I’ve noticed a few days ago that I am at my most thankful lately. I
absolutely adore my husband and my son. I am finally living somewhere I
love. I am surrounded by old and good friends. I am looking forward to a
wonderful new job. I love my new house. I am making tangible progress on
the driving thing. I can’t imagine my life getting much better than this.
Jake, David and I drove down to Big Sur last week for a day trip so I
could take my new 10-22mm lens for a test drive.
The trip to Turkey has been quite the growing experience for David. He’s
learned to go up and down staircases. He’s learned to play pee-a-boo. He
learned that when you run up and down a room with a metal grate, if you
fall, you hurt yourself pretty badly. He discovered playgrounds and slides.
He’s also started to exhibit a lot more toddler behavior. When you don’t
give him something he wants, he covers his face and turns his back to
you. He crunches up his eyebrows and gives you a look that defines
“That’s not fair!” He stomps his feet. He throws himself on the floor
and complains. He has adopted a variety of faces from “Oh, Come On!” to
“You’re Mean.”
Despite the recent behavior, he’s still pure joy to be with and poses
quite well.
Turkey is full of stray cats and dogs. This is even more true in the
island of Burgaz where we spend our summers. Since they are stray, many
of the cats are sick, mangy, and injured. They are still beautiful and I
couldn’t help but photograph many. You can find a few more: 1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
and
7.
Many years ago, I wrote an entry about the
two-me’s.
Lately, the idea of the Ideal Self has been on my mind a lot. There have
been many occasions where I noticed that my ideas of who I hope to be in
a certain situation often get crushed by the real me.
The Ideal Me wants to be mature in a situation that might be chaotic and
frustrating but the Real Me gets annoyed, acts impatient or irrational.
The Ideal Me wants to explain things clearly and without placing blame
so we can have a productive conversation and resolve our differences,
yet the Real Me gets emotional and can’t think clearly. The Ideal Me
assumes the best and commits to situations where the Real Me freaks out
and makes things unpleasant without meaning to. The Ideal Me is kind and
compassionate regardless of how others treat me, but the Real Me gets
hurt and angry. The Ideal Me wants to make everyone happy but the Real
Me knows that’s impossible and often ends up upsetting everyone instead.
This has caused numerous problems in my personal life, in my work life,
in my friendships and relationships. Most significantly, it has made me
feel like I am continuously letting myself down.
After countless recent such events, I have realized that it’s time to
cut myself some slack and to start becoming more realistic about who I
am, what I can do and what I’d rather not. With a new job and a growing
family, time is quite rare. As I grow older and more responsible, I need
to learn to be who I am. I need to learn to graciously decline, even at
the cost of upsetting people I love. I know that, otherwise, they will
get much more upset when I do something to please them and end up
feeling resentful and frustrated. I need to learn that people get over
things relatively quickly and those who harbor resentment for not
getting their way aren’t worth dealing with.
I need to learn that there’s nothing wrong with the Real Me and that
when the Ideal Me starts taking over, I need to pay attention and make
sure that the Real Me can deliver the promises the Ideal Me makes.
 I actually read The Arithmetic
of Life before Hardboiled Wonderland but forgot to put it up. Found
this book on the recommendation of the O’Reilly
radar. Within a day, the book went from being around 300,000th on
Amazon’s rank to 3,000th. None of the bookstores around Palo Alto
carried it, so I used this occasion to enroll into the Palo Alto library
system and got the book within minutes and read it in hours. I found the
articles interesting and thought-provoking – albeit a bit repetitive.
The writer *really* hates the Congress and makes sure we know it often.
Overall, this book is a great read for those who say math isn’t useful
in their daily lives. The articles are short, easy to read, easy to
relate to and even entertaining.
 After having read 100 Years of Solitude in one
day, I was looking forward to reading Love in the Time of Cholera. A good
friend of mine had said that, of the two, this was her favorite and I
enjoyed 100 Years so much that I couldn’t imagine how much better it
could get. Maybe that’s why, it took me a few years to get the book and
finally start reading it.
I started it in Turkey but I was so tired and sick that I kept having to
put it down. When we got home, I took a break to get over jet lag and I
finally managed to sit and read a large chunk of it in one sitting,
which is when the book got good. Despite its beautiful story,
interesting characters and fantastic writing, I didn’t enjoy this nearly
as much as 100 Years of Solitude. When I finished the book, I did have a
wonderful, satisfied feeling, but I wasn’t as blown away with this story
and I had been with the previous. It wasn’t as epic and magical.
Still, it was a beautiful story and a beautiful book.
 My sister gave me a Turkish translation of The Ultimate Gift when I was
visiting her. Normally, I don’t read these books anymore. Mostly
because I read tons of them at some point in my life and I feel like I
want to take a break from all the advice-giving text. But since she gave
it to me and jet lag was preventing me from reading anything that
requires a lot of attention, I gave it a try. I struggled a lot with the
Turkish translation since it was so obvious that the translator didn’t
make any effort to make it sound more Turkish. Some of the phrases were
direct translations and didn’t make much sense in Turkish.
The “gifts” were relatively obvious to me but I did like a few of them,
especially the idea of the Golden List. Overall, I thought it was an
okay read but I don’t know that I would have missed much if I hadn’t
read the book.
 Now that I am on a
Haruki Murakami kick, I thought I should read Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of
the World. I started the book on the plane to Istanbul and didn’t
feel like I got into it as quickly as the other two I read. That might
have been because it also took me the longest to read (or maybe it took
me the longest to read because I didn’t get into it as quickly as the
other two, who knows?) I felt like this was the most resolved of the
three I’ve read so far and I really liked it a lot by the end. For
reasons I can’t really put into words, Kafka is still my favorite one. I
have three more Murakami books on my shelf and look forward to reading
every single one.
I truly owe a big thank you to the AskMe crowd for introducing me to
this great author.
So it’s been too long, I know. But to be fair, in the three weeks since I’ve made my previous post I found a new place, moved to a new house, in a new city, accepted a new job, changed my addresses everywhere, and said good-bye to one life and hello to another. I’m finally settled in and about to leave for vacation.
It’s been a long and tiring few weeks. After an unbearably long flight, I am hoping to have a pleasant, eventless, and relaxing vacation. I will do my best to post as much as possible, but I am not bringing my computer so it will depend on how much computer time I get on the island.
Be well, more coming soon.
Another from our night shoot from weeks ago. As you can see, these
are not processed as well as they could be. Now, I am especially glad
that we did the shoot since I don’t think I’ll be near a beach at
night anytime soon again. Beautiful La Jolla.
 Since reading Kafka on the Shore, I couldn’t stop
thinking about the book, so recently I went and bought another one by
Murakami. I picked The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel
because it’s the novel that made Murakami famous in the US. This book
is considerably longer and thicker than Kafka and more convoluted. It
resolves a bit more but not a huge lot. There were bits that were
common to both novels but that didn’t bother me. I feel like maybe if
I read more of his work, I might get closer to solving the puzzle of
his stories. I now have to go buy all of his books. Easy to read,
difficult to understand.
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projects for twenty twenty-six
projects for twenty twenty-five
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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