Hello everyone again. I know it hasn’t been that long, because this year I finally managed to stick to my goal of “writing twice a month.” To be honest, there were even times when I had to stop myself from writing more than that.

This is the second birthday letter published on my website. You could also call it a small outpouring of thoughts that I am handing over from age 27 to age 28.

When I look back at the letter I wrote to my 27-year-old self, I feel as though last year was harder than this one. Or maybe I simply matured a little more this year and was not shaken by certain things as much as I used to be. Who knows.

But if I am going to paint an honest picture, I have become someone who has more trouble sleeping now and jumps from one task to another just to distract himself.

What Happened This Year?

I managed to fit quite a lot into this year as well. A spoken language, a programming language, and so on...

Okay, okay. If I talk about “AhdCode” one more time, everyone reading this has every right to say, “Enough with AhdCode already! You wrote two whole blog posts about it. Are you still bragging?”

I am really not bragging. I am just happy.

Because this time I managed to go a little beyond simply leaving a trace on the internet and created something tangible that actually belongs to me. Maybe years from now it will mean nothing, or maybe it will last longer than I expect. I do not know. But it mattered to my 27-year-old self, and I think that alone earned it a place in this birthday letter.

Since I mentioned “a spoken language,” I did a little something with that today as well. I translated a short part of this birthday letter into AHD.

And this rather strange thing, which I actually quite like, came out of it:

Mi AHD-v, sil-y pa nal-d qox-t çéz-ñ-i-k-m, ax ri-t çéz-n-i-v biv-w-i-n rov-x, mi ze-pa-g-i-t mak-k-ı-m. Sil ri-t cév-x-i-k-s-l üf, https://chat.checkmate.tr-ğ xom-y lép-s-i-l! Éd ri mi-p AhdCode ze-pa-qox-u-m-u-v çéz-w-i-k-r. AHD qox-n AhdCode-v ze-pa-w-i-k-r. Cér-n-p şav-n poy-x-u-w-r üf, mi-p kép-zél-p çéz-n-t qal-k-ı-s-l-c pén-s!

Translating this directly into ordinary English would be a bit like cheating, because the purpose of AHD is to construct meaning by mathematically combining existing roots instead of creating a new root for every new concept. So, keeping its structure as intact as possible, the rough back-translation would look something like this:

“As AHD, I was able to write you a new language; however, instead of introducing it through a piece of writing, I built a software space. If you have not tried it yet, step inside through chat.checkmate.tr. Moreover, this was written with my AhdCode software language. The AHD language was coded with AhdCode. If the commerce talk is closed, thank you for reading my embodiment-day writing.”

The strange expressions here are not translation mistakes. In AHD, structures such as software + space are used for “website,” software + language for “programming language,” commerce + talk for “advertisement,” and embodiment + day for “birthday.” Even the word for “software” is not a ready-made root of its own; at its foundation is a structure derived from the idea of 0 and 1, in other words, binary logic. The goal is to avoid constantly expanding the dictionary with new roots and instead create new meanings by combining a limited number of basic concepts. That is probably the part of the language I find most entertaining.

And do not let forms like cév-x-i-k-s-l above scare you. The basic roots in AHD are generally built in the form consonant + vowel + consonant, and they are usually followed by single-letter suffixes. So most of those long-looking forms are really just a basic root with several small pieces of meaning stacked onto it.

Some suffixes can also appear repeatedly in different structures. In particular, the letters m, v, r and s reappear when expressing things such as person, possession, and similar grammatical relationships.

There is also a sound-harmony rule I call KSUA. The system does not allow three consonants to appear directly next to one another. When such a collision occurs, a buffer vowel that matches the vowel of the root is inserted between them. That is why, for example, cév-x-k-s-l is not used directly and instead becomes cév-x-i-k-s-l. The i here carries no new meaning; it simply makes the structure easier to pronounce.

I am not going to comment on the fact that, in the final days of being 27, I somehow decided to create both a programming language and a human language. 28-year-old Ahd can deal with the consequences.

