inspired by a shared human experience, so take your time to absorb it.

a couple of days ago, i was admiring the 4 p.m. sun peaking through my living room’s window, casting a beautiful shadow on the wall opposite my sofa. i believe it to be nature’s light show organized exclusively for me, and i show up for it like clockwork.

it’s that time of the day when, somewhere else in the world, Italians are easing into a siesta and the Swedish are pausing for fika. in quiet solidarity, i usually join with my own cup of herbal tea.

on this particular afternoon though, my attention drifted to the empty space on the sofa. i found myself wishing someone was sitting there, seeing the light with me, and before i could sink too far into that feeling, another thought interrupted it:
why was I so quick to want this space to be filled?

i tend to understand things better in analogies, so, i visualized this empty space as a ‘void’ and thought that as people, we are hardwired to fill it.

empty hour in the day, space on the calendar, a corner in your home, silence during a conversation, time since the last date, or a gap in your career.

we seem to have a reflex for filling voids, as if an unfilled space is not simply empty but threatening.

but, why? i have three theories for it.

we fear that if we don’t fill it now, it might grow. today it is an empty seat on the sofa, but tomorrow it can become something larger, something harder to ignore.

we’ve also learnt that leaving gaps untouched is a form of laziness. that we must act, respond, engage, fill, or optimise. we don’t have enough examples of people co-existing peacefully with gaps, but we have endless examples of how to stay occupied.

but the third theory is the the one that stayed with me the most.
we’re simply not interested enough in ourselves to remain there.

because a gap, if you don’t rush to fill it, eventually returns you to your own company. and, that’s where it gets uncomfortable or even untolerable.

not because something is wrong, but because we are rarely taught how to be with ourselves without distraction, validation, or purpose. we are taught to be useful, liked, productive, or needed. so when none of that is happening, the question underneath becomes quiet but sharp:

is there enough here for me to stay?

for instance, the day i have client wins or more of you read what i wrote, i feel more interested in myself. i invest in things that are good for me more easily. at some level, i think i feel more worthy of it. every time i get a positive signal that someone or something is interested in me, i get more interested in me.

and that is… disheartening.

i feel that this is a shared experience for us. we may name it differently, but the truth remains - if we have not built a living relationship with ourselves, the return feels like exile instead of home.

ever since i felt that ‘void’ on the sofa, i have been thinking about what it really means to be interested in myself.

i see it as relating to your own life with curiosity instead of conclusion.

most of us unknowingly treat ourselves as something already decided:
“this is who I am.”
“this is how I react.”
“this is what my life looks like.”

interest disrupts that ‘fixed identity’ notion.

in order to stay interested in yourself, you will need to see yourself as still unfolding. to remain attentive to your thoughts, your desires, your contradictions, your changes. you commit to not becoming boring to yourself.

but it’s also not admiration, constant analysis, or seeing yourself as a project to keep improving.

it’s simply staying in conversation with your own life.

you notice what excites you now, even if it didn’t before.
you observe how you respond to things without rushing to judge it.
you allow yourself to evolve without forcing consistency.

it’s a kind of companionship:
you don’t abandon yourself just because nothing external is happening.

you might recall this phrase “Know Thyself”. at the temple of Delphi, this phrase wasn’t a conclusion. it was an invitation to keep discovering.

for Socrates, wisdom began with admitting you don’t fully know yourself.
to translate it for this conversation, i feel it would mean to not reduce yourself to a fixed identity.

you’re not just “this kind of person.”
you’re a living question.

i also realize that it might be easy to fit ‘staying interested in yourself’ next to the self-love, self-care, and self-worth family. but interest is subtler and, in some ways, more durable.

love can feel demanding. worth can become moral. care can become another task.
but interest is alive as it has movement in it. it suggests attention, curiosity, discovery. it means the self is not a burden to manage, but a life to accompany.

and above all, staying interested in yourself makes the gap less threatening.

because then an empty evening is not immediate evidence of abandonment.
a season of uncertainty is not immediate evidence of failure.
solitude is not punishment.
waiting is not bad timing.
space on the sofa is not a void.
it becomes observation, participation, ripening, and possibility.

i feel that, if i allow this understanding to seep into my DNA, it can alter how i experience life every day.

a person who is interested in themselves is less likely to use others as constant anesthesia. less likely to force unsuitable relationships, conversations, jobs, identities, purchases, or routines just to avoid emptiness. less likely to resent the life in others because they still feel life moving in themselves.

