“It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for — and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool — for love — for your dream — for the adventure of being alive.”
— Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Hi, I’m Ebru.
This will be a story of my past few years and you will know me a little bit better than only me being a software engineer in the end, I promise.
When I was 18 years old and feeling a bit depressed I saw a movie, The Bucket List. It completely touched my heart and I created my own list following this. If you did not see the movie, I’d like to have you see it once. The concept here is that you list or at least think about all the things that you want to do before you die. But then I limited my list to a certain frame of time and I named it ’25 things to do before turning 25’.
I am 25 years, 2 months, and 7 days old now. I could not complete the list in time, to be honest, I did not want to after a while. 17 of them I completed in time though.
It was one of the biggest life-changing moments of my life when I created it. It was so exciting, the journey itself. I had fun, laughed a lot, experienced, failed, felt depressed some time to time again, and learned but most importantly I had seen all steps of growing along the way — I had seen the change in me as years passed.
I backpacked through Europe while it was my first time going abroad. I spent an exchange semester in Estonia and I had my most fun days there. I was a volunteer in a project in Sri Lanka for one and half months and I lived in a completely different culture than mine. It was truly amazing. I just love living in different cultures and hearing different stories from people there. Everyone has their own story to tell, you just need to listen.
I had a postcard collection that I have sent from my trips, received from friends, and even people from all around the world that I do not know in person. But I know them through their writings on the back of postcards. It is an indefinable feeling to read them.
I did a couple of other things that we can call ‘experience’. I always believed in experiences rather than having material things. I still do. It is an amazing way to discover yourself and the world you live in.
Then 25 has been coming. At one point I cannot know exactly when I started to feel less excited about the rest of the list. Because you know, they were the things that get me excited when I was 18. I have started to have other goals that I want to focus on and I did not want to spend my time on the things that I did not really feel about the way it was. I just embraced the change and started to go with the moments only.
I love new beginnings. I am a true -movie clichés lover-. Now I am at a point in my life where I feel a bit depressed again in a different way than at age 18 but I know that I do not need to have a list this time. I know the motivation here. I just want to live in the moment and remember the things that I did in the past 6 years with a smile on my face. I was living way too fast but I am definitely sure that I just want to slow down a bit from now on. Because sometimes everything comes with its own time no matter how hard you try, and it just happens to be the best time.
I am in love with coding since I was a little child. It is probably one of the things that I did not get bored with for years and years. I just simply love it and I really want to be the best version I can be as a software engineer. Therefore these days I enjoy spending my free time improving myself in this area rather than focusing on others as well. Because I always tried to do so many things at once and I finally realized it was getting exhausting and it is not something that I want to do anymore, at least for a while.
The second thing that is not changed in years is that I just love being in nature. I was thinking that I wanted to travel the world, like see many cities as I can. I was even planning to get a world tattoo on my 25th birthday, but no. I just simply love spending my time in nature, near a river in villages or forests somewhere new. In the end, yes I got a tattoo on my 25th birthday but not a world one… it is mountains, trees, and the sun.
I was also documenting this journey on my blog and Youtube channel, I know that it has touched many others’ lives and inspired them as well. I knew amazing people along the way even though we did not meet in person and it felt amazing to be able to reach them somehow. I always tried to get back at everyone, it was always nice to be able to know that you are helping but at some points again, it was not that possible like in the beginning. Because I am also not the person I was a few years ago, I just need some time to figure things out on my own.
I feel this would be like the end of your favorite tv show. You do not want it to end but on the other hand, you know that in a certain season it would be the best finale. I think it is now for me.
Therefore now this journey is over, it must be. But some ends come with a new beginning they say. I will be around and share my knowledge. It is always something that makes me happy, but it will probably not be in the same way that it has been. I will stay away from the traditional social media and only have here and probably my GitHub account active for a while. I hope I will decide on a new journey soon or maybe I will just go on living in the moment and this is the only thing that I need.
See you around.
ps. My personality type is ENFP-T and the beginning quote was all about.
