2013 (new year special)

I have something to tell you, but I’m afraid if I did, you wouldn’t want to be friends anymore.

I get this funny feeling inside, and I promised myself that I will not let it get in the way of what we have.

It is so hard to find a friend like you, good friends are hard to come by.

I have fallen in love with you and I’m afraid that if I told you, you wouldn’t feel the same and if I told you, our friendship will never feel this way again.

I have become so used to you. I don’t want to know anyone new.

I’m not sure if this is a letter to you or a memory stuck in one of my thoughts, but I hope this reaches you, wherever you may be.

I am so afraid of losing you that I forgot to tell you how much you mean to me. I’m not sure where you are right now, but if you can hear me, please come back home. It has been so long, that I forgot what it was like to see how your smile made me feel… it has been so long, that I have forgotten how your smile made me feel.

It has been so long that the years have continued to end and I have forgotten how you made me feel and now it feels like 2013 will leave a gaping hole in my stomach. I’ll walk around on New Year’s Eve while the people call me a freak on the streets and I will shy away from their ignorance of not knowing what I’m suffering from.

I’m afraid that when the clock hits midnight, history will be sealed and everything that I have done will be lost and our friendship scrambled within the words.

Hello 2013, it looks like we’re going to be here for a while, just you and me.

Save me.

a legendary dream (over 100k page views to the blog special)

Saddened voices and brittle joints, the end of the horizon seems near.

In these deserted lands where wilder beasts roam and jokers lurk, the hesitant nomads wonder alone.

The nomad carries a journal filled with empty notes with a semi broken spine. He empties his words through thought and imagines the page becoming full of hope of past dreams.

The nomad is no different than the average nomad you find in exiled worlds, he is merely, ordinary. Like many before and many after, he had a vision of fortune and success.

The nomad spends entire moments in awe and dazed over possibilities that are so variable, even the joker fits in laughter of such ridiculous visions. It’s fate often taunted on a line of thick and elusive string dangling from the heavens teasing and reminding nomads of an oasis in waiting. This dubbed as an oasis is thought to be the work and masterstroke of the devil.

In addition to their fragile state of body and soul, the nomads are laid to rest ever only achieving imaginary outcomes from a world dry and barren from any opportunities. The jokers feed off their struggle and are amused for the rest of their life.

For the jokers, their purpose are for the nomads, but the nomad wonders on a purpose of fulfilling a legendary dream.

A special post to mark over 100,000 page views and over 46,000 unique visitors to the blog. Thanks for reading!
- Michael Daaboul

escape (quest newsletter special)

If you were able to leave work tomorrow with a year’s salary included, what would you do? That might be too much freedom for some, maybe, not enough freedom for others. If you had one year before you had to go back to the routine of getting up the same time everyday, would you use it wisely?

If you haven’t been lucky enough to fall in love, take the time to look around and see if your smile might be melting the hearts of those that are around you.

Jump on a plane and leave to an unknown destination. Fly through the clouds and never look back. Travel around the world and go to places you have always dreamed of. You might not have had the chance when you were a little younger, but time isn’t making any exceptions, you have the opportunity, take it with both hands.

Understand the world in another language. Are you a poet inside? Maybe this could be your plan of attack for falling in love. Write a poem, if it doesn’t succeed in English, try writing it in French. If that fails, well, maybe he or she might think you’re cute enough for trying and you just might earn yourself a date. Watch the stars on a clear, summer’s night.

Love the water? Ride the waves. Set foot and explore the ocean with the cool breeze pushing gently behind your head with your eyes closed. The Sun rises to greet you as the calm of the water welcomes your presence to thank you for visiting from so far away. The water appreciates your company; something you thought was rare in this world.

If you have always contemplated about getting married, no need to wait anymore. Take a lengthy honeymoon away from the rest of the world. Enjoy your company and let reality drift off on to the offset of your imagination.

When you have ran out of ideas, think about exploring the hidden alleyways of your city. Then think about running away to other cities around the world and dine in exotic restaurants. It might be foreign, but the adventure will excite you, even making you feel alive for the first time since your memory could remember.

The only problem with all this is, once the year ends, you wouldn’t want to go back to work again. Unfortunately, as much as escape seems like an attractive alternative, at least you would have broken the routine. After all, that’s the main message to this story, it might be something that stays in your dreams, but it doesn’t have to.

As published in #1 of QueSt newsletter on March 2011.
- Michael Daaboul

sell yourself (master’s personal statement special)

(How would you benefit from this course? Why are you interested?)

Master of Creative Media (Creative Writing) will enable me to explore a field of study that has occupied my thoughts and progressively, infiltrated my subconscious for a long period of time now.

(Do you have any background information or education that showcases your interest? How about proven ability? This is a good time to include it now.)

After completing my 4 year undergraduate degree in Multimedia Systems, I have tasted the narrative hunger in courses such as: Content Design Project, Design for Interactive Media 3 and most notably, Writing Angles: Popular and Professional. My burning desire evolved and grew to new heights while completing the latter. A score of 86 (HD) was achieved for this particular course, which made Writing Angles the highest scoring subject currently on my academic transcript.

