You know how the last days of each December arrive with a slam from the universe to show us that whatever we have done in the year that’s coming to its end… now has to remain in the past. And you certainly know how each December, right before the new year knocks on the door, leaving an invisible trace in the snow, we get flooded with content on the topics of new year’s resolutions, fresh starts, and becoming greater versions of ourselves.

And as I was sitting at home (a.k.a. the Museum of Meltdowns) in Istanbul, in December 2025, reminiscing about the year that had almost passed and the lessons I had learned, I couldn’t help but wonder…

Do we ever pause and realistically take into consideration how our lives actually look before we try what reinvention feels like?

I kept writing in How to Make 2026 the Best Year by Mel Robbins, convinced I had the clarity required to welcome the new year feeling prepared, calm, and structured — as structured as I can be. I set goals that I had neglected in 2025. I set some necessary boundaries, both with some people around me and with myself.

And I waited.

Here’s what I’ve found so far, now in January.

1. Reinvention is not loud.
Until it is.
You don’t announce it, you live through it. It announces its arrival softly and sometimes you don’t even realize it’s come.

2. Starting anew is necessary because of you, not because others told you it’s time for a new beginning.

3. If you’re genuinely happy with your current life, you don’t need to start over. Maybe. Certainly?

4. You can’t start rebuilding if you’re still stuck in the old routines.

5. Old routines will try to devour you into their abyss, but this is the first reality check. Are your foundations strong enough?

6. Anyone can reinvent themselves at any age. Stop thinking of the numbers, think of the outcome.

7. It’s important to be realistic when it comes to your present. There may be things you want to escape (a job, a relationship, a city) but you still might need to keep them a little longer until you build something strong enough so you can leave.

8. Believing in yourself and avoiding self-guilt, can be lifesaving.

9. No one teaches us how to stand still without guilt. Standing still does not mean giving up. It means building a strategy that you can later implement.

10. I need to read self-development books now. I take what I need and release what I think should be released.

11. The universe doesn’t reward us instantly with peace, but with chaos. Thus, we see what our boundaries and limits are.

12. Am I doing everything right? What even is right?

13. Every day you do something new that’s bringing you closer to your goals is reinvention.

14. Becoming yourself doesn’t necessarily look like a glow-up. Sometimes it’s just pushing through survival until the next moment of freedom.

15. Waiting doesn’t magically save you, as much as you believe in magic.

16. Sometimes you will have to deal with some of your worst traits because they will reveal what they are.

17. The most uncomfortable moments are exactly the ones that show us what needs to change. They’re a sign that movement must happen. Discomfort arrives first, though.

18. A question struck me:
What if reinvention isn’t the actual moment we change, but the moment you admit the old life no longer fits?

Think about it. The moment you admit to yourself that the old life doesn’t serve you and that you need a way out can be considered reinvention, can’t it?

19. Rebirth starts when we have run out of ways to avoid ourselves.

20. Small wins are still wins. Tiny steps are still movement.

21. Learn your traumas. Look for them in the past. Usually, it’s an old version of ourselves that’s gripping us. Make peace with it.

22. It can’t be difficult, right? This is probably one of the most misleading questions you can ask yourself.

23. And when you realize how hard it is, you ask yourself… Can’t it just be easier?
It doesn’t need to be easier, it’s just different.

24. Trusting yourself is probably the best action you can take when you’re feeling low.

25. I didn’t deserve this to happen.

26. But tomorrow will be better.

And as I waited and experienced life in the last one month, these twenty-six thoughts crossed my mind and stayed with me. I realized something. Making the attempt to start changing your life means one thing.

You’re on the right path and you cannot go back. And I realized why.

Once you’ve tasted the fruit of rebirth, even just a little, you would want more of it. Maybe not right away, because you can get caught up in the old routines easily, but you will not go back to who you were.

My closest people know how hard 2025 was for me. I made mistakes, I lived in survival mode for almost a year, and yet… there was always a quiet voice calling out my name.

