In November of 1999, I was asked to go on a six-month business trip to Japan. At the time, my situation at work was so bad that I knew I needed to get away. I agreed to go to the other side of the world and told myself that no matter what, I would find a way to resolve the issues before I returned to New York City.
I went to the bookstore by my house and bought a collection of soft covers designed to tell me my purpose in life. What color was my parachute? Was I destined to be an actor? A mathematician? Social worker? What was my dream job? I wanted answers and these books promised to deliver.
And I can’t, in good conscience, say that they didn’t. For me to claim the books were no good, I would have had to use them. I cracked the cover of a few, but I didn’t make it all the way in any of them. I guess I wasn’t motivated enough to find out my true calling. Which is a little odd, considering how bad things really were.
I’m not exactly sure what stopped me. I think it was partly the canned exercises that seemed pointless and partly the fact that I already knew most of my strengths. But mostly because I didn’t care for the way they categorized people. I don’t like being labeled “perceiving” vs. “judging” or “extrovert” vs. “introvert”. I believe the real world is much more complicated than that. There are times when I think more and times when I depend on my feelings to guide me. It depends on the situation, the people involved, the state of mind I’m in and many other factors. I got frustrated not being able to answer the questions and gave up.
Which, in the end, turned out to be the best move.
I came back to New York and decided to change my job and my schedule so I’d have more free time to explore some of my other interests. In the year that I’ve been back, I’ve figured out the best test. It stems from one single word. The answer to what your calling really is lies in the answer to this sentence:
What are you passionate about?
Which can be rephrased as: What moves you? What do you enjoy doing most? What can’t you stop thinking about? What would you spend all your time doing if you didn’t need to worry about money? What feels more like play than work?
These are all ways to ask the same question. There are many reasons a job might not work out for you. A bad manager, unbearable work mates, obscene hours, undesirable location, too much travel, not enough travel, not enough mobility, etc. These are issues that might cause you to change firms, departments or locations, but not careers.
I think what defines the best career for you is the thing you’re most passionate about. It can be something that’s directly tied to the job like being an artist cause you’re passionate about painting. Or something that indirectly allows you to reach your passion, like being an investment banker cause you’re passionate about being rich. Once you can honestly admit to yourself what your true passion is, setting the path to reach it is inconsequential.
I’m not saying it’s easy. If you’re passionate about art, money might not come easily and therefore you might get discouraged following your passion. Or that it has to be a single thing. You might have several things and then you’d try to find a way to combine them. Or your passion might change and you might need to alter your life completely. Either way, I think that once you know your passion, you’re much more likely to find happiness and success.
Here are a few items on my “passion list”:
Learning
Reading
Helping Others
Technology
What’s on yours?
Previously? The Other Way.
Ignorance is not bliss.
A while back I wrote about the importance of letting go, or temporarily ignoring, issues that come up in a relationship, especially the not-so-important ones. I still believe in the necessity of not making a mountain out of every little detail.
The ignorance I’m talking about here is in a completely different context.
I’m referring to the world and community in a bigger scale. I’m talking about issues such as education, recycling, racism, preserving our forests, world peace and much more. Many of us operate within the thought patterns of “If it’s not affecting me directly, I don’t need to do anything about it.” We blissfully ignore problems that fall outside our own community, our daily lives.
If we don’t fall in the above category, we often fall in the other major one. There are many of us who acknowledge and understand the severity of some of the problems facing the world. Some of us even take the time to educate ourselves about them. Yet most of us do nothing about it. We use the excuse that the problems are too big for one person to resolve. We hide behind the historical evidence of people who’ve tried unsuccessfully.
It’s much easier to ignore than to have tried and failed.
But this is our world. These issues, however much you might feel don’t affect you today, might become crucial in your life tomorrow. You might not care about education in America until you have a child who ends up in the public school system. You might have never considered the difficulties faced by a handicapped person until, by some terrible misfortune, you or a loved one becomes handicapped.
