Home, pressure, and waves for ideas

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 development environment.

Confronting Reality

I’ve literally had a computer since the first day of school in ’99; the internet followed not long afterward. I fondly recall the days when floppy disks—those thin plastic squares of magic—arrived tucked inside glossy magazines. Those early experiences ignited my fascination with technology.

As my interest with technology became a career, I discovered its dual nature. I had no idea how to shape my life amidst constant demands and distractions. My job doesn’t take place in an office; it unfolds in online meetings and emails, where time and place hardly 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, but there were 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 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.

Here, the rhythm of life is different, 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. 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.

I’ve been distancing my mind from deeply ruminating on certain subjects. Part of that process includes recording music all day—sometimes waiting for inspiration to strike, or until I fall asleep—plunging deeper into that creative state. It’s a way to escape the pressure. It’s reminiscent of my days as a mechanical engineering student a decade ago: I chase, and simultaneously run from, the emotions that arise when I finally stop overthinking. I call it “raw, unrefined inspiration.”

Unfortunately, my home studio isn’t ready yet; I’m still awaiting a studio monitor, some effects pedals, and Teenage Engineering’s brilliant OP-1 (currently held up in customs). On some days, my friends and I work solely with 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.