even in a quiet room. even in a waiting period. even in an ordinary morning.

at this point, i feel ready to practice ‘staying interested in myself’. not like a project, but a muscle to train every single day.

in our fast-paced lives, we are constantly pulled outward - towards work, screens, conversations, validation, deadlines. so staying interested in yourself might not be about adding more, but about changing how you relate to what already exists.

first, the principle:
it means not outsourcing your aliveness entirely to external events.

you don’t wait for plans, people, or achievements to feel engaged with life.
you learn to remain engaged even in the in-between moments. you don’t rush to fill every silence, treat every boredom as a problem-solving exercise, or need constant stimulation to feel like something is happening.

for instance, i was more independent with my desires in my 20s versus in my 30s. if i were to crave a visit to a bookshop and a cafe afterwards, i need a reason, a person, or something external to get me there. i outsource my choice and the fulfilment of my want for no good reason.

because i am putting it on someone else, if it doesn’t happen, i will eventually translate it into a bigger conclusion that would successfully ruin my next few days.

so, to shake things up and begin this training, i’d need to take myself on this outing whenever the urge surfaces. the more i do it, the more natural it would feel. i wouldn’t villainize someone’s absence nor will i victimize myself. that’s one less mountain of thought for my shoulders.

if you were to try this, it could look like:

• following through on small desires (a walk, a recipe, a book) without waiting for the “right time”

• noticing your reactions instead of immediately distracting yourself from them

• allowing an empty evening to remain partially empty instead of overfilling it

• building routines not just for discipline, but because you’re interested in how they shape you

• try things ridiculously outside your comfort zone to know a little more about yourself

in essence: you don’t only live when life is happening to you. you stay engaged even when it isn’t.

as you practice this, i think you will become a student of your own life.

you will develop an anti-dote for most things that chip away from it, such as loneliness, dejection, burnout, abandonment, heartbreak, failure, fear.

you will amuse yourself, feel an unusual ease with yourself, like “hanging out” with yourself, and believe at the very core that you are a living being in evolution.

and, if you’re evolving, how can anything you’ve experienced be final?

in fact, i feel you will never reach there even if you’re 90.

people often assume that bitterness with age comes only from loss, irrelevance, or physical decline. but perhaps some bitterness also comes from a long abandonment of the inner life.

if a person has spent decades being animated only by external roles, by competition, by other people’s need for them, then later life may feel like a theft. but if a person has remained interested in their own becoming, then age does not have to mean shrinkage.

it can mean continued intimacy with life.
not youthful in surface, but youthful in attention.

this is what the Japanese centenarians have actually cracked. the clean eating, farming, or community living, are just “means” to stay interested in themselves.

i believe that this is the only way you can see yourself wanting to still experience the world at 90. choose any form of any exercise, try something absurd for your “age”, feel joy versus resentment towards the younger generations, and still feel there’s something to live for every day.

and even if you do find yourself alone on the sofa, which you definitely will, i hope you just lift your legs up and go back to doing what you enjoy.

love,
tan

I am someone who makes sense of the world with words. I read, write, and express. It may sound dramatic but I feel that without this, I might combust. I find over-thinking exhausting and convoluted, so I must engage my mind and body. When I’m actively not doing so, and I am in a state of ‘paradox’, I know I am in trouble.

My 20s saw periods where living in my mind was a familiar and safe thing to do. However, I learned that it isn’t a friend to my mental health, and built systems in which my mind could stay anchored and still thrive.

Now and again, the system breaks. And, the past few weeks have felt like that.

The thoughts were there, some worth talking about and some felt like rain in winter. In the shower, before sleeping, in the middle of the day, drifting in and out of things that had nothing to do with the moment I was in. But the words to make sense of them didn’t follow. The best I could do was ramble in my notes app.

In the absence of that rhythm, easier habits took over. Doom-scrolling, binge-watching, and doing just enough. All this while, I have been aware of my beloved, ‘slow system’ being right there but inaccessible.

It didn’t stop working. I stopped working.

Naturally, I’d look at the external forces at play - the unrest in the world, the untimely shifts in weather.

Usually, I would double down on my system and my anchors. This time, I allowed the “creative” in me to overpower the “structured” in me. Again, I knew I was in trouble.

It’s funny how you can feel severely self-aware but are chronically passive about it, at some points in life.

But, I did show up for work, stayed active, watched another Korean drama, but I maintained a ten-foot distance from words.