And then there are those whose effects we might never see firsthand. You might never realize the full disastrous outcomes of deforestation or global warming since they might take years, decades, or sometimes centuries. Does that mean you shouldn’t do all you can to stop these from getting out of hand? Do you not care about the effects it might have on your grandchildren, or great-grandchildren?
It’s true that some of these issues might take centuries and hundreds, or even hundreds of thousands, of people to resolve. Some might never get resolved. Does that mean we shouldn’t even try? While we might not avert the potential disaster, we might be able to put it off for another hundred centuries, by which time science might allow for us to have the answers.
Or we might not. Maybe they will never get better. Maybe we’re doomed to have racism or mediocre education.
Or maybe we’re not.
We will never know till we try. Every movement starts with the first step. And you cannot take the first step if you’re ignoring the issues.
For me, it’s time to hit the books, the news, the essays. Anything to educate myself on the problems. Once I know the problems, I might be able to come up with answers.
For me, it’s time to stop looking the other way.
Previously? Know It All.
A friend of mine recently sent me some bad news.
She’s been going through some tough times with a friend and she told me that she knew I’d say “I told you so” and I’d be right.
The first thought that crossed my mind as I read the words was “I’d never say that.” What’s the point of making such a cruel comment to someone who’s already suffering? The more I thought about it, the more stupid it seemed to me. Was I really the sort of person to make such a remark?
I called up my friend and told her how badly I felt for her recent falling out and how much I wished she’d work things out eventually. I said, “I wouldn’t say ‘I told you so’ I would have never wanted you to have to go through this.” She thanked me and we chatted for a brief period before it was time for me to get on the plane to Turkey.
Even though she didn’t say, or probably even imply, that I was a vindictive person, the idea of getting satisfaction from having been right about her potential to have a falling out with her friend felt disgusting. The more I thought about the phrase the more repulsive it became in my mind. If I were the sort of person to enjoy being right so much, I needed to change immediately.
Giving advice is not necessarily a bad thing. Often times if a friend asks for my opinion on a subject matter, I’m more than happy to offer my opinion of experience with the subject matter. Especially if the friend is someone on whom I can count to take my words as nothing more than my opinion. I don’t want people to do as I say, I just want to offer them my perspective, as I believe in hearing everyone out before I make a decision.
I also get annoyed at people who give me advice and then get cross if I decide not to do exactly as they recommended. What these people seem to fail to understand is that this is my life. I need to make and be responsible for my own decisions so that if something doesn’t turn out as expected, I only have myself to blame. Disappointments are hard enough to live with as is, the last thing I need is the excuse to blame it on someone else. Nor do I want anyone putting the responsibility of their own misfortune on me.
And ‘I told you so’ accomplishes nothing besides making everything about you. It’s as if you’re saying ‘See you messed up you life, cause you didn’t listen to me. You didn’t take my advice as gospel and now you’re screwed.’ It doesn’t matter if the friend is sad, all you’re thinking of is gloating about how you were right.
Talk about a good friend.
Previously? Home Again.
I registered the domain karenika.com on June 5, 2000.
I put up a page and started writing. Nothing in particular. Just anything that crossed my mind. I had begun reading a few weblogs and as a person who wrote diaries for years, I loved the idea.
On August 20, 2001, I started using blogger.
I changed the layout of my site. I kept reading. I kept writing.
At first, I had one loyal reader. My good friend Cheryl.
But then it changed. I kept checking my referrer logs, trying to find out where people came from. Certain sites kept appearing in my logs over and over again, making me feel giddy.
Last week, I downloaded all of the main karenika writings into a Word document. Running wordcount showed that the file had 121,110 words.
121,110 words.
That’s almost two novels.
And it doesn’t even include the excerpts, tidbits, or ‘what I learned’ section.
And here I was feeling miserable that I couldn’t finish my novel.
In the last year, I’ve shared many of my emotions, thoughts, frustrations and joy with the entire world. I’ve met some incredible people. I’ve been sad, mesmerized and inspired. I’ve learned an enormous amount from the community that is exclusive and inclusive at the same time.
I love writing my page and to each one of you who come to read every day, or even once in a while, I thank you. You encourage me to keep writing, even if you don’t say a word. Just the fact that you come to my site thrills me endlessly.
