Somehow, though, looking at it gave me a surprising amount of energy. Maybe it was simply because I had barely slept and anything warm and bright would have helped at that point, or maybe mornings still carry a kind of hope for me, especially when I am travelling and every new day feels as though something unexpected might happen. I packed up my sleeping bag while I was still half asleep, carried my things to the bathroom, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and did my skincare exactly as I would have done at home.

It does not really matter whether I wake up in my own bed, in a hostel, on someone’s floor, or after spending the entire night at an airport; I still do almost the same things in almost the same order, and while everything around me keeps changing, these small repetitions create something familiar enough for me to stand on. I suppose this is one of the first safety nets I learned to weave for myself without even knowing that I was doing it.

Because it was still early, I took out the postcards I had designed for my online customers. (tysmm for supporting me!!!!) They were printed with snowy landscapes from Hokkaido, which felt slightly funny when I thought about it: I was sitting there in summer, preparing to send pieces of winter Yakumo to people living in completely different parts of the world.

I stood beside the airport’s floor-to-ceiling windows and opened the envelopes one by one, typing each message on my laptop first because I was terrified of leaving an ugly correction in ink, and then copying everything carefully onto the postcards by hand. After finishing one, I would leave the wet side facing up for a few seconds, put it back into its envelope, take out one of the seals I had designed, press it into place and smooth it down with my fingers before returning everything to the hard document folder in my bag because I did not want anything to bend.

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I also took out one of the bookmarks and tried holding the film against the sunlight, hoping the image would fall onto the page, but the angle was never quite right. I changed positions several times and still failed, and at some point I started imagining the people who had already received their packages doing the same silly little experiment at home. I hoped they might send me photographs if they ever managed to make it work.

There is something deeply happy to me about making an object with my own hands and then letting it travel somewhere I have never been, almost as if a memory does not have to remain entirely mine once it has happened.

Around one in the afternoon, it was finally time to board. I had barely slept that night, and there were still one or two postcards unfinished, but I decided to put them away and continue once I had settled back into Yakumo. I did not want to write them simply because I needed to finish a task. These people had trusted me enough to buy something I made, and I wanted to be fully present when I wrote to them; I wanted the care to be real rather than something performed because an order needed to be completed. So I closed the folder, packed everything back into my bag, swung the giant thing over my shoulder and walked towards the gate, carrying with me all these tiny objects that had become strangely important: postcards, seals, film bookmarks, skincare, my laptop, my sleeping bag, all the practical and sentimental pieces of a life that had somehow learned how to move.

When I returned to Yakumo, though, I was not doing particularly well.

I had just gone through the end of a relationship, and on the plane my brain kept rehearsing every possible version of what might happen after I landed. Would we see each other again in Yakumo? How was I supposed to explain everything to my friends? What were we now? Could I trust this person again? Could I trust my own judgement after everything that had happened? Somewhere among all these questions, another one appeared that frightened me much more than I expected: could I still trust Yakumo?

Until then, I had never really separated the place from everything I had experienced there.

When the relationship ended, all of those things became tangled together in my mind, and for a while I could no longer tell which part I was actually grieving.

I remember being incredibly sad on that flight, although looking back now I cannot reconstruct exactly what I was crying about at every moment. I remember the physical feeling much more clearly than the thoughts: something in my chest seemed to have been torn away before I was ready to let it go, and whenever I return to that version of myself in memory, I can still feel the urge to cry.

At the time, it seemed as though the relationship had somehow contaminated everything surrounding it.

The memories, my friendships, the promises, the certainty I once had about the future, even the safety I associated with Yakumo suddenly looked suspicious, as though perhaps I had invented all of it by myself. I think this was why, for a short period, I wished I had never known any of it. If I had never gone there, never met these people, never allowed myself to become so attached to a place and to a version of my life inside it, then perhaps I would never have had to experience the terror of believing that I could lose all of it at once.

Everyone noticed that I was not okay, and I realised that they understood me much better than I had imagined.

Kaikai worried about me quietly without really knowing how to ask what was wrong; Sumi would look at me from time to time and simply ask, “Are you okay?”; Kana would smile, wrap both arms around me and remind me that everyone was still there; Boss continued asking what I was going to do after leaving Yakumo and what I planned to do next, almost exactly as he always had; and Daachan remained my friend, without turning the situation into something larger or stranger than it needed to be.

