Exaybachay

People are not as strange, deep, complicated, or mysterious as they would like to be perceived. Nobody has a grand strategy. It's as if we're all in a state of confusion and have the illusion that we know more than everyone else. This illusion distinguishes us, at least in our minds, and allows us to believe we are unique. The irony is that when we are alone, each of us has doubts about our persona. Deep down, we know nothing, but we insist on fortifying our clumsy thoughts and hiding behind its walls.

I don't know how the hell I am going to pass this semester. I feel lovesick, stressed, depressed, unfocused, and unsatisfied all at the same time. I felt lovesick before, and I know that I overcame it. That's how life is, right? It bends us to the point we think we won't survive, and then, miracle! You're still breathing motherfucker! Well, I wish I didn't! Isn't it ridiculous? The way life works, I mean?

So crying for love does not kill you, but does it make you stronger? And if yes, what does being stronger in love even mean? I don't know. What I know is it definitely leaves you with a broken heart. A broken heart that beats! Is someone with a broken heart considered to be strong? Well, maybe! Maybe not!

It's time for us to slow down and understand what being alive actually means! And it's definitely not your work. If you find meaning in your work and only in your work, then something is missing. Your life is missing. And if you keep ignoring your life, you won't realize that till that painful last moment of your LIFE! It's time we began being human beings!

Some days you're lost. Better put, some days you feel lost. No matter how you started your morning, you feel there is just no way to go about your day. Meditation, yoga, chatting with friends, listening to music, . . . nothing seems to work. Dragging yourself from your insipid being to actually doing something with a hundred percent presence seems impossible. All your thoughts jammed up in your head, and you feel stuck. Approaching yourself is scary! Like the fear of getting close to a stray dog and touching it. You don't do it because you don't wanna risk getting bitten. And that dog is you! It's been living inside you for years. You've grown with it, fed it, and now it scares the hell out of you. Funny! It does not growl, does not bark, but you don't dare to step forward again. Today, like some days, your dog does not behave. Or maybe it is not the dog, it is you! Whichever the case, some days, you gaze at your dog, and your dog gazes back at you, and you lose yourself in those long, silent, terrifying moments of dullness. The dog becomes you, and you become the dog!

Another day of writing. It is snowing outside, and I am sitting behind my window on the 37th floor of a skyscraper in this old town: Istanbul. Unlike the rest of Turkey, it barely snows here in Istanbul. Even the wildest blizzards do not last more than four days. That is why snowmen have a very short life expectancy in Istanbul, and they are pretty rare. You can find a bunch of them crying in a random park in Istanbul. They are made by children, and the sun takes their lives. "Don't cry, snowman, not in front of me/Who'll catch your tears if you can't catch me, darling." Probably my heart is with the snowmen, because I can not come up with the right words to describe whatever I have in my mind. However, what I have in mind has nothing to do with snowmen. I just meditated, and now the naughty monkey inside my head is calmer. But it does not mean that he is more creative than he was. Does a calmer mind mean an organized mind? Well, I doubt it! And do we need an organized mind to be creative? I do not know that. Probably my heart is with the snowmen, because I can not come up with the right words to describe whatever I have in my mind. However, what I have in mind has nothing to do with snowmen. I just meditated, and now the naughty monkey inside my head is calmer. But it does not mean that he is more creative than he was. Does a calmer mind mean an organized mind? Well, I doubt it! And do we need an organized mind to be creative? I do not know that.

I've always been familiar with the fact that you either use something or lose it. I learned this when I started learning English. Now I live in Turkey and try to add another language to my quiver. This, however, has begun to affect my English efficiency and fluency. I'm thinking slower in English, and finding the right word at the right time has become a difficult task. So, I decided to start writing in 15-minute chunks. This hopefully will help me stop my English from declining and meanwhile even improve my English. Being a master's student, I read a lot on a daily basis. This reading habit gives me the opportunity to encounter many beautiful sentences and expressions that, without writing them down, I lose them. By the end of 2021, I probably will find myself obliged to take another standard English test, which includes a writing part. So, preparing myself from now is definitely will do my goals the greatest good. I know my English sounds artificial and foreign to the native ears, but I'll do my best to keep writing and writing till I get better, till my creative juices start to flow. I'll call this series of writing 15-minute writing practice (WP). I hope one day I will start another series with a more creative title. I haven't decided yet about my essays' details, but I want to write about a variety of topics. That's what an essayist does, and the best scenario for me is that one day I'll be one.

In the anime series Death Note, two young men who don't know each other's real name try to find justice in an imperfect world; one by murdering people and writing their name in his death notebook, and the other by trying to find the murderer. That's a darn hell of a plot for a series.

What are our goals? How do we know we have them? Is there a way to know even they are good goals or bad ones? I have always had a problem with these kinds of questions, and now I have broached a subject I have always avoided. Needless to say, queries like this are the most difficult ones to answer. Self-knowledge is what you will get by the end of this journey. Today, all of a sudden, I googled the Harvard Business School, and I stumbled upon their management department page. I'm studying master of engineering, so management, and everything related to it, although seem interesting, are unknown waters. Right now, I have no clue how difficult it is to get into HBS for doing a Ph.D. However, it sounds exciting, and something inside me says I have the guts for it. Having almost two years and a half to explore my own major and work towards a decent Ph.D. program, I have a good feeling about the future. I believe maybe good goals show how good they are as we work towards them. Everything, even goals, shows their true colors over time.

Your writing does not need flowery embellishments to communicate your feelings. Simple sentences always work better than long, convoluted ones that only make your writing look wordy and bombastic. I have just watched the anime Violet Evergarden, Episode 03. I should admit it was exactly what I needed to start writing again. Violet has great mechanics when it comes to writing. She is the fastest typist of her class who has aced all her exams with the highest possible marks in grammar, style, and language use. But she has a critical problem: she does not know how to understand people's feelings. This is actually the most crucial ability for anyone who wants to become a Doll. In the terminology of the anime, a Doll writes personal letters for people who don't know how to put their feelings on paper. This episode of the anime is the turning point for her writing career. For the first time, she manages to write something that is more than just a technical report. It is interesting that it is not more than one sentence: "To my brother, I am happy ... I am happy that you are alive." Violet writes this letter to Luculia's drunk brother-a crippled soldier who blames himself for the loss of their family-, which makes him cry and understand that there is someone who, against all his failures, loves him. This is a simple fact that we don't realize most often. Our writings have not to belong and verbose. It should successfully and honestly say what we want to say. Interestingly enough the logic of animes are same as this kind of writings: it is simple to follow, and it can make you cry! So, cheers to simplicity!

Screen shot from the documentary, Human directed by Yann Arthus-Bertrand

This here might one day be a not so serious piece of writing of a serious writer. I have always had a passion to write, but ended up in engineering school and even now am continuing to bang my head against tough math formulas. I used to keep a journal in Persian, my mother tongue, but for whatever reason that language and its rich literature did not satisfy me. Now, day by day, I try to improve my English and Turkish and discover these two totally new, and desperate worlds. Being creative in a language you are so strange to is like walking on a minefield. However, one should be brave. It takes guts and lots and lots of time to get better at something you have not been so familiar to so far. 

Excerpt from the film: Gulyabani Directed by: Gürcan Keltek

Excerpt from the film: Gulyabani  Directed by: Gürcan Keltek

You walk and listen.

Paying attention to your breath takes guts.