Need chocolate, a lot of chocolate

I have a rule, which I am about to break at the moment. I do not write here when I feel depressed, sad, or in a panic. I actually do not express myself in any public media when I feel like... Well, when I feel like I lost it. Because like happiness, being sad or depressed is like being drunk. You either exaggerate things happening around you or over look them.. But today, I just have to blurt it all out.

You know the questions, when something bad happens to you, you ask to yourself.:"what shall I learn from this?", "why is this happening to me?", "is it bad karma", "uh-oh did I do something wrong to deserve it?" I am tired of these question, so tired. I wore myself out. I am shaky, about to cry any moment, cannot concentrate on my yoga practice, cannot sleep regularly, have allergies, got a fine for a stupid reason, me being stupid in short, have to move out because of these (the photo) adorable cats -allergic to them . Ugh, it's just too much. And I am tired of telling my self this "everything is fine" mantra over and over again.

I was in the cafeteria, just ate half way of my extremely sweet cake, and was telling to my self, "everything is fi-" and the tears, unstoppable tears. Uh I must have looked like a lunatic. No, everything is not fine, I have to move out, I worry about my sister, worry about my academic future, worry about my not working lamp on my bike, worry about me worrying about myself... And feel really bad about worrying about these...

Guess just have to stop, or pause or whatever... It's OK, when everything is not fine.... It's just everything is not fine..

And above is the new haircut I gave myself couple of days ago.. Here here..

Non-Procrastinating Episodes

To procrastinate or not to procrastinate... ?

From now on I will give extra effort to procrastinate since it's a must and I gotta do it. I really need to see some results immediately after all..

Actually, dear ma'friend, I just found out the way to defeat the procrastination, but it turns out I do not even need it now. O mon dieu, what can you do? Ce la vie..


And despair demotivators have just become my favorites... I have never seen such genius and motivating effect together, as you can see it's already paying off..


Images via flickr You can click on the images if you want to reach to the original sources

New Methods

Everybody has their own ways for each and every path in life. We have to develop methods to survive, to cope, to live. Now I came to a point where I realize I have to change my ways of doing things because they are not working anymore. To find a new method is not a piece of cake. I am sure if I google it I can get a lot of help. Even learning programming which in the past I dreaded so much is now a piece of cake. Well LaTeX is not really programming but still, thanks to google it's so easy to learn and implement it.

I think most of us do not give ourselves enough credit for what we accomplish and for that reason we cannot find enough motivation for the forthcoming projects. Like I said everybody has different methods for different ways in life. For writing a big project what could be done to motivate oneself? I read here that one grad student was allowing herself one square of chocolate for every written paragraph. LOL, the other one just got himself a car since he reduced alcohol consumption! Sounds like a good technique. Do you have any other suggestions?

The photo by Kaan, in Bebek Kitchenette...

Focusing

Focusing... Focusing? We the generation of multitasking are having serious concentration problems. We need to juggle many things... Working, studying, doing the sports we like, pursuing the goals that we did not know that we wanted... Most of the time we do these things to please the others, to have their approval, to make them happy. For 13 years, now I realize that I was not being able to focus on one thing at a time.

 I did my homeworks at work, I did my work on the snowboard camps, and did remaining work in some of the classes. When I was in a party or in vacation I thought about my homeworks, assignments and work. When I was at work I thought and planned about the snowboard camps, vacations.. I thought I was saving time, I thought I was being efficient. But what I have realized only couple of weeks ago, I was not doing anything completely and I was not present in the places I have visited and traveled.

My mind never stops when I do crafts and as a result the crafts turn out to be not the way I like. I remember painting a very detailed pattern on a fabric 13 years ago, my mind was fully there I did an excellent work and I enjoyed painting it so much. When I was knitting the first piece of my pair of socks, my mind was constantly engaged with other stuff, I was not knitting, I was writing my papers, planning and doing assignments... As a result it was full of mistakes. When I was knitting the other pair I was determined to be focused only on the stitches, the progress, the needles. And suddenly that changed everything, I mean in my life too. Now at least I try to focus on the thing I am doing at that present moment, to that thing only... It's hard, but the quality and the pleasure you get is way higher. I hope I never forget this again... To be there, to enjoy the present and to engage the mind to one thing, one thing only at a time...

Image via tmagazine

Flexibility

Image via here...

Being quite confused should not be that bad. We do not live in a complete, closed and bounded system of anything. So not all the relations, be it social or scientific, are deterministic. Therefore we change our minds, our theories day by day, year by year... 

If you are socially challenged and an obsessive perfectionist like me then you are in the unlucky crowd. We will try to swim across the current, criticize ourselves,  and make life harder and harder. Since we try to make no mistakes, we expect other people to be perfect and cannot tolerate any faulty behavior or one conflict could be enough to press the delete button in the friends' list-in real life I mean- But then, years pass and those things that matter do not matter that much and you carry the burden of the hearts you have broken. So being quite confused is not that bad at all, having a strong opinion and not taking any prisoners is way too much worse... 

After all, those strong opinions we think which never will change vanish with the new information forever and if we are lucky we do not form other strong opinions, or at least we do not make them ours. After all,they are not ours, they are just forms based on some facts which are presented to us in a given time in a given way..

So I am confused, and I guess I will stay confused. Am I choosing the hardest way again in order to make life easier? I do not know. It feels so insecure not to have unchanging, absolute truths. One can feel deeply insecure and vulnerable, without the strong opinions and without the ability to judge others according to those strong opinions... But eventually, I think, it will be the least harmful way for all of us...

Therefore I will remain confused, and maybe have a less strong opinion about confusion's being good, real good.

About the photo: A friend of mine posted another photo by these two artists sometime ago.  They did a marvelous series with a star and a moon which can be found here.

About Me

I can change my mind about social life ten times a day... Learning too much in too little time tells me not to have strong opinions about things, but that really pisses some people off. And, me, hating conflicts, after being a wild conflicting person for 28 years, is trying to have ideas, opinions about things just not to make people really mad or disappointed in me. Well not true, my PhD thesis is about finding objective truths... So deep down inside I kinda know that there are some absolute truths. Are there? See... On a good day, I spend couple of hours thinking about these things in this way...I don't know maybe I do not... Can I just stop? Please?

Apart from torturing my self as in the above paragraph, I do ashtanga yoga everyday, and love libraries and having the excuse to study when there is a social event that I do not want to join. Was that just too much information?

I want to be good at crafts, especially knitting but I just spend too much time on the internet when I do not study. Well, when I study too. Sigh... I should really stop that. So anyway, I really want to be good at crafts. You can find some of my creations in this blog. Just click the craft label in the labels.. See how organized I am? That's another thing I want to be really good at, organizing. I am obsessed with and never find myself adequately good at it.

Having studied, trained, worked and traveled all my life I have lot's of advices, cannot keep them in and they are just pouring out. If you need any coaching just email me at ozge dot ekin at gmail dot com and let me be the guide, I am really good at it, and I just love guiding. Seriously..

Oz