What moved me most was how ordinary all of this felt. Nobody gathered around me to repair my life, and nobody tried to force me to become cheerful again.

They simply continued relating to me as the person I had always been to them, and in doing so they quietly dismantled one of the fears I had carried back with me: that the ending of one relationship would somehow rewrite everything that had existed around it.

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I had been afraid that I would lose Yakumo because everyone there had once been connected to the same story, and I worried that my own immaturity had created a situation that other people would now have to carefully navigate around.

Sometimes I became withdrawn and could not fully participate in conversations; sometimes I was physically sitting with everyone while my mind was somewhere completely different.

But nobody made me feel as though I had become an inconvenience, and nobody made me carry another person’s choices as part of my identity. In their eyes, I was still myself. I was still their friend. I was still Lynn. Sumi told me that I could always come back to Yakumo and that my existence itself made them happy, and I do not think she knew how much I needed to hear something so simple.

I had spent so much time wondering whether I still belonged there that I had forgotten belonging was never something I had earned through a relationship in the first place.

Slowly, almost without my noticing it, my friends gave Yakumo back to me.

Or perhaps that is not quite right, because Yakumo had never actually been taken away; I had simply become too frightened to recognise it.

The place returned through extremely ordinary things: the familiar kitchen, stupid jokes, somebody calling my name from another room, the roads I already knew, people asking what I was doing tomorrow, sudden hugs that did not require an explanation. None of these moments solved what had happened, but they separated the place from the ending I had temporarily allowed to swallow it. I began to understand that the happiness I had experienced there had been real even if one part of the story had changed, and that something does not become false simply because it does not last in the form I once expected. I had been held there before, and I was being held there again, only this time I was beginning to understand that the source of that safety had always been much larger than one person.

Afterwards, I started wondering why this tiny town had become so important to me in the first place.

Why Yakumo, a place that most people outside Hokkaido would probably never recognise on a map? Why did I keep taking photographs, saving scraps of paper, remembering random sentences people had said, trying to absorb every small moment as if remembering it hard enough could prevent it from disappearing? I think part of me had always been afraid that happiness was temporary, and therefore needed to be documented before it vanished.

After leaving Yakumo and returning to my ordinary life, the photographs and fragments pinned to the corkboard in my room began to feel almost like a time tunnel. Sometimes I could look at one picture and immediately remember the temperature of the air, someone’s voice, what we had eaten that day, what I had been wearing, or the exact texture of a happiness I had not known, while living inside it, that I would later need to remember.

For a long time, I think I treated places like Yakumo as somewhere outside my ordinary reality, almost as if travelling allowed me to temporarily enter another version of myself and then return home when it was over.

Yakumo was especially dangerous in this sense because it felt so safe that I could easily imagine turning it into a shelter, a place responsible for giving me back whatever I could not find elsewhere.

But after this sixth return (yas, I’ve been there six times over the past two years), something about that relationship began to change. I still love Yakumo, and I still want to return. I still believe that places can save us in very real ways, just as people can. I do not want to turn growth into the kind of independence that insists I should need nothing from anyone, because that has never been true for me.

People have held me together. Friendships have changed me. Sometimes a hug really has made the world feel survivable again.

I do not become stronger by pretending those things did not matter; if anything, I think I become stronger by allowing them to matter so deeply that they eventually become part of the way I know how to care for myself.

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Maybe this is what I have been trying to understand when I say that I want to carry my own universe with me. I do not mean a universe created entirely by myself, sealed off from everyone else, where I am so self-sufficient that nothing outside me can ever hurt me.

My universe is full of other people. It contains my mother, my friends, people I have loved, people I met for only a few days, cities I have walked through, airports I have slept in, things I made with my own hands, letters I wrote to people living on the other side of the world, and places where somebody once opened their arms and made me understand that I was welcome.

Yakumo is inside it too, not as a fantasy I need to preserve perfectly and not as somewhere I must run back to whenever life becomes difficult, but as something that has already entered me and changed the way I understand home, friendship, safety and belonging.

And perhaps this is why I keep returning to those tiny rituals that seem almost irrelevant compared with everything else: washing my face in an airport bathroom, doing my skincare after sleeping badly on the floor, carefully writing a postcard, keeping photographs on my wall, carrying the same familiar objects from one temporary room to another.

They are small ways of reminding myself that home does not have to disappear every time I move, just as love does not become meaningless when its form changes, and a place does not stop belonging to my life simply because one story inside it has ended.

