Productivity at it's best

Productivity is a hard state of mind to hold on to.

When we come across with something that inspires us, we feel an urge to produce our own, express ourself and get it out of our chest. It's those times we are most productive.

Music always helps though.



Music puts you in a mood of high concentration and endless thoughts. 
I reckon it makes us wonder into new worlds where we don't take ourselves so seriously.





Nothing feels like waking up at the end of a song and following back your thoughts and just be amazed.

Oh, grow up already!

Grow up and look good. 

What's the point of maturing anyway? 

You feel the urge to pull your shit together and get on with life because you don't want to feel like a failure when you look back in a few years. And you can no longer wash a hangover off of your face with some organic soap and mild pharmaceuticals you bought when you were high.

Classically, you claim you no longer get wasted. You are too old for that shit. You only drawn youself in your misery on special occasions like your best friend's bachelor's. 

The one and only good side of growing up is that you're supposed to like yourself even more. You have spent enough time to know and just be fascinated by yourself. Please please, have some self-respect by now and don't let people hurt you in any way. 

For that, you actually need to know how to say "no". I know, it's a pain in the ass. 

They say, "when you are younger, you equate love with mind games, manipulation, and experiencing insane high and lows.". But you've grown up and besides, you have disappointed in yourself and so many others so many times before. So now, you find relationships boring, emotions doomed-to-end and feelings dull.

You may be critical of claimed love stories and people getting married to show themselves that they are worthy of being loved and you find it somewhat pathetic, you don't have walk of shames on saturday mornings. You'd rather iHome on Fridays, may be, have a friend over. You do not need diamonds and glitter to be poured all over you to shine. And you certainly don't need to be the centre of the world for a day because you had been loved way too much for that crazy shit since you were a child. But you don't hook up with random strangers. Remember, you had developed self-respect on paragraph four!

With growing up here comes the strings attached. You need to actually go to the gym twice a week and let everyone know that. You cook and you're proud of it way too bluntly. Save up money just to go on overseas trips but always have some more on the side to invest. Yes, you've heard me. You need to put your financial consultant hat on and plan your alleged future and acknowledge the world's problems. You can stay irrelevant to world's calendar because you know bank credits, exchange rates and weather forecasts for at least 3 countries. 

Besides travel, you need to have a very mature and fullfilling hobby. All admirable grown ups have a cool hobby. Say it's photography, wine tasting or horse riding it needs to be a little expensive and requires an enterance criteria. It's always better if the hobby requires you to wear special gear like snowboarding or kitesurf. You can always be a research junkie and write your blog, too. 

     

How we remember, how we remind ourselves

The NPR Daily Picture Show is a great distraction. You get to see a bunch of photos and learn about some genuinely interesting stuff. Its a great way to distract yourself from listening to the news pieces on All Things Considered =) You'd still listen, though. 

The piece on propaganda on Chinese art got my attention earlier today.  They've got a whole museum of weird stuff and you'll be fascinated by the pics this piece have. 

This one shows Mao announcing the new "people's republic" concept and one guy on the far right disappears on one version of the same scene. Its like having two different apostles in the last supper! 

It's a perfect showcase of us being shown two sides of a coin with tangible evidence. And they have it in a museum for god's sake?! Respect! They remind themselves the twisted politics are there to keep us from remembering it straight.

5 Stages Of A Relationship

1- Define

During this very 1st stage, you’re expected to go through a phase which is famous for its glorious levels of expectation. You’re meant to define the bond as a formal relationship and you need to get your hands dirty to get it done. You listen to music, read a lot of relatable stuff and say that you’d like to keep it in your life for just a little while longer than once you look and you’ll see that you’re in deep shit. Now, you have to define it. 

2- Make your move

So, you define it. You make your move to get you two to talk it out of your chests. Introduce the gigantic elephant in the room. Make it so delicately and eloquently that its almost refreshing to talk it for a change, except denying its very existence.

3- Get lucky 

You need to and I mean really need to get lucky at that point. So, do your due diligence. Collect the signs and connect the dots. Make a through analysis of what you want and need (so that you don’t relate to stuff that much next time) and what might he be interested in. And get lucky!

4- Get lucky and keep it cool OR Don’t get lucky and keep it cool

Whatever comes from that flip of a coin; heads or tails, keep it cool. Freeze and act like it’s what you’ve known all along and you just made things whole a lot easier just out of boredem. Get bored and act upon it. See it through.

5- Realize

At this point realize that you dont feel the same anymore and you just can’t go through that episode of communicating with the other and realize that it’s what happens. Things cease to exist. And you resalize that one moment. You feel comfortable in that moment. And get out to act upon it.

Simplify!

Lesley Hazelton says "to quote is to misquote" ahahah! 

But, its so true, words taken out of concept, interrupted, do not necessarily tells us the whole story that is why we feel the urge to start from the begining and walk through the steps. This is why high school girls forward whatsapp conversations. 

Interpretation on the other hand is a whole another story.

You say 'glaciers have melted the sea', I hear 'things gotten closer to the sun'.

There is so much subtext in any conversation that its pretty tricky to hear whats actually being said. It also makes you load your sentences with answers to conversations that have not taken place. Its as if an imaginary conversation is taken place and we just hear some bits. Like we are quoting from those imaginary conversations. Thats why we don't make sense, that's how we complicate stuff.

Interpretation requires a certain knowledge and experience but these are so subjective merits that its almost an oxymoron in itself. 

