In November of 1999, I was asked to go on a six-month business trip to Japan. At the time, my situation at work was so bad that I knew I needed to get away. I agreed to go to the other side of the world and told myself that no matter what, I would find a way to resolve the issues before I returned to New York City.
I went to the bookstore by my house and bought a collection of soft covers designed to tell me my purpose in life. What color was my parachute? Was I destined to be an actor? A mathematician? Social worker? What was my dream job? I wanted answers and these books promised to deliver.
And I can’t, in good conscience, say that they didn’t. For me to claim the books were no good, I would have had to use them. I cracked the cover of a few, but I didn’t make it all the way in any of them. I guess I wasn’t motivated enough to find out my true calling. Which is a little odd, considering how bad things really were.
I’m not exactly sure what stopped me. I think it was partly the canned exercises that seemed pointless and partly the fact that I already knew most of my strengths. But mostly because I didn’t care for the way they categorized people. I don’t like being labeled “perceiving” vs. “judging” or “extrovert” vs. “introvert”. I believe the real world is much more complicated than that. There are times when I think more and times when I depend on my feelings to guide me. It depends on the situation, the people involved, the state of mind I’m in and many other factors. I got frustrated not being able to answer the questions and gave up.
Which, in the end, turned out to be the best move.
I came back to New York and decided to change my job and my schedule so I’d have more free time to explore some of my other interests. In the year that I’ve been back, I’ve figured out the best test. It stems from one single word. The answer to what your calling really is lies in the answer to this sentence:
What are you passionate about?
Which can be rephrased as: What moves you? What do you enjoy doing most? What can’t you stop thinking about? What would you spend all your time doing if you didn’t need to worry about money? What feels more like play than work?
These are all ways to ask the same question. There are many reasons a job might not work out for you. A bad manager, unbearable work mates, obscene hours, undesirable location, too much travel, not enough travel, not enough mobility, etc. These are issues that might cause you to change firms, departments or locations, but not careers.
I think what defines the best career for you is the thing you’re most passionate about. It can be something that’s directly tied to the job like being an artist cause you’re passionate about painting. Or something that indirectly allows you to reach your passion, like being an investment banker cause you’re passionate about being rich. Once you can honestly admit to yourself what your true passion is, setting the path to reach it is inconsequential.
I’m not saying it’s easy. If you’re passionate about art, money might not come easily and therefore you might get discouraged following your passion. Or that it has to be a single thing. You might have several things and then you’d try to find a way to combine them. Or your passion might change and you might need to alter your life completely. Either way, I think that once you know your passion, you’re much more likely to find happiness and success.
Here are a few items on my “passion list”:
Learning
Reading
Helping Others
Technology
What’s on yours?
Previously? The Other Way.
Ignorance is not bliss.
A while back I wrote about the importance of letting go, or temporarily ignoring, issues that come up in a relationship, especially the not-so-important ones. I still believe in the necessity of not making a mountain out of every little detail.
The ignorance I’m talking about here is in a completely different context.
I’m referring to the world and community in a bigger scale. I’m talking about issues such as education, recycling, racism, preserving our forests, world peace and much more. Many of us operate within the thought patterns of “If it’s not affecting me directly, I don’t need to do anything about it.” We blissfully ignore problems that fall outside our own community, our daily lives.
If we don’t fall in the above category, we often fall in the other major one. There are many of us who acknowledge and understand the severity of some of the problems facing the world. Some of us even take the time to educate ourselves about them. Yet most of us do nothing about it. We use the excuse that the problems are too big for one person to resolve. We hide behind the historical evidence of people who’ve tried unsuccessfully.
It’s much easier to ignore than to have tried and failed.
But this is our world. These issues, however much you might feel don’t affect you today, might become crucial in your life tomorrow. You might not care about education in America until you have a child who ends up in the public school system. You might have never considered the difficulties faced by a handicapped person until, by some terrible misfortune, you or a loved one becomes handicapped.
