In my first year of university, I went to the campus canteen quite often. I liked thudding down after class, alone, finding an empty seat in the busy plaza, and swallowing a meal that cost less than a hundred NT dollars.
One day a friend asked whether I found the canteen food too greasy, the portions too large. Honestly, a little — yes. I knew all this. But for cheap and convenient, even if the environment was noisy and the food a bit heavy, for a student like me who needed a full meal, it still had enormous appeal.
Especially during every rushed gap between classes: walking into the canteen spared me from the eternal question of what to eat next. Into the plaza, calories consumed, done in under half an hour — on to the next task.
Habits are hard to break; the place is still packed.
In 2010, when I was in second grade, I made my first Facebook account. I’d opened it originally to play Happy Farm and Tetris Battle with my dad’s students — every day after school, I’d look for a free moment when nobody was using the computer, spend fifteen minutes harvesting my crops and playing one 1v1 match. I never posted anything; my feed was filled with friends’ game updates. Leaving birthday wishes for people was about the extent of it. That was more than enough.
I didn’t get my first phone until middle school. The moment I had it, classmates immediately urged me to sign up for Instagram. Stories that disappear in twenty-four hours; a feed built from images. Compared to the chaotic Facebook of that era, it felt streamlined and modern. In time, I made my first post — and later created a second account.
It was all too captivating. Knowing I needed to stay focused on schoolwork, I started the habit of regularly deleting social media: before mid-terms, before competitions, before university entrance exams. The empty days unoccupied by stories actually made me calmer, more able to be present in my life.
I thought once I became a university student, I wouldn’t need such extreme measures. But things didn’t go as expected — I found myself dependent on social media again. Scrolling left me restless, and yet I kept scrolling. For the sake of my mental health, the frequency of uninstalling only increased.
I once heard someone say that your social media feed reflects what you care about. That’s true — mine is full of interesting events, in-depth news features, ongoing discussions about current events, all of it worth paying attention to. But people can still be overwhelmed, and I’ve noticed that I’ve slowly become numb to suffering happening elsewhere in the world. Scrolling past it quickly makes me feel guilty; staying with it carefully is something I don’t have the patience for.
At the same time, I’ve grown tired of updating my own feed. Partly exhaustion — partly an unwillingness to have my writing swiped past like a short video.
Lately I’ve barely gone to the canteen at all. Mostly I find a small restaurant, eat alone and quietly, or share a proper meal and conversation with a close friend. A little more expensive, and now I have to figure out what to eat — but in return, food with more character, time of higher quality, time to truly get to know myself and the other person, time to eat each bite without rushing.
Given the reality of things, social media is still not something I can easily walk away from. And I still have a lot I want to say — stories I’ve encountered, things I’m thinking through. So I’ve built this site. Going forward, more writing will live here, updated whenever it happens. If at some point you feel like reading, or want to know where I’m at lately, come back here and see if anything’s new. And if you finish reading something, you’re welcome to come find me and talk about it.
If I’m still on the road, I’ll keep recording.
