Goal #10 Book #5 Serdar Ozkan - The Missing Rose

    One day I saw a tweet by Paulo Coelho about a book which is not his but a Turkish writer`s. It was The Missing Rose (Kayıp Gül) by Serdar Özkan. He was saying that it was a great piece. So I decided that it would be the next book I`d read. And I did read it.

    I have to confess, it was not as great as I expected it to be. It was almost ordinary except the content. In the beginning I was shocked to find out that its form was almost of an American one and I found it tasteless. It crossed my mind that I drop it, but I was curious about the ending at the same time. Also, comments suggested that it was the Turkish Little Prince, so I had to read it, since I have not read the Little Prince yet. I was also interested in searching for oneself in a journey through time, mind and space. Kept on reading, and reading....

    The last feeling I got was something approximating Coelho`s work but not quite there yet. I was not satisfied with the flow of the events, very content with the oriental taste in it, disappointed with the repetitive nature of some aspects of the characters and overall Americanness. It should have been deeper, with more layers into the character analysis and more oriental emotiveness. Very wise sayings of the great thinkers of orient is not sufficient, spreading a few phrases of wisdom does not make a book great. Many things actually looked disconnected or as least not that well connected.

    Would I recommend the book? Yes.

    Although, it was not my taste, it may be of your liking. It is also short and fluent so why not taste it :)

Goal #5 Revising the List

    Goal #5 on my list was something like this "Revise my goal list on the first day of each month and evaluate my progress". I will do that now, on the 4th of March.

    I have downloaded my list on 43things.com, it is as following:

• 1.Rent my own room
• 2.earn my financial independence
• 3.update my blog daily
• 4.create a travel book about my future destinations
• 5.revise my goal list on the first day of each month and evaluate my progress
• 6.gain 3 months of experience in a decent company
• 7.learn water marbling
• 8.excel in sumi-e painting
• 9.submit 100 works to Deviantart
• 10.earn at least 100$ on Etsy
• 11.read 100 books
• 12.watch 100 films
• 13.read all of the National Geographic Magazines in my library
• 14.read all of the japanese mangas in my library
• 15.take more photographs
• 16.open a bank account
• 17.graduate from school
• 18.Read "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
• 19.learn yoga
• 20.Try 30 new recipes in 2013
• 21.meditate in a buddhist temple in Nepal
• 22.Try new recipes.

    Let`s take a look

1. I had a small fight with my parents about moving out and it didn`t go well. Both parties got very emotional and no real discussion was done at the end. We shut up and never talked about it again. They told me that I can move out when I get married. Shocking news for me. I didn`t know that my parents cared so much about what other stupid people say. I feel kinda disappointed. I understand though. I have to be patient, because the time will come for me to set sail. 
2. Financial independence, hmmm... Being very lucky to find a good job in no time, with minimal effort, I am now trying to keep up with the high tempo of my life and to do my best. In short, with school and two jobs that pay fair I am pretty content.
3. Oops! That goal is one I have hard time accomplishing. Let alone finding topics to write about on my blog, I hardly find some time to check the news on the net. After starting to work full-time in the beginning of February, because I feel tired every night when I get home, I do not have motivation to think about anything but not thinking about anything. I will try updating it weekly.
4. Traveling seems like a distant dream to me for the next couple of months. Besides having no motivation to consider this goal list of mine, I have no motivation to create a travel book or anything of that sort. Maybe I will recover that goal in the summer, when the good weather will fill my heart with high hopes.
5. Revising the goal list was something I wanted to do for some while now. After two months, this are the results.
6. "Gain 3 months of experience in a decent company" God loves me, that is for sure. Even though I did not pray for or try hard enough to realize this, one day everything worked in my favor. It has been a month now, I will probably hang around here for at least a few months.
7. I was very enthusiastic about learning water marbling in January. I lost interest, or let me say, I lost track of what I really wanted to do, after starting work. I realized that I still very much want to learn water marbling. Currently I am saving money for a starter`s kit and courses. I want to concentrate on this in summer.
8. As well as water marbling, sumi-e painting is another thing I want to postpone until summer and improve to a certain extent.
9. That goal requires some serious work. Again, in summer.
10. Money money money... Water marbling hopefully bring much money. I know I am stupid to exploit art for commercial reasons. :( sorry, but I have to make money to survive.
11. I have read five or six books so far. I wish I could read faster and did not waste my time on the bus staring into space. Last book I read was The Missing Rose of Serdar Ozkan. I will next read The Little Prince of Saint-Exupery. (Blog entry about the book is on the way)
12. Watching 100 films seems easier than reading books. Only problem is that I don`t. I used to watch so many movies. I do not know at what point I lost interest. However, I will definitely work hard to accomplish this goal in 2013.
13. Although I haven`t read all of the NGMs in my library, I got my friend to bring me some old issues of NGM from Japan. Hahaha! How silly! :) That`s for studying Japanese, so my priority is the Japanese ones.
14. I have started reading on of the girl manga series I bought. You may have heard of this one. It is called NANA. I had watched the anime, than I bought the series while I was in Japan, now I am reading the first volume, there are 21 volumes in total.
15. The weekend before the last, my boyfriend and I went to a place I had never gone before. There I took some pictures, some of them I liked. I think I will do such day trips more often, because it is a really good opportunity to practice my skills in photography. (Blog entry about the day trip is coming soon)
16. Opening a bank account I found unnecessary. I already had one, which was, and partly is, under control of my mom. Lately, I told mom to stop managing my account and let me handle my own business. Let us consider that I have completed this goal.
17. I will be graduating from school in less than a year. I will look at this goal next year.
18. Maybe after reading The Little Prince, I will read this book. I cannot promise though.
19. Learn yoga? I may start taking classes very soon. Apparently, there are cheap classes from interns at some yoga institutes. I can start next month.
20. and 22. Try new recipes. I have baked cake and muffins, salmon and prepared a dish of cooked vegetables. I will write about it and upload some pictures soon, hopefully. I want to try preparing a soup or grilling some meat.
21. Meditating in Nepal... Will definitely do someday. Not so soon though.

