20s

You're pissed at everything during your teens. You choose your area of expertise during your 20s. You're supposed to be mad at certain things. It means you're normal.

Worrying about your future is a given so does resenting your misfortune. 

The way to survive puberty is to make amends with your parents and the road to salvation during your 20s passes through your friendships. 

You gotta have a strong support circle to get you through the day. Your feel stuck between your job and the urge to sleep a little longer. 

And there are the occasional disputes at work that drive you crazy. 

During puberty, you think you're dumb but during your 20s you think you're the only one with a 3 digit IQ. Everyone else is complete morons. No one understands you during puberty, and you don't understand anyone during your 20s.

Only think you can think of is earning more money to travel further away from your life. 

You believe getting lost will help you find yourself.

You start redefining the concepts you learn during your teens such as love, respect, loyalty and friendship. Not so surprisingly, you realise you need to adjust your expectations.  

You learn the meaning of meditating for real. 

You need to learn to live a little between depressions and feel lucky when you avert a crisis or two. 

It's like a bad trip; it feels like forever but you gotta remind yourself that it'll end eventually. 

Travel Often Getting Lost Will Help You Find Yourself: The USA Episode

Finally getting to hit the New York highs put a huge smile on my face.  It was as hard as they said to figure out the NY metro and we shopped till we dropped at the Woodburry Commmon. Now we start sentences with "when I was/we were in America" and we giggle. We know how lucky we are.

LA beaches are gorgeous. Oh, and there was the art gallery at the 3rd street Promenade.. LA was a different type of high but Vegas is a whole new level. I can't tell how I feel about partying that hard. I've seen dirty pool parties in Çeşme but Las Vegas really deserves that "what happens in ..." saying. 

Breath taking, NYC style

Museum of Modern Arts (MOMA), without a doubt, is breath taking. 

Coming home from work, quite very tired, on a Friday night was hard enough so I decided to ease the pain New York City style. Looking at this amazing piece by Gilbert & George just makes me lose track of time and get lost in gorgeous MOMA. 

NY was lived quite chilled despite all weather conditions both in metaphorical and literal sense. It left us with a handful of stories to tell and reminisce for a very long time. Ohh, we were spoiled! 

We now get why people make a big fuss over Central Park. Shop till you drop motto is a New Jersey classic which is all the better when followed by a trip to the Cheesecake Factory. 

Broadway is really glamorous, its an art festive. 

Milkshakes are marvellous in Harlem.

Times Sq is too much.

Hell yeah! Its was wonderland and I was Alice!

     

It was better coz it was with friends..

Ummet Degil Millet Olan Turkler

Eyvallah dedik, dokulduk sokaklara dun gece. En son baktigimizda cevreciler parkta takiliyordu biz de haftasonu bakalim, fotograf cekelim enteresan pankart vardir simdi diyorduk.

Kendimizi 10. Yil Marsi soyleyerek elimizde tencere tava sahilde bulduk. Taksim sakindi artik Cumartesi sabahi. Olan olmustu. Carsi Ekibi, cevreciler, solcular artik hangi etiketi kullanmak istersen hepsi suyu, gazi yedi. Insanlarin piston dustu filmindeki gibi kalkip basi kesilmis tavuklar gibi kosusturmasi nasil bi adrenalin(!) Yok, boyle bi kafa!

Dolmabahce yokustur, kadehleri tokustur!

Rihanna bilmis de konserden hemen sonra gitmis zira, vur vur inlesin Inonu dinlesin stayla saldirdi polis.

Bra kuji xilas bu? Yok canim, Avrupa'daki parklarda takilmayi, kadin haklarini, halka kendi vergisiyle verilenleri ve bir de o meshur kadehi kaldirinca, katil gitti kardes oldu. Tum dunya durdu, Biz'e bakti.

Polis'in taraf degistirmesini bekliyorduk. Kadrolasmayi hesaba katmamamistik. Avrupali gibi protesto edene gavur zulmu reva goruldu.

Apolitik yetisen jenerasyonun, sivil orgutletme, provakasyon ve eyvallahsiz/orantisiz guc kullanimi konseptleriyle ilk tanismasiydi.

Buyuk ask yasiyoruz denebilir. Cok acayip!

