Jake and I started dating over nine years ago.
At the time, we were both in college and had a lot of free time. We started dating during final exams. Instead of studying, we pulled all-nighters getting to know each other. Sharing stories from our childhood. Laughing. Those days we spent together are some of my fondest memories.
Over the next nine years, we’ve had many ups and downs. Periods of great communication and periods of frustration with work, life, and other obstacles getting in the way. In the last four months, Jake and I quit our lives and started over. We spent morning, noon and night together for three months, in a car, tent or hotel room. We saw some of the most beautiful sites of the United States and we made amazing memories.
All of that was nothing compared to this weekend.
After two weeks of working, I asked Jake if he’d be okay driving to Joshua Tree National Park for the day, on Saturday. The park is approximately a three hour drive from San Diego. We got up, ran some errands, and got on the road at 10:30. We had conveniently forgotten our California map at home so we took what looked like a quicker road on the U.S. map. The fast route turned out to be windy and very scenic.
By the time we got to the park, it was well past 1pm and we were both famished. It turns out the park has no food so we had to drive back out to get some snacks and finally got to drive into the park close to 2. We took a walk through the cacti garden and climbed the huge boulder-like rocks. When we got to Key Point, we got out of the car and took in the hazy, but nonetheless jaw-dropping view. I had wanted to sit and read at the park so we grabbed our books and sat on the bench overlooking Los Angeles.
We started talking. For no specific reason. We talked about my new job. About Jake’s company. About being in California. About us. About the future. About nothing specific and about everything. We got back in the car so we could get on the way home before it got dark. We kept talking. We talked and talked. As if we met for the first time. With the same level of excitement. But a lot more honesty.
We put the windows down and sang at the top of our lungs along with the radio. We laughed.
One of the best days of my life.
I’ve been noticing how important it is for people to be right.
It doesn’t matter if the issue itself is unimportant or even a complete misunderstanding. I’ve talked to several people in the last few weeks who’d rather keep a fight going with their loved ones than to admit they may be wrong. Some won’t even give up until the other person explicitly says they’re right.
Any relationship between two people requires a lot of work. A strong friendship demands commitment to keep in touch, sharing the rough times and honest joy for the good times. A family needs attention and communication. A work relationship requires professionalism. A marriage craves all of the above and so much more. Relationships are built around kindness, honesty, patience, and a lot of respect. It’s hard to share your space and heart with other people.
In my opinion, the few people whom you’ve chosen to be your true friends and companions deserve better than your making a big deal over being right. Being right is important when it’s about standing up for your rights. When people are trying to be malicious.
Besides my family and, at times, my work structure, I have handpicked everyone in my life. I choose the people I get close to and I certainly chose my husband. There are specific reasons why the people I love are in my life. And malice definitely isn’t one of them.
In my experience, most fights start innocent. One person is frustrated for one reason or another and utters something remotely mean and the other jumps on the bandwagon. Next thing we know, here comes ten years of history. “But you did this and you said that and you never did this.” People say things they regret and both parties are too pissed off to remember how much they care for each other. They stop talking altogether.
If it didn’t start with a fight, it starts with quiet, internal observations. “Jim hasn’t called me in a month, he must hate me. Maybe he’s pissed at me for not calling him on his birthday.” The story starts small and snowballs before the other person is even remotely aware that there’s something fishy. Soon, the idea that Jim might be extremely busy or going through some tough times isn’t even considered an option. This is my favorite kind of fighting, because it literally comes out of nowhere.
No matter what the reason, most of the time, I think it’s a bad idea to stay mad at a loved one. The only exception I can think of is if the other person is malicious in nature and actually meant to hurt you, not out of momentary anger but planned, thought-out meanness. In that case, it’s fine to not talk to them ever again.
But in every other case, I feel like it’s a waste of precious time to wait until the other person admits his or her wrongdoing. Who cares who’s wrong? Aren’t you friends? Wouldn’t you rather spend time together than apart? In good relationships, as soon as one person has the guts to stop being right, the other person admits his or her wrongdoing too. So what if you’re the one who has to apologize first?
Who’s keeping tabs?
The pace of my life has changed drastically in the last week. Two weeks ago, Jake and I had several interviews and a busy week that ended with his birthday. I remember feeling a bit bummed on the weekend thinking we had no interviews scheduled for the week and worrying that I might not be able to get a job after all.