And then there are those whose effects we might never see firsthand. You might never realize the full disastrous outcomes of deforestation or global warming since they might take years, decades, or sometimes centuries. Does that mean you shouldn’t do all you can to stop these from getting out of hand? Do you not care about the effects it might have on your grandchildren, or great-grandchildren?
It’s true that some of these issues might take centuries and hundreds, or even hundreds of thousands, of people to resolve. Some might never get resolved. Does that mean we shouldn’t even try? While we might not avert the potential disaster, we might be able to put it off for another hundred centuries, by which time science might allow for us to have the answers.
Or we might not. Maybe they will never get better. Maybe we’re doomed to have racism or mediocre education.
Or maybe we’re not.
We will never know till we try. Every movement starts with the first step. And you cannot take the first step if you’re ignoring the issues.
For me, it’s time to hit the books, the news, the essays. Anything to educate myself on the problems. Once I know the problems, I might be able to come up with answers.
For me, it’s time to stop looking the other way.
Previously? Know It All.
“But he’s groping behind his aviator sunglasses for the point of his anecdote – that forgiveness is ultimately less self-destructive than the bitter desire for revenge. Or perhaps that there is no such thing as revenge, in the sense that it never actually offsets the original grievance. ” – Michael Lewis in Trail Fever
I don’t believe in keeping tabs. At least I don’t want to.
While I am quite difficult to anger, once someone crosses me, especially someone on whom I’d placed my complete trust, I rarely ever forgive. The heartbreaking experience of being hurt to my core seems to leave a deep trace in my soul.
Compared to many others, I haven’t suffered any major disasters in my life, so when I run across stories of people who’ve suffered intolerable torture and are still able to forgive their offenders, I feel small. I feel petty.
As much as I don’t believe in the necessity of revenge, I also haven’t been able to forgive as easily as I should. I think the above quote is a perfect explanation of why revenge is useless. People seek revenge with the hopes that they can undo some terrible sadness or unfairness that occurred many years ago. Over the years sadness gives place to anger and bitterness. They focus all of their energy towards their enemy and grow to believe that if only they could seek revenge, all would be all right with the world once again. And, inevitably, it never works out that way.
Revenge leaves a bad taste in the person’s mouth. It becomes misplaced anger, an emotion that surfaces way after its time. It resolves nothing and the person suddenly realizes he’s wasted his entire life looking forward to this one moment which fails to deliver the magic. Talk about a wasted emotion.
While I don’t live my life with the hopes of seeking revenge, I certainly do have a hard time forgiving people who hurt me. People who take my kindness and generosity for granted. People who forget that I have feelings.
But it’s time to grow up. Time to let go. Time to learn to be a bigger person.
Time to forgive.
Previously? Know It All.
A friend of mine recently sent me some bad news.
She’s been going through some tough times with a friend and she told me that she knew I’d say “I told you so” and I’d be right.
The first thought that crossed my mind as I read the words was “I’d never say that.” What’s the point of making such a cruel comment to someone who’s already suffering? The more I thought about it, the more stupid it seemed to me. Was I really the sort of person to make such a remark?
I called up my friend and told her how badly I felt for her recent falling out and how much I wished she’d work things out eventually. I said, “I wouldn’t say ‘I told you so’ I would have never wanted you to have to go through this.” She thanked me and we chatted for a brief period before it was time for me to get on the plane to Turkey.
Even though she didn’t say, or probably even imply, that I was a vindictive person, the idea of getting satisfaction from having been right about her potential to have a falling out with her friend felt disgusting. The more I thought about the phrase the more repulsive it became in my mind. If I were the sort of person to enjoy being right so much, I needed to change immediately.
Giving advice is not necessarily a bad thing. Often times if a friend asks for my opinion on a subject matter, I’m more than happy to offer my opinion of experience with the subject matter. Especially if the friend is someone on whom I can count to take my words as nothing more than my opinion. I don’t want people to do as I say, I just want to offer them my perspective, as I believe in hearing everyone out before I make a decision.
