Mandatory New Year’s Blog Post (Which I’ve TOTALLY Ignored Last Year)

🌟 Happy New Year, everyone! 🌟

Hope you all had a fantastic holiday! I certainly did! Especially, when I compare it with how 2024 started—with me feeling burnt out, anxious, and overwhelmed by a major delayed  product launch. This year, I’m very well-rested. In fact, I even took New Year’s Day off today (yes, I know it’s a public holiday for most, but I’m one of those people who usually finds it hard to stop working). If my parents hadn’t visited me last month, there’s a good chance I would’ve been working on Christmas Eve too.

A big part of this is because of Hubstaff, the time-tracking tool we use at work. Knowing exactly how much you’re earning per hour really puts things into perspective. And I’m not one for leaving any money on the table. That said, I got an amazing bonus this year, which made taking some well-deserved time off feel even better. And I’m planning a full work detox after January 9th—no emails, no deadlines, just pure me time.

Quick side note: The CEO at my first proper job once told me, “Things start to stabilize financially around the five-year mark in your career.” Ironically, I hit that milestone in December, and honestly, life does feel more stable. I don’t know what the future holds, but right now, I’m genuinely happy.

One of my goals this year might involve exploring opportunities with larger companies that offer employment sponsorship—but I’ll assess my finances post-tax season before making any big moves.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The real question is: what’s the plan for this year? 

New Year Plans for ATITW

Let’s address the elephant in the room: I’ll admit, I wasn’t consistent with this blog last year, but when I did, I think created pretty good content. That doesn’t mean it was smooth sailing, though. You have no idea how much I’ve struggled with figuring out what to do with this blog. There’s so much I could’ve done better, but honestly, life has been insanely busy. Here’s what’s been going on:

1. Work

After stumbling my way (like a completely unsupervised, bumbling buffoon) through the intense world of product development for a year—and barely holding it together during the first couple of quarters in 2024—my boss and I finally had a long, overdue conversation. And now, for the first time in a while, I feel like I’m in a good place.

Transitioning from marketing to product has been tough. It’s a space I’ve wanted to break into for a while. I even came close to landing a product management role at a very well-known blockchain company—a dream industry of mine for years. But that opportunity fell through, and ever since then, I just haven’t been able to get the break I’ve been looking for.

Remote work comes with its own set of challenges. One of the hardest parts is feeling undervalued—especially when you’re from a developing economy. Explaining to recruiters that I’m not going to settle for less because of my nationality is draining. Istanbul isn’t exactly cheap, and I work hard for what I’m worth.

So, for now, my blockchain aspirations are on hold. I’m focused on the industry I’m currently in, which—given the state of the economy—is relatively stable. That said, it’s still easy to feel overwhelmed.

After years of dealing with difficult CEOs, I’m relieved to say my current boss gets it. He understands burnout, which makes a huge difference.

Burnout is almost unavoidable when you’re part of a small, remote team scattered across multiple time zones, working on a super-niche legacy product. Especially if what you do also requires an understanding of a billion, small, also niche things that most people don’t know about. Seriously, ChatGPT can’t help me with the logic of my code sometimes. We’re that niche.

But here’s the good news: I finally feel like I understand what I’m doing and where I might be headed. Becoming a subject matter expert in this industry? I don’t  mind it. As I said, my industry is stable. We’ll see what happens.

2. The Book

I’ve been editing, reviewing, rewriting, and proofreading—basically doing everything—to finally finish my book. And just a few hours ago, I did it. It’s done. 

I can’t even express how much I appreciate getting feedback on what I’m doing wrong from a publishing perspective. Writing is one thing—anyone can do that. Heck, even those dumb AIs that can’t tell you how many “r’s” there are in strawberry can churn out words. But publishing? That’s a whole different game.

I’ve learned so much throughout this process. Honestly, I really want 2025 to be the year I land a publisher or a literary agent—whichever comes first.

Of course, I still have to do another round of editing; but it’s done. We’re there.

3. Traveling

You might not know this, but I’ve been traveling a lot over the past year. It all kicked off on January 11 and only wrapped up five days ago. And the travel isn’t slowing down anytime soon—over the next few months, I’ll be on the move again, especially since my youngest sister is graduating and we’re considering leaving Turkey.

That’s a lot to unpack. there, but that’s all for now.

