{"id":87,"date":"2014-07-31T10:05:32","date_gmt":"2014-07-31T14:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/haanarafiq.com\/?p=87"},"modified":"2014-08-02T16:53:10","modified_gmt":"2014-08-02T20:53:10","slug":"forgetting-familiarity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/haanarafiq.com\/?p=87","title":{"rendered":"Forgetting Familiarity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One small flight, one giant change in mindset, and I&#8217;m here. It&#8217;s taken two weeks for me to collect my thoughts. Moving has been a lot tougher than I had prepared myself for. It broke friendships, caused more stress, and created a hollowness inside. Moving far away -even just two time zones away-created a disconnect from who I was to who I&#8217;m now becoming. Imagine a painting, then immediately, over all the colors, it&#8217;s painted white-that&#8217;s how it feels.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a blank canvas. What I had previously known and experienced feels 100\u00a0light years away. \u00a0I have endless ways to reinvent the way I&#8217;ve been thinking for my entire life. I have time to figure out the things I like and don&#8217;t and truly make decisions without anyone else. But there&#8217;s a catch&#8230; and it&#8217;s aimlessness. Most people here are okay with that feeling of &#8220;going with the flow&#8221; and &#8220;letting things happen.&#8221; The lack of structure and plan is their blessing. Unfortunately not everyone is gifted to think like that. Some of us need to re-image our brain to be able change our perspectives.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s funny how the quality of life here is so much more freeing than anything I&#8217;ve experienced. There&#8217;s no fear. There are times of loneliness, doubt, and even sadness, but no fear. I&#8217;m learning things that I wouldn&#8217;t have tried to attempt before. Meeting people here is so refreshing and the thought process is so diverse that there&#8217;s literally no judgement. It&#8217;s a place where I&#8217;m\u00a0allowed to be my\u00a0own person; where forgetting the past is an opportunity to fill the empty spaces with personal drive, new experiences, and knowledge. I know that things might not be perfect right now, but if I want to stay busy, if I have an open mind, if I just get up and go somewhere, the resources are right in front of me.<\/p>\n<p>It may have only been a short amount of time, but I&#8217;m not the same person I was 3000 miles ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One small flight, one giant change in mindset, and I&#8217;m here. It&#8217;s taken two weeks for me to collect my thoughts. Moving has been a lot tougher than I had prepared myself for. It broke friendships, caused more stress, and created a hollowness inside. Moving far away -even just two time zones away-created a disconnect [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/haanarafiq.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/haanarafiq.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/haanarafiq.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haanarafiq.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haanarafiq.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/haanarafiq.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90,"href":"https:\/\/haanarafiq.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions\/90"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/haanarafiq.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haanarafiq.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haanarafiq.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}