So why not simplify the shit out of conversations and get rid of the baggage?

I reckon its because we know better. You can go so far with bluntness. People either will want to still interpret your words and write another story or, will not take it good. You know, some people cannot handle straight up truth easily since they are not used to it. So, we maintain a certain level of disguise in our conversations. We interpret what the other party says and garnish our words for that person to peel off the layers and get to the real stuff. 

There is so much tension and it takes so much efforts to communicate that I sometimes want to cut all cords of communication and sit still. Since there is no point in putting an effort to be understood by and to understand one another, I feel like saying 'talk to the hand'.

   

Loyalty

Loyalty is a funny thing which surprizes you most of the time. Sometimes you cannot believe your actions that are undertaken in the name of loyalty and other time the act of loyalty warms your heart.

Loyalty means expectations and expectations are always rough on you. So, why are we loyal again? I guess, to make life further complicated to manage.

Looking one side of the loyalty concept where you devote yourself to a certain concept; a brand, a friend, a school of thought..something..anything..

You must believe that there is a gain at the end of the deal so that you bet on this. You are loyal to a brand because you believe that the brand gives you something you want/need. But this assumption of future gain actually puts you in expectation of a not-promised gain. And expectations..they are rough.
Loyalty clouds your judgement and messes with your rationality. A. you no longer actively judge the value of the gain- if you're still getting it, B. you tend to not evaluate the rest of the things you're losing/missing out on.
It must be quite hard on a rational person so we tend to lose our rational as we become more loyal.

Expectations have the possibility to fail you. That's why I hate to find myself in the expectation of something. It doesn't matter how often the expectations cause a disappointment. Disappointment is always disappointment regardless of its nature, frequency and scale. So, why bother developing potential bombs (expectatiaons), why be loyal?

On the other side of the coin, lies the satisfying moment of being the person to be loyal to. Maybe its the superfreaky human nature that develops a sick bond between being loyal and been loyal to, as a result people wanting to be loyal to feel the loyalty hunger in themselves. At the end, we are a kind that has professionalized in justifying stupid actuvity in absence of certain other things. Or may be, loyalty will be an era like mass production that we study in marketing courses where we say "after that, custimization era started and changed many things in the industry".

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPad]

Change is refreshing

Boşuna tebdil-i mekanda ferahlık vardır demiyorlar, change is really refreshing and uplifting. 

..

Somedays, you just have to drag ourselves into out off the bed and off to a meeting room. You know that nothing is wrong with that meeting, and it in fact might be useful to a certain extend but you just can't bear the thought of carrying yourself that far. It was one of those days. But it all turned out well. 

Professionally, today's big meeting was quite fruitfull but it was even more fruitfull personally. Seeing people from your past is a weird thing. Hope it always feels this good.  

It always gives you a chance to glance over the years that passed by and where you've ended up. You remember how things felt then and compare to how they feel at the moment. Better hope you've not lost your perspective and over-reacted. It's hard to snap out of the moment's captiveness and see the bigger picture to take back the control.

In the daily rat race, you don't pause and spontaneously appreciate the moment and take a step back to get perspective. You need change to do that. That's the beauty of change; gives you a new perspective hence the refreshing feeling. You need to do things differently, you need the change on a daily basis. Otherwise, you'll get lost. You need to exploit every opportunity that could bring you some good-quality change.

Change on a professional level is more than necessary on a daily basis. You need it almost every other hour! Listening to the dynamics of another industry was a great mental gymnastic today. I realized why i loved the marketing courses at uni. I liked the idea of changing topics every other week and studying different cases. 

It feels like a splash of cold water in your face.   

p.s. change is good, embrace it

Travel often: getting lost will help you find yourself - Amsterdam Reloaded

Travel often: getting lost will help you find yourself - Amsterdam reloaded

It's fascinating, it's calming you down, it's the right dose of quiet and noise that you need to concentrate on pure nothing.  

Pleasent redefined(!)

Enjoy the show!

It's an undersea experience in the morning

It's a different undersea experience in the evening

Beauty is in..the looks or the eye of the be holder?

To all my colleagues who repeatedly comment on how i look,

i would like to point out that, there is no correlation between how nice of a work i produce and how nice of a look i have. its not like when i am on high heels i see the bigger picture more clearly. i so don't need to look serious let alone act serious in order for my work to be serious. - i see how motivational it can be to suit up but when you suit up at 6.30 am, you replace more than 50% of the motivation with sleep deprevation. so what's the point?

i am quite a colorful person and possibly due to the excess color in me, i don't feel the urge to color myself up specially in the mornings. and i know how society's standards/expectations are way more colored, thank you very much, but i simply am not disturb by the paleness. i can't be bothered to play the artist and put together a master piece that early in the morning. i can assure you though, i prepare very colorful charts and graphs in so very colorful presentations. stop asking me whether i am sick coz i look so pale, lady! i freaking am pale by nature and i am fine with it. learn it already and keep your judgement to yourself. and men, do us a favor and stop being so conscious of those stuff.

i have to admit though i am fascinated by how good of a job other ladies do. some of them just beat . i just don't have it in me but i salute yours.

but guys, you all need to chill a little. trust me, i'll do a good job 1.60 cm, make-up free, casually dressed.


p.s. my work's beauty is not subjective. it sometimes can be scientifically proven and be beautiful. only "i" don't look good all the time.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPad]

Create a job for yourself

till then, you just have to suck it up and get to work at 8 am.