The safety net I once thought existed somewhere outside me has been woven from all these experiences over time, and every person who has held me, every place that has welcomed me, and every version of myself that has survived leaving has added another thread to it.

I can still need people, miss places, fall in love, lose something I thought I would keep, and allow myself to be held when I cannot hold everything alone. Carrying my own universe does not mean carrying it alone. It means that when I eventually have to leave again, I do not walk away empty-handed.

Some part of what loved me leaves with me, becomes part of the way I move through the next place, and quietly reminds me that I have been at home before and can build a sense of home again.

So wherever I wake up next, even if the room is unfamiliar and my bag is still half unpacked, I can begin with the same small things I have always carried with me, and from there, begin again.

✨ Explore Kita-Sora

Welcome to Kita-Sora, a living world built from fragments of life, creativity, and intentional living.

If you’re new here, start with The Map of This World, a gentle guide to the stories, reflections, and creations gathered here.

I’m Lynn, the person behind Kita-Sora. I write about slow living, emotional clarity, creative work, and the quiet process of building both a brand and a life with more intention.

If this world resonates with you, you can buy me a matcha. It helps me keep making things slowly and sharing them with care.

You can also find me here:

• Pinterest → the visual language of Kita-Sora

• Instagram → real-time fragments of my creative and personal life

Last Saturday, Adeline and I went live together for the very first time. Even though we were interrupted by the internet frequently (I even got offline for some minutes), we still managed to find so much common ground and left the conversation feeling inspired by each other.

The whole conversation was started with a question that has been baffling us for a long time:

I know it sounds simple, but behind it sits a much larger tension. We both want to make work that feels human, thoughtful, and aligned with who we are, while still needing that work to hold up against rent, uncertainty, savings, and the real cost of building a life.

I am building Kita-Sora from China while also trying to create a life that can stay stable as it becomes more mobile. Adeline has spent years building her own business and learning what it takes to protect her creative energy while dealing with clients, revenue swings, and responsibility. Our paths are different, but the question underneath them is similar:

How do we build something soft without making it weak, invisible, or unsustainable?

While we were talking about what being gentle actually means for our brands, I was honest about something that probably does not show up from the outside. Kita-Sora is gentle for now, but the structure behind it is not always gentle at all. I am working my ass off every single day to keep building it, and sometimes the softness people see is being held up by a lot of invisible effort.

Adeline understood this tension from her own experience. Although her way of moving through the world is different from mine, she also knows that building something meaningful requires more than passion. She sees herself more as a fighter, someone who can be direct, aggressive, and straightforward when she needs to be.

That difference between us is actually what makes our conversations valuable. My brand tends to move more slowly. It is softer, more reflective, and more focused on creating a space where people feel safe. Adeline’s approach is more action-oriented and willing to fight for what she wants. We are not trying to build the same kind of life with the same tools, but we are asking many of the same questions. Our perspectives challenge each other while also complementing each other.

During the live, I realized that I do not actually want to be quiet. I want to be findable. I want to share enough truth that the right people can recognize themselves in what I am making, without turning every raw feeling into public content or becoming so loud that my own space stops feeling safe.

I think this is something many creators struggle with. There is a difference between disappearing in the name of softness and being visible in a way that we can still live with. Building a gentle brand does not mean hiding from the world. It means learning how to create a relationship with the world without losing ourselves in the process.

The postcard test made this tension especially practical. A postcard can be a small, tender object. It can say, I thought of you from far away, and carry a little piece of a world someone wants to hold in their hands. But the tenderness does not remove the structure underneath it. There is printing, packaging, shipping, customs, missing parcels, and the possibility that I may need to send something twice because it did not arrive the first time.

The emotional gesture is real, but so is the cost of carrying it out.

This is something we keep learning as we build: a meaningful idea is only the beginning. The systems behind that idea are what allow it to survive.

Because we are both building toward lives that may cross borders, we cannot build everything around products that require us to stay in one place. Writing can travel. A newsletter can travel. A live conversation can travel. The feeling of being seen can travel too, if there is a clear place for it to land.

We do not want to stop making physical things, but we want them to sit inside a wider system that does not collapse when our location changes. Maybe that is what building gently means for us right now: not avoiding the practical questions, but designing around them early enough that they do not eventually force us to choose between the brand and our lives.

When we were discussing this topic, one idea kept returning: gentleness does not mean passivity. It does not mean saying yes to everything, giving everything away for free, or pretending that exhaustion is proof that we are serious about our work.

