One of the biggest disadvantages of being successful, or having a smooth life is the strong fear of failure that plants its seed in one’s mind.
It might sound cocky to say that I’ve had an easy life, but I’ve been blessed and I’ve tried hard not to take it for granted. I’ve always been a good student, worked hard to make sure my parents’ money wasn’t being wasted on me. I rarely skipped class, and tried to apply myself well. After graduation, I took the right job and have been working in the same firm for almost five years, now. About eight months ago, I decided to work part time so I can volunteer more and take some classes. Even now, I don’t spend a moment being lazy. I am taking eight classes and volunteer five hours a week. I consider my life wonderful and I try hard to appreciate my luck.
One of the things I noticed lately, though, is that I’m scared to take a risk. Even though the idea of dropping it all and living in Italy for a year excites me to no end, I fear I have too much to lose. The voices in my head ask what would happen if I can’t find a job upon my return. I want to try to work from home, or for myself, but I worry about not being able to make it. I spend hours constructing scenarios of what can go wrong. And I’m so busy worrying that I don’t even try.
Sometimes one has to fail to learn that failure is not to be feared. Sometimes the best way to understand that losing your job is not the end of the world is by being fired. Going through hard times and bouncing back shows you that you’re strong and that you will find a way to survive. Humans are much stronger than they appear.
The only way I’m going to know that dropping everything and moving to Rome is a good idea is if I do it. It might even turn out to be a bad idea, but just about anything is a good life experience. True, some lessons aren’t worth their consequences but those are few and far between compared to the ones that are. Each new job, each new risk makes you stronger and shows you your capacity.
Therefore, staying at a job cause I’m scared I might not be able to find another is a bad idea. Just like staying with a boyfriend cause I’m too scared I might never meet a new person is a stupid idea.
So, I’ve decided to make some changes. Some drastic ones and some not so drastic ones. The best time to take risks is when there are fewer people being affected by my decisions. When I have a family, it’ll be harder to pick up and move to another country. I have a few more years before then and I plan to make the most of that time.
Life is about to get exciting.
Previously? Games.
I remember a Brown alumnus, in Turkey, who asked me the following question in an interview. “Would you rather have fame or fortune?” I seem to recall the original question having three options, but for the life of me, I can’t remember the third, which is real weird since that’s the option I’d chosen. (The even weirder fact is that I never applied to Brown University so obviously it must have been a different school’s alumnus, but my memory insists it was Brown.)
If I were asked the same question today, I think I’d answer differently. At the time both fame and fortune seemed beside the point. I told her that I’d just like to be really good at my job. I would want to be respected in my field. Her question implied an excess and I don’t need too much of either.
Not to say there aren’t benefits to being famous. People give you things (mostly so you’d promote it for them) for free and they’ll do anything to be associated with you. That’s one of the reasons most charities try to have a celebrity talk about their cause. But there are too many downsides to being famous. Too many people think they know you. You never have a personal life. Not that I would really know, but that’s what my imagination assumes, at least.
I’ve never been famous. Not even for fifteen minutes. But I have been put on a pedestal by different people in my life. And I don’t like it. When someone thinks you’re so wonderful and amazing, all you can do is disappoint that person. We’re all human. We make mistakes. We hurt people. We have faults. Most of us have disgusting habits. Many of us suffer from self-doubt. We don’t always say the right thing. We don’t always do the right thing.
So when we’re placed on a mantle, we’re bound to fall down. As we never belonged there initially.
That’s not to say that some people don’t have amazing talents. There are many people on and off the web that I admire madly. I respect their talent, especially of the humble ones. When someone’s really cocky, it’s harder to look up to that person. There are many areas where I wish I were as good as these people. When I read an amazing book, see a great design, an awe-inspiring piece of art, and a really clear and intelligent piece of code. All of these inspire me. I feel thankful that such people live and make our world a better place. I strive to learn from them. But I don’t forget that they, too, are human.