I also get annoyed at people who give me advice and then get cross if I decide not to do exactly as they recommended. What these people seem to fail to understand is that this is my life. I need to make and be responsible for my own decisions so that if something doesn’t turn out as expected, I only have myself to blame. Disappointments are hard enough to live with as is, the last thing I need is the excuse to blame it on someone else. Nor do I want anyone putting the responsibility of their own misfortune on me.
And ‘I told you so’ accomplishes nothing besides making everything about you. It’s as if you’re saying ‘See you messed up you life, cause you didn’t listen to me. You didn’t take my advice as gospel and now you’re screwed.’ It doesn’t matter if the friend is sad, all you’re thinking of is gloating about how you were right.
Talk about a good friend.
Previously? Home Again.
This time tomorrow, I’ll be over the Atlantic Ocean.
I’ve already written about my feelings when it gets this close to going home.
I’ve already written about hugging my nephews.
I’m sitting here and trying to come up with a pithy entry. Something that will make you think during the next few days that I won’t be updating the site. Something to keep you entertained. Something to keep you busy.
But all my thoughts fail me.
This is about the time when my feelings have completely taken over everything else. I go through my daily motions and do what I need to, but the whole time there’s this loud voice inside my head and all it says is:
“You’re going home!”
It’s not quiet. It’s yelling. It’s not subtle. It’s a continuous loop. It’s there during all my waking hours. It even creeps into my dreams.
I’ve packed all my presents, Jake’s clothes, my clothes, 4 library books on education, Derek‘s book into a piece of luggage. Add to that a bag pack full of printouts on education reform, Trail Fever by Michael Lewis, The Language Instinct by Pinker, my laptop and my Japanese homework and our passports and tickets. We’re set to go!
All this for nine days.
I hate packing. I want to take everything with me. All my books. My cameras. My laptop. More clothes than I could wear in a month. Mostly cause I hate to have to choose. I want it all so I don’t need to make any decisions. What if I finish all six books in one day and I have nothing left for the rest of the week. That’s what I think. Even after the last eleven trips where I barely finished a book, I take six with me just in case.
Just in case what? Your guess is as good as mine.
I simply suck at packing.
I apologize for the lack of depth in this post. But the voice in my head won’t let me do anything. All it can think of is lying on the couch in our balcony, playing with my nephews. Hugging my nephews. Hugging my nephews. Hugging my nephews.
My mom, my dad, my sister, my brother in law, my grandmas. But most importantly, my nephews.
See? This is why I should stop writing now!
I promise to have something much deeper to say as soon as I arrive in Burgaz.
Btw, I am in the process of putting together a new idea and I need volunteers. If you’re interested email me.
Previously? Courage and Fear.
“Courage is the mastery of fear, not the absence of fear.” – Mark Twain
Mark Twain’s quotes are often my favorite, but this one has a special significance to my current state of mind.
I think most people assume that if you take a risk you must either be stupid or fearless. Why else would you give up all you have for a questionable future? Especially now that the markets are bad, the future of everyone is up in the air. This is no time to take risks.
So I must be fearless, right?
I must be a snob. I must be secure in my abilities. I must be rich. I must be dumb.
Well, I’m not.
I just believe in the power of fear and the necessity of conquering it.
A while back, I wrote about how sometimes it’s okay to ignore an issue. Sometimes time helps issues disappear. Sometimes you change your mind. Sometimes you just learn to let go.
But that’s not the case with fear. Fear tends to grow with avoidance.
Imagine you’re in a bad relationship and you’re scared to leave him or her for fear that you might never find ‘the one.’ So you put it off. Another year passes and now your relationship is even worse, yet you’re a year older, and even more scared to leave. Another year and you’re even worse off. One more year, and you’re completely stuck. You may never get out.
The same applies to pretty much everything of which you’re afraid. A bad job, moving out, moving in, a bad friend. The longer you’re in, the harder it is to get out.
