About Me — Nasar Karim
I’m still not quite sure who I am, but I’ll figure it out on the way to where I’m going.
It’s hard to sum up ‘me’ because we’re always changing. You can’t go through life with your eyes open and not change. But there are veins that have held all the different stages of me together, the underlying themes.
I’m a writer, I know that much. A writer writes and I do that every day. This morning I was erasing the notes I made in a book called ‘Think Like a Winner’ because I want to go through it and do the exercises again. One of the goals I’d jotted down in there simply read ‘finish writing this book.’ I can’t even recall what ‘this book’ was. I’ve been working on ‘a book’ or planning ‘a book’ since I graduated from university in 2000.
I love writing and I love reading. A couple of years ago I was sitting in a coffee shop and two ladies sat at the table next to mine. When the older one asked the younger one “So what are you reading at the moment?” my heart jumped and I wished somebody would ask me that question. People rarely do anymore. I started a YouTube channel to review books that evening, and now there are a hundred videos on there. Just over fifty subscribers. I’ve not made a single penny from that YouTube channel, yet. I imagine I will eventually.
Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, and Dr. Seuss are the writers who really turned me on to writing. I was thirteen when I read The Tell Tale Heart, and it blew me away. Before long I’d read everything I could get my hands on by Edgar Allan Poe, and even memorised a fair bit of it. Books alone didn’t give me hyperphagia, music played a part as well. I spent about twenty years of my life with headphones in my ears. Good lyrics really get me. The Doors, Megadeth, and Guns N Roses are all great artists whose lyrics got me writing poetry. They’re probably my three favourite bands of all time. I can still listen to those artists and have the same feelings I had when I first heard them.
Music makes life so much richer. I play it whilst making breakfast in the mornings. My nine-year-old daughter has started singing along to some great tunes and I’m enormously proud of just about everything she does. My seven-year-old daughter is born on the same day as Slash, who I think is the greatest rock guitarist of all time, along with Eddie Van Halen. When I was a teenager I had a VHS of clips recorded from MTV. I’d scribbled ‘Slash is God’ on that cassette in black marker. I didn’t understand back then why that made my father so angry. He was a Muslim, an independent thinker, ridiculously intelligent, way ahead of his time in his attitude, and an adventurer. I never appreciated any of those things as much as I should have done until he passed away.
Often I surprise myself by noticing similarities between me and Dad, we never really saw eye to eye. I wrote about that in my poem Ant and Hawk. I do remember sitting in the passenger seat of his car, as we drove through the night after dropping my elder sister to university. He’d let me play The Doors, Nirvana, and anything else I wanted on the car stereo. We laughed a lot together, but we never talked much.
I used to want to be a musician and spent far more time playing guitar and doing other extracurricular activities at university than I did studying. Sometimes I think that was a mistake. After university I taught guitar privately (despite being self-taught myself) and had a great time doing it. Occasionally I wonder what some of my old students are doing. I still play guitar, but I don’t believe in talent anymore. Before I discovered the guitar, I spent a lot of time drawing. I can unashamedly say I was the best artist I knew until I stopped drawing.
I love the idea of playing in a band with my friends, and I love the idea of busking.
I’m quietly proud that I share my birthday with Bob Marley and Axl Rose and convinced that my calling is in the creative hemisphere. But I’m not black, I’m not white, and I don’t sing that well. I still know I’m meant to be SOMEBODY damn it! My university has produced some famous writers (E. L. James, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Kazuo Ishiguro, Elizabeth Buchan, Sarah Waters, and David Mitchell amongst them) and that makes me feel good.
What I like to write about
I love writing poetry, it’s what I do most easily. Ideas for poetry come from everywhere; conversations, books, random words that pop into my head, things I see, feelings, and anything else that I can come up with a line for. My first book started off as an ad-lib poem, it’s not been released yet.
My wife isn’t crazy about my poetry. We met when we were seventeen, and I thought she was way out of my league. But twenty-five years later, we’re very happily married.
The articles that get the most reads and make me the most money on Medium are invariably about exercise and diet. Losing fat and gaining muscle. I’ve been working out since I was fourteen, and I’m in good shape for my age. My first training partner was also my best friend. He always said I should be a writer. The first article I ever wrote on Medium was about him. He committed suicide when he was thirty-seven, and that was the hardest thing I ever had to go through.
I like writing about business, money, and self-improvement as well. I’ve started a couple of businesses, I’ve traded markets, and I’ve improved upon former versions of myself. I do miss some of the old versions of me sometimes. The one that didn’t need sleep, watched horror movies all night, didn’t give a damn, and always had an amazing time, for example. I’ve held on to a few of those ‘qualities’. But I need my sleep now.
Where I’m from
London. I was born and bred in London. I think it’s the greatest city in the world. I love London, and I love Soho. When I had my own businesses which I could run largely from my phone, I spent a lot of time in a Pret on Oxford Street. I answered my phone, booked in clients, wrote a book that never saw the light of day, spent lots of time in guitar stores and book stores, and traded the markets. Glorious, glorious days.
I lived in Poland twenty years ago. In the capital. It was interesting being one of only two brown people I ever saw there.
I’ve traveled a little, and I want to travel more. The world is worth seeing.
Where I’m going
Practically, I know where I’m headed.
I don’t believe there’s such thing as being disciplined. I think everything we do is a matter of motivation. We’re all motivated to do something, we’re not disciplined to do anything. That’s my own experience. Our life follows the direction of our motivation.
I’m a writer and I’m going for a published novel every year. Maybe they’ll be a success maybe they won’t. I’ll write them anyway. Maybe that’ll put my name on the map.
I’ll keep working. I’m building a business on the side, and I have my job. I know I can’t go forever without starting to trade the markets again either.
I’m a dreamer and a risk-taker. Those two things can make life take some unexpected turns. Risk can be ugly, but it can be beautiful as well. It’s better than sitting around and just letting the days run away.
Whatever happens, and whoever I become, I’m pretty sure I’ll be writing on Medium for a long time yet, and I hope you keep reading.
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