The problem with the pedestal is that it distorts reality. So when the person makes a mistake, as humans are bound to, his or her admirer starts hating him. How dare the great designer make an ordinary-looking page? How dare he not respond to my email? Who does he think he is? All this anger coming from the fact that you set the person up to a set of standards that he was bound to not meet.
I often see the same thing in relationships. One partner totally blinded by the other one. He can do no wrong. Until he does, of course, mess up and the entire relationship is destroyed. If you start up so high, there’s nowhere to go but down.
So I’d still prefer not to have fame. Fortune, however, is welcome at my house anytime.
Previously? Opera.
My friends, Natalia and Akshat, and I went to the opera tonight.
Natalia goes to the opera pretty much every other week and this was Akshat’s first time. While I’m nowhere near Natalia’s extreme, I’ve seen quite a few operas. As we sat in at the Metropolitan, Akshat asked about the average age of operagoers.
In my experience, the average age of opera viewers is in the forties. We tried to delve into the reasons of the lack of interest in younger people and we came up with some theories. The first issue that sprang to my mind is the cost. Good seats at the Met can go upwards of 150dollars. Natalia, rightfully, noted that our seats were a mere 25 dollars. Which might not sound high compared to the 150dollar Orchestra tickets, but 25 bucks is still quite a lot of money for some people.
Even if the opera were free, I still don’t think it would be popular among teenagers. I’m not exactly sure why. I can think of a few possibilities, but nothing that I can put eloquently enough to say (as opposed to my regular level of eloquence here). If we were to start stereotyping enough to say teenagers don’t like opera, we could also say the same thing about men. Most shots of men at the opera imagine the wife crying and the husband trying not to snore too loudly.
Obviously those are just stereotypes. But even stereotypes exist for a reason.
Almost every single opera has a ridiculously tragic and predictable plot. Here’s a run down of tonight’s plot: Gypsy puts a spell on man who has her killed because of it. Gypsy’s daughter wants revenge and grabs one of the sons of the man to burn him at the fire the gypsy was burned at. The daughter makes a mistake and burns her own son and so she keeps the other one and brings him up as if he were her own. The man has another son who grows up thinking his brother is dead. The other son is in love with this woman who, of course, falls in love with the brother. The man finds out about the woman loving the brother and after a lot of hoopla, the woman they were in love with drinks poison to sacrifice herself. So the son kills the brother and then the gypsy’s daughter tells him that the man he just killed was his brother. Tragedies galore. (the met’s synopsis in case mine left you extremely confused.)
So I can’t imagine anyone watches an opera for the enticing story, and from the seats we had the set is almost invisible. People look no bigger than ants. The only thing left is the music.
I’m not sure why others love or hate the opera, all I know is that I love it. I always have. The music pierces through my soul. I apologize if it sounds cheesy, but it really does. I feel totally engulfed and overwhelmed by it.
To me, opera is magic.
Previously? Motivations.
In my house, we had no unexplained rules. My parents often had decent reasons for the household rules and any new ones had to be justified. It might seem condescending to imply that my parents had to back up their decisions but I believe their behavior instilled very sound seed in my and my sister’s personalities.
I’ve always tried to have sound reasons for my actions. More importantly, I’ve always paid attention to the reasons behind my actions. Before I did something, I’d think about why I wanted to do it. As an overly emotional person, I know it’s extra crucial for me to make sure I stop and think before I act or decide.
But this is not about whether I think before I do or not. It’s more about for whom I do it.
I’ve met many people who make decisions based on other people’s criteria. People who choose careers because of popular demand. People who wear a certain type of clothing cause their crowd thinks highly of them. People who decide to lose weight cause someone makes a comment. People who move to another part of the world to follow a person they love. People who change their personality to fit in better.
I’m sure most of us are guilty of one kind of such decision making at one point in out lives. Fitting in is such an integral part of living in a society.
