One week has passed since I have arrived to Sapanca and it seems like ages : you will not believe how busy life can be on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere. Major renovation of the hotel was finalized followed by a massive cleaning and preparing the rooms for the guests. Then receiving the guests over the weekend. Somewhat settling ourselves (if putting a bed in the middle of an empty room can be called settling). Cleaning the rooms after the guests and helping parents to settle down. Finding out a million of small things to be taken care (like we ran out of water last light and Özgür joked that he would write in his blog how I washed my foot in the toilet - he thought I would not mention it in mine, ha!). And the new week starts like that.

For the whole week I was working out my personal boundaries. I have arrived to Sapanca with a sense of gratitude. Gratitude to life that has been so generous with good things and people coming to me. I wrote blog posts, made a trip to Istanbul for a food walking tour with my customers, helped here and there with making food, serving customers and cleaning, cooked a meal, took part in the two day full-fledged post-construction cleaning. What a life: having a luxury of numerous venues where I can apply my energy and do great job with no expectations anyone holds on the outcome in either.

Probably the first time in my life I am embracing this feeling of abundance. Abundance which stimulates your creative juices you have no option but producing wonderful things. As wonderful as a new life. I can’t think of a better setting for giving birth. Because when you have so much goodness it is only right to give back to the world. But then I thought that maybe my giving birth spree is just a disguised attempt to escape from instilling self-discipline which is much harder to practice in the situation of abundance. And maybe working on self-discipline is the greatest thing to do while planning pregnancy (mom, do not despair, not yet!).

In the context of working from home office, living with an extended family and helping out in a family business self-discipline becomes the matter of setting the personal boundaries. Understanding yourself, your space - physical and emotional, your needs and goals and finding out how that fit those of the others.

Setting boundaries when living with extended family

I have never shared the living space with so many people. Strictly speaking, it is in not an extended family: it’s Özgür’s parents, two of us and 3 staff members helping out with all the kitchen and housework. However, with at least a dozen of construction workers, occasionally visiting relatives and friends and of course hotel and restaurant guests that makes for quite a vibrant social life. You hardly feel isolated as one may get to when living on a hilltop but at the same time your life becomes little bit more public and communal than you wish it to be.

Take such routines of an extended family as shared meals. I like to romanticize practice of Turkish breakfast that brings the whole family to the table in the morning so they can start the day together. This is what we do here every day too: a long table gets set up for 7, double tea pot with the freshly brewed tea is steaming on the electric plate on the table, the breakfast set filled with white cheese and olives is presiding over the table and a basket of fresh bread is complementing the scene. Jokes, gossips and day plans are shared over the morning meal. As much as I adore this routine sometimes I wish I could just prepare a bowl of yoghurt with dried fruits and nuts for myself, sit down on a sofa (also imaginary in our post-construction habitat) and enjoy it to the quietness broken only by the birds singing in the trees outside. Or prepare breakfast just for Özgür and myself and enjoy his undivided attention.

It is clear that through such routines and common activities relationships are built and maintained in an extended family. That is why I feel that sometimes it is hard to withdraw from those, go and do my own thing instead. My dilemma is that of staying involved or being productive. The more time I spend in the activities around the farmhouse the less time I have for writing, business development and simply staying in touch with the outside world. Unlike with helping in a family business where the expectations about my contribution are little, I need to participate in the life of the extended family as I am part of it. Which I really appreciate and enjoy at the end of the day.

Solution: For keeping my personal boundaries and sanity I have realized it is important for me to keep two houses. While in Sapanca I can have sharing and belonging, calm and peace and it is in Istanbul where I can nourish my self-worth and independence and enjoy the vibe of a big city. It may be just a sneaky shortcut but something tells me it’s one of those temporary fixes which has a potential of a long-term solution.

Setting boundaries when working from home office

Another thing is that even though I work from a home office I work in a kind of public area. Because the internet connection got weakened after the construction I find myself running around with my mac like an antenna trying to catch the strongest signal and do some work eventually. So often times I sit with my mac in the restaurant.

I have a very acute sense of personal space and sometimes a simple question, “Where are you going?” or “What are you up to?” seems like a major violation of it to me. This is where the cultural differences kick in: in Turkey it is customary to ask “What are you doing?” when you see a family member around the house in the sense of acknowledging her presence just as in the case with “What’s up?”. I thought they were rude to intrude and they thought I was rude to get irritated by the question. I think I am getting better though - less irritated and less distracted too.

