I don't think I am really in 'tune' (by your definition) as I would like to be, but to be in harmony with your surroundings and environment, I think you need to observe them first and then decide on advantages and disadvantages and how you can change them.

For me, the realization was couple of things. After years of work in a small company that declared the biggest growth in Turkey, I joined up a startup only to see how it can fail in this country. After that, I have been freelancing for the last year, with the long term hopes of getting myself in the SF area. So I think hopes do help. I told the three employer offers I got last month that I would like to work remote from home office, two of which accepted. I took one of the jobs, subletted my house in the busiest part of Istanbul and moved south to the Mediterranean coast. I practiced Aikido three days a week while I was in Istanbul. Now they are asking me to teach it here, since I seem to be the highest level in the region. I like swimming, and I can do it here for free instead of paying lots of cash to a gym with a pool in Istanbul.

So in order to 'retune', I chose the way to change things drastically. Everything is not settled yet, and moving things around has not made me productive at all, and I should really be coding instead of responding to this but how did this happen:

- I realized I had to change somethings completely. Turkey is becoming a one city (Istanbul) country and I started to hate that fact. I started to hate the fact that everyone feels like they can only make money in that one city in the country. Like the rest of the country is just a hinterland serving that city. I like the city, but I think it is now at the edge of madness.

- I am now 36, and all those ideas are going to die if I don't do something about it.

- I don't enjoy working for other people's ideas anymore when I don't believe in them.

- Noticing that even my U.S. Computer Science education wasn't up to par, and I had to retrain myself, which is an ongoing effort.

- I get paid 3 times less than a U.S. programmer. Though it also means I can find programmers cheap here in case I need to hire them, I have trouble finding capable programmers that also get things done.

- There are no programmers my age that I know of. Well OK, I know one, and I am currently working for him.

- The need to start my own company and projects some time.

- If the programmer minds are meeting in the SF area, I should be there as well.

- I felt like I had to get rid of some of the strange loops in my life. My girlfriend (with whom I ended up leaving each other) warned that the loops are in the mind and I'll take them along to anywhere I go. This also has truth in it.

- The realization that I don't hack anymore. Even my hobby projects have turned into dull events.

So I decided I will make my own bay area first, however fake, and work from there. Thus I moved.

- I made a "field test" first to see if it would actually work. Basically. on my off month, I came here and worked on my hobby projects. I found that I was less stressful and more productive. What I didn't figure out was that this project was something different, and hobby projects always are fun. Boring projects can be harder to do on the country side.

- I have no proper networking to be really freelancing. Basically it is just that previous people that I worked with that like to give me work. This might not work since I won't be meeting anyone in the industry from here. But that is ok. I think I can build up my network from the net. Or move somewhere else. Or die trying.

So basically now I got my own view of a bay, looking west from my rented house. Hopefully I will get some work done today. So I changed it all. And I am all out of tune, because starts are a delicate points in time.

Another thing, before I did this, I was telling everyone that I was going to do it. Move south, work freelance from home. I told it to so many people, so often, and it became a reality. Basically writing it here also is a step in that direction.