At one point, I turned to it and it said: you are meant for more.

There were hardships, there was drama, there was the heaviest downpour I’ve ever witnessed, there was the largest power outage I have experienced, exhaustion… and stories I’ll save for later.

If you have checked my publication, “I Couldn’t Help But Wonder”, under its title, there is a line: “and I kept asking.”

Ask. Give yourself permission to ask. Look for ways to improve your life. Give yourself some grace. Save yourself the meltdowns because life, in its own crazy, twisted, and silly way, always shows you that the best is yet to come.

And the bravest reinvention is allowing yourself to become a different version of yourself. Different from your past versions.

And if even one of these twenty-six thoughts stayed with you after reading this…
then rebirth has already begun.

This essay began as the first entry in a monthly series on reinvention. The series returns in June on The Wonder Mag.

An earlier version of this essay was originally published on I Couldn’t Help But Wonder on Medium. This version is now part of The Wonder Mag archive.

What falling for the wrong kind of mystery taught me about modern love.

On a cold night at the beginning of February, the unexpected happened.

I’m lying…

I had just returned to one of my worst patterns.

I was lying in bed in my Istanbul home — also known as the Museum of Meltdowns — with a notebook and pen beside me, staring at my phone as if it were a crystal ball holding the meaning of life. Well, for a hopeful (or hopeless) romantic like me, that phone could really feel that powerful, especially when I was in love.

And that was exactly the case.

I had fallen for a friend.

He was kind and intelligent, funny, and unavailable in the exact way my old wounds recognized instantly. The kind of unavailable that gave me just enough uncertainty to feel like home.

Now that it’s April — two months after that battlefield in my heart, and two months after starting the much-needed therapy that followed — I am revisiting the piece I wrote that night in February.

And all I can say is: thank God I started therapy.

Because rereading these pages reminds me how easy it is to turn waiting for one person’s text into a full-time job when you have forgotten the fact that your own life exists.

The strange part is that, back then, I thought I was doing well and that I had it all figured out.

I was getting back on Medium. I was creating more structure in my days. I believed I had figured things out. But when the backbone of your life is not yet strengthened, it is so easy to fall into the same traps of life again.

And again…

I had fallen for a friend.

Isn’t that how trouble always introduces itself?

A familiar face. Good old memories. The easy conversation. An unexpected kiss on the sofa after a night out. A few days and nights together. Enough adrenaline to awaken hope, and enough distance to keep me starving.

In other words, my nervous system was fascinated.

We spent time together. We slept together. We laughed together.

Then came the silences, the strange behavior, the delayed replies.

He came to my home once, and I cooked dinner for us. We made love, but he did not stay over. He left for his place alone, and something in me knew that something was off.

The lack of clarity.

The exact lack of clarity that can turn a grown man into a desperate French poet.

I couldn’t believe that someone I called a friend could avoid naming what had happened between us — what was happening between us — and refuse to bring the conversation into the light.

The worst part was that I was avoiding it too.

And just like that, I couldn’t help but wonder:

Why is it that some of us can survive heartbreak, betrayal, even failed engagements, yet still feel mortified by a text that doesn’t arrive?

I knew he was leaving Istanbul for a while, and I was craving clarity, craving to know where I stood.

At a certain point that night — that February night — half-heartbroken and half-humiliated, I threw myself onto the bed with a notebook and a pen, and I wrote what you’re about to read.

“What happens when you open your heart again after the worst betrayal you’ve survived?“ — I was referring to the collapse of my engagement failed - a betrayal that had left me questioning not only love, but my own ability to trust it again.

“Pain.

Unknown, dysregulating, suffocating pain.

You sit waiting for a text as if it would never come.
You try to stay hopeful.
You try to believe.

And yet… Nothing seems logical. Nothing even gives a point of meaning where you’re supposed to find air, warmth, and space to just be.

I didn’t even think I would ever fall in love again.

But one kiss, one friend, a shared moment of intimacy and passion were apparently enough to set my heart on fire, send me to the heavens, drag me back to earth, pull me through hell, and transcend me into the unknown.