Somewhere among all of this, I have not completely stopped writing either. Reading about last year’s enthusiasm for writing reminded me of something: yes, I am still writing.

But when it comes to actually finishing things, I have become a complete wreck.

I am sorry that I keep sailing toward new ideas while leaving six unfinished stories behind me. I really hope I finish them someday. And if I cannot, well, as long as I am alive and well, what can you do? At least the population of people living inside my head keeps increasing every year.

The Desire to Escape into the Future

There were still moments this year when I thought, “I wish I could go back ten years,” but I am not as obsessed with that idea as I was last year.

Instead, a new thought has appeared:

“I wish I could just jump three years into the future so all this PhD stuff would already be over.”

I hope that when 29-year-old Ahd reads this next year, he laughs and says, “Seriously? That was what you were worried about?”

Of course, his job is easy. It is 28-year-old Ahd who will have to deal with qualifying exams, coursework, and all kinds of academic nonsense. I, as 27-year-old Ahd, am just about to finish my shift and disappear.

My Sessions of Talking Back to Myself

Last year, around this point, I apparently wrote, “Okay, that is enough schizophrenic talking.” I guess some traditions continue even when we do not mean for them to.

If we put these schizophrenic “talking back to myself” sessions aside, we can move on to the advice section for everyone, but mostly for myself.

This year, I understood something a little more clearly: keeping my distance from people has gradually turned into a form of relief and escape for me.

Maybe that is also part of the reason why I can love the characters in my imaginary worlds so much while being so wary of real people. People are easier inside your head; you more or less decide what they will say, what they will think, and where the story will go.

You do not get that luxury in real life.

But constantly running away and keeping everyone at a safe distance does not seem very sustainable either.

You want certain things: to be valued, to love, to be loved more...

But if you want those things, you cannot spend forever waiting for someone to come and find you. Unfortunately, you have to participate in this part of life too.

If there are parts of yourself that need changing, change them. If you are afraid of something, at least try to understand why. You do not have to be perfect every time, but do not stay away from the things you want to experience just because you are afraid.

Even if difficult things are waiting for you, believe me, no real-life scenario will ever be as perfectly catastrophic as those destructive possibilities you create in your head that begin with “What if this happens...”

Because you are honestly far too talented at making things worse in your own mind.

This letter will not instantly inject happiness into you, of course. Last year’s letter did not have any miraculous effect like that either. But I hope that when you come back to it next year, it leaves at least a small smile on your face.

To 28-Year-Old Ahd

I would have loved to hand you a year with no debt, no worries, and no troubles, but this is the best I could do.

I am packaging up a whole pile of problems and pushing them over to you.

That has become a tradition too, you know.

I suppose the troubles of adulthood, growing like a snowball rolling down a mountain, are not going to get smaller just because we want them to. You will solve some of them, and new ones will take their place. Maybe the point is not to eliminate all of them, but to realize that you are capable of carrying them.

Before anyone else, I have expectations of you, Ahd.

Even if you keep resisting the idea of caring about other people’s expectations, please try for me at least, okay?

Be better than me. Be stronger and more knowledgeable than me.

Trust yourself a little more and believe that you can put things back in order.

By the way, you have been calling yourself “30” since last year, but I think it is time to stop forcing yourself to grow older.

Yes, you really are getting close to that age.

But do not make your life miserable in advance because of it, okay?

The 27-year-old version of me can now look back at things we once thought we would be ashamed of and laugh about them. Maybe 28-year-old you will do the same with some of the things you are worrying about today.

I hope so.

World Ahd Day

As I reach the end of this letter, I can now say this to everyone without showing even the slightest sign of embarrassment, unlike last year:

Happy September 27th, World Ahd Day!

Last year’s version of me may have gotten a little unnecessarily excited about this, but since we started the tradition, we might as well keep it going.

If you made it this far, even though most of this letter was not directly addressed to you, thank you sincerely for taking the time to read it.

See you in the next post.

Take care!