The last two months have consisted of hard work, a collection of trips to the bathroom to pee or to puke, and napping every free moment I found. Now that we’ve passed the first trimester and our baby’s results came clean, I am looking forward to writing all about this journey here. I apologize for having been gone for too long and hope to make up for it in the coming days. Thank you for sticking around.
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The last few days have been a bit better and I’m waking up around 4-5am instead of 1-2am now and I think things are going to get better soon (they’d better…) and I am hoping to take some photos very soon. I still haven’t even finished going through my photos from Turkey so I have a lot of work ahead of me. I just wanted to thank everyone who keeps coming back even though I haven’t updated or said a word in a while. We’ll be back to our regular site updates really soon. I promise. Thank You.
“Oooh, ” I said, “Who’s your best friend?” He told me a name I never heard before. “I don’t know him.” “Will you introduce me to him?” “Yes, I will,” he exclaimed and then put my sister back on. Then the first one had more to tell. And then so did the other one. I could tell they are just as excited as I am that we will be seeing each other very soon. It almost makes the twenty-two hour flight worthwhile. Ps: I will be gone for a little over a week and will try to post photos from Fethiye, Turkey.
One of the first people I met in Pittsburgh was Jon, who walked up to me while I was opening a bank account with my father and gave me his phone number. I remember being baffled by his repetition of the word ‘cool’ during our conversation. Cool meant between cold and hot, to me; I had no idea of its other, more colloquial usage. People used to often ask me where I came from during Freshman year. I remember when my friend Laura and I noticed that my accent disappeared if I sang. We didn’t know why but it happened each time. Somewhere along the line almost all of my accent did evaporate but I have no idea why or how. Most of the Freshmen at my school had a dining plan that confined them to one cafeteria, Highlander, for all meals. You could have unlimited food but it had to be from Highlander. I don’t need to tell you how the food tasted. It appears there was a long-standing tradition with the Highlander trays: people claimed the trays for their own purposes. Each time we ate a meal, we’d real aloud our tray’s owners. “Tray of the Itchy Freshman,” “Tray of Late Night Phonecall.” During our many trips to the cafeteria we’d laugh at the variety we’d seen. A few months into the school year, I got “The Tray of Constipation.” I was with my friend Laura and her friend Matt. I asked Laura what constipation meant. From the look of embarrassment on her face, I thought it might be something sexual so I added “You don’t have to show me, just tell me,” which made her laugh out loud. She tried to get Matt to explain it to me but he refused. Finally, she made the face that clarified everything. Looking back, it seems funny that I didn’t know the definition of constipation twelve years ago. My accent has since then disappeared and my vocabulary and grammar knowledge have grown exponentially. I don’t know how and when the changes came about but remembering “The Tray of Constipation” always makes me laugh and realize how far I’ve come in this country.
Last week started really awfully. Monday night I found myself in an exceptionally bad mood, not motivated to do anything at all. I was angry at myself more than anyone else. I hated the fact that I put so many restrictions on my life. The number of diet cokes I was allowed to drink in a day, the list of foods I had to give up. The books I had to read, the chores I had to complete; they were all swallowing me up. I had no desire to do any of them and yet I made lists on Monday and Tuesday morning as if they were going to get done. After another lousy day on Tuesday, I decided to take the rest of the week off. In Jean Little’s wonderful words I decided I needed a rest. From myself. I spent the rest of the week eating out, ejoying my meals, drinking soda, walking around, taking photos, read when I felt like it and not when I didn’t. I worked as always, but I spent my free time guiltless. I didn’t even make lists. I didn’t keep track of anything. By Wednesday night I was visibly happier. Even my yoga teacher noticed the change. I had a bounce in my step and a different tone in my voice. You might think I am exaggerating, but I’m really not. The rest of the week was wonderful and I still got a considerable amount done. With the exception of two slices of chocolate cake and a few extra diet cokes I didn’t overdo anything. But I was allowed to. I gave myself permission to mess up, to overdo, to be lazy, to be irresponsible. Permission to not live up to my potential. And that made all the difference.