Having said that, I also hope that we all grow up and figure out our mistakes. The fact is doing something for others is never a good idea. In some cases it’s a blaming disaster waiting to happen, in others, it’s even worse.
I have friends who have chosen their college majors on what their families decided for them. They finish college and a few years later, they finally face the fact that they never wanted to do this in the first place. Now at a minimum four years of life has been lived satisfying their parents’ wishes, possibly even more. These people consistently have a hellish time trying to figure out what they want at that point, cause they never thought about it when other people were busy doing so.
In the cases where people follow a loved one around the world or change weight/hair/clothing for others, all it does is mask the actual issue. And by the time, the person realizes what’s going on, it becomes the other party’s fault, ruining the entire relationship.
You should do things for yourself. Pick a career you know would make you happy. Or meet your goals whatever they might be. Lose weight cause you are ready to and you want to. Change your hair color cause you want to try something else, not cause your friend said you’d look better blonde. This way not only will you think about your actions more, but you’ll be secure with your decisions.
And you’ll have no one to blame.
Oh, and, hi Ryan! =)
Previously? Nice People.
I hate nice people.
Is hate too strong a word? Ok, let me try again.
Nice people make my skin crawl.
People aren’t nice by nature. We all have good sides and bad sides. If you ever meet people who claim they’ve never harbored negative thoughts, I guarantee you that they’re lying. Or even worse, they might be fooling themselves.
I am in the process of dealing with someone who is nice. He is so nice that he never challenges anything. He won’t give his opinion on the matter discussed. He sits on the corner and nods. When asked if he agrees he will utter “we’ll see.”
I hear those little words and my brain translates them to, “I know it’s a stupid idea but I’ll wait until you fail so I can rub it in your face.” Which, of course, drives me absolute bananas. This way, he never says anything so his ideas can’t be wrong and those of us who put ourselves out there by presenting our thoughts are open for criticism. And he never said anything, so he is not mean or difficult.
And I feel bad talking to him cause what am I to say? He didn’t bash the idea. If I ask him to express an opinion, he says, “I will when I have a strong one.” So I feel like yelling, but I bite my lips. What has he done wrong?
Nice people force you to become mean. Since decisions have to be made, the complacent person forces the other person to dominate. You are the one who has to resolve matters. It might sound like it’s fun to make all the decisions but trust me, it gets old.
Being so utterly nice is a copout. It’s making sure that others decide for you. That others take the risks and possibly face the consequences. It also means that the complacent person is suppressing the negative thoughts, which often come out in forms of major lashing out. Even if it doesn’t, it still annoys the crap out of everyone else.
Even before I met this person, I used to hate nice people. It’s so incredibly fake to be so very fucking nice. I’m not saying don’t be considerate. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being understanding, courteous, and kind. But there are times when you need to say your opinions. Times where you disagree. It’s human to have your own thoughts and feelings.
Have a spine for God’s sake!
Previously? People We Choose.
At a quick glance, the men I’ve been with have nothing in common.
People say who you hang out with says a lot about who you are. In that case, I assume whom you date says even more. As opposed to our family, we choose our friends and significant others.
Including Jake, I’ve had four men in my life. Each had different heights and weights, with different colored hair and eyes. Different economic and religious backgrounds. Different family structures. Different levels of intelligence and motivation.
There are commonalities. Three of them had colored eyes and wore glasses. Three of them were scrawny and tall. Not that these things matter. Their personalities were each completely different. Most people who’ve met all four are quite confused at my lack of consistency.
But not me.
When I think of these men, I can tell exactly why all three were able to capture my heart.
They made me laugh.
I’m not sure why other people choose partners, but I tend to pick people that I think complement me. I look for happy men who will push me to try different things. I pick men who are more comfortable in their skin. I figure if I choose someone exactly like me, not only would it be no fun, but I wouldn’t be able to grow.