And if you’ve been coming for a while and haven’t ever shared or dropped me an email, please do so. What makes the web amazing is the people and I’m delighted to be a part of this wonderful place!
Here’s to another great year!
Previously? Burgaz.
When I tell people that I’m from Turkey, the visions they imagine are nothing like my actual life.
Istanbul is actually quite similar to New York City. People running around, always in a rush, the streets dirty, the nightclubs open till the morning hours and blocks and blocks of shops continuously open. The mosques, the low skyline and the widely spread city reassure you that you’re not New York City and the Turkish doesn’t help either, but the lifestyle isn’t so different from most other major cities.
But Burgaz is.
Burgaz is a tiny island, one of four, in the sea connecting the Black Sea to the Aegean, the Marmara Sea. The islands increase in size, Burgaz being the second smallest. We have spent our summers there for as far back as I can remember.
The island is so small that you can walk its entire circumference in two to three hours. As children, we used to make the trip several times a summer. Burgaz has no cars, only horse carriages. The only vehicles on the island are the two fire trucks.
   
Fishers make the island a heaven for the hundreds of cats that are its inhabitants. As you dine in one of the seaside restaurants, live fish jump up and down in their buckets. It has the best ice cream I’ve ever tasted in my life. Sweet corn and caramelized apples are available all day long. Most of the kids either skateboard or swim during the day and hang out in one of the two clubs at night. I must admit that dancing in front of your parents and your grandparents during your teenage years isn’t anyone’s idea of fun, which is why every teenager, as soon as the parents okay it, takes the evening boat to the biggest island to dance in the one disco. The same boat picks up the kids around 4 am, after the disco is closed and the early morning snacks are eaten. I have breathtaking images of walking up the hill to my house as the sun rose.
Burgaz is a piece of history. A tiny community with a single pharmacy, one grocery store, and a few restaurants. You know every one of your neighbors cause just like you, they and their parents and their parents’ parents have all grown up here.
As of next week yesterday, Jake and I will be relaxing in the balcony of our small house in Burgaz. Watching the waves dance, the sailboats slide back and forth, the kids run around, eating delicious Turkish food.
Thankful that some parts of the world never change.
Ps: the beautiful images of Burgaz and our house are copyright of a family friend, Erdogan. If you want to see more pictures of Burgaz, you can find them here.
Previously? Mistakes.
I believe in making mistakes.
I know that in the overall scheme of life mistakes are meant to be bad. They lead us to failure and who wants to fail?
But that’s not entirely true, similar to yesterday’s point, the importance of learning firsthand also applies to making mistakes.
Let’s say you didn’t want to learn firsthand, how could you avoid making mistakes? Well, by listening to other people of course! With that approach, you’re making two fundamental assumptions:
One. What they consider to be a mistake in their environment and circumstances is also going to be a mistake in yours.
Two. Repeating the actions that led them to their mistake will result in your facing the same mistake.
I believe that both of these have cases where they become incorrect assumptions.
Let’s take the first case. Decisions and choices are extremely environment-based. Divorcing an abusive partner may be considered a huge mistake in some societies and the correct path in others. Same goes for abortion and many other controversial issues. Dropping out of school to help save your family’s financial situation might seem shortsighted to some people but might lead you to go through doors that would not have been available to you in some societies because in yours family values are extremely highly regarded. What I consider to be a stupid move might be an act of genius for you.
On a related note, just because you do the same thing I did doesn’t mean you will reach the same results I did. We could both cut school and go to the movies and while I get caught and end up getting detention, you might end up meeting someone who changes your life in that movie theater. (okay, it’s not likely but it could happen) A lot of our life depends on people or events outside our control. The likeliness of a certain set of actions resulting in the same exact outcome is very low.
Even if we ignored the above points. I still think there’s much to be said for making your own mistakes and learning from them. When you make a mistake, depending on the significance of that mistake, it stays in your mind for quite a long period of time. You don’t need someone to explain to you why it’s a bad idea, you lived through it and you learned. Even when the same actions result in a mistake, there might be different reasons why it was a mistake for you than why it was a mistake for the other person. And it’s important to know the difference.
