day, i look at my website. marvel at my job. write. gaze at my site again. i am still enamored with this. it is new, but even when it is not so new, i will still be enamored. because i have finally joined that group of people who do what they love for a living.

alhamdolillah.

check me out! www.zahraink.com

since starting this business, i have felt inspired by the feeling of having complete and total creative freedom. i have felt this way before- and in truth i am easily inspired. books, songs, buildings, the lake, poems, trees, fashionable people on the street, strange noises, picture frames. many things please me. but now i feel like i have made a step forward in my life. i've reached a new level of awareness about what is around me, who is around me. who and what i want, who and what i don't want.

i feel like 27 will be different than 26. i feel that i have so much more than i realize, and i am enjoying the deliciousness of trying to realize it. that i can use many, many words in my blog to convey a simple idea; i don't have to conserve. that i can be effusive if i want to be. that i can just relax and enjoy all these bright and silly and generous people around me. that simplicity is not always key.

autumn, my favorite season, is approaching. last year taher and i missed out on autumn, and the smell that autumn brings with it. i think i missed the smell almost more than i missed the respite from the heat.

and as it ushers itself in (sloooowly) i feel a change in me. happening as slowly as the season is changing. but a welcome change. an ever-so-slight further settling in my skin.

the way it is

have you ever heard a song or seen a building that just inspired you? that made you feel a sense of history and made you feel connected to the sea of people beyond those you know?

i give thanks for such things, for such books or songs or places or buildings that make me feel tied to huge-ness. connected.

for the past 27 years and for the rest of my life, the smell of oil of olay mingled with powder will make me see my mother's face, hear her voice. if i have two kids one day, will they agree as to what my scent is like? i don't think this is a small part of only my life. i feel like this is something beyond my life.

today is one of those days.

i apologize for not posting about katrina sooner, but i have felt, for the last few days, as i feel now- i have nothing new or profound to say, nothing to add to what the rest of the blogger universe is already saying.

it's very scary. and heartbreaking. and this year already there has been the tsunami in thailand, floods in bombay, typhoons in japan, and now katrina.

what is going on?