4. The Value Question

I think this mindset might be rooted in my education, but I really enjoy doing work that feels meaningful. And no, I’m not one of those Silicon Valley, EV-obsessed people. My life goals are actually pretty simple: I want to be financially secure, have a family,  two or three kids, and retire early—hopefully in my late forties—so I can focus on writing full-time.

That’s why getting my first book published before I turn 30 is so important to me. Fifteen years feels like a solid timeline to build a reader base that would buy books I write. Enough to live comfortably for the rest of my life, I mean.

Yep. That’s always been the plan. Oh, and I’d love to teach engineering at some point too. Not sure when, but it’s definitely on the list. Anyway, that’s not really the point of this section.

The Main Point

For the past few months, I haven’t felt like I’ve been creating anything truly meaningful. Honestly, I even considered to stop posting on this blog altogether, but I’d made a New Year’s resolution, and I’m not someone who backs out of those.

I don’t know if anyone noticed, but I haven’t been fully invested in the topics I’ve been blogging about lately. Instead, I’ve been writing what I thought my Pinterest audience wanted. And while my passion for writing hasn’t disappeared, I haven’t felt inspired in months—half a year, to be exact.

I’m the kind of person who gets caught up in the numbers, and seeing the number go up (if you know, you know) pushed me to create content based on what was trending on Pinterest. But looking back, I realize that the blogs people resonated with the most were the ones that didn’t follow the trends.

Take my AI blogs, for example. Those have consistently performed well, and I think it’s because they reflect my most authentic voice. I know I get ridiculously specific when it comes to AI, and that’s largely fueled by my frustrations with it. But that’s when I’ve felt the most me on this blog in a long time. I stopped posting on Pinterest too, by the way. The algorithm didn’t vibe with me. I’ll only post stuff there when I want to.

So, What Are We Doing With the Blog in the New Year?

With Pinterest no longer being my primary channel anymore, I’ve decided to focus on just being authentic and grow this blog organically. Which might not fly with the people here who want to know more about SEO and how to quickly get traffic, but here’s the truth.

SEO is hard.

If anyone tells you it’s easy, they’re lying. It’s an art, and sometimes things make sense, but more often than not, they don’t. We’ve actually moved SEO under Product at work, and I’m now the main point of contact for it. And let me tell you: most of the ‘valuable’ information out there is either behind a paywall or too generic.

Sure, there are free online courses about SEO—I’ve mentioned them before. But the truth is, not every SEO challenge can be solved just by focusing on keyword ranking or using meta titles and descriptions correctly.

SEO requires experimentation, understanding, and a lot of trial and error. I didn’t realize that when I first started copywriting. I used to think that stuffing twenty keywords into a 4,000-word article was enough to boost rankings. No one really talks about what it actually takes to rank. And the few blogs that do a decent job explaining it are mostly written by SEO software companies—and, by the way, no one can learn their entire tool in a seven-day trial.

Now, I’m not here to bash anyone. But let me tell you: anyone who promises to teach you SEO in a month is lying. I’ll keep talking about things that interest me—like the mini-series I did during the Google update. But moving forward, this blog won’t be centered on marketing anymore.

I’m just not comfortable staying in a space where people are selling courses to make a living and lying about making $10,000 through their blogs. It drives traffic on Pinterest, but my morals won’t let me create a course, unless I can guarantee something.

Incoming Change in Direction

So, the plan for the new year is to completely revamp this blog for. I want to focus on things that new writers actually need to know—everything from freelancing to landing a full-time job, tackling burnout, and the occasional geek-out over all things tech. Because, at the end of the day, my domain name isn’t bloggingsomething, it’s athistleinthewind, and I tend to get caught up in the nitty gritty of things.

Oh, and writing. I really like writing and not necessarily copywriting. As I make final edits to my manuscript, I’ll probably be talking about the writing process behind it. There’s a lot of thinking that goes into it, and I think I’m more useful there.

Oh, also I may have made a new year’s resolution on reading a book a week. I know, me and my new year spirit is kind of funny. But I like starting off the new year with new goals. Blog post will be up shortly.

Oh, and I might’ve even already started writing a blog on the history of new year resolutions, but I’ll think about it. If I’m happy with it, I’ll post it here.

This blog was all over the place, but I’m hoping to finally make a habit of posting here regularly.

So, yeah. Hope you like this new era of ATHISTLEINTHEWIND (and yes, I’m attending Taylor Swift’s concert here in Istanbul next month).