The men in my life have all introduced new worlds to me. They made me see issues from a totally opposite perspective. They made (and continue to make, in Jake’s case) life delightfully interesting.
When I choose friends, I tend to do a little bit of both. I have really close friends who have a similar background, value structure and family life to me. I also have friends who challenge my thought process, my beliefs, my lifestyle and my choices. If I surround myself only with people who agree with me, I don’t believe I’d realize my mistakes as quickly. But all my friends have the same sense of loyalty to friendship as I do.
I think the people we choose to be with does say a lot about who we are and who we strive to be and with whom we are willing to associate.
Look at your life. Are all your friends the same? Why did you pick the people in you life? What do they have in common?
It’s always good to know.
Previously? At the Movies.
And April has come.
Have you been reading my daily tidbits?
Have you noticed the weekly pencam shots?
Just making sure.
Every now and then a movie comes and it totally blows your mind. I am so glad that I dragged Jake to see Memento. Even though I knew the subject matter to be disturbing, I’ve been dying to see this film ever since I heard about it. Not to mention the amazingly fascinating site.
Memento is a rare example of a movie which combines an interesting plot with artistic shots. It forces the audience to interact with the movie in a similar manner as the movie’s main character. It pulls you in, keeps you attached and has you trying to put the pieces together the entire time. Just when you know who’s good and who’s evil, you find out you’re wrong. Just when you think you understand what happened, you find out you’re wrong. And you leave the movie more confused than you began.
I hate movies that don’t end. When the plot is not resolved, I leave the theater with an empty feeling. I get aggravated like I was cheated. Memento left me with a million questions. I still don’t know what was fact and what fiction. And the most important part of the movie didn’t get resolved. Yet the minute the credits started rolling, I smiled. I loved the ending. I loved it cause the plot didn’t really matter. The experience did.
I’m so glad such movies are made.
Especially when they also make incredibly moronic ones such as this. Argh.
Previously? Celebration.
Isabella Rosselini has a new perfume. As I watched the program where she was talking about the process of making this perfume a reality, she said that her logo for the perfume was that it should be a scent representing not this mystical thing that we strive to be but who we really are.
Which, of course, made me think.
There is an entire set of products whose job is to make us look and feel better. Perfume and makeup are easy to recognize members of such a club. Most of their function is in distorting reality. In hiding the blemishes and highlighting the strengths.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
For all intensive purposes, striving to be better is wonderful. It gives you drive, motivation and direction. Nothing wrong with a healthy dose of self-competition.
Healthy being the operative word.
I think these industries have gone so overboard that we feel ugly without make-up. We feel obligated to buy seventeen skin products to look decent. There’s nothing wrong with trying to accentuate the positive and go the extra mile on special occasions. As long as they don’t distort our idea of who we are.
I know many people who won’t even buy milk without putting makeup on, or wearing heels. Argh. Looking spiffy is nice, but who you are is so much more than that and why do you really have to be this “mystical entity” all the time?
I like the idea of celebrating who we are. Putting light makeup, dressing comfortably, being happier in your own skin. I wish more of us did that. We’re so busy being fed the person we have the potential to be, that we never enjoy being the person we already are.
It’s like people who live for the freedom they’ll have once they’re retired but their entire life is torture until that moment. We live in a society where plastic surgery and diet programs thrive. One where size 2 is the norm and one where normal-looking people are never good enough. Images get doctored, blemishes covered. Views are skewed.
What’s so bad about just being you?
Previously? Trust.
I tend to make friends easily.
Well, maybe not friends but acquaintances. For the most part, I’m outgoing and it’s easy to hold conversations with me. So at a party, I mingle well and make many acquaintances. I’m also often spread thin so I know many people from different situations/commitments. During college, I knew just about anyone in my year and the two years above and below me.
Becoming my friend, however, is a complicated and time-consuming task. Probably as a result of my past, I take a real long time to truly trust a person.