He started his part-time job on Monday and I started mine on Tuesday. I still looked all over monster, hotjobs and craigslist for more full time positions getting more depressed by the minute.
Then, within minutes, a friend of Jake’s decided to come for three days. His mom decided to come for a day. I got three calls and an interview. I went to the interview, which lasted much longer than expected and ended with my promising to learn part of a scripting language I had barely used previously. From the moment I left the interview on Wednesday to Friday’s interview I spent my minutes between my part-time job and studying for the interview. Jake ended up hanging out with his friend on his own.
Friday morning, the day of my 29th birthday, I woke up at 6 to go to my part-time job, worked till noon, came home to study some more for the closed-book exam and then went to a coffee shop by the company’s building to wait for the interview while Jake dropped off his friend at the airport.
The interview lasted from 2:30 to 9pm. It involved coding for a few hours and talking about details for another few. I came home to several days’ worth of TiVo and left the couch only to go to bed until Saturday night when my mother in law arrived and took us to dinner and a beach walk.
And this was supposed to be the quiet week.
Thank you for all who wished me a happy birthday. My first in a new home, a new town, with my new car and, now, my new job.
I’ve been applying for a lot of jobs lately and I have noticed two patterns:
1. Everyone is looking for people who have a lot of experience
2. Everyone only hires ‘the best and the brightest’
Seriously, if you owned a company and were trying to hire people, would you claim to hire ‘the so-so’?
I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want out of a job. Some days I feel like taking any job so I can have the money to pay for my rent. Other days, I feel like holding out. I try to remind myself that life is too short and that I deserve a job I love, a job that I would actually enjoy doing.
My requirements aren’t that complicated: I want to work with people who’re happy to be there and I want to be learning about something new often. The something new doesn’t have to be technical. I could work in a new industry and learn about that or I could work with a new programming language and learn that but if I’m not learning, I will quickly get bored and disillusioned.
You’ll notice money isn’t in my list of requirements. Assuming I did get a job I loved, I am willing to work for much less money than the guy next door. I don’t really care if I can’t afford a yearly vacation to Maui if it means I get up every morning and am thrilled to go to work.
Maybe I’m asking for too much?
I can’t drink alcohol. As a teenager in Istanbul, I used to be able to drink Safari and peach juice but only when I absolutely had to. Since I’ve been in the States, I get a weird sensation with every sip of alcohol. My whole body burns and I feel like my clothes are strangling me, especially my underwear. I’ve been known to take off all my clothes after a wine cooler.
I’ve tried many different forms of alcohol, anything from wine to beer to hard alcohol to wine coolers. I seem to be okay with shots mostly because they don’t sit in my throat for an extended period of time, so when forced (or let’s say strongly urged) I will do shots. I only drank lemonade at my wedding and hated the sip of wine I had to have as part of the ceremony.
Recently, I decided it was important that I be able to drink wine and possibly beer. In an effort to help me, Jake took me to a local shop and we bought a bottle of Chardonnay and a bottle of Merlot. Last night, we opened the white wine and poured a glass for each of us. Fully determined, I drank the entire glass.
If I said I enjoyed it, I’d be lying. But I did manage to keep my clothes on and I didn’t chug the glass, I sipped it slowly. I’m told after a few glasses, I might even start enjoying the experience.
I’ve always wanted to be more artistic. My mom can draw beautifully and at seventeen earned a scholarship to study art in Italy, but chose to marry my dad instead. I remember getting really upset when she told me that. She noted that had she made the opposite choice I might not have been around. Fair enough. It still made me sad that coming out of this creative and capable a mom, I couldn’t draw to save my life.
In my experience creative people are never creative at just one thing. They may have an area of strength, whether it be painting or sculpture or saxophone, but they just think creatively. They look at life creatively. My mom has had over ten unrelated creative jobs in her lifetime. She can look at an empty space and imagine something there. Her head is a box of ideas.
A desire to appear more creative was what originally brought me into computers. Maybe I couldn’t draw to save my life but if I could get the computer to draw for me, wasn’t that also creative? In high school, I dreamt of working in big art galleries in Italy, renovating masterpieces. If I got really good at computers, I had a chance getting in that environment. I craved that environment.
Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about my pull towards creativity. Creative people represent so much of what I am not. People who are expressive. People who are comfortable in their own skin. People who live life day in and day out. People who define their own life. At least, that’s how I see it.
For me, the difference is between living life and going along with it. I was browsing through the Burning Man installations and feeling utter joy at the fact that these things exist. That people create works of art. That they add to the beauty of the world. That they have the guts to do what they love. To explore. To express. I guess being creative represents so much more to me. It represents freedom.
A form of freedom I’ve always wished to achieve.
Looking good is all about feeling good. People who are self-confident and comfortable in their skin look much prettier and more attractive than people who display the conventional features of beauty. I wish there was a trick to becoming more comfortable in one’s own skin.
Walking around in my neighborhood, in search of Mars, tonight, Jake and I saw three deer and one rabbit. We saw a total of six cars during the hour-long walk. But, alas, no Mars.
Do you take pictures? Have you visited any of the 50 United States? Come on, contribute to 50 States. It only takes five minutes to email and you’d make me one happy person.
Happy birthday, Jake. I love you with all my heart.
So I got a part-time job today. The one main requirement for it being that I read Turkish fluently. On the way to the interview, I turned to Jake and said, “If I don’t get this job, I can’t get any job. I was practically born into this job’s requirements.” He told me not to stress and that one never knows. Well at least I did get the job. It appears I can read Turkish afterall. My elementary school teacher would be proud.
“I know you were very nervous, but you really need to watch the right turns,” she says, looking at me. At least, I think she is looking at me; I can’t see her eyes behind the mirrored sunglasses.
I never learned to drive until two weeks ago. In my native country, you need to be eighteen to take the driving test and since I was already in the US for college, I never took the test at eighteen. The summer of my twentieth birthday, my mom asked the driver to give me some lessons and made me work for the written test.
The written exam is very complicated in Turkey; you have to answer questions about traffic, engine and first aid. The driving exam, on the other had, is a joke. You get in their car, go straight, make a U-turn, pull over and you’ve passed. It’s not a huge surprise that Istanbul is full of bad drivers. Before the exam, the driver and I practiced a bit and I drove on my own around the block one time.
So, at twenty, I had a license. I went back to college in Pittsburgh and did not drive. I graduated and moved to New York City and continued not to drive. When we decided to move out of the state, seven years later, we bought a car and I promised Jake I’d drive as part of our all-summer cross-country trip.
And I did. I drove for twelve hours on my first day. The car was swerving a lot, but mostly under control. At the end of the day, my muscles were tight from stressing and my hands hurt from gripping the steering wheel. I drove several more times during the trip, in the farm roads of Texas and highways of Montana. All in all, I drove maybe for ten days.
California State allows a foreign licensed person to get a temporary license until she passes the driving test. I took the written exam with Jake and scheduled my test for two and a half weeks later. I told him that I would do the driving since I needed the exercise and I almost killed us on the ramp to the highway.
read more
I asked for pictures of the states a few days ago. It was for this. If you have pictures, please email me, I would love to post them.
I have longed to visit Antarctica for quite some time, so Antarctic Diaries – Life Behind the Science is my chance of getting a feel for it until I get to visit and make my own diaries.
By the way, Suzanne Vega’s story on how she learned to drive, made me feel a little about my current struggles and driving-school adventures.
Lately, I seem to be suffering from a problem that only occurs when I have too much free time on my hands. I get fleeting moments of inspiration where I want to work very hard and finish a task I’ve been putting off. I’ll be sitting in a movie theater and think that as soon as I get home, I’ll write that code I promised Jake, or that I’ll update parts of my site that are outdated. Or that I’ll finish the presents I wanted to send to people who hosted us throughout the cross country trip. Or that I want to sit and write. I make mental lists. For that fleeting moment, I feel that I can do all those things. I feel energetic and enthused about my projects. I feel driven.
And then the moment passes. I come home and read my mail and don’t really feel like doing much else. I take a break and read for a while, hoping the moment will come back, but it doesn’t. Not until a day later, when least expected.
When I’m working I don’t seem to have time for these fleeting moments. I am generally too busy for them. I run from one place to another getting things done instead of thinking about getting things done.
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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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