Posting Only Occasionally

Dear Readers,

The last year has been hectic and at times very traumatic. I left Turkey reluctantly after quitting one of those nightmarish employers that I had heard other foreigners in Turkey warn about online and offline. I faced what I thought my own honesty and professionalism would protect me from: promises, broken promises, lies, incompetence, and skimming off of my pay without explanation. My resignation severed me from students that I was close to and my Turkish boyfriend, who has drowned in his own despair about his future and his country.

Even after I came back in March, the ugliness of what it actually meant working for that school came back in glaring detail when I learned that my British friend and colleague who had tried to hang on and work for those people had suffered a heart attack. Though the boss and his wife cared nothing for his welfare, some of my students showed the kind of compassion and concern that I had gotten used to and which never really came from my boss and his wife, the manager. My poor friend and I had been a team, and he was treated even worse than I had. Throughout the summer, he lived alone in a shabby apartment recovering from surgery on his heart.
I learned last week that they have now reneged on their promise to pay for his operation and has reduced his pay
to about $400 a month. My boss and his wife's chief aim was making money at the expense of their students and the teachers. Neither my students nor my boyfriend wanted me to leave. The experience left me tired, struggling not to be bitter, angry, on the brink of despair, but firm like others who have gone there before to never work in Turkey again.

However, the drama and the trauma of the last year has had a positive effect. Not long after Michael Jackson's death I started writing a book. His death and the all that I had gone through beginning on the day I set foot in Izmit, Turkey on October 3, 2008 made it a fertile time to finally go after my dream of trying to become an author. This is a dream I've had since I was 18. I have been encouraged by professors, family members, and friends. I write nearly everyday now, and I watch and ponder with wonder the evolution of me becoming a writer. I keep a notebook too, and whenever a description or a phrase pops up inside my consciousness, I get out my notebook and write it down. I've read of other writers doing this, and now I do. Most of what is written in my notebook are verbal supplies left for my book.

The freelance writing business has also become an area of study for me since the summer too. I am hoping that I can eventually make a steady income from magazine writing. Then maybe I can move back to Turkey or somewhere in the Near East and make a living with my pen without depending on a Turkish boss.

Since I am trying to edge slowly into the writing world, I will spend less and less time here. I'm not going to let my blog completely die out though. There will be occasion posts, but I don't want to specify any days or dates. On up the road I hope to have my blog linked to my own website along with other examples of my writing.

I have set a date for the completion of my book which is an autobiography and stories of my parent's families. I hope to have it completed and maybe edited by February 2011. The book is not an instrument to get fame or big money, but it is an artistic project, a means of therapy, of asking questions, piecing together a puzzle, understanding myself, my family, and humanity. I am going to go after a real publisher. There will be no self publishing for me.

My book is a quest. Yes, I want to be an author who is paid for her work more than anything in the world. I feel I have a lot to say and share. Nevertheless, I don't think like many in this age of quick monetary gain and scrambles for celebrity. I see things in the tradition of the great and good writers before me. Writing is art, and writing is about life. I live to write. I write to live.

My friend in Qatar has asked me, "Do you want to be a famous writer or a good writer?" I told him, "I want to be a good writer. If fame comes, fine." Fame today often does not mean greatness or worthiness in the society that I live in. I don't want to be a part of that community.

If something inspires me or is very special, I will be posting. Keep checking back.