Answering Your Questions: Routine

What was your daily routine before you converted to Islam?

I’ve never really had a routine.  True, I had the basics in place – sleeping, eating, studying, going to school – but otherwise I sort of drifted through the days, doing whatever needed to be done.

My typical weekday schedule prior to converting formed around school.  I would wake early in the morning, prepare for the day, and hop on the school bus about an hour before the school day began.  Once the final bell rang at school, it was back to the bus and home.  The afternoons after school varied: during the winter I would do my mother’s chores before the sun set at 4 pm, otherwise I would maybe do some relaxing, watch TV, do some writing (no Internet so no surfing the web!), and, if I were particularly ambitious, complete that day’s homework.  I tried to get to sleep relatively early, but that usually meant sometime around 11 pm or midnight.

My weekend normally mirrored the hours after school during the weekdays.  During the summer I would often sleep in; I normally tried to avoid sleeping in too much: it’s true when people say you can get more done when you wake early in the morning!  I would often head outside, especially if the weather was nice.

Before my conversion, I really had no purpose or direction in my life.  My life was simply school and empty time after school.  I suppose that isn’t necessarily something to worry about when still attending school, but as I got older, it bothered me more and more.

However, when I did convert, my life finally went from mindless and pointless to having some sort of schedule that made life feel much more worthwhile.  It didn’t happen right away, but over time, I’ve managed to settle into a schedule.

Of course, work does affect my schedule from day-to-day, week-to-week.  So I’m not going to go into every single day.  Basically, I wake early, before fajr.  I wash up, pray, and then spend some time reading the Qur’an.  What I do afterwards depends on the day: I either go to work or attempt to get a little more sleep in.  The rest of the morning and the afternoon is spent doing whatever needs to happen, writing or studying for example.  Some evenings, I work; the other evenings I spend doing the same thing I do during the rest of the day.  The day is punctuated by the other four prayers.  Before bed, after preparing for the night, I sometime spend some more time reading the Qur’an.  Or ‘The Sealed Nectar’ depending on what I feel like reading.

There might not be much difference between what I do now and what I did then.  I mean, a lot of my day is spent doing stuff some people might see as useless (though I am of a far different opinion); instead of studying, I’m working.  But, I feel like there’s much more purpose to my life.  Praying and reading the Qur’an mixed with dhikr throughout the day really has improved my life.  It’s amazing what those few minutes a day can do!

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