The trick is not ‘not to fear’, it’s to face your fears. To attack them head on and remind yourself that you deserve better. Or at least that you owe it to yourself to try. As Shakespeare said, “Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.”
Cause if you don’t try, you cannot possibly achieve.
So I’m going to try. I am scared. But I want to try. I need to try. I will try.
Care to join me?
Previously? Cuppcik.
I’m not a bird person.
When I first moved to New York City, I knew I was going to live by myself in a city where I knew practically no one. Ideally, I wanted to get a dog. But with the obscene investment banking hours, I knew that the shelters wouldn’t let me have a puppy.
So I figured a cat might be a better alternative. Cats are more self-entertained, I assumed. Well, I found out I am dreadfully allergic. So much so that the white of my eyeballs swells when in the same room with a cat. That ruled out the cat option.
My mom kept saying that I should get a bird. Wouldn’t I want a cute, little bird?
A bird? Who wants a bird? You can’t hug a bird. You can’t give him kisses and have him curl up on your lap. No, I told my mom, I wouldn’t want a bird.
A few weeks later, on my way home, I saw a bird store with tons of colorful lovebirds in the window, chirping loudly. I don’t know what made me walk in, but next thing I knew a parrot the size of my face was sitting on my arm, looking into my eyes. When the storeowner quoted me several thousand dollars for the fascinating creature, I balked. Maybe I could see a cheaper, more affordable size?
Which is how I ended up with cupcik.
   
  
  
  
In the five years that cupcik and I have shared the same apartment, he’s never ceased to amaze me. This tiny, blue creature is curious, intelligent, and playful. He imitates the phone ring, he figures out how to maximize his level of fun and he makes our life much more entertaining.
His little feet make small clicking sounds when on the parquet floor. He walks over to the mirrored legs of our chairs and pecks at the bird he sees. He is so excited by the clicking of the computer that he flies on to the keyboard to have a piece of his own. He loves chewing on paper and landing on your head. He’s sweet, kind, and comes to everyone.
He’s made me into a bird person.
Previously? 121,110.
I registered the domain karenika.com on June 5, 2000.
I put up a page and started writing. Nothing in particular. Just anything that crossed my mind. I had begun reading a few weblogs and as a person who wrote diaries for years, I loved the idea.
On August 20, 2001, I started using blogger.
I changed the layout of my site. I kept reading. I kept writing.
At first, I had one loyal reader. My good friend Cheryl.
But then it changed. I kept checking my referrer logs, trying to find out where people came from. Certain sites kept appearing in my logs over and over again, making me feel giddy.
Last week, I downloaded all of the main karenika writings into a Word document. Running wordcount showed that the file had 121,110 words.
121,110 words.
That’s almost two novels.
And it doesn’t even include the excerpts, tidbits, or ‘what I learned’ section.
And here I was feeling miserable that I couldn’t finish my novel.
In the last year, I’ve shared many of my emotions, thoughts, frustrations and joy with the entire world. I’ve met some incredible people. I’ve been sad, mesmerized and inspired. I’ve learned an enormous amount from the community that is exclusive and inclusive at the same time.
I love writing my page and to each one of you who come to read every day, or even once in a while, I thank you. You encourage me to keep writing, even if you don’t say a word. Just the fact that you come to my site thrills me endlessly.
And if you’ve been coming for a while and haven’t ever shared or dropped me an email, please do so. What makes the web amazing is the people and I’m delighted to be a part of this wonderful place!
Here’s to another great year!
Previously? Burgaz.
When I tell people that I’m from Turkey, the visions they imagine are nothing like my actual life.
Istanbul is actually quite similar to New York City. People running around, always in a rush, the streets dirty, the nightclubs open till the morning hours and blocks and blocks of shops continuously open. The mosques, the low skyline and the widely spread city reassure you that you’re not New York City and the Turkish doesn’t help either, but the lifestyle isn’t so different from most other major cities.
