This is not a technical post. There are no clusters to configure, no exams to pass, no YAML files to debug. This one is about something far more terrifying: changing your life on purpose.

Let me catch you up.

The Short Version

Last year, I left my job. “Left” might be a generous word—the situation was more nuanced than that—but let’s go with “left” for now. Then I decided that if I was already shaking the table, I might as well flip it entirely. New chapter. New city. New everything.

So in December, I moved to Istanbul.

I’m writing this in March, and the strange part is—I’m still here. Somehow that feels like an achievement on its own.

The Long Version (Coming Soon)

I’ll get into the details eventually. The why, the how, the “what was I thinking” moments. But for now, I just want to put this out there as a marker. A flag in the ground. I was here, and I was figuring it out.

36 and Loading…

Here’s the thing about making a major life reset at 36: nobody warns you how weird it feels.

You’ve spent years building something—routines, relationships, a comfort zone that was, let’s be honest, pretty comfortable. And then you voluntarily press the reset button and watch it all go back to zero. Your brain immediately starts running a cost-benefit analysis you didn’t ask for. The people you left behind. The familiar streets you’ll never casually walk again. The version of yourself that knew exactly where to get coffee.

And now you’re here. New faces. New streets. New coffee shops where nobody knows your order yet. You’re essentially a side character in everyone else’s story until you build your own plot here. That takes time. More time than I expected.

The Comfort Zone Problem

I won’t pretend this has been easy. It hasn’t. Some days feel like progress, others feel like I’m just standing in a very large city wondering what I’ve done. The adjustment is real, and anyone who tells you that “getting out of your comfort zone” is purely exhilarating has never actually done it at scale.

But—and this is the part I’m holding onto—there’s something underneath the discomfort that feels like it might be growth. It’s hard to tell the difference in real time. Growth and panic look surprisingly similar from the inside.

So Why Write About It?

Because this blog has always been about the journey, not just the destination. I documented every Kubernetes exam, every failure, every “one more answer and I would have passed” moment. This is no different. It’s just a different kind of certification—one where the exam is life itself, the timer is always running, and nobody gives you a retake link.

This is Part 1. The introduction. The “hello, I’m here and I have no idea what I’m doing” post.

The details, the stories, the Istanbul discoveries—those are coming. Consider this the trailer.

Stay tuned. Or don’t. I’ll be here either way, probably lost somewhere between the European and Asian sides of the city, trying to figure out which one I belong to.

This is the first post in what I’m calling the Istanbul Adventures series. More to come as I figure things out—or spectacularly fail to.