    Wow! Being silent for a month, and look what comes out of me in an instant. Man! I needed to write so bad. And I feel so good :)

    See you next time!

Granpa Moon Game

    Tonight there is a full moon in the starless night sky of Istanbul. I have to tell his story.

    Full moon has a very special place in our relationship with my boyfriend. We see the "Granpa Moon" (that is how children call him in Turkish) as a protector of our relationship and us personally. It may be because of that he was in the night sky, watching over us, at times when we were really happy and joyful. Every time he smiled upon us at times of happiness, we looked up and thanked him and prayed him to keep protecting our love and asked for more happiness. I know it sounds veeery cheesy, but we are such romantics, that we don`t care how other people would think of us and about our little game of love.

   I have another game to share with you: 

   Granpa Moon Game

   I had this weird game of mine since I was little. I would look at the moon, not just the full moon but every state of moon is important to me, and I would interpret his expression (the moon is a round cute face in my imagination), his emotional state and what he is doing. Some days (or should a say nights), he would be very happy like he has seen an old friend while he was wandering the streets of the old city, or some days he would look sad or sleepy or angry or whatever. I would play that game every time I encounter him in the sky. For example, the other morning, there was a half moon on the morning sky and it looked completely like a juicy slice of melon. I was happy for some minutes.

    After playing many times, I came to realize that what I attributed to be the Granpa`s mood is in fact my mood at the moment. In an unconscious way, I was analyzing myself and than making a judgment about it and than expressing it in a quite implicit way. Granpa Moon was my shrink for long years. I do not recall that I have told anyone about my story with the moon. I taught the game to my boyfriend though. he has been playing with me for some time now. I wonder how he feels while playing. Maybe I will ask next time.

    Although, as human beings, we are capable of being happy over very little details of ordinary life, it is that most of the time we don`t pay attention to our surroundings, small details or very obvious big things around us. I am not saying that everyone can be happy by merely looking at the moon, but why not try playing my game?

Let's Talk About Sex!

    I'm taking a gender studies course on human sexuality this semester. It is the first week of school and I'm doing some reading about the historical aspects of the topic.

    There is a part about the social constructionist view. It summarizes the sexual script discourse of Gagnon and Simon . They basically argue that our perception of our sexuality is a product of our social interactions -or something like that :P-. It is also argued that our sexuality continually reconstructed by experiences both internal and external. Three dimentions are given for sexual scripting (i.e. "the processes of interpretation and negotiation of the layered symbolic meanings by which the self is created" (p. 15)): intrapsychic, interpersonal and cultural.

    Especially the interpersonal dimention captured my attention, for it emphasizes the everyday nature of sexuality. I will quote here:

    "Interpersonal scripting emerges from and is deployed within everyday interaction, not only in negotiating sexual activities but also in talking about sex with others." (p. 16)

    Upon reading above text, I stopped there for a second and reflected upon my personal history. I realized that in the course of past 2-3 years, while growing as a person and developing a Self, I experienced a remarkable change in how I see sexuality and how I conceptualize my own sexuality. Everything related to that change in Self happens gradually and it is not independent of time and space. As I have got more comfortable talking about such matters with others and encountered more people, every one of them with their distinct self and sexuality, the changes I'm experiencing became more liquid, I'm becoming more flexible, yet more solid at the same time.

    I don't know if I'm making any sense to you. Sometimes an urgent need for expression emerges from within. A shortest moment of enlightenment manifests itself through my writing.

    Lastly, I would like to share a random experience I have had yesterday. There was a moment when I saw a part of  myself in another person and it lead me to thinking...

    

    A year ago or so, a friend of mine was giving me advices on how to overcome the negativity of a break-up and forget about the ex-boy/girlfriend. At one point he said that he went through a period of "ruthless unconditional sex" during the process of recovery. I was shocked for a moment, because up until that moment my perception/conception of him was more of a conservative individual. I never thought that there would be such a turning point in my life, both in terms of the quality of our relationship as friends and the realization about my misconceptions of people around me. Moreover, it made a contribution to my view of sexuality as an everyday notion. My friend being so open and open-minded helped me become a better person.