Having said that, once someone becomes my friend, it’s pretty much a done deal for life. I try to always to my best to be there for my friends and make sure that they always feel comfortable coming to me for anything. I’m not trying to boast, I believe that’s what friendship is all about, so I’m no more special than the next person.
So what do I do when a friend hurts me? How much do I forgive? How far is too far?
Such questions occupy my mind at times. Some people would say that you should always forgive accidental malice and others would say friends should know better. I would assume the ranges of unacceptable behavior would change from person to person. I have my own list. What’s on yours?
I’ve lost friends from not having kept in touch. I’ve lost friends from our priorities and routes having split. I’ve lost friends due to large distances that came between us. But all of those are temporary losses. As soon as our paths cross once more, it will be like we never parted.
The ones who’ve hurt me will have a totally different fate. Over the years, I’ve learned to forgive, but I don’t think I will ever learn to forget. I never forget my own fuck-ups, why should I forget others’? To be totally honest, even though I forgive my friends things never really are the same.
That’s the problem with trust, once it’s broken it’s not truly replaceable.
If you break a vase and then glue it back together, you can still see the break marks. As much as both parties might try to ignore them, if we were all being honest, we’d have to admit that you can’t go back.
So don’t fuck with other people’s trust.
Previously? And the Chicks for Free.
Each time I go to another “for women” meeting, I get more and more disappointed in members of my gender.
As a way of celebrating Women’s History Month (which pisses me off in so many ways that I won’t go into it) my firm organized a session on women and money. I ran to the session twenty minutes late cause I had a meeting, so I can’t vouch for the first part of the meeting. But the second part gave me enough frustration to last a few weeks. It also confirmed my suspicions that I must not be female.
The first thing the presenter does is ask people what their parents taught them about money. Several hands go up. Women say: “My dad told me never to pay on a date.”, “My mom used to sing ‘Daddy’s coming home, he’ll give us all his money.'”, “My mom told me to marry rich.”, and this went on and on.
Holy Fucking Shit! Is this the 21st century or not? Every single woman in this room is working at quite a prestigious firm, so we’re not talking people who went to college to find a husband. Or why would they be working?
My mom never graduated high school. My father never finished college. Both have worked pretty much every single day I’ve been alive. Neither ever told me to make the man pay or that I’d never be able to make money on my own. I don’t mean to imply that my parents never disagreed about money. They fought all the time, even though we were fortunate enough to have enough to go around.
My father used to hate the enormous phone bills so much that when my sister and I were teenagers, he had machines installed on the phone lines to cut us off after three minutes (cost multiplies in Turkey every three minutes so the longer you’re on the phone, the more you pay). It wasn’t that we didn’t have the money to pay; he just got irritated by how much we took advantage of the situation. Most money related issues were handled similarly. If we really wanted something we got it but not if it was merely caprice. For some reason, I don’t think that either my sister or I never took anything for granted. We never assumed that all we wanted could be ours. Even now, we’re more likely to not buy something than go crazy with shopping.
So I don’t know whether my parental education on issues of money was any healthier than other people’s but I was never ever told that I would need a man to provide the cash in my life.
The presenter says that a large population of women fear being a “bag lady”. Huh? She claims this is a common fear in wealthy, professional women. Huh? Maybe I’m snotty, but I have never ever had that fear. Or anything equivalent. Is that cause I’m fortunate enough to have a family who’s financially secure? Nope. I know better than to assume that money today has any guarantees. My parents could get sick and that money would disappear literally within days due to doctors’ fees. They could make bad investments. There are a million things that could go wrong. I could even lose my own savings overnight and be forced to start from scratch.
So what? Don’t I still have a brain? Even if all technology jobs dried up and I couldn’t get something in my field, I could learn a new skill. How is it that women question their capacity to mold to different situations? And don’t even get me started on the presenter’s opinion on women and math. I’m so sick of women becoming victims and I’m even sicker of women who victimize themselves.
