To borrow a line from Robert Frost, “In three words, I can sum up everything about life: It goes on." That's also one of my favorite lines from Ricky Gervais' After Life series.

6:30 a.m. I can hear an alarm, must be a morning. I'm getting ready to head out for a run. The sun is at its lowest point in the sky now. Light is starting to stream into the backyard. I'm putting a coffee in a thermos flask and leaving home quietly. Simultaneously, I notice my neighbors stepping out to walk their dogs. I offer a friendly hello. On some days, we walk together along the quiet coast, accompanied by their sweet dog, Maya🦮. Strolling along the seashore is always heavenly feeling for Maya. I'm convinced that the emotions of animals and humans are more alike than we often realize. Their emotional reactions are just expressed differently than typical human behaviors. Maya shows her feelings by wagging her tail and jumping around. After walking together for a while, I part ways with them and continue wandering through the coast, facing the full force of the offshore wind.

This routine of morning runs and strolls, a ritual I've cherished over the past year, has been a part of my life while I've been away from the wider online world. Sorry for the quiet here, but after this period of focusing on the simpler joys of life, I'm back, quietly stepping out from my confines of a development environment.

Confront reality

I have literally had a computer since 99' first day of my school; the Internet came not long after that. I fondly recall the days when floppy disks, those thin squares of plastic and magic, would arrive tucked inside the pages of glossy magazines. These initial encounters laid the foundation for my deep interest in technology.

As my interest with technology evolved into a career, I found myself grappling with its two-sided character. I had no idea how I’m going to carve a life away from the world’s constant demands and distractions. My jobs do not take place in an office, they take place over online meeting, mails, where time and place do not matter. The upside, is that I can go anywhere and still do them. The downside? I can never truly escape. Of course, I didn’t feel like have the awareness and courage of like Henry D. Thoreau had when he lived Walden, yet there are basic things that I was willing to let go of.

I went to the woods because i wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if i could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when i came to die, discover that i had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear, nor did i wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. ⏤ Walden, Henry D. Thoreau

I yearned for a respite, a moment of disconnection, to take a break from a world entangled with technology and pressures, a world where people hardly know any other way of life - it was liberating. It was about being on the edge of a new beginning. One thing is clear, after all, I have brand new thoughts, perspectives and groove harmonies - it's not just the sound of music in my head.

Nothing is static

After spending years immersed in the digital world, a significant shift occurred in my life – in recent year, I was inundated by the superconscious feeling waves. The sea was apocalyptically windy. Within this period, it was difficult to focus, especially with so many aspects of my life in flux. In the midst of these swirling changes, the most noticeable alteration was in my living space. I moved to inspiring town of Urla, İzmir. This scenic coastal place, did more than offer a new backdrop, brought a deep transformation in my perspective. The gentle whisper of the Aegean Sea revived a sense of calm that I had long forgotten in my tech-driven existence.

In Urla, the rhythm of life is different. Here, time seems to slow down, allowing moments of reflection and creativity that were often lost in the constant buzz of the world. In this small town, particularly during the fall and winter seasons, the local business become lively hubs of community interaction and turns simple daily errands into meaningful communal experiences. One of the most memorable summer vacations of my childhood in this town, continues to evoke a unique feeling during its sunny days.

6:30 p.m. You have a new notification! I thought I was limiting notifications except for work related ones at this time of day. It seems I overlooked Apple Music. Well, there's the new Arctic Monkeys album The Car waiting for me to press the notification to play it. For about three months, I wasn't exposed to any music even hanging out in a cafe or standing in an elevator. To be honest, it was an intentional decision for me. My intrinsic motivation was to get rid of the noise on my mind and to focus on the things that matter. It made sense. I mean, there's definitely a lot of option to mystify your brain. But some instrumental approaches stimulate the mind to think about the things that are not in the foreground. Especially Tame Impala's sound was like excursions into the inner reaches of anxious on my mind. So I stopped, it was like, the world’s intense enough as it is.

In a musical era guided by the popularity of singles, I strive to sustain the journey of being an LP listener. The moment I got into the car, sound of the album began to fill the space. First feeling, i asked myself to, do i even know this band at all. Moog synth, whole things with strings at the end which take us into a bit of a "Marvin Gaye" space... I felt like the album opener "There’d Better Be a Mirrorball" is north star of Arctic Monkeys' for the record. Instead of kicking doors down, making a racket, playing a fast and to get to a place where everybody's comfortable enough in their own ability to play to way less is a courageous decision. They literally made their new records' "The Car" sound good in cars.

The way I see it, I am distancing my mind from deeply thinking about certain subjects. And as part of this process these days, I often end up recording all day long. I try to enjoy myself and wait until inspiration strikes, recording until I fall asleep — going deeper and deeper into that process. Because for me it's a good way to escape the pressure. It's almost reminiscent of my days as a mechanical engineering student a decade ago. The emotions I chase and at the same time flee from - when my tendencies to overthink are finally set aside - can be described as "raw, unrefined inspiration." Unfortunately, my home studio is still not set up, as I'm awaiting the arrival of a studio monitor, effect pedals, and Teenage Engineering's brilliant product, the OP-1, all of which are currently waiting to clear customs. On some days, my friends and I spend our time working solely on classic, old school effects like this

Anyway, tonight I wrote my own weblogging system. One of the silver linings of open source tools is that you get to rebuild things just the way you like. I released a new blog with v0.1 number and shared the source code on GitHub.