Melih O.

Yes John, there is something worse than Turkish time

In high school, it drove my dear friend (and comrade in arms for all things sports) John Gottshall bat shit crazy how late I was to everything.

Heading to the Ale House? At least 15 minutes late.

Tailgating at 2pm? Show up at John’s house at 2:15.

You wanna drive together to skiing senior year of high school? I don’t even remember if I was late or not… I’m just assuming I was.

Well, I’ve been beat. By “Island time” in Fiji. The guy coordinating everything has his watch set 30 minutes behind the actual time. On top of that, everyone is 15-30 minutes behind schedule anyway.

John would have gone crazy. Luckily, I’m well adjusted 🙂

Pictures will land tomorrow. There are some amazing ones!

Heading back from Fiji

We’re about to board a seaplane back to Nadi from which we’ll fly first to LAX, and then hopefully to SFO later.

We leave 9:30pm Jan 2 in Fiji, and get home at 4pm Jan 2 in San Francisco.

That – ladies and gentlemen – is the magic of the international date line.

It was absolute magic, and a ton of photos and stories will follow in the days to come. But first some things I’ve learned:

If you pick up a sea cucumber from under the water, then it spits water at you
Don’t touch the coral. It will cut you. You will get infected.
Always ask the questions you’re not sure about because the answers can be fascinating and wonderful.
Get a return plan. It’s a paradise that needs to be revisited.
It’s really, really weird to be a day ahead of everything you know. Especially when you try to send new year’s wishes.
Don’t drink the kava
Smile. It fixes everything
A ridiculously good looking 6-month old boy will be kissed at least 25 times a day while in Fiji
She can be as beautiful five years later as you remember her being the first time you arrived
Eat the fish.
Grow old. Not for yourself, but for the others who get to enjoy your company.
Be worthy of their company, and make sure they are worthy of yours

The trip was amazing. The friends we made laughed with us, and then made fun of us. I met a prominent US Senator and his family. I was inspired by an old man with a huge soul.

Good-bye Turtle Island. My heart stays with you.

New Year Resolutions, Uncategorized 0

I mentioned in my last post of 2015 that I think 2016 is going to be a year of big change. That doesn’t mean more babies. It does mean though that I’ll be very upset if I get to next December, and I haven’t made the progress that I’m planning to make. Here are the big ticket items that will get me there:

Fitness goal

I’m going to do 30 minutes of activity everyday. It might just be walking meetings. It might be a DailyBurn class (which I love by the way). It may be Yoga at work. It may be 30 minutes after work where I grab the kids, and we walk to the grocery store and back. But regardless, I’m going to be active for 30 minutes everyday.

Personal goal

I want to write more. I’m going to setup regular meet ups with friends. Spend more time at lunch on myself, and less with business meetings. I want to go to bed by 10:30pm 3 day per week. That’s going to be hard because I don’t really know how to turn off to be honest, but I’ll figure it out.

I want to have my annual french fries fest the first week of January with one of my favorite blog readers.

I’m gonna spend time with my dad this summer. Celebrate Mike turning 80. See my brother and mom at Easter.

I’m going to have a date night once per week with Micky. Even if all that means is that we light a fire, turn off all technology, and just chill out in the living room.

Other

There are a lot of other things I want to do better, but first I want to map out how to make them possible with the ecosystem of folks who will help make it happen. As these become more clear in what they are, I’ll happily share with everyone. But until then, I just want to do a better job of demanding that they happen instead of waiting for them to happen to me.

2016 is going to be an amazing year. I look forward to sharing it with everyone.

New Year Resolutions, Uncategorized 0

Before we head out

We’re leaving for our Turtle Island adventure in just over an hour. Before we disconnect, I want to end the year with a review of my 2015 resolutions. I’ll also write, to auto-post on the first, my 2016 resolutions.

Before that though, I have to say what a pivotal year 2015 will be when the history of my life is written. Theo being born is the end of an era. It’s also the beginning of an awesome journey. I didn’t think I could love him as much as the other two. And somehow, I almost love him more. Maybe because he’s my last one. Maybe because he’s most like Micky who I obviously am obsessed with. I don’t know though. He’s magic.

It was a big year in learning about what’s important to me. Feedback to become a better person was ever present. This was less true in other areas. And a lot of moves are happening around me that makes the future more clear. The decisions I need to make are more obvious.