The rule is simple: You’re not allowed to act on a reaction within twenty-four hours of a piece of news. This generally applies to what we consider upsetting, frustrating, or other negative events. For example, let’s say your boss is being a complete jerk and pulls you into his office and lets you have it. Your first instinct might be to say “I don’t need this,” and quit on the spot. No one needs to be treated with disrespect and your boss is definitely wrong, regardless of the context. However, this doesn’t mean giving him the finger and walking out is the best reaction to that situation. Maybe it is, maybe it’s not. It’s not certain. What is certain is that in that moment, your emotions control you more than your logic does. While I’m generally in favor of making decisions with the help of our emotions, I think it’s not a good idea to make them solely based on emotions (this is probably even more true for me than it is for normal, less-emotional, people). In that moment of raging anger or huge humiliation, we tend to see dark and make harsh decisions, utter regrettable words. Jake and I decided that if we wait twenty-four hours, it gives us enough time to cool off. We’re still emotional after a day but we’re not so emotional that we can’t involve logic in the decision-making. This way, we might explore other options like moving departments or even changing managers instead of walking away. We still have the option of coming in the next day and giving the boss the finger and quitting, of course. That option doesn’t go away. The twenty-four hour rule seems to only add choices. We now apply it all the time. A problem at work? Wait a day and then resolve it (unless, of course there’s a major immediate repercussion and it needs to be handled immediately). Having a major disagreement with your loved one? Set up lunch for the next day to talk it over. Fighting with a friend? Call her in twenty-four hours. I am not advocating putting off a problem or burying it. I think it’s crucial to address issues and make sure they get resolved. I used to think it was crucial to resolve problems immediately. I don’t anymore. Now, I wait twenty-four hours.
I told myself that the rules were such that I wasn’t allowed to take body parts or personality traits and plug them into the rest of me. If I liked someone’s something, I had to completely change places with that person. Not only did I get their whole body, but I got all their personal issues, emotions, family, psychological state of mind, past, living status, job and anything else you can think of. I basically forced myself to choose between me and this random (or in some cases not so random) person. Yeah, I got to have their small nose or blue eyes, but was I ready to also have their eating disorder? How about the disinterested mom? Was I willing to give up all of who I am to look like this person? It was my way of forcing myself to face the fact that people don’t come in pieces. You want a part, you get the whole thing. How do you like them apples? In fifteen years, I’ve never met one person I was willing to change places with. I don’t know if it was the fact that I wasn’t willing to give up certain aspects of who I am of my life or the fact that I tend to favor the known over the unknown. Looking at a woman walking down the street, I can see she has pretty hair or a size-2 figure, but I can’t see what goes on in her head or how much she suffers daily. With me, at least I know what I’m getting. Or maybe I was finally growing to like myself. In a weird way, the game’s done a lot to improve my self-esteem.
I don’t think too often about having left Istanbul to live in the United States. I love Istanbul and I am proud to be Turkish but I always knew that I didn’t belong there. There were many variables which limited my life and choices extensively when I lived in Istanbul. While Pittsburgh wasn’t the easiest city to get used to after Istanbul, the college environment kept me busy and entertained. However, moving to New York fit like a glove. The pace of the city is very similar to Istanbul and I already knew many people from either Carnegie Mellon or Istanbul. Within weeks, I also made a group of friends from work. Everything in the city felt like second nature to me; I didn’t have to go through an adjustment period. The subway was extremely easy to navigate, even for a navigational moron like me. Finding like-minded people was never a problem and, thankfully, neither was money. Before the Teach For America insanity, I had arranged to reduce my Wall Street job a part-time arrangement for two years. I went to work Wednesday through Friday and volunteered on Mondays and Tuesdays. Betweeen the bookstore and NYSD I made friends outside the technical and financial industry. I took classes at NYU, the New School, and other smaller schools all over the city. At one point, I was taking eight classes, volunteering in four different places, and doing my regular job. That was the winter I got engaged and made Vice President. It was also the winter I decided to quit my job and do something more purposeful with my life. Thanks to those two years, I took full advantage of being in New York. I went to book readings, to the opera, to plays, to movies, to art shows, and many museums. I made new friends and walked all over the city. During the soul-wrenching months Jake and I fantasized about leaving the city. We were tired of the insane lifestyle we lived. We were both miserable at work. We had had a long, rainy, and dark winter. I wanted a house. At least a bigger apartment with a normal bathroom and a normal kitchen. I wanted to travel more and see the United States. I wanted babies. I wanted a yard. I didn’t even know what I wanted, I just wanted out of New York. I was tired. I was worn out. I was ready to move