Before I Leave

A quiet hour at my desk

The same desk, the same hours. I wonder whether wanting something different is already the first movement.

Coffee, again?

The routine repeats. Then I choose tea—suave, tranquilo—and remember that a life can begin changing through one small choice.

Otro día de trabajo.

Another working day, with a small pause to breathe. The city keeps moving outside the window; for one moment, I do not.

The trees that come with me

Every morning, I bike to work beneath the wutong trees. Their branches make a roof above the street; their shadows travel beside me.

They do not ask me to slow down, but somehow I do. On the way to an ordinary day, they offer a small, lovely kind of company.

Maybe a commute can be more than the distance between home and work. Maybe it can be a place to arrive. Los wutong me acompañan.

Water without a vessel

Typhoon White Dolphin came through fierce and untamed, battering the city with sheets of rain.

In Chinese tradition, my element is Water: always moving, without a fixed shape, never quite settling into one vessel or calling one place home.

I feel that way now. Drifting. Searching for something just beyond reach, with no anchor and no steady ground beneath my feet.

Maybe the storm is not only washing the streets. Maybe it is rinsing some of the restlessness from a soul that has wandered too long without rest.

Coffee with a stranger

Today I had coffee with someone I met on Xiaohongshu—a pilot from the Philippines.

It was easy and relaxed: no business, no agenda, just the quiet pleasure of getting to know someone whose daily life moves through a completely different world.

Maybe this is a gentle beginning—a small way back into my social life.

Not disturbing

When I was young and watched TV dramas, I could never understand why two people who loved each other could not simply be together. Why did they not fight for it? Why did they not try to reach happiness?

Now that I am older, I understand a little more.

Sometimes, not disturbing someone is a kind of decency. A quiet, grown-up form of love. You can bury a feeling deep inside—not because it is small, but because it does not always need to ask for a place in someone else's life.

It is not the ending I once wanted for the characters on screen. But perhaps it can still be a gentle one.

Still curious

I am not the shy girl I was in my twenties. Time and experience have changed the way I meet the world.

I carry more history now: a little more caution, perhaps, but also more trust in my own company. I no longer need to become someone else in order to begin again.

The curiosity is still here. It looks up, follows the water, and wonders what might happen if I keep exploring—slowly, honestly, in my own way.

The company I keep now

An old friend came to Shanghai. We have history, but not much shared rhythm anymore.

Our values, our pursuits, even the way we move through a day have quietly become different. I used to think friendship meant making room no matter what.

Now I am learning that I would rather be alone than keep filling time that does not feel alive. This is not bitterness. It is a kind of honesty I have grown into.

The morning the wind locked the door

Some mornings do not begin badly. They arrive like a verdict.

I woke from a nightmare with anxiety already sitting in my mouth. In the elevator, carrying three heavy bags of trash, I realised my phone was missing. I ran back upstairs—late, distracted, already losing the race with the day.

Then the bedroom door was shut. A gust of wind had slammed it closed. My phone was on the other side. So was every easy way to solve the problem. Neighbours woke. Property management called. A locksmith came. Even after the door opened, the panic lingered—an aftershock that took time to leave.

Later, I wondered if the morning had been less random than it felt. I had been rushing, discarding, pushing forward. Then a locked door made me stop. Some things are easy to throw away. Others—old habits, stored-up stress, the emotional clutter we pretend not to carry—ask for more: a pause, a reckoning, sometimes a locksmith.

The door opened. The day continued. But the lesson stayed: when life locks you out and your heart will not slow down, perhaps it is not punishment. Perhaps it is asking you, reluctantly, to come home to yourself.

When I cannot grasp time

Autumn is almost over, and I still cannot hold time in my hands.

Maybe that is the sadness of it: days keep passing, grey hairs keep arriving, and I am still not sure what this life is asking of me.

Some days I look around and cannot find my peers—not quite. Just the feeling of being between shores, still becoming, without a map or a matching pace.

I do not have an answer for the purpose of it all. Today, I only have this: a corridor of brick, a square of pale sky, and myself continuing through it.