Walking along Hackney, I spotted a boat at the bottom of the canal — sunken, covered in algae and dead branches. It hadn't disappeared, but grown into something else beneath the surface.
Today I turn 26.
Every year on my birthday I write something. Last year it was "I am and will forever be an imposter." The year before, in London, "a chaotic year." Looking back through these entries, every version of me thought I wasn't good enough. Every year I told myself I wanted to "become" a better person.
Lately I've started to think the word "become" itself is the problem.
Last January I moved back to Taipei and joined Zeabur shortly after, entering a stretch of intense work. A few months in, I hit a wall — work stuck at an awkward stage, body surfacing small ailments, brain convinced there was always something unread waiting for me on social media. Couldn't enter flow. Like a computer with too many tabs open, every one of them spinning.
Then I discovered Vibe Coding — building things from scratch with AI — never thought it could pull me unexpectedly deep into my mind flow. I've had attention issues since I was young. In high school I had to switch subjects every hour or two. I once kept a habit of waking up at seven, to write before work. Lockdown broke that too. This kind of thing just keeps coming back, and each time I have to find a new way through.
When I first joined Zeabur, I was trying to figure out how to approach the US market. Talked to Ric about it — he mentioned that when Cursor ships a new feature, they lock everyone in a room for two sleepless days and nights until it's done. A Series C company.
"Some people are not only smarter than you — they work a hundred times harder."
But genius and mediocrity are perhaps only a thin line apart. What we call intellect can probably be cultivated by investing enough time in reading and thinking. You are what you eat — spend ten hours reading and thinking, and you grow into a person of depth.
Grow into. Not become.
Late June I went back to London. Three weeks.
When I left the last time, I'd carried this lingering sense of failure — not having been able to stay. Going back, I realised the city had given me far more than I thought. In my notes from the first term I'd written: "I keep sensing — sensing the rhythm of collaborating with designers, sensing the different ways people live in the world, sensing how artists express ideas stroke by stroke in real time." Everything was a first — first time cooking for myself, first solo trip, first time walking thirty minutes to class.
This time back, all those firsts had been vacuum-sealed into specimens I'd pick up and examine whenever something triggered the memory.
So
after all of that
up until now
have I become
who I wanted
to be
A month in London, and in the fourth week I flew to Stockholm to see a friend — my thesis groupmate from Indonesia. After hundreds of applications, she'd landed a service design role at a Swedish healthcare consultancy. I was genuinely happy for her. Watching my talented friends push through gruelling job hunting — you really do feel the joy, not just for them but also for yourself who's been through the phase.
After seeing her, I spent some time walking around the city. Stockholm is surprisingly compact. In the central market hall I had a bowl of Swedish fish soup — tomato base, saffron, anchovies, with a plain cracker on the side to crumble and dip.
Whilst feasting, I thought of the oyster stew in M.F.K. Fisher's Consider the Oyster, and of a clam chowder I'd have later on a road trip through Nevada, during my business trip in California. A single object, small as a bowl of soup, pulling open memories from entirely different times and places.
The week after returning from Europe, I flew to San Francisco for a month and a half. We went down to the South Bay a few times — at a boba shop, whilst paying, a box of lollipops on the counter hooked a distant childhood memory.
Like many Taiwanese kids, I spent a good part of my childhood at an English-immersion kindergarten. I'll always remember how the American lecturers loved handing out Costco-bought candy. Only much later did I realise it was a choice driven by cost and convenience — but back then, every time I got a lollipop, I just felt happy.
Cotton candy flavour was cloyingly sweet. Never had it again after growing up. Cherry, though, I've liked all the way to now — the bright red candy gave younger me a joy I couldn't quite name. That fondness turned, over the years, into a thing for Dr Pepper, and for the neon-dyed cherry at the bottom of a Cosmopolitan.
Back to Taiwan in late November; two months later, another trip — two weeks in Tokyo for work.
One evening after an event, walking back to the station, I passed a building where a security guard stood alone inside a frame carved out by light and shadow. At Shinjuku station, waiting for the train, I shot a few more silhouettes of people passing through light.
The still and the moving, placed side by side. In a big city everyone walks alone, but inside that solitude there seems to be something very quiet.
After Lunar New Year in late February, I went to Hangzhou and Shanghai. Shanghai was a revisit — the things left behind last time were still there, but their weight felt different.
After coming back, I officially moved out on my own.
One evening I took an empty IKEA bag, ride on a twenty-minute bus to the Xinzhuang store, hauled a full load back. Swaying on the bus, I thought of how my whole family used to bring that same blue bag on big shopping trips; and thought of my first week in London, hitting up the Hammersmith IKEA with flatmates, everyone carrying a bag of their life; also thought of how, ever since, I'd wander into whatever IKEA I passed in whatever city.
I've been rewatching Whisper of the Heart recently. One night, Shizuku's older sister tells her she's moving out. The room is suddenly all hers — but the person on the top bunk, the one she'd always looked up to as her role model, is gone just like that.
Growth probably doesn't happen the day you move out. For her sister, maybe it was the moment she brought the topic up to their parents, or when the rent become a worry of her life. For Shizuku, maybe it was staring at a room that was suddenly all hers and not knowing what to do with it.
Or maybe it's some other day entirely — carrying a bag home alone, when you suddenly realise: oh. So this is what it is now.
"Become" implies a destination. Become a designer, become an entrepreneur, become a better person. As if reaching that point means you're done.
"Grow into" is different. It's organic — every small choice you make each day, slowly stacking up. Not a straight line toward a goal, but being shaped along the way by the books you've read, the people you've met, the choices you've made, the mistakes you've learned from. Layer by layer.
When I wrote that imposter manifesto on my birthday last year, I thought I was admitting a fact. Looking back now, it was a frame I'd put on myself. What if I'm not chasing "becoming" at all? What if I accept that I'm still in the process of growing — not yet finished, and maybe never will be?
Twenty-six. Taipei, London, Stockholm, San Francisco, Tokyo, Hangzhou, Shanghai, and back to Taipei.
Feels like it might be time to move again.
What I'll grow into, I can't yet fully foresee. But knowing I'm somewhere on the road — that's all I need to know for now.
A damp night, passing through an alley by the Nanjichang Night Market. Rain had knocked petals off the trees, scattering them across the hood of a car under a streetlight. Scentless romance, filling a corner of the city on a night walk.
