You really need to stop talking on the phone

 
I'm here – barely on the other side of yet another bout of illness. This year is turning out to be one big blur with all my energy being wasted bedridden. Today, I summoned the energy and courage to go pick up new books from the library and walk over to another branch to sit and write this. I was about to type "work" but I don't work currently, thank goodness. I wake up grateful for the break everyday. However, not all is bleak – I've been reading, reading relatively voraciously. I lapped up Rabia Chaudry's Fatty Fatty Boom Boom in under 24 hours and almost immediately moved onto Wajahat Ali's Go Back To Where You Came From. Both autobiographies (that I highly recommend to fellow Pakistanis)!

This month, I borrowed Michelle Zauner's Crying in H Mart, which is another acclaimed autobiography and everyone who's anyone is reading it these days. Also, in the spirit of changing things up, I finally found Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria. Books on feminism and I don't go along very well even though DEI is my discipline – but I have a feeling I'm going to really like this one.

Through reading books by other people I'm trying to find my own voice back, both written and spoken. It's like Wajahat Ali wrote in his book, if you don't tell your story, someone else will tell it for you. I wouldn't like my story to be told by someone else. Like the time we went out for dinner and one of my husband's idiot colleagues started to talk about sending me back to work while I was sitting there right across him. After demonstrating some of my signature patience, I had to shut him up when he repeated himself, to his own embarrassment because the entire table laughed at him. I really don't like when people try to write my story and I haven't ever been one to let them do it.

Anyway, I feel a little distracted right now because there's a person constantly talking on the phone in the library and I really wish they would stop. I dedicate the title of this post to them.