(You’re applying for a ‘writing’ course, why not use some narrative to help strengthen your desire?)

Writing Angles: Popular and Professional installed a wave of ideas and concentrated my understanding of writing through one channel. The course opened up different fields of creative analysis in my mind and aided my focus to craft a series of written work.

(Why do you like to write? Where have you written? What makes your writing significantly more interesting compared to other candidates?)

I have consistently used some form of narrative in my designs to accurately deliver a story that not only engages the reader, but sends their minds through a captivating journey back in time that pinpoints moments of epiphany. I write constantly, trying to find the answers to what philosophers have been trying to find in life. It is an endless engagement to find words that bring new meaning to storytelling. A way of relating, the source of comfort, writing gives the imagination an image for a world that words orchestrated to define a motion picture to animate in a still mind. Within my writing, I strive for the same blueprint and I only need to remember that to spawn inspiration.

(Consolidate your desire! Plead for a chance to see how bright you can shine.)

I decided that I need to take the road that leads into the world of creative writing. It is not only the next level I can take in terms of increasing the magnitude of my career prospects in narrative media, but it is the next step that I need to feed my personal development in the world of writing. I feel a perpetual stream of motivation and passion that I believe will play an important role for me to advance if given the opportunity to do so.

Another requirement needed to get into Master of Creative Media (Creative Writing) at RMIT University in 2009, this time a personal statement was required. There’s a few tips to follow when you’re writing your own as I have highlighted throughout mine just above my submission. Please treat this with respect as this is the original wording, like before, I have no problems sharing this with you as long as it’s respected.
- Michael Daaboul

the offset (master’s project proposal special)

Taking a more philosophical approach to my writing, I want to explore the fundamentals of life through a different perspective. Narrowing down the essence of existence of human beings and analysing the possibilities for possible answers.

Either a series of abstract short stories or a novel based on the different emotions, behaviours and exact thoughts of everyday events and human psychology. An emphasis on appreciation and what is often left unnoticed because of the busy life routine.

This could also take a form of conversations between two characters asking questions and exploring answers about time, love, good vs. bad, various emotions, how people think in certain situations, death etc.

The novel will be a non-fiction debate over questions of life that are thought provoking and not obvious. They could spark from walking into town and viewing the surrounding and explaining and debating how all the strange things go neglected; the blind spot for everyday wanders that live there.

Research will need to be done on the psychology of different types of emotions and behaviour, concepts in philosophy and observing human interaction between social gatherings and other crowd populated areas.

One of the requirements needed to get into Master of Creative Media (Creative Writing) at RMIT University, a project proposal was needed to be submitted. This was mine back in 2009. I have no problems sharing this with you.
- Michael Daaboul

memories (this started it all special)

I have forgotten your smile, the one that took my heart and tore me apart inside; the smile that betrayed me from the start.

It didn’t have to end …

My memories of you seem so near, everything was so clear.

Those memories have all seemed to just disappear …

It didn’t have to end …

What your sad smile told me, you didn’t want me forever, that’s something I will always remember.

My memories keep you near, it’s what I always feared; my memories have disappeared.

It didn’t have to end …

They have all just, disappeared.

This was the very first piece of writing that I had written sometime in 2003. Before then, I had written for assignments for school, but this was the first bit of writing I did in my own time. The writing that started my ‘mad’ hobby. 
- Michael Daaboul

72 years (tribute to the yeager’s couple special)

For 72 years I have been married to you and I said, “I won’t part with you”, for 72 years I said, “We won’t part.”

They said, “We’re old-fashioned”, we took our wedding vows to heart, ‘til death do us part.

I feel that the world had other plans it seemed, after the accident, you were put into a coma; you suffered internal bleeding and a broken neck.

If only we had stayed in that morning, it was a nice summer’s day, the heat gently passing through our bodies while we’re asleep.

You wanted to go for a drive, it was 8 a.m.

Down we went on the darkened road, the collision happened so fast, all I remember was silence and my breath caught by the scythe of Death.

I’m already dead, so I can’t explain the phenomena that allowed me to tell my story.

We were taken to hospital; we spent our last moments in intensive case. We were in the same room. We were holding hands, even though we were barely functioning.

I died later that day, but my heart was still beating on the monitor.

I said, “We won’t part”, but I couldn’t keep that promise in the end, I’m afraid no one would of been able to keep that promise, but I told you every day because I thought this day will never come.

Who would have thought 72 years would just fly by, I still felt like I had so many things to say to you, even though we were close to 90 now. I know now that you can never have enough of life.

I just wish we could of stuck around a little bit longer, I was not ready, but in my mind, I’d knew you would know this somehow.

If you wanted to know how the monitor was showing my heart beat, it was because we were holding hands and her pulse was going through me until she died a few minutes later.

Tribute to The Yeager’s couple who died on October 12, 2011.
- Michael Daaboul