I love deeply.

It’s not something I force. It just happens when the person is… right?

I have no more tears to cry.
I have no more strength to carry that burden.

I only have a heart that still somehow cares.

A heart I realized was still somehow capable of loving and craving someone.

A mind that will never rest until I am beside the person I am in love with, trying to prove I am worthy of their attention.

I’m asking myself what I’m gonna do. And it’s one of those moments that have grabbed me by the throat.

Will I ever be enough? Will I ever feel like enough?
Will I ever believe in a love that’s not chaotic and intense?
Why do I keep putting myself through so much pain?

I am waiting for a text from that boy. Something simple like:

“Do u wanna meet?”

And I’ll be there.

Not to get clarity, just for the high of the moment.
Not to have the serious talk my soul is waiting for, just to indulge into the heat of the moment.

And once I get the text, I’ll rise from the ashes like a powerful newborn phoenix until we separate, and then I’ll burst into flames just to disintegrate gracefully into ashes again, while waiting for the next message.

And the next high.

I don’t really know how to love someone while bracing myself.

I hope I’ll learn.

P.S. He texted.

How very cinematic of me, right?

After he texted, we did meet, but we didn’t have the talk.

We went out, and I hoped we would go back to his place, wake up in the morning together, and that I’d finally bring up the question — What are we now? — myself.

None of that happened. He went back to his place alone, and I walked myself home.

I don’t need to tell you how confused I felt. Most of us already know.

A few days later, I entered therapy for the first time in my life, and it was grounding. Therapy teaches you unromantic things very often, but you understand yourself and learn how to change. I’m learning so much about myself and the years of unprocessed trauma. I’m learning to recognize my emotions and register them.

I am learning to set boundaries.

And I have rarely felt happier.
Truly.

Looking back at that February version of me, I am shocked I was still even functioning at all. I was literally awaiting salvation that would come via a WhatsApp notification.

And yet I do not think that version of me was pathetic.

He was simply trying to love with tools built during years of survival mode. He was lonely.

Hopeful or hopeless.
Triggered.

But still trying and wishful to finally change. Otherwise, he would never have booked that first therapy appointment.

He was also brave enough to open his heart again after it had been broken before.

Had I known then what I know now, if I could only sit beside that boy in the Museum of Meltdowns, I would give him a pat on the shoulder and maybe, just maybe, I would whisper to him:

The message you are waiting for won’t give you oxygen.
You should be brave enough to bring up the hard conversation by yourself.
And actually, anyone who likes you should sound less confusing than this.

And dear readers, if what I shared with you could be called that was me then, then this is me now, is wanting to tell you this, in case you’re going through something similar:

If you’re waiting for someone to save your life, start by returning it to yourself. By yourself. You are enough. You are lovable. And love would never require you to shrink into waiting.

An earlier version of this essay was originally published on I Couldn’t Help But Wonder on Medium. This version is now part of The Wonder Mag archive.

I spent years waiting for a different life, and then I accidentally started building one through repeated mornings.

It began, as most changes do, on an ordinary day a month ago. I woke up, spent some time staring at the little multicolored blocks on Google Calendar — chaos and hell lurking inside them while only pretending to be marking my teaching slots — dreaded the day ahead, ate breakfast, and came to my office.

I am kidding, I do not have an office.

What I have is a place that marked the beginning of my reinvention and homecoming to my true self — the media person eager to craft beautiful pieces about culture, music, art…

That version of myself was not always so difficult to locate. At nineteen, he was working as a reporter and video podcast host at one of the biggest media companies in Bulgaria. He was curious, ambitious, hungry for culture, and aware that his future belonged somewhere inside media, interviews, music, art, fashion, and the strange electric glamour of public life that he had already grown used to.

Then life happened. Or, more precisely, Istanbul happened. Love happened. Breakups. Rent. Teaching, because I couldn’t work as a journalist in Istanbul.