Two months ago, I would have said a lot of this in anger, frustration, tiredness. Today, I say it with an incredible clarity about who I want to be, and what I need to do to get there.

If you ask Micky, I’m sure she’ll say that many of the same things have happened to her. And so I’m excited to say good bye to 2015 because 2016 will be the first major year of change in a long time. And whatever that change looks like is going to be awesome to be a part of.

And with that… let’s score the resolutions!

Lose 30 pounds

I’m down about 12 – 15 pounds depending on the day. Halfway there isn’t good enough 🙁 I’m gonna see if a week of running, swimming, and eating seafood helps 🙂 Nonetheless, I’ve been really inspired this year by my weaknesses with food, inability to create habits around exercise, and generally dissatisfaction with my body image to put a plan together that will be a big move in 2016. More details on that in April/May.

Read 12 books

Nailed it! One of them was a kid’s book, but, nonetheless, I read a lot more this year than in the past. This is a trend I’m definitely going to continue. Thank you SFPL for all of your ebooks which made this a lot easier.

Book of the year for me was the one about Habit forming that I read this summer. The deepest book was the one by Ta’Nehisi Coates. In between there was a lot of things learned, and a lot of joy found.

Food-related resolutions

I nailed the one about learning to cook more things. I bombed epically at the less sugar one 🙂

Business-related resolutions

Launching broadcast hasn’t happened yet, but we’re 90% of the way there. That’s gonna be huge, and I’m incredibly proud to have led my second intrapreneurÂ project within TokBox. So far, both look to be vibrant businesses. From a people point of view, I got close to my goal. Didn’t nail it though 🙁 From a business point of view, I’m really happy with what we accomplished. Up next is making that number even bigger!

Personal-related resolution

Nope. I bombed this one again. But I’ve already got plans in the works to do better next time around.

Thanks everyone for being part of these last twelve months. I was at so many graduations, weddings, barbecues, birthday parties, and other events where I laughed; I cried; and I thought about how lucky I am.

Fatherhood, Uncategorized 0

Self-worth – a toddler’s point of view

It’s fascinating how much of the reflection we see in the mirror is a reflection of what others have told us about ourselves. In this case, it’s more of a metaphorical mirror, and also more of a metaphorical reflection.

But it has a bigger impact than the physical one that I can actually look at.Â And taking control of it is also much harder.

But I think I’ve done it 🙂 And it feels amazing. Obviously Theo helped. You see, he doesn’t have that problem, and somehow he showed me how to approach it the same way he does. By not approaching it all.

And then there are those dance parties, curtains wide open, with two screaming, happy babies. They care a lot. Which friend said what. Whose feelings got hurt by inclusion or exclusion. But man they shake it off fast.

And then a kiss. A hug. A sneak ice cream that mommy doesn’t notice. It just fixes everything.

It’s awesome. And I don’t mind at all if I just copy their approach. It’s much better than the one I was doing.

just thinking out loud, Uncategorized 0

A Friday for thoughts

I feel like my day started feeling like this:

and now it feels like this:

â€œAll men dream; but not equally.
Those who dream by night in the dusty
recesses of their minds
Awake to find that it was vanity;
But the dreamers of day are dangerous men.
That they may act their dreams with open
eyes to make it possible.â€

T. E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia)

It’s just all about perspective.

just thinking out loud, Uncategorized 2

A sense of being stuck

I have this incredible sense of being stuck.

I don’t know the source, and I’m not convinced that it’s not of my own doing. Worse, I’m pretty convinced it is of my own doing.

It just feels like at every turn we’re this close to an answer; this close to progress; this close to finishing; but we just can’t get there. And I don’t feel like I have any control left. Any more levers or motivational speeches.

I took a run today with Theo, and it was wonderful. For the first time, in a long time, my mind was empty. My focus on my breathing. The road. The baby in the stroller. That silence between my ears was heavenly.

But then I got home again, and I couldn’t keep the volume down.

I hope the end of the year let’s me switch into 2016 in a different zone. But I don’t know… this one feels like it has roots that are starting to settle.

Fatherhood, Uncategorized 0

When 3 year old wit strikes

We were dropping Micky off at work today. Driving up Mission Street, we saw a bunch of Academy of Arts kids walking to school. As they’re all designers of one sort or another they’re always wearing something quirky.