on to a different life. Try something else. Anything else. We were excited to leave New York. We paid a lot of money to get out of our lease. We had long goodbyes with friends. We packed up seven years of accumulated junk into 70+ boxes and moved it all to Boston. We bought a car and drove all around the country. We hadn’t taken a real vacation in seven years, besides the honeymoon. We took four months off. We drove from Boston to Florida, Florida to Atlanta, to New Orleans, through the Blue Ridge Parkway. We went to the Cayman Islands and went diving for the first time. We vacationed in the South of Turkey with my family to celebrate my dad’s sixtieth birthday. We came back to Boston and drove all over the midwest and the west coast for the next five weeks. We saw over thirty states. We had the best summer of my life. We picked the new city we were going to live in randomly from the map and came here and found an apartment and a job. We settled in. We officially had a new home. A new chapter in our lives. Everything should have been great. We did all that we wanted to and more. We were able to find a job to sustain the new life we wanted to start. We have a real kitchen and two real bathrooms. We have pools, hot tubs, movie theater, and gyms. Free cooking lessons. Free pilates and yoga. Life is much more relaxed and we live minutes from the most beautiful beaches in the country. Yet, I miss New York. Yet, it doesn’t feel like home here. I was really worried that five days in New York would make my homesickness so strong that I wouldn’t want to come back. And it did. For the first two days, all I could think of was moving back there. I loved the subway. I loved the streets. The people. The diversity. I simply belonged there. And then the weather turned bad. It poured and poured. I went down to my old job and visited some of my friends. I saw the life they live. I saw the sacrifices they make to earn the money they earn. I remembered the reasons I wanted to leave. I remembered the downsides of being in the city. Suddenly, my intense yearning to be back became more like a fondness for a place I love. A place that will forever be in my heart. A place I will return to time after time. A place that will forever feel like home. But a life I am no longer willing to live.
I recently discovered that I’ve taken over 11,500 pictures with my previous camera which I bought a little less than two years ago. That number doesn’t include the aiptek and casio shots. I don’t know if that’s a big number or average for someone who takes pictures. To me, it translates to a lot of time. If I assume a minute per picture, which is generous considering how long it takes for me to turn the camera on, to arrange the shot and to wait for the image to be written to the car, that number translates to 191 hours spent taking pictures in the last two years. This, in a timeframe, where major upheaval was going on and I didn’t even update my site nearly as regularly as I used to. To be fair, I also had a honeymoon and a cross-country trip both of which are major occasions for photography. But I am getting off topic. The point is, I spend enough time and take enough pictures that I think photography could definitely be considered a hobby. But then, I started thinking about other hobbies I have. I spend hours and hours writing, coding for, and putting book excerpts and photographs on this site that I think it easily qualifies as a hobby, especially since until this year, my job didn’t even have to do with web technologies. I spend at least ten to twenty hours a week reading books. Does that count as a hobby? Is reading a hobby? What about writing? Does the fact that I wrote parts of two novels and am working on a third make writing a hobby for me? What if I’ve also written over 25 short stories? But what if I’ve never been published? How about knitting? I’ve knit seven scarves and am in the process of making another one. I know that’s an easy one. Knitting is a hobby. Even though I spend ten to twenty hours doing it, I am clever enough to know watching TV doesn’t qualify as a hobby. That’s just wasting time. Which is why I try to couple it with one of the above. While I watch TV, I code my site, I type up an excerpt, I eat, I post my pictures, I reply to email. So we’ll skip TV, email and chats which are other big occupiers of my time. What I’ve been wondering since my friend’s comment is whether I have too many hobbies or not. I suppose hobby by definition means I do something for fun/enjoyment and not for monetary gain. Thus, how much I excel at my hobby doesn’t truly matter as long as I get enjoyment out of it. The fact is, that’s not good enough for me. I strive to learn new patterns for knitting. I want to be much much better at photography. I want to read more books. I want to write better. I want to have a publishable book. I would be lying if I said otherwise. All these “wants” have one thing in common: they require time. Time after my priorities like Jake, family, friends, work and sleep. When you subtract all those from the 24-hours I am given, I am not left with much daily. A serious undertaking of any one of the hobbies I enjoy would take a big chunk of time, let alone tackling all of them. I know this. And I know it will limit my ability to excel in any particular one. Am I willing to give up my dream of being published so I can have a large photography collection? So I can read 20 more books a year? So I can maintain this site? The answer is, “No.” But at the same time, would I give up reading completely? Would I agree to not take pictures anymore? Would I stop knitting altogether? Would I shut down the site? The answer to each of those is a decided, “No”, as well. I enjoy every one of those activities and I don’t want to give them up. So what do I do?