I have many fears, but the ability to make money has never been one of them. It seems that makes me a minority in my gender.
What a shame.
Previously? Unspoken.
It’s pouring outside. When we were little, my sister would say that rain is God crying. During earthquakes, she’d say it’s the devils fighting down below. Quite funny, cause we were never ever a religious family.
I don’t like rain. Over the years, I’ve observed that people either love it or hate it. Rain always depresses me. It makes me think of mud. In the non-paved streets of Istanbul, rain doesn’t cause a pretty mixture. Maybe it’s due to my having lived in big cities all my life, but rain is people rushing home, subways overflowing, and the unbearable traffic
I could imagine a beautiful house with large glass panes, facing the ocean, by the beach. In that case and assuming I don’t work or that I work from home, rain might not conjure up such bad emotions. If I lived by some trees, I might like that, too. I love the smell of wet trees.
I suppose the other factor would be the temperature. If it were raining but warm, like in Florida, I could go out in the rain in my shorts and twirl around. I might even do cartwheels. In Turkey, during the summer, we get short, fast showers. I remember many times where I’d be walking at Burgaz from my house to the club as I got caught in one of them and I’d get soaked. And then, just as quickly as it started, it would all be over and the sun would cover the sky, the last few drops decorating it with rainbows. It never bummed me out then, I just jumped in the sea with my clothes on.
I guess it’s closely related to my frame of mind. In the ideal setting, with no work to do, rain is delightful, but in New York, during lunch or the commute home, it’s a pain.
I’m definitely ready for spring.
Previously? Silence.
Today was the last day of my sign language class. The classes at my school go until level eight and I just finished level seven.
At this high level, most of the grammar and basic concepts are long covered. We spend the class time on vocabulary and deaf culture. One of the reasons sign language vocabulary is harder to learn than most other languages is cause it has only one-way lookup. A dictionary can only tell you the sign for a specific word. If you watch two people signing, you can’t take note of the sign one made and look it up in the dictionary. The only way to learn the meaning of that sign is by asking that deaf person. If you make a note of the sign and ask another deaf person, you’re likely to have missed a subtlety of the sign or the context, which would change the potential meaning of the sign immensely.
Even more frustrating than acquiring vocabulary is understanding deaf culture. There are so many aspects to a hearing person’s life that we take for granted. One of the discussions we had last week in class was about a deaf person going to the emergency room. Imagine your friend bleeding and you’re both deaf and you need help. Trust me when I say that it’s overwhelmingly frustrating. Or imagine being mugged and you approach a police officer. The possibility of getting immediate help is completely nonexistent for deaf people in a hearing world.
My firm hired its first deaf employee a few weeks ago. She is a network specialist. When you enter my firm, there is a four-month training program that is organized to prepare you for your job. After she was given interpreters, the girl insisted that she needed note-takers as well. I know that, initially, the coordinator thought that the girl was being picky and greedy. The fact is we take for granted that we hear with our ears and write using our eyes. We don’t need to look at something to be able to write it down. Deaf people hear with their eyes. If she’s watching the interpreter, she can’t take notes. Any second she takes her eye off the interpreter to write, she’ll be missing words.
Tonight, our teacher took my class to a restaurant after class. She told us that we’re not allowed to speak, so we can have a better understanding of what the world is for her, as she’s deaf. The six of us walked into the restaurant, signing and laughing and we were lucky to have a waitress who had a deaf mother so even though she knew Polish Sign Language, she knew enough to help us out.
The little trip made me realize more and more about what I take for granted. Sitting there, I knew that at any moment, I could speak if I got frustrated enough. I could explain what I really wanted to say with one word. Instead of having to use paper or mime. No matter how hard I try, I will never truly be able to live in the shoes of a deaf person, cause deep down I’ll always know that I have the choice to opt out while real deaf people don’t.
Previously? Intentions and Expectations.
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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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