Bra Kuji Xilas Bu?

A few weeks ago Radikal newspaper published the below article about "kardes katli"

http://www.radikal.com.tr/radikal2/bra_kuji_xilas_bu-1130285

Today, Turkish police decided to stop "bra kuji". Citizens all around the country marched a thousand miles.

Whole hell broke loose on Taxim Gezi Parki.

It's the awakening.

No one has seen this one coming. A tiny parkin the middle of the city, very much like Madison Square Garden turned out to be the first seeds of Turkish Spring. 

Neither "Akil Adamlar" nor any other phony initiative can make up for this epic fail.

Sleep

THE MOST RELAXING MUSIC IMAGINABLE ile lolo_8ball

Take a rest. Like a time out but not in a loud way or anything. 

Come home fairly early. Chill a little then go to bed early. 

And, I'll see you the next day bright and shining. 

Coz, this is not a good way to live. It's just too boring to be feeling you're bad at your life as a whole. 

Get a good night's sleep and stop magnifying the shit out of your circumstances. 

Get over yourself.

You just need to suck it up and start over the next day. One day, you'll notice that you're back in control.

Act like you have no other choice but to pull this one off. 

Stop being a spoilt brat and appreciate your priviledges. and start caring again. 

Try giving a shit about the world that is not revolving around you but actually happening. It is called awareness. 

Don't be blind about what's happening now around you in all aspects. 

You'll deal how-to part later but just stick with the plan for now.

Take a rest and start fresh tomorrow. 

Be on your best behavior and do it right.

A Piece Of Mind

How do you find relief? When is the last time you had a moment of calm silenece? It's so rare. I reckon we set our standards and expectations so high that our experiences never meet them thus turning us into superiority creaving monsters.

That's why we can't get rest.

"I need to pull my shit together." rings backs over and over again in my head." echoing in our heads we can't help but hurry and worry.

Stop, cool out and breathe. Have a piece of mind and then move on.

Stop

Cool out

Breathe

Move on

.

Something A Little Less Depressing

Today went somewhat swiftly. I didn't have time to stop and feel bad about myself except for lunch time. 

Ironic enough, when I take a z-report at the end of the day walking from the subway, I don't see much increase in terms of MoM, YoY or QoQ. I'm gonna throw up comparative shit soon. Jokes aside, I feel like I'm learning some stuff and finally getting to see a bigger picture but the progress is so incremental that the market share is not changing. 

I know your 20s supposed to be awkward and excruciating but give me a break. I'm so off my game that I can't auto-pilot even the most basic tasks. You know, like giving a polite answer to an awfully boring question, copy - paste special'ing, taking a percentage change or looking at where you're going. I have to pay special attention while performing these activities coz I'm way off my game. They used to be so inherently easy tasks. I need my 20s phase to be concluded so that, I can shake off all the confusion and questioning and have some piece of mind. Maybe, then, I can focus and learn something. I'm very frustrated and its just a by-product of taking things out of proportion. My magnifier goggles are on. I need to chill a little and have some faith. Stop, what do you mean faith? 

Yeap, it's that easy for me to start questioning the purpose of life and other philosophical concepts. Going back to where we left of, overthinking and over-dwelling on shit will kill me.

Is there a TED video on learning to keep your chin up and keep learning while failing depresingly often? 

Imagine the first two seconds of remembering how to ride a bike. Your whole world shakes in those two seconds as if the floor is icy. I feel like stuck in those two seconds everyday. I gotta get a grip on this job thing, yesterday! 

I shall contemplate the best NYC trip as a gift for myself hoping that this miserable episode will end by October.

I have to admit today was a little less painful. I made it through without blood and tears. But, I need a game changing wild card to get my shit together. I need a mental dialysis and a good night sleep.

  

Not Achieving Your Dreams

Today is about being unable to achieve your dreams and realizing you're not cut out for the job.

I have carefully reviewed my options of a) quiting b) running away c) crying out loud and all seemed better than trying and failing once again. Losing the little faith that I had in me, I came to realize that I'm failing terribly.

High levels of stress in a fast paced environment and super high expectations intimidate me. I'm definitely not suited for a marketing job in a multinational company. There it is, I said it.

