Break the loop, move to Berlin

Break the pattern today or the loop will repeat tomorrow.

TL;DR: I'm moving to Berlin, Germany. I'll tell you what I'll do there in part two.

In every engineer's career, there comes a moment when they ask themselves:
"Should I quit all this and become a techno DJ?"

I think it's mostly a joke, but think about it for a second: what if?

You are really worrying me right now.

Obviously I'm just joking. (or am I?)
Okay but for real though, sometimes there are turning points in life that force you to change, adapt, and grow. Whether it's a change you chose, imposed on yourself, or simply came to accept, it eventually makes you realize it's time to break the pattern. That's how I have been feeling for a while: stuck in the same loop and looking for a way to change things.

My grind for the past few years was to build cool stuff in the open source ecosystem and be more visible. This effort eventually led me to travel to many places, meet amazing people and eventually have the freedom to experience new things. As I explored more, I realized the changes that I can choose to make in my life. And today, I'm going to tell you about a big change that I'm about to go through.

I'm moving to Berlin, Germany!

So, what happened? I thought you were happy in Ankara.

I was born and raised here and my love for this place/country is unquestionable.

My crazy "open source world tour" last year taught me that change is a good way to reset and breaking the comfort zone is one of the best things that you can do to yourself. In other words, discomfort is the key to growth, so I decided to grow.

Why Berlin though, out of all places?

You seriously ask? It's one of the most vibrant cities in the world and a lot is happening there. Germany is one of the countries that I have traveled the most so far and each time I was in Berlin, it was somehow always a different experience. I wanted to become a part of this.

And oh, I found a kickass job there :)

Classic. Met a synthesizer nerd, got invited to a music fair and fell in love with the city. So what kind of life are you trying to build there?

First of all, more stable. And no, I'm not quitting open source (which made all of this possible in the first place).

I feel like I need to slow down a bit and find a better balance. Actually wait, I probably won't... and still try to work on 213 things at the same time. But at least I can reduce that number a bit. So more focus on essentials and less being scattered around.
More time for my personal growth and less time for burning out.

When it comes to the life I want to live there, it will definitely involve more music. I want to produce tracks, go on stage to perform and collaborate with other artists to learn from them. Maybe I can finally kickstart Tuitar there and finally learn how to play the guitar with it. There are also so many other ideas that I want to build with embedded Ratatui so it's going to be a fun time for sure.

Being in Berlin also means I will be more connected to my European friends and the ecosystem in general, so there will be opportunities to hang out more often and even organize events together. Maybe at last, we can finally have a Ratatui or Grindhouse meetup in person. That'd be ausgezeichnet! Speaking of, I can finally learn German and speak it properly one day. It has been on my bucket list for a while!

There are definitely endless possibilities that I can explore and this excitement alone is worth taking a leap of faith!

What about your homies? And the Mercimek hackerspace?

The good thing about hackerspaces is that they can operate themselves without a specific person being there. I will probably keep visiting Ankara and Mercimek to hang out with my friends. Sadly, every change comes with a cost and trade-offs. I don't want to see this as "leaving things behind" but rather "taking things to different places".

What's next? What's the timeline?

I'm trying to find an apartment which I heard it's notoriously hard, and can confirm. If you have any tips or wanna help out in any way, please let me know. And then I will announce the next big change in part 2. You'll have to wait for that one though, so stay tuned!

Final thoughts 🌀

I can confidently say that my efforts in open source made this possible for me and I'm truly blessed to be in this position. One thing I can do to give back is to share my journey to hopefully inspire you to pursue whatever your grind is. If you're reading this, it means that we are in this together.

After all, we are all just rats in a maze, trying to find the cheese, right? 🧀