After four days and four nights of coming to grips with the Editor X website builder (we had our ups and downs but I think we're friends now) and finally publishing the site, the time has come for me to begin adorning it with content. I've realised that my perfectionist approach to the website may have been a bit of a procrastination strategy; putting things out there which people might actually come into contact with and have opinions about is, in practice, a lot scarier than I'd anticipated. But part of the purpose of this project is to document my process of becoming a better journalist, a better artist, and a better friend, and if that means that I have to look back at these early blog posts and cringe the way I cringe at my diary entries from when I was eight, then so be it - it can only mean I've achieved part of what I set out to do.
So without further delay, here it is: the introductory blog post, outlining what all of this is actually for.
I've sort of covered one of my aims, which is to improve. I grew up thinking I wanted to be a classical pianist, and the best way I know how to get better at anything is to simply do it, religiously, knowing that on some days you'll feel like you're the worst at what you do in the world. Filling journals which sit in my bedside drawer is evidently becoming a little too comfortable (I'm starting to believe I might actually be a good writer?) so the other box is my new daily practice.
My own personal growth aside, though - far too blogger-y on it's own - I genuinely hope that the other box serves as a platform for those who wouldn't otherwise be talking about their experiences. I'm a big believer in the idea that most of the world's issues arise from ignorance; a refusal to see the world through somebody else's lens, for fear of shattering your own. I'd like the other box to be the place where two people's lenses can comfortably overlap. While I realise how juvenile it sounds to claim that the project is going to change the world, I am going to indulge in the idea just a little bit. If even one person feels a little less out of place, a little more connected, a little more okay with themselves because of something they've read on the blog or heard on the podcast, and if even that one person changes the way they behave towards themselves and others because of that, then that's a change I'm happy to have enabled.
To me, wanting to become a journalist is about wanting to collect as many of those different coloured lenses as possible. I tried to do so with music, focussing most of my compositions on integrating different genres, disciplines, or audiences, hoping that they would illuminate or inform each other in the process. I threw myself into my English Literature studies, scrambling for yet another way of looking at the set Duffy poems, yet another angle from which to read The Handmaid's Tale. I applied, fresh out of A-level, to such a wide variety of courses (including but not limited to Sociology, Psychology, Linguistics, Music, and Philosophy) that my personal statement ended up being a complete mess and I received mostly rejections.
It's been a year since then. I've decided to study languages and cultures at university (German, my native language, and Turkish, the language of my heritage), and spend the rest of my gap year doing more directly what I've been trying to indirectly do for several years: to ask people questions about themselves and think carefully about the significance of their answers.
I'm excited to see whether the other box lives up to the expectations I've got of it in my head. In the meantime, thank you for being here. You have an insight into the world which nobody else does, and I can't wait to learn more about it.
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