I'm hoping for a complete change in the turn of events since one can always hope to see the light at the end of the tunnel but it doesn't seem to be a likely one.

I want to look back in a fee months and say "yeah, change management is a pain but I managed it well at the end". But, I have no hope, none what so ever!

Desperation is in my bones today. I can't help but fail miserably.

I need a drug induced sleep of 3 straight days.

Money in your 20s

You hated when you were a teenager? Wait for your 20s, they are going to feel more awkward. In the middle of my 20s, I can proudly say that I belong to the group, I feel out of place, confused and somewhat bipolar. 

I love watching other people who play it cool, like they've already figured it all out. Bitch, please! If you did figure out the purpose of life, why you still seek approval? 

A visit to the shopping mall paralyzed me today. There was an elevator man(!) It felt like being in the Ritz's elevator from the Boardwalk Empire set. How badly do we want to draw a line between us and them to feel good about ourselves? 

I have been motivated to work hard and collect gems of achievement from a very early age, perhaps too early, and I can't help but question the purposed of it all together. Make no mistake my friends, earning money doesn't make life easier nor being successful. It just raises expectations to a higher level. Where is the line? Is it right where the line between me and the elevator man is drawn? - where I'm supposed to feel priviledged to have another person pushing the elevator buttons for me.  

On God

You come to existence. You develop a conscious all around your existence then you cease to exist. And you call it coincidental? Once upon a time, there were two close buddies; matter and space and it ended up producing you. Think rules of physics made you breath. That's a way of looking at it. But from where I stand the view is quite the opposite.   

Even the very act of breathing fascinates me. The concept of life is so mind-blowingly complicated that I can't help but believe, there must be something bigger than this. 

Your immediately developed conscious, breaching a past, a present and a future for you, stops being the conscious you know at a certain moment, death. And throughout your consciousness you live with not knowing what happens once you're dead.  The very foundation of consciousness is built on knowing. You know where you are in terms of so many dimensions while you are conscious; place, time, emotional orientation, physical being. And you live with not knowing where you will be at in terms of any of the above dimensions once you are dead. 

This fascinatingly difficult situation makes me think that it's only rational to assume a higher entity exists and that's why you come to exist the way you exist. This beautifully complicated existence cannot be coincidental. 

But I don't buy any of this self repeating stories. There are ways of teaching and story telling, giving a story to an abstract concept, is one of them. All religions and beliefs claim a story, many repeating the similar ones in a slightly different manner, they are trying to teach us concepts. 

While putting so much meaning in to the idea of a might entity I perceive religion quite very skeptically. Science tells you to question and I have some very big question marks as to the religious explanations of existence. It can neither be chance nor a disobedient and insecure servant. I don't think someone called god created us out of boredom or wrath nor I believe it was simply matter and space holding hands.

Ironically, the famous pastor's words are so profound; get up in the morning, go to work, come home, watch tv, go to bed, and go to parties on the weekends. there has to be more to life than this.

     

To Hell With New Years Resolutions

Joseph Campbell once said that "We must let go of the life we had planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us." 

I have recently admitted that I do not have a 5-year development plan for my career during a job interview. As unprofessional as it sounds, it was a candid answer. I don't live life like USSR after WWI, I really don't have plans for future development. At the expense of blowing my chances, I played my cards openly. 

With the new years, everyone should show some sincerity to themselves. You don't need the calender to tell you to change your life. We all know, starting a diet on Monday or a new life on Jan 1st never sticks. We should focus on our experiences and try to learn a little. 

In the book Conversations with God, it says that God gives you the same test over and over again until you take a good lesson out of it and change yourself. So, better look where you were last year this time and then walk your way through now. You probably never have imagined you'd be at this point in life a year ago. But don't get stucked on the miserable moments, they must have made you stronger and/or wiser in some way since you've survived.

I recently read the most inspiring analogy "...If a caterpillar judged his metamorphosis by the first step – being locked up in a cocoon – he would never experience flight."
You've got to look at the bigger picture and figure out which choices led to which results and what are your take home messages.

Dreaming about the future and putting unrealistic targets is as pointless as obsessing over your past. Instead, you should reflect on the past and be hopefull that you learn more out of this year.