And that self, I buried accidentally somewhere between my first breakup and my permanent relocation to Istanbul. And thanks to the very practical obligation of paying for an adult life and the chaos of day-to-day survival, my weeks became filled with teaching English, more teaching, detesting teaching, wanting to escape teaching, and preaching how I wanted to return to television, return to writing, and, most importantly, return to myself.

Somewhere in this havoc, I would write personal essays, each of which became my ‘comeback’ to writing.

A comeback only until I went to bed past two in the morning again and woke up around noon to begin teaching again, or a comeback until I would get distracted by the next foreigner in Istanbul and disappear into his temporary orbit. A comeback until I found my next actual partner, got engaged at twenty-three, and then watched that imagined future collapse in a plot twist so vulgar and operatic that it deserved its own press release — which it got.

Unfortunately, my days last year were full of chaos, for which I blamed myself relentlessly.

Recently, I have started to wonder whether chaos felt so familiar because, for a while, I was mistaking it for freedom.

I had recently come out as a gay man and had moved to Istanbul. I was living alone, working constantly, falling in love recklessly, trying to survive financially, emotionally, and creatively. I felt frivolous, and that version of me accepted that maybe, just maybe, freedom meant chaos. Maybe it was supposed to look like late nights, cigarette smoke, missed mornings, beautiful strangers, overbooked calendars, and writing at the edge of exhaustion.

What I was not giving myself was space.

The space to just “tune out and tune in” — a line I had recently returned to while working on my Christina Aguilera quote piece — process what had happened to me, accept that teaching is temporarily funding my next chapter and start executing from where I was.

But unconsciously, chaos was still finding me, or perhaps it was actually me still finding chaos.

That day a month ago, after having had breakfast, I entered my office — the Atatürk Cultural Centre, one of the most marvellous places I have encountered. I ordered my usual hot chocolate with coffee at the café, then went inside the library, which in its purest essence is an excellent example of craftsmanship, with its wooden interiors, ceiling-high shelves and windows, and a remarkable collection of books on fashion, art, cinema, design, and culture.

I sat at my usual desk, opened my laptop, and stumbled upon the racing thoughts in my mind about how I could return to my actual identity.

I remarked on the fact that I was already doing way better than in March, considering I had started therapy in February. I was also back to writing consistently, but I was still craving more output, because I really do not associate myself with being a teacher. All that “could-a, would-a, should-a” you have just read regarding the year that had passed had also planted a seed of mistrust inside me, so I did not fully trust that what I was building was consistent.

The night before, I had watched The Devil Wears Prada 2, known as TDWP2 in Vogue, for the second time, so I was still feeling the lingering influence of its immaculate fashion-world energy, its sense of power and precision, and the impeccable performances of the actors.

Miranda Priestly’s spirit was still around me, and knowing her mythology has long been linked to Anna Wintour, I decided to explore Anna’s life more closely.

I opened the library catalogue on my laptop and searched for Vogue, hoping I would find some archival issues here. Instead, among the top results, there she was — Anna Wintour, smiling behind her iconic glasses.

It read “Anna”. Simply “Anna”.
That was it, I had found her biography, written by Amy Odell.

I took a photo of the call number and took a stroll around the shelves and floors to look for “Anna”. I found her sitting on a shelf on the third floor, I reached for her, and with the excitement of someone who had just discovered a key, I started reading the introduction.

“Of course she was wearing the sunglasses.”

I began reading the description of what happens to be the day following Donald Trump’s first election as president, and the reactions it had caused within Vogue’s ranks and the all-staff meeting that followed.

What got my attention, however, was:

“Anna started the day as usual. She rose by 5:00 a.m., exercised at 5:30 or 6:00 (depending on whether she played her twice weekly tennis or worked out with her trainer), sat for thirty minutes for professional hair and makeup, and was then chauffered to her office at 1 World Trade Center, where her three assistants and her usual breakfast — a whole-milk latte and a blueberry muffin from Starbucks, which would mostly go uneaten — were waiting for her.”