When we make mistakes, we learn about ourselves more than anything else. Yes, we learn about our environment, too, but we learn so much more about our logic. Our assumptions. Our ignorance. Our unrealistic expectations. Our naive outlook. We try to sit and pinpoint where exactly things went wrong. At what point did the great idea turn into a disaster?
That’s not something any other human being can teach you.
Previously? Show Me.
One of the fundamental creeds of writing is telling versus showing.
Imagine you’re reading a novel and the writer has the following line:
“She must be out of her mind,” said Jennifer. She was angry.
What do you know about the character? Well you take the author’s that Jennifer’s angry. You don’t really have proof, with the possible exception of your added voice to the words. If you read it in an angry manner, you might feel okay about taking the author’s word for jennifer’s state of mind. But if you read it ironically, you might be surprised when you hit upon the word “angry”. Depending on the sentence, you might even have to go back an reread.
Now take this sentence:
Jennifer stormed into the room. “She must be out of her mind,” she hollered. She slammed her schoolbag on the table and turned on the TV.
Okay so it’s not the most elegant prose you’ve ever read, but the author didn’t come out and say that Jennifer was mad, yet you got the idea. Why? Cause you could see Jennifer “storming” into the room and “hollering” and “slamming her bag” those are all signs of anger. The reader can play it out in his mind and figure out that Jennifer must be mad. You haven’t “told” the reader what to feel; you’ve let him experience it firsthand.
The same strategy can be used in teaching. It’s the fundamental difference of being told how things work and seeing how things work. Especially in topics in the sciences, since we have real world examples of how things work, firsthand knowledge can’t measure up to a few lines in a textbook. No matter how many times I tell you that a chemical solution is very acidic, as soon as you dip the litmus strip into it and it turns red, it will carve a place in your memory. And it’s important that you dipped the strip and not me. You figure it out all by yourself. You deduce. You conclude.
Same idea applies to basic math, instead of saying two plus two equals four, why not line up two balls and then add two more and ask the student count? This way it’s not as if you’re divine and just imparting knowledge, but you’re showing people how they can derive their own, correct, conclusions. I think that we tend to remember firsthand experiences much more vividly than information we’re told.
Maybe it’s cause we don’t inherently like to take other people’s word for things. Humans always observe the world around them. It’s in our nature. And maybe in the processes of letting the students or readers come to their own conclusions, you elevate them to the same level as yourself. You show them that they’re intelligent enough to figure it out.
In the end don’t we all like to be treated as equals?
Previously? The Obvious.
Can you light a bulb with a battery and a wire?
Really? How?
It’s amazing how little attention we pay to things that are part of our day to day experience. We often focus on the task at hand and pay little attention to the peripherals in our world.
For example, let’s take this question: “If you wanted to see more of yourself in a mirror, do you move backwards of forward?”
Go ahead, think, I’ll be here.
You thought it through? You sure? What’s the answer?
Nope. It’s not “you have to move back.”
The fact is no matter how far back you move, you still see the same amount of yourself in the mirror. Trust me, you can test it out.
Isn’t it amazing that we use mirrors every single day, but we never really notice that? When we look in the mirror, we’re busy concentrating on our task: brushing our teeth, combing our hair, etc. But we don’t wonder much about how the mirror works.
Mostly because we don’t have to. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it, right?
I think we could all benefit from looking harder at the world around us. Maybe I feel that way cause I’m surprised when a basic assumption I make turns out to be wrong. At the age of twenty-six, I believe I should know about fundamentals of how the world works or at least how things I interact with on a daily basis work. I don’t mean that you should know how each chip of a computer works, but how does electricity work, or mirrors, or cameras. Those are pretty fundamental.
Here’s another question for you: if by some way we were able to create a room that was completely dark, could you see an apple that was in that room? What about after ten minutes?
Let me know what you think, you might be amazed at the answer.