There are others activities that regularly fill my free time. I read for at least five to seven hours a week, mostly on the weekend. If the book is really interesting, I might read up to twenty hours a week. I spend many hours agonizing over how I should be writing my novel and another few actually writing it. Each time, I go out to anywhere, I take time to stop and take pictures. That makes my trips take longer. I watch two to three hours of TV every night. I talk on the phone and chat over the computer with my friends. That’s a quick list that gives an indication of the last few months of how I spend my free time. When I think about it, there are good reasons for each of my choices. Reading non fiction exercises my brain and teaches me things I didn’t know. Reading fiction exercises my creativity and helps me get lost in someone else’s world for a while and thus makes me experience different emotions. Admittedly, agonizing doesn’t help me at all and I am trying to turn this time in to a more productive one by using it to organize my novel. Writing my novel makes me feel a huge sense of accomplishment. Even though the good feeling comes months later, I am not ready to give up on writing because it still nags me all the time. I’ve recently noticed that taking pictures helps me remember being in places I visit. Because I have to take a moment to take a snapshot, I remember the scene even if I don’t look at my photographs for years. TV. I know that’s a pet peeve for many people. Honestly, I work much better with the TV on. I know that for a fact because I spent all weekend coding php scripts for this site and I could function much faster and more productively when the TV was on then when if was off. I can come up with many theories as to why that is true but I will just state that it’s true and count on the fact that you’ll believe me. I suppose with friends is the best way to spend time. Especially since most of my good friends are spread all over the world and continually busy, I am thrilled that I can get some quality time with them at all. So when I get it, I seize it and cherish it. What’s interesting is that my ways of spending my free time are quite different than, say, Jake’s. The goal is to spend it whichever way you like; that’s why it’s called free time. The fact is time is the most precious thing we own and one that never comes back. So I think it’s important that we think of the things we choose to give our time to and those we don’t. Why do you do what you do in your spare time? I have decided there officially aren’t enough hours in a day. You might have heard it before; you might have even uttered it before. But seriously, since the beginning of the New Year, which officially was Monday for me, I have been making to-do lists on things I promised myself I would start doing this year. I have a list of daily things as opposed to those that are general. I don’t think my list is that outrageous. It involves returning emails more quickly and thus writing a few emails a day. Updating this site and writing a bit each day. That’s pretty much it. Oh, and doing more things outside each day. Yet, it’s only been two days and I am already behind. I have to get up at 7am at work and I am ‘at work’ until around 5. Last night, I met a friend at 7 to go to Pilates and by the time we came back it was already 9. So I had a total of three hours to play with: the time between 5 and 7 and between 9 and 10. I am completely out of commission by 10pm and in my third dream by 11. Even if I try to stay up late, my brain is definitely not working past then. Three hours might sound like a reasonable amount of time to get something done, but it hasn’t proven so. It takes me a while to move from task to task. Writing and putting the site up takes about 45 minutes, assuming I know what I plan to write about, which is often not the case. Writing fiction is yet another huge problem since there are times I could stare at the monitor for a full hour before I type even one word, so knowing that the clock is ticking only makes things harder. What I want to know is how do other people do it? Where is this time that I have no access to? Am I just wasting it? |
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