But Burgaz is.
Burgaz is a tiny island, one of four, in the sea connecting the Black Sea to the Aegean, the Marmara Sea. The islands increase in size, Burgaz being the second smallest. We have spent our summers there for as far back as I can remember.
The island is so small that you can walk its entire circumference in two to three hours. As children, we used to make the trip several times a summer. Burgaz has no cars, only horse carriages. The only vehicles on the island are the two fire trucks.
  
Fishers make the island a heaven for the hundreds of cats that are its inhabitants. As you dine in one of the seaside restaurants, live fish jump up and down in their buckets. It has the best ice cream I’ve ever tasted in my life. Sweet corn and caramelized apples are available all day long. Most of the kids either skateboard or swim during the day and hang out in one of the two clubs at night. I must admit that dancing in front of your parents and your grandparents during your teenage years isn’t anyone’s idea of fun, which is why every teenager, as soon as the parents okay it, takes the evening boat to the biggest island to dance in the one disco. The same boat picks up the kids around 4 am, after the disco is closed and the early morning snacks are eaten. I have breathtaking images of walking up the hill to my house as the sun rose.
Burgaz is a piece of history. A tiny community with a single pharmacy, one grocery store, and a few restaurants. You know every one of your neighbors cause just like you, they and their parents and their parents’ parents have all grown up here.
As of next week yesterday, Jake and I will be relaxing in the balcony of our small house in Burgaz. Watching the waves dance, the sailboats slide back and forth, the kids run around, eating delicious Turkish food.
Thankful that some parts of the world never change.
Ps: the beautiful images of Burgaz and our house are copyright of a family friend, Erdogan. If you want to see more pictures of Burgaz, you can find them here.
Previously? Mistakes.
I believe in making mistakes.
I know that in the overall scheme of life mistakes are meant to be bad. They lead us to failure and who wants to fail?
But that’s not entirely true, similar to yesterday’s point, the importance of learning firsthand also applies to making mistakes.
Let’s say you didn’t want to learn firsthand, how could you avoid making mistakes? Well, by listening to other people of course! With that approach, you’re making two fundamental assumptions:
One. What they consider to be a mistake in their environment and circumstances is also going to be a mistake in yours.
Two. Repeating the actions that led them to their mistake will result in your facing the same mistake.
I believe that both of these have cases where they become incorrect assumptions.
Let’s take the first case. Decisions and choices are extremely environment-based. Divorcing an abusive partner may be considered a huge mistake in some societies and the correct path in others. Same goes for abortion and many other controversial issues. Dropping out of school to help save your family’s financial situation might seem shortsighted to some people but might lead you to go through doors that would not have been available to you in some societies because in yours family values are extremely highly regarded. What I consider to be a stupid move might be an act of genius for you.
On a related note, just because you do the same thing I did doesn’t mean you will reach the same results I did. We could both cut school and go to the movies and while I get caught and end up getting detention, you might end up meeting someone who changes your life in that movie theater. (okay, it’s not likely but it could happen) A lot of our life depends on people or events outside our control. The likeliness of a certain set of actions resulting in the same exact outcome is very low.
Even if we ignored the above points. I still think there’s much to be said for making your own mistakes and learning from them. When you make a mistake, depending on the significance of that mistake, it stays in your mind for quite a long period of time. You don’t need someone to explain to you why it’s a bad idea, you lived through it and you learned. Even when the same actions result in a mistake, there might be different reasons why it was a mistake for you than why it was a mistake for the other person. And it’s important to know the difference.
When we make mistakes, we learn about ourselves more than anything else. Yes, we learn about our environment, too, but we learn so much more about our logic. Our assumptions. Our ignorance. Our unrealistic expectations. Our naive outlook. We try to sit and pinpoint where exactly things went wrong. At what point did the great idea turn into a disaster?
That’s not something any other human being can teach you.
Previously? Show Me.
One of the fundamental creeds of writing is telling versus showing.
