And what will *you* be doing in Turkey?
After "Why Turkey?", this is the question I get second most often. I have gone through phases of answers and it largely depends on my audience; "I dunno; chilling" is not always acceptable. Sometimes I'll mention I'll be doing some part-time contracting work for AltSchool, which will start next month; my other standard answer is "traveling, learning Turkish, writing..."
"Writing" sometimes gets a follow-up question. "Oh, are you a writer?" No, no I am not. Though I used to be pretty into LiveJournal (may that article stay live on the internet forever), and my best friend in Junior High and I would spend many lunch breaks writing short stories in the library (she is now a professional journalist; I'm just a very fast typist).
But! But. The right answer to this question right now is, I think, "Not yet," or perhaps, "I aspire to be." I've got two novels and one self-help book I want to write, the premises of which I will not expand on in this public forum because I think they're all really good ideas and it's execution that matters and right now I'm very behind on the execution side. So we'll see. I'll leave it at 1) silicon valley thriller 2) sci-fi/YA 3) relationship advice. Let me know if you want to be a test reader (later, when I learn more about authoring, I assume I will have a better word for "test reader").
Sometimes people ask about learning Turkish. I'm going to save that for its own post, because I love languages so much. But the short version is that I'm spending a lot of time right now practicing Turkish, both formally in the comfort of my own apartment and informally way outside my comfort zone in stores and restaurants staffed by non-English speakers. I know a lot of words (I counted them up recently and I'm well into the hundreds!), but I really struggle to string them together and conjugate them properly, especially under pressure.
There are lots of other things I want to learn, too. I completed the Codecademy Python course and am going to try building a little Turkish practice program for myself. So add "become some degree of functional in Python" to the list. Also on the professional development side, I'm looking into some online business-y courses just so I'm more fluent in parts of startups beyond tech/product/UX. The Smartly MBA has shown up a ton in my Facebook newsfeed and I've poked around; let me know if anyone has opinions on that or any other resources.
On the music side, there's voice, piano, and guitar. I used to sing for at least an hour every day, but it's been about 7 years since that was part of my routine. I'm essentially a former college athlete: I just haven't used these muscles as regularly in so long, and I'm out of practice. I have the vocal equivalent of a beer belly. So I'll work my way through a couple opera and art song anthologies; maybe I'll look into the Izmir opera scene once I have minimally functional Turkish. I have a backlog of songs I want to learn on piano (once I figure out where to get a digital piano; stay "tuned"). I also aspire to know more than 5 chords on guitar.
And then there's cooking. Maybe I'll get really good at making bread. Or I'll figure out where to get ingredients for east or southeast asian cuisine (I've found soy sauce and sushi rice already!) and throw dinner parties of foods that can't be found in restaurants here. Right now I'm still in the honeymoon phase with Izmir restaurants, though; ₺7 (seven Turkish lira, just under $2) for a döner wrap 1 block from home is pretty hard to beat.
I have lots of ideas for side projects; we'll see what comes to fruition. One is a podcast called Singing Second Fiddle that I started ~2 years ago and created 2 episodes for (as far as I know, you can still find them Wherever You Find Podcasts™). Or maybe I'll turn that into a YouTube channel. I have some music/choir-related apps I want to try making although I'm very far from knowing how to do that.
I also like the idea of collecting random certifications (today's education vocab: extrinsic motivation). I'm currently a Level 1 Google Certified Educator and am planning to level-up that this month; I'm researching others. Got any ideas?
And all that's in addition to traveling. I just got back from Italy and Croatia (blog posts coming soon), we're going to a Greek island next weekend, and we have plans for Paris in October. And, of course, meeting up with YOU when you come somewhere near this part of the world and we schedule a lunch. Keep me updated.
"Writing" sometimes gets a follow-up question. "Oh, are you a writer?" No, no I am not. Though I used to be pretty into LiveJournal (may that article stay live on the internet forever), and my best friend in Junior High and I would spend many lunch breaks writing short stories in the library (she is now a professional journalist; I'm just a very fast typist).
But! But. The right answer to this question right now is, I think, "Not yet," or perhaps, "I aspire to be." I've got two novels and one self-help book I want to write, the premises of which I will not expand on in this public forum because I think they're all really good ideas and it's execution that matters and right now I'm very behind on the execution side. So we'll see. I'll leave it at 1) silicon valley thriller 2) sci-fi/YA 3) relationship advice. Let me know if you want to be a test reader (later, when I learn more about authoring, I assume I will have a better word for "test reader").
Sometimes people ask about learning Turkish. I'm going to save that for its own post, because I love languages so much. But the short version is that I'm spending a lot of time right now practicing Turkish, both formally in the comfort of my own apartment and informally way outside my comfort zone in stores and restaurants staffed by non-English speakers. I know a lot of words (I counted them up recently and I'm well into the hundreds!), but I really struggle to string them together and conjugate them properly, especially under pressure.
There are lots of other things I want to learn, too. I completed the Codecademy Python course and am going to try building a little Turkish practice program for myself. So add "become some degree of functional in Python" to the list. Also on the professional development side, I'm looking into some online business-y courses just so I'm more fluent in parts of startups beyond tech/product/UX. The Smartly MBA has shown up a ton in my Facebook newsfeed and I've poked around; let me know if anyone has opinions on that or any other resources.
On the music side, there's voice, piano, and guitar. I used to sing for at least an hour every day, but it's been about 7 years since that was part of my routine. I'm essentially a former college athlete: I just haven't used these muscles as regularly in so long, and I'm out of practice. I have the vocal equivalent of a beer belly. So I'll work my way through a couple opera and art song anthologies; maybe I'll look into the Izmir opera scene once I have minimally functional Turkish. I have a backlog of songs I want to learn on piano (once I figure out where to get a digital piano; stay "tuned"). I also aspire to know more than 5 chords on guitar.
And then there's cooking. Maybe I'll get really good at making bread. Or I'll figure out where to get ingredients for east or southeast asian cuisine (I've found soy sauce and sushi rice already!) and throw dinner parties of foods that can't be found in restaurants here. Right now I'm still in the honeymoon phase with Izmir restaurants, though; ₺7 (seven Turkish lira, just under $2) for a döner wrap 1 block from home is pretty hard to beat.
I have lots of ideas for side projects; we'll see what comes to fruition. One is a podcast called Singing Second Fiddle that I started ~2 years ago and created 2 episodes for (as far as I know, you can still find them Wherever You Find Podcasts™). Or maybe I'll turn that into a YouTube channel. I have some music/choir-related apps I want to try making although I'm very far from knowing how to do that.
I also like the idea of collecting random certifications (today's education vocab: extrinsic motivation). I'm currently a Level 1 Google Certified Educator and am planning to level-up that this month; I'm researching others. Got any ideas?
And all that's in addition to traveling. I just got back from Italy and Croatia (blog posts coming soon), we're going to a Greek island next weekend, and we have plans for Paris in October. And, of course, meeting up with YOU when you come somewhere near this part of the world and we schedule a lunch. Keep me updated.
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