Most of us take these fundamentals for granted. Most of us are never taught these core functions well. Most of us never had to light a bulb with a battery and wire or sit in a completely dark room. Most of us never cared to look at a mirror just to see how the reflection is affected by the change in the distance of the source. Most of us either don’t care or work off of some, and often incorrect, assumptions.
Buy maybe you’re much more observant than I am and have learned all the basics. In that case I look up to you and think you’re amazing.
Because you’ve conquered the ideal of looking beyond the obvious.
Previously? Categorical Imperative.
The night before her philosophy paper was due, my college roommate swallowed the two Vivarins that came in her Freshman box.
In our first week in college, we each got a box with the ‘essentials’. A small box of shaving cream, a razor, a pack of advil, tampons, tooth paste and a toothbrush, deodorant and a pack of Vivarin. Two years later when I became a Resident Assistant, I tried to get the Vivarins removed from the package but I lost. Well, that’s another story for another time.
My roommate ended up pulling an all-nighter but her brain was completely asleep yet the chemicals wouldn’t let her body cooperate. So she couldn’t write her paper and she got no sleep. The next morning, she felt like shit. And she still had a paper to write.
My first all-nighter was to guard the fence. At CMU, we have a tiny fence that’s outside one of the main buildings. Much of the campus-event advertising is done through painting this fence. The rules are that you need to guard it all night, before you can paint it. So my organization got a tent and we spent the night by the fence. A perfect college experience.
All-nighters are exactly what college is about.
Thanks to a full load of classes, real good friends, several jobs, and unquenchable energy, I spent many all-nighters in my four years. To be fully honest, most of them had nothing to do with homework. I was having too much fun, I enjoyed being around the people and sleep seemed to be a waste of time.
Since graduation, I have pulled one, a single, all-nighter. It was during my very first year in New York, when I was chatting with friends on the computer and working on my 3-D trumpet. I modeled and rendered it all that night. I’d been working on it on and off for a long time but I kept getting it wrong. The energy I got at three in the morning and the excitement of talking to my friend, allowed me the concentration to actually get it right.
I can’t seem to stay up all night any more. By the time my watch says eleven, my eyelids are heavy and I struggle to make it to bed. It might have something to do with getting up at seven, or that I’m six years older now, but I think it’s just that I’m lacking the environment.
The enticing setting.
I miss school. I miss the friendship, the chatting about everything, even the work. But most of all, I miss the all-nighters. The wee hours when your body is tired but getting its second wind. When you’re giddy and laugh at everything. When you don’t care that you’ll be dead tired tomorrow.
When you just do it cause it’s fun.
Do you remember your first all-nighter?
Previously? Reality.
There are many theories of reality.
Some people say that reality doesn’t exist unless someone’s there to observe it. Others claim that there is a fundamental reality regardless of its observers. The age old question of “If a tree falls in the forest and no one’s there to see it, does it make a sound?”
About three years ago, I started writing thanks to a web site that offered a free writing course. As time passed I got more and more involved in this site and became a part of it. So much so that I wrote for their monthly e-zine and wrote one of their classes a year and a half down the road. I even went down to Virginia to meet some of my fellow classmates and the brains behind the site. The site was part of my daily routine, I made friends who changed my life.
A year ago, I decided to take a break and stop writing there altogether. I wanted to take a local class on writing and get some face-to-face feedback. I told everyone I was taking a break and literally cut myself off. A few months later, at the end of my NYU course, I injured my back and stopped writing completely. Each time I thought of my novel, I’d get depressed and try to put it out of my mind.
This week, I finally decided that unless I got back to the site, I am never going to finish my novel. And the characters refuse to leave me alone. Plots attack me out of nowhere and I keep hearing dialogue. So I logged back onto the site and started surfing around.
The thing that surprised me the most was how little things had changed. I don’t mean the site hadn’t improved; they offered more and better classes now and they had many more members. But most of the old-timers were still around, still writing their novels, albeit they’re much further along. I just felt like I’d never been away.
It was so eerie.