I was thrilled and immediately thought to myself: “‘Rose by 5:00 a.m.’ What a tempting thought”. I read a few more paragraphs, left the book on the shelf again with the promise to continue reading it every day, and returned to my seat.

I already knew that Kris Jenner, for example, wakes up at 4:30 a.m. every day and that waking up early is a habit that many successful people have. But still under the spell of TDWP2 and Miranda Priestly, somehow the idea really was tempting, and I started thinking about whether I could apply this routine to my life, too.

Maybe it was also because Anna Wintour made the idea feel less like productivity and more like authorship. I could sense that the reason behind her waking up so early isn’t just because “successful people wake up early”, but because she might like psychological control over the day. Mornings are quieter. She avoids reactive chaos. So I decided to try it out the following morning.

When my alarm rang at 5:00, I stood up, not fighting against it, but actually feeling the quiet pride of having achieved a small victory against the version of myself who always negotiated with the alarm.

I did yoga, which had already become part of my routine. I had breakfast. I got ready. Then I walked to the cultural centre, ordered my hot chocolate with coffee, waited for the library to open, and returned to the third floor, where Anna was sitting on the shelf.

Reading her biography became one of my morning rituals.

Around the same time, I subscribed to Vogue. That, too, became part of the ritual: hot chocolate with coffee, Vogue before the library, then Anna, then the work of the day.

It sounds small because most rituals do. That is their power.

My therapist has taught me a lot about structure recently. Not structure as punishment or the enemy of creativity, but structure as the environment that makes change possible.

It appears that if we look at change as a wave, then structure is the shore.

Motivation is a feeling. Discipline is a decision.

But structure is the habitat that makes decision-making and discipline simpler. Structure is built by rituals and habits, and it helps you take the next step. It reduces the number of negotiations and removes the drama from beginning all over again.

And the reason why rituals are key to building long-lasting structure is that rituals are signals to the nervous system saying: this is where we start, this is how we continue, this is where we return when everything else becomes too loud.

Examples of my rituals: the morning drink; the same table; the book on the third floor; the Vogue article before work; the notebook; the opening of the day before the day opens its mouth.

Rituals are small ceremonies of self-trust and repeated gestures through which you tell yourself:

I am choosing myself, I am coming back again. I am not waiting for inspiration to rescue me from disorder. I am in control.

Now I wake up at 5:00 a.m. every day. I do yoga, aim to arrive at the cultural centre by 7:45, have my hot chocolate with coffee, study Turkish, read Vogue, read Anna, and then begin the tasks of the day.

And something has shifted.

Flawlessness is impossible, of course, the structure sometimes still breaks in the evenings. I still get tired. I still have teaching slots. I still occasionally feel the gravitational pull of old chaos. But there is now a backbone where there used to be longing.

I am feeling better than ever, I am writing and publishing, because now ideas are constantly coming to my mind, and I actually execute them. I have set up a content calendar and I am already filling July. I am beginning to feel, with surprising calmness, that I will not be teaching forever, because I finally built a structure that allows another life to become possible.

Most importantly, thanks to my therapist, Anna Wintour, Miranda Priestly — all three powerful women, three Devils in their own way — I realized that there’s beauty, almost frightening beauty, in a life run with precision, clarity, image, standards, and ritual.

And there is the quiet realization that structure itself has not made my life smaller, but more glamorous.

For years, I thought glamour belonged to clothes, labels, cities, hotel lobbies, and expensive cafés. And perhaps, it does, in part. But lately, I have started to see glamour differently — there is power in a life lived with intention, in knowing where your morning begins, in the discipline of protecting your mind before the world starts asking for pieces of it. It is taste, but also timing; standards, but also repetition; beauty, but also boundaries.

Life finally has somewhere to place its dreams.

And maybe, just maybe, inspiration is what appears after you sit at the same table, open the same notebook, and prove to yourself — morning after morning — that you are coming back.

An earlier version of this essay was originally published on I Couldn’t Help But Wonder on Medium. This version is now part of The Wonder Mag archive.