While Ozgur knows what I am up to, it is harder for me to explain to the others - partly, it’s my limited Turkish and partly the exoticism of what I am actually doing. Once Özgür took good 10 minutes to explain to his parents who are very up to date with the modern life what I am doing exactly with my Istanbul food walking tours (well, my parents never quite understood what I did as a strategy consultant before either). So I am still a bit of a mystery here, working on my mac, running around with a camera and making occasional trips to Istanbul. With such a casual working style I think I rarely appear to people as working - so any time I may be getting all the “what’s ups?”, occasional questions from the guests, requests from Adem, Zeliha Hanim’s assistant at the kitchen to pick up something from the kitchen to the guests and random questions of the Georgian ladies working here about the cleaning plans.

Solution: I have started with creating “virtual cubicle” by planting myself with my mac in a spot with great internet reception, plugging in ear-phones and putting on cheerful Ottoman marches or Ukrainian folk so that I am less distracted and more energized. I organize my work by keeping concentration for the spans of the individual tasks after which I take breaks. But I still catch myself checking out people passing by and being tempted to jump in and offer help here and there. I guess it is the time for 3G modem and including a comfortable working spot into the room interior project. Nothing as efficient as physical boundaries at times.

Setting boundaries when helping in a family business

About two months ago Özgür decided to de-invest his professional efforts in this MICE-agency in Istanbul which he has been running for 15 years and which is still doing ace job in organizing corporate events, meetings and getaways in Turkey and abroad. So he came to settle down in Sapanca, help his parents with the the renovation of the hotel and put more energy into running the hotel and restaurant at a larger scale. I clearly see his point about the potential of the place. Lovely location on a hilltop seemingly in the middle of nowhere but really close to the towns of Izmit and Adapazari, 1.5 hours drive from Istanbul and about 3 hours to Ankara makes a great getaway for couples and families. Home-like ambiance, food, rooms, service and honest attitude of the owners make people come back again and again. In the family business you can really tell when the owners care and Irez guys definitely do.

From the back-office end this translates into a range of things waiting to be done all the time. With the construction that has been running until this week the scope has been only multiplied. And I am a kind of person who’s got a serious inner itch to help good people. Especially if I love them and they have been kind to me. Especially if this help can get me near this professional kitchen where Özgür’s mom is commanding the work. Or near her son so we can spend more time together. So any time the place gets busy I jump in to help. I find myself peeling tomatoes, carrying done dishes upstairs, sorting out the cutlery, preparing water and bread, carrying out ready dishes upstairs, clearing the tables, preparing fresh Turkish tea, setting up a meal for the staff. Little things can keep you very busy indeed. Because there is always something to do.

When various family business owners told me such things before I thought, “They just can’t delegate”. Until I figured they don’t want to - it’s a different business model - offering a part of your heart with your product or service or offering a standardized procedure that can be formalized to the bone and anonymously delegated. It makes me really happy running around as it’s belonging and satisfaction I am deriving from it. But also it is not my business and I have other thing to invest my time into also. So, I have figured I need to set the boundaries to make sure I do not only help others but do my own thing.

Solution: I have decided to set boundaries in terms of time and areas of responsibilities. As for the time boundaries I take the first half of the day when my brain is more productive for writing and leave the second half with my own admin tasks and helping around at the restaurant and the hotel when they are at the busiest. As I am writing these lines I am missing out on the preparation and serving breakfast for the guests and cleaning the guest rooms but I will spend the afternoon checking the cleaning of the guest rooms, doing our laundry and cleaning our room after some re-arrangements. As for the areas of responsibility I have chosen to do the test drive with the household “department”: it sort of came out naturally after the post-construction cleaning and there is more room for delegation here as two Georgian ladies are doing most of the work. With all my interest in cooking I have chosen not to sneak into the kitchen in a big way. Yet. Personal boundaries are set to be negotiated and thought over time.

Relieved with this answers and solutions in mind I started my day. Internet reception was awful in the room where I planned to spend my productive half of the day. For 30 minutes I could not open flickr and then it took a good hour to download a single photo to my photostream for it to appear on this post later. I came down to the restaurant and gave a furious speech to Özgür about the sucking connection, 3G modem and my ruined day. One of the guy’s many merits is that he does not pick up the fights at those silly moments of mine.

He listened to me, kissed me and said that this week he would resolve the internet connection issue. In a few minutes I saw him taking a photo of me: I burst into laughter as I exactly knew how stupidly angry I must be looking right now. Suddenly remembered that if worse comes to the worse I can always run away to Istanbul. And stay there as long as I want. Maybe a week. Maybe a one or two days as I would itch to come back to Sapanca. Because personal boundaries are important but they should not become fences that guard off love and sharing.