I just thought it odd that when I was incredibly involved in this community and then I removed myself, for some reason it was as if the community disintegrated. But of course it hadn’t. When you quit your job and come back to visit a few months down the road, you can often see that things are pretty much the same way they were before you left. Similarly, just because you stop reading a website, the poster doesn’t stop writing it. It only feels to you as if the world stopped cause you’re not observing anymore.
It made me realize how insignificant one person is in the grand scheme of things and how, thankfully, the world goes on.
With or without you.
Previously? Intimate Stranger.
Forever didn’t use to be a scary thought to me.
I was the sort of person who made long-term decisions and stuck to them. I decided to come to the United States for college at the age of twelve. I chose computers as my main field at seven. Those goals never changed. I came here; I studied information systems. I got a programming job.
The same pattern applied to my relationships. I hung on regardless of how bad situations got. An abusive boyfriend. A cruel best friend. But I was in it for the long run, I knew how to stick around. I didn’t do things on a whim.
I was Ms. Consistent.
Deep down, I always resented myself for not being daring or impromptu enough. I secretly wished to do something crazy, like get a tattoo or pierce my tongue. But I never had the courage.
Today, I was chatting with Daphna about how I don’t like tattoo’s anymore and it got me thinking. Why had I changed my mind?
And I realized that getting a tattoo wasn’t necessarily an out-of-character thing for a person like me. Whether the receiver is aware of it at the time or not, a tattoo is a permanent commitment. It’s quite difficult to remove and even then leaves a scar. It’s not temporary.
It seems I’ve decided to put permanence on hold for a while.
Temporary sounds more attractive for now. Not temporary in the sense of “this week” but temporary in the sense of “it’s okay if you change your mind ten years down the road.” I want to try different things. Do something that I’m passionate about. Shake my beliefs up. Shake my life up. Not worry about doing something that wasn’t ‘part of the plan.’
I want to fall and get up. Just to see that I can. Just to see that there’s nothing to be scared of. I want to conquer surviving within a world of unknown and handle situations as they come my way. I want to stop anticipating potential problems and worrying about them. I want to stop putting myself on a path. I want to climb trees instead and figure out what branch to jump to at the end of each one.
At least just for a little while.
So I don’t secretly wish for a piercing anymore. Instead, I’ll have temporary tattoos, henna, jewelry and beads.
But no tattoos.
Previously? Body Image.
I think there’s a skewed opinion of body image in the world.
Well, at least in most of the cultures in which I’ve lived.
Many women try to change their body structure to fit the range of what’s ‘desirable to a man’. Most of the women I’ve talked to who are struggling with their weight or self image seem to link it to being wanted. If I’m pretty, men will get attracted to me more, and then I can find someone to like me. It might sound convoluted and desperate to some people, but I’ve heard this concern multiple times.
Putting the issue of whether you need someone else in your life to feel good about yourself aside, the notion of getting thin to please men doesn’t really work, in my opinion.
From what I’ve experienced, the ones that judge women’s bodies are other women. Most men I’ve met are not really affected by weight as much as women think they are. Some like thinner, some like fuller but none of them notice the extra five pounds you gained last week. At least not the men who are worth having.
Women, however, size you up and down and can tell if the skirt you wore yesterday is a tiny bit tight, if you’re bloated from your period, if the shoes you’re wearing are scuffed. Women scrutinize other women. It’s as if they find you to be a constant threat and therefore need to find fault. Not only do they analyze you to bits, but then they call up your mutual friends and share.
Of course I’m generalizing. Of course it’s not true for every woman. Some women are wonderful and kind and caring and don’t spend any time feeling good about other women’s weaknesses. But, in my experience, women notice other women’s body structures and criticize them a lot more than men do.
Most of the women’s magazines give tips on losing weight and looking thin. They promote thinness simply by plastering their magazines with thin people. They don’t come out and tell you that it’s bad to be above a size 4 but they imply, coax and leave subtle hints.
In my opinion, many of today’s eating and self-image issues are caused by the women in our lives. The magazines, the movie stars, the family members, siblings, and many others.
So if we want to address these problems, I think we should really start looking within our gender.
Previously? Web People.
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projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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