One girl walked across the street wearing bright green Ninja Turtle pajama bottoms.

Micky, as the pajama bottoms walked across the street, said, “Wow, those are hideous.”

And Luka, without missing a beat, said, “You can’t fix stupid, ya know.”

The whole car started dying laughing, and then had another fit of laughs when Amelia asked, “I didn’t hear what Luka said. Why are we laughing?”

Oh man, in those moments… you know they’re definitely related to me.

Life Updates, Uncategorized 1

This week in review

Ok, I’m going to get back in the swing of the family weekly update. That means many things have to happen. (1) I need to take photos. (2) I need to start recording these kids more because honestly unless you hear it from their mouths, then you won’t believe it. (3) I need to not fall asleep Sunday night with the babies after an insane weekend.

And we’re off.

This week was always going to be crazy because it was Homecoming week at TokBox. For those who don’t know, homecoming is an event that colleges and high schools across America celebrate as a way to bring alumna back on campus. It’s usually centered around a major sporting event. In our case, it’s just centered around the calendar. And it’s just a cluster fuck of humanity. Which is good because all of this is an outcome of the great work we’ve done. But holy smokes that was a lot of people.

Monday was also a pretty special day. Micky turned 40 for the 2nd year in a row 🙂

We went to Central Kitchen, and had an AMAZING dinner. Really, really awesome.

Tuesday, I took my turn at being a speaker about the OpenTok platform. It’s nice because I feel as if I haven’t had as much of a chance to talk about the product publicly as we all thought would happen. Lots of reasons why, and so when the chance came, Ellie and I practiced a ton, and then really nailed it. The demo worked (and about 2 people later, the Internet went down). I hit the talking points. It was a good 3.5 minutes. I had to fly back up to the City though (from Santa Clara) because I had to coach soccer.

Oh yeah baby, I’m helping to coach the Swooping Eagles! We’ve got a Tuesday practice run by a pro, and then Saturday it’s me and the other parents. So far, only dads, but I can see a few mom’sÂ itching to make it happen.

We had another conference Wednesday (where I was a booth babe!), and then on the way to the dinner (which is the BEST part of homecoming) Micky got sick. Like up all night, throwing up sick 🙁 So I headed home, and the babies and I spent Thursday not being at home so that Micky could get better. Which meant…

WE WENT ROCK CLIMBING

I finally passed my damn belay test. I’ve got a red Planet Granite card to prove it. The first time the guy was like, “I’ve never failed anyone, but I’m going to fail you.” That was bad :-/

The kids though hung out with Liz and Jose Carlos, and got both their top rope and bouldering on. It was really lovely. They’re so good at bonding with people, and I think that they’ve really learned to trust people as well. They look for clues from Micky and I (which makes sense), and then on that assumption they dive in.

Micky got better after a day full of rest (thankfully), and the week ended with seeing Praveen (who is leading in the weight contest right now).

The weekend was its usually mad self with a visit to the pumpkin patch after a Saturday morning soccer game. Today we did ballet, brunch with Betsy & Cody, and a daddy/daughter date for dinner.

Oh shit, I almost forgot… Saturday was our 5th wedding anniversary. And we went to see a movie. And it was AWESOME!!! Definitely go see the Martian. It’s a wonderful movie. We laughed. We cried. We peed our pants. It had it all. I’ll write another post tomorrow about how I think it’s the first science movie I’ve seen that made minorities and women look like heroes. And then we had a quick bite of sushi, and then passed out. Oh what a life!

I’ll add pictures when I download them (not tonight), and I’ll start writing again. But until then, what a week!

Life Updates, Uncategorized 0

Happy Birthday to my dad

She said, “You don’t look very handsome. You should wear a white shirt”

He said, “You know what? I have a white shirt with me.”

She watched as he buttoned up each button. When the one in the middle wouldn’t stay in place because the shirt only fit him 10 pounds ago he said, “You know there’s no one else in the world I would change into this shirt for.”

I said, “That’s the power of a woman”

But in this case it was just a little girl. A special girl. The granddaughter of the birthday boy. Who wore her special dress, flew to see Dede in his favorite place, and with her brother made the day even more special than it already was.

That’s the power of unfiltered, honest love. That’s the connection a birthday brings whether you’re 4 or 56. And that’s why having these moments, recording them, and sharing them is so special.

Happy birthday babacigim.

Author: Melih O.