Imagine you’re reading a novel and the writer has the following line:
“She must be out of her mind,” said Jennifer. She was angry.
What do you know about the character? Well you take the author’s that Jennifer’s angry. You don’t really have proof, with the possible exception of your added voice to the words. If you read it in an angry manner, you might feel okay about taking the author’s word for jennifer’s state of mind. But if you read it ironically, you might be surprised when you hit upon the word “angry”. Depending on the sentence, you might even have to go back an reread.
Now take this sentence:
Jennifer stormed into the room. “She must be out of her mind,” she hollered. She slammed her schoolbag on the table and turned on the TV.
Okay so it’s not the most elegant prose you’ve ever read, but the author didn’t come out and say that Jennifer was mad, yet you got the idea. Why? Cause you could see Jennifer “storming” into the room and “hollering” and “slamming her bag” those are all signs of anger. The reader can play it out in his mind and figure out that Jennifer must be mad. You haven’t “told” the reader what to feel; you’ve let him experience it firsthand.
The same strategy can be used in teaching. It’s the fundamental difference of being told how things work and seeing how things work. Especially in topics in the sciences, since we have real world examples of how things work, firsthand knowledge can’t measure up to a few lines in a textbook. No matter how many times I tell you that a chemical solution is very acidic, as soon as you dip the litmus strip into it and it turns red, it will carve a place in your memory. And it’s important that you dipped the strip and not me. You figure it out all by yourself. You deduce. You conclude.
Same idea applies to basic math, instead of saying two plus two equals four, why not line up two balls and then add two more and ask the student count? This way it’s not as if you’re divine and just imparting knowledge, but you’re showing people how they can derive their own, correct, conclusions. I think that we tend to remember firsthand experiences much more vividly than information we’re told.
Maybe it’s cause we don’t inherently like to take other people’s word for things. Humans always observe the world around them. It’s in our nature. And maybe in the processes of letting the students or readers come to their own conclusions, you elevate them to the same level as yourself. You show them that they’re intelligent enough to figure it out.
In the end don’t we all like to be treated as equals?
Previously? The Obvious.
Can you light a bulb with a battery and a wire?
Really? How?
It’s amazing how little attention we pay to things that are part of our day to day experience. We often focus on the task at hand and pay little attention to the peripherals in our world.
For example, let’s take this question: “If you wanted to see more of yourself in a mirror, do you move backwards of forward?”
Go ahead, think, I’ll be here.
You thought it through? You sure? What’s the answer?
Nope. It’s not “you have to move back.”
The fact is no matter how far back you move, you still see the same amount of yourself in the mirror. Trust me, you can test it out.
Isn’t it amazing that we use mirrors every single day, but we never really notice that? When we look in the mirror, we’re busy concentrating on our task: brushing our teeth, combing our hair, etc. But we don’t wonder much about how the mirror works.
Mostly because we don’t have to. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it, right?
I think we could all benefit from looking harder at the world around us. Maybe I feel that way cause I’m surprised when a basic assumption I make turns out to be wrong. At the age of twenty-six, I believe I should know about fundamentals of how the world works or at least how things I interact with on a daily basis work. I don’t mean that you should know how each chip of a computer works, but how does electricity work, or mirrors, or cameras. Those are pretty fundamental.
Here’s another question for you: if by some way we were able to create a room that was completely dark, could you see an apple that was in that room? What about after ten minutes?
Let me know what you think, you might be amazed at the answer.
Most of us take these fundamentals for granted. Most of us are never taught these core functions well. Most of us never had to light a bulb with a battery and wire or sit in a completely dark room. Most of us never cared to look at a mirror just to see how the reflection is affected by the change in the distance of the source. Most of us either don’t care or work off of some, and often incorrect, assumptions.
Buy maybe you’re much more observant than I am and have learned all the basics. In that case I look up to you and think you’re amazing.
Because you’ve conquered the ideal of looking beyond the obvious.
Previously? Categorical Imperative.
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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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