Eric Tian

This will be my last post for a while. After writing 300+ articles over three years, I’ve decided to take a break from writing publicly.

This decision was not made lightly. This blog has been a sanctuary for me to share my most sincere thoughts. I’ve rambled about about religion, happiness and art; shared stories on medicine, introversion and suicide; cried over suffering, poetry and love. My ideas and writing have evolved over time and this blog has captured some of its most precious, delicate moments.

It depresses me to step away from this sanctuary, knowing the clarity and relief it brings to my conscience, but a time has come where I no longer feel able to write with genuine honesty. And if one cannot write with honesty, one should not write at all.

To the readers: this blog was never written for you, but I am deeply moved by the possibility of it having improved your life. Every email, comment or like on a post touches me like no other compliment can. It is a terrifying thing to cast your voice into the void; to hear it reaffirmed is endlessly comforting. Thank you.

This site will still exist to keep my old posts and thoughts alive but will no longer be updated. As for me, the future is uncertain. But if it contains books, stories, challenges and love, there must be good waiting.

Take care.

Eric

Sometimes a random memory pops into my head. When this happens, I always search through my journal or memory banks to relive it. And whenever I do, I always wish I wrote more of the moment down.

It could be a joke somebody said. The clothes somebody wore. The feelings I felt. The details feel unimportant and excessive at the time, but in retrospect you wish you had more to look back on. There are few things more painful than a half-remembered moment.

Sometimes you never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.

Whenever I get writer’s block, it’s always due to one cause: I’m terrified of writing something bad.

What if this idea isn’t interesting enough? What’s the best way to start this piece? How will I structure my argument? What even is my argument?

The considerations can be paralyzing. There are days where I’ve spent literal hours staring at a blank text editor, unsure what to do and how to start.

Here’s an idea: just write anything down. Anything remotely interesting that comes to your mind. Just one line. And then elaborate on that line as if you were explaining it to a child. And then keep going and going, making wild and brilliant tangents in the process, until you discover something in your messy pile you can write about for a post.

It’s messy and unprofessional. Your sentences don’t make grammatical sense, the logic disappears then reappears again paragraphs later, and there are misspelled words and missing punctuation everywhere.

But from this chaos comes form, and with the tools of editing and hindsight, you can shape the form into something tangible; something beautiful. Like all sculptures beginning as a messy block, so too can we carve out ideas from our block of words and experience.

It all begins with one line.