If you’re a reader or a writer, you know the agony of it. Of thinking or feeling too much, but somehow forgetting the alphabet.

Until, ironically, doom-scrolling led me to a video of a man explaining the word ‘Apricity’, and I felt it enter my soul and fill it with light. Of course, it too sounds dramatic, but this new word I learnt, which is often considered obsolete, rescued me.

Now, I’m coming to the point. Let’s begin with what it means:

Apricity (noun) refers to the warmth of the sun in winter.

This described the season I was in - an unseasonal winter. The word reignited my curiosity, love for words, and a desire to express. It embodied its own meaning. It became the warmth I needed.

The beauty of the word felt like wearing the warmest socks on cold floors, holding a warm beverage while the icy winds gush past your face, and lighting a candle at midnight. I felt ‘Apricity’ electrify me from within. It made me think of all the things and people that embody it too.

It felt like going on a color walk. You decide to notice yellow, and suddenly, it’s everywhere.

It started with noticing this season’s first Butterfly Pea flower in my garden. It surprised me because I missed out on the buds forming. Then I read 35 pages in one sitting of a great book I was struggling to continue. I was in the world of words again. Then I wrote down everything I wanted to create next.

It felt like a big exhale after holding breath for days.
And then finally, I am here, writing this to you.

I feel the ‘slow’ course through me, again.

For someone like me, ‘slow’ feels electric. I can notice the little things again. Words are on my finger tips again. I want to dive into the things I love to do, again.
It’s still raining outside, but I feel like sunshine inside, again.

All because the word ‘Apricity’ found me and became exactly that for me.

And I think life offers these moments more often than we realise. Not as grand turning points, but as gentle interruptions. Small sources of warmth that remind you of what you already know, but may have stepped away from.

It can be a person, a place, or an ordinary moment. But more often than not, it will be you.

Recognising these moments is its own kind of practice. Letting them land, allowing them to do their work, is what slowly brings you back home.

Here’s to finding your apricity, in whatever form it arrives.

Love,
Tan

We expect our days to move in straight lines, yet our minds refuse to cooperate.

Some hours arrive sharp, lucid, almost cinematic in their clarity. Others feel slower, heavier, as if thoughts itself were hiding like the Sun on rainy days. For the longest time, I treated this as temperament, mood, discipline, perhaps even mild personal failure on unproductive afternoons.

Until I stumbled upon something that explains it right.

The brain, it turns out, does not operate in steady streams, it moves in cycles.

These cycles aren’t dramatic or the kinds we consciously register, but are like subtle waves of rise and retreat. Periods of heightened attention followed by natural softening. Energy gathering, dispersing, and returning again.

So, what feels like a fluctuation for us is often just function.
What feels like inconsistency is how our brain is designed.

And yet, modern life is built on the assumption of continuity.

We structure days as if focus was meant to be sustained indefinitely, as if mental sharpness were a resource that should remain evenly distributed from morning to night. Constant input, constant response, and constant engagement - an unrealistic expectation that the mind should remain perpetually switched on.

The irony is that we’re expected to stay always on using devices that don’t.

No wonder exhaustion feels ambient.

After a never-ending week of long nights, exhaustion announces itself as burnout and we understand it. But something like this operates like an undercurrent as a more persistent kind of fatigue. And, this one lingers even after objectively “good” days. It makes fullness feel oddly elusive despite relentless activity.

This, I understand, happens because cycles require something continuity resists - space to just be.

Moments where nothing is demanded, processed, or consumed. Low periods or pauses that are not interruptions but maintenance. Breaks that allow experience to settle rather than skim past awareness.

Even joy, strangely enough, needs time to land.

Perhaps this explains a peculiar modern paradox - how a day can feel relentlessly full yet curiously hollow.

When everything moves at a uniform pace, very little is actually absorbed.

We live inside rhythms while aspiring toward straight lines, hoping we can defy our design.

I believe fullness was never about how much fits into a day, but how much is genuinely experienced, noticed, and allowed to stay long enough to mean something.

Maybe the problem isn’t always our lack of discipline or consistency. Maybe it is the expectation that we should function like machines instead of organisms.

If we began working with our cycles instead of fighting them, the benchmarks would soften. The guilt would loosen. The need to extract something from every hour might ease.

And perhaps we would stop mistaking natural rhythm for personal failure.

Because nothing in nature moves in straight lines.

Why do we insist that we should?

Love,
Tan