Introduction

Welcome to my blog.

English below | Click here for Turkish.

Who am I?

Hi everyone.

This is Erhan, I’m 27 but let’s say I’m 28 because I feel like it and also let’s make it a straight number, engineer’s logic. It’s been around a month that I’ve been living the life differently than how I’ve lived in the last 10 years. If my memory is serving me right I’ve lived this way until I got into the university, even until I got into my department via prep school. However Middle East Technical University(METU) made me forget that. I’m blaming my university instead of myself, in an unjustified way. Truth to be told, even if I had a second chance in this life, I’d spend 10 years of it in METU again, with zero hesitation.

Lately I started to get a lot of positive reactions from my circle, just like before, because I’ve managed to get my old self back. I really love when people close to me are happy. I’ve been trying to share my positive experiences with them, because I genuinely would like them to taste the same feelings as I do. It didn’t take too long for them to come up with the idea of creating a blog for me, I should note that I really wasn’t expecting it.

Lately I’m not curbing my enthusiasm! (We’ll talk about this later.) That’s the reason why we’re here right now.

The reason behind talking about my university life, 10 years and counting, is that to help the readers among us who’ve lost a few years in their life, or who is scared to lose some to not worry about it all. We all have a different pace for our lives. Theodore Roosevelt says:

"Comparison is the thief of joy."

I’d like to share a second quote here as well, this time from Jordan Peterson,

"Compare Yourself to who you Were Yesterday, not to who Someone Else is Today"

the capital letters are intentional, we should think on these.

Why should you listen to me?

Well… you shouldn’t. Don’t listen to me or anyone else instantly. Everyone starts off their lives in different circumstances, and lives their lives in other circumstances. Therefore the observations I’m going to make about life in this blog only apply to my own life. I’ve used these observations of mine and my theoretical knowledge in my 18 years of life, however I’ve kinda stopped using them in the last 10 years. Now that I started using them again in this last month, I’ve been getting a lot of positive outcomes.

So don’t listen to me or anyone, only listen to your own observations and results of your own experiments. That’s what it takes to be a Scientist. Take whatever you like from the things you read, integrate them to your life, experiment with them. Take actions according to the results you get.

I should note this early as well. Everything I write are own personal opinion unless I say otherwise. I can’t start every sentence with I think and end them with to me. Don’t take me for a annoying person who constantly gives advice please, instead think of me as a person who shares their own thoughts on things. I’d like you to consider that when commenting or messaging me, thank you.

What am I doing differently for the last month?

I believe there was a turning point in my life last month. It wasn’t triggered by a single event, not even two events, it was three. We won’t go into detail for the first two, but we’ll talk about the reasoning behind those events in this blog too. The remaining event is the books I’ve been reading. Let me be candid with you, I have not read a single book for the last 10 years except for Data Structures and Algorithms with C++. (That book can also make you cry btw.) Before that I’ve probably read a poem book in my 3rd year at high school, thanks to my amazing teacher back then.

Alas I’ve read two and a half books in last 2 months. I’m taking it slow for the 3rd book, I gotta digest the ideas in it well. This is gonna be a big sentence for a person who hasn’t read any books for the last 10 years, but I’ll say it anyways. If you want to get your life back on track, I can not imagine a better combination of books than these 3.

I’ll mention the names and contents of the books in a short way, with the order that I’ve been reading them.

• Atomic Habits by James Clear | Half of the book explains how to create good habits and the other half talks about how to get rid off the bad ones.
• Education of the Will by Jules Payot | As the name suggests it helps train our own will and control it.
• Poetik ve Politik by Besim F. Dellaloğlu | This is a Turkish book, a short summary will not do it justice but I’ll try anyways. It explains the origins of 25+ important words while diving deep into their meanings. Lots of quotes and great analyzes in this book.

I want to suggest these 3 books to newly graduates from high school the most, but if you haven’t read them yet you gotta. As I mentioned above it’s never late!

Why MadManWithABlog?

Well, I love DoctorWho and MadManWithABox was once used to describe the Doctor by Doctor himself. I liked that a lot back then, I don’t have a blue box, i.e. TARDIS, but now I have a blog. I also enjoy defining myself as a mad man more often than not. The stuff I’ll write will be like a journal of a mad man in my opinion, but I’ll let the readers decide that themselves. So yeah this is how this weird nickname came alive. We’ll talk more about series/tv shows later on.

What do I plan on sharing here?

I genuinely want every decent human who tries to be happy become happy, not just people close to me. Because of that my priority is relaying my current observations that are making my life better, whose I’ve tested and seen the results of. It’s very likely that you might have seen what I’ve said here in other places, I’m composing the good parts of everything I see in my daily life.

After those we can talk about books, series, games. If you think that our tastes might match, then I’ll have some great suggestions for you to check out. I’ll also expect some from you. I’m sure there are hidden gems, I love discovering those.

I also might do some interviews here with people who are knowledgeable in their areas of expertise. At the beginning this would probably with the people I know, then who knows maybe with people I get to meet via here.

For now I’m only planing on written stuff, but an idea of podcast is at the back of my head. My writings will be available in both English and Turkish. I’m gonna translate them myself, because I believe that only I can express my humor and personality via both of these languages.

Thanks

Thank you for reading until here. This was the introduction to my blog. I plan on linking this to top of my every writing from now on, because I’d like people to read this first before reading any of my other stuff. If what I write interests you, I’d kindly ask you to follow me and share my stuff with people who might also understand it. However if it does not interest you then feel free to ignore me as you ignore the rest of the internet. As the name suggests, it’s a blog of mad man.

Wishing to meet at conversations at the bottom of writings. You can also follow my professional account at Instagram if you wish to do so. https://www.instagram.com/madmanwithglasses/ (@madmanwithablog was taken, so I used my second choice there.)

Apology in advance

As an overthinker with both rational and emotional mind, I personally already review my writings a few times before publishing. However I’m also a human, therefore there’ll be things I’ve missed or didn’t mean. Therefore I’m apologizing in advance for such cases. If you spot things like that please let me know in the comments.

With love, praise and enthusiasm.
Erhan