    

    Yesterday, when I was chatting with another friend about sexuality and my problems, I got a comment like "I didn't know that you were such an open person, before we started talking a few months ago." Apparently, he thought of me as a more conservative person.

    Isn't it funny that no one actually knows the other person unless he really talks with the other in an open, unprejudiced and straightforward way?

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References

Jackson S. and Scott,S. (2010). "Conceptualizing Sexuality: From Kinsey to Queer andBeyond," , Chapter 1 in TheorizingSexuality. Maidenhead: Open University Press, pp. 5-23.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_script

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PS. If you think there has been any act of plagiarism throughout the text please warn me about it by e-mail or comment. It would be an unintentional mistake, since I'm still an amateur on writing papers.

Mixed Up: About Work, School and Everything Else

     I`m so sorry that I couldn`t update my blog ever since I`ve started working full-time. As I had expected, working full-time is a pain in the a... I`m content about my job though. Managing social media accounts of our clients is okay. Enough about the job. Let`s talk about fun things.

     I`ve been experimenting with my cooking. Last couple of weekends I tried different recipes. A salad with broccoli and cauliflower and different types of muffins. Although first muffins were complete disaster, I managed to make good ones last night. I will post the recipes very soon. I have taken some photos of my raspberry muffins.

     Tomorrow starts the school!! Omg, I never thought I would be so happy. After working full-time for three weeks, going back to school is like going back to kindergarten. Only problem is that my advisor doesn`t approve my schedule because there one or two hours of conflict with some of my classes. It will be fine though. I`ll take care of it. 

     Another thing about the lost three weeks is that, since I got tired of working working and working, which I think decreased my creativity and effectiveness and a great deal of happiness, I experienced some tense unhappiness and anxiety about my love life. Valentine`s day was both a disappointment and a step forward to healing. I was a bit neurotic that day. I got disappointed because not everything went how I wanted it to. Then I fell again into the deep dark places of my mind and got an acute depression for a short while. 

     Saturday morning I met with a friend from my department who has been of great help to me for the last year. We talked about some teachings of Buddhism and so. I asked for help on how to overcome my negativity and start living in the moment. He gave me a couple of tips:

     1- First, you have to BELIEVE that you will get what you want

     2- Be POSITIVE in your ACTIONS and THOUGHTS

     3- There is a TIME for everything and it`s not in your control, so be PATIENT

     4- IMAGINE yourself as you have what you want

     I didn`t have time to go to the gym for a while. Yesterday morning I could finally do some workout. It would be great if I didn`t wake up this morning to find my body in pain all over. I ran to the living room, which is the biggest room of our flat and started doing some yoga. In approximately 5 minutes I was feeling much better. I am also planning to start taking some yoga classes with my friends. We`ll see how it goes.

     That`s all for today. Recipes will come soon. Hopefully I will read some more books too. I forgot to mention, one of my classes for this semester involves creative writing. I am looking forward to school to begin.

Goal #2 After the first day of the new job

    Third day on my new job...
    Content... So far...
    Tired though...

    Here is a dairy entry from three days ago:

    Today was an important day. My mind says so, because I didn`t get much sleep yesterday night, a thousand images and ideas and endless possibilities crossing my mind and crossing again. Man! Don`t I get anxious at such times XD

    First day on the new job... No, it wasn`t boring. But soo much tiring. A lot of information trying to find a way to settle in my central nervous system. On the other hand my system was giving error of overload. I think I have a headache. I don`t know because it cannot process any more info, either external or internal. 

    Tomorrow I will take the day off -yeah and it`s only the second day- for some personal business to take care of. When I get back on Wednesday, I`m expected to have made a good schedule in order to work more efficiently. However, I don`t have the slightest idea about what I will do next. But it`s okay, because I got a positive feeling about this. And if I believe it to be positive, then everything will turn out to be positive. Yeah. I believe in that :)

Goal #18 Learn Yoga (New Goal!!)

cat yoga by ~katiecandraw on deviantART

   Actually it's been a while since I've added this goal to my list of new year's resolutions on 43things.com. For the last couple of months it has been in my mind to start learning some yoga and practice it on a regular basis. I`ve thought of taking yoga classes offered by my university as a physical education class, however I never got the chance to register for it. Then I got myself to type "yoga" on Youtube. I`ve made a playlist out of a few yoga and pilates videos.

   Yesterday I woke up in the morning and my body was so sore that I couldn`t move a bit. I thought I`d caught a cold. I needed to get up and do my daily stuff and I didn`t have any cure but yoga. I watched a couple of those videos, tried doing some of the simplest moves. Miraculously I was feeling soo much better after I was finished 15 minutes later. I did it this morning as well. I intend to make a habit of it. 

   I`m putting two videos I liked for you to try something new for yourselves :)