It can also mean knowing where to put our boundaries, where to put our energy, and where to put our teeth.

Adeline was my first paid subscriber. When I saw it, I cried, not because it meant I had already built a business, but because someone looked at this small world I was making and decided it was worth supporting before there was any guarantee.

Of course, one person’s support is not enough evidence to turn into a business theory, and we do not want to romanticize one act of generosity into a complete strategy. But it still mattered. It reminded us that people do not only pay for speed, polish, or the loudest promise in the room. Sometimes people pay for care, specificity, and a world they want to see continue.

So, can a gentle brand pay rent?

We do not have the final answer yet, and this first conversation was never meant to pretend otherwise.

The more honest question might be:

Maybe it needs better boundaries, clearer offers, more evidence, more capacity, and a structure that does not require the person making it to disappear.

Because the goal is not just to build something that survives.

The goal is to build something we can actually live with.

Preview for the next…

For our next live session, we want to continue exploring what it means to build a creative life in a world that is changing faster than ever.

This time, we will be discussing a question that has become increasingly relevant in our own work:

Where do we draw the line with AI at work?

AI has completely changed the way we create, research, design, and solve problems. It can help us move faster, expand our abilities, and unlock possibilities that were previously difficult to reach. But at the same time, it also raises deeper questions about creativity, authenticity, and the parts of our work that should always remain human.

• How do we use AI as a tool without losing our own voice?

• What should we delegate, and what should we always keep for ourselves?

Join us next Monday as we continue exploring how technology, creativity, and human intention can exist together.

I know I’ve been a little quieter here recently. After coming back from Hokkaido, I entered a rebuilding phase. I’ve been going through a lot of changes and slowly rebuilding my life system from the ground up.

That experience also awakened a new curiosity inside me. Meeting people from different countries, hearing their stories, and seeing the different ways they approach life made me realize how much more there is to explore. Different definitions of success, different ideas of happiness, and different ways of building a meaningful life.

So lately, I’ve been learning and exploring a lot: Japanese, cooking, philosophy, literature, poetry, history, and different methodologies for thinking. Basically, anything that can make my mind richer, deeper, and more alive.

I’ve been spending a lot of time sitting with myself, asking difficult questions, and trying to figure out what I truly want without wasting my energy or losing myself along the way.

And what I’m doing now is slowly picking up each one, understanding where it belongs, connecting the dots, and turning them into something meaningful. It feels like I’m crocheting my own life into a piece of art.

But I’m getting better.

Little by little, my system is starting to take shape. I can finally see the hidden connections between things that once seemed completely unrelated. If you’re interested in this process, I’ll share more in future Building Kita-Sora sessions: how I design my systems, organize my thoughts, and build a life that can move with me.

Now that my foundation is becoming more stable, I finally have the energy to come back here and share what I’ve learned throughout this journey.

Thank you for waiting for me.

Looking back at my journey here on Substack, I realized that the most unexpected and precious gift I received was not numbers, growth, or achievements.

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Through sharing my thoughts and little pieces of my life, I found souls who resonate with the same questions, values, and curiosity about the world. Even though we live in completely different places and come from completely different backgrounds, there is something incredibly special about finding people who simply understand.

Some inspired me with their courage. Some touched me with their creativity. Some reminded me to stay connected with the beauty of the world.

Together, they represent the kind of community I always hoped Kita-Sora could become:

a place where people from different corners of the world can meet, exchange stories, and remind each other that we are not alone.

So today, I want to introduce some of the beautiful souls I’ve met along the way.

— The Strength to Transform Pain into Power

My FAAAVV queenie.

I met Yara when I had just started this account, and we immediately clicked. Her presence has always made me feel supported and seen. To me, she is truly a queen in this space.

What I admire most about Yara is her honesty with herself. She is deeply, radically honest about who she is, and I believe that kind of honesty is exactly what allows people to attract the right connections online.

She doesn’t just share the beautiful parts of her journey. She shares the entire process: being hurt, looking inward, finding the courage to question the unfairness of the world, standing up for herself, and transforming those experiences into strength that she can share with other women.

Through Yara, I learned that strength doesn’t always come from being untouched by pain.

Beyond that, she is a Pilates instructor, a marathon runner, speaks English, Portuguese, and Spanish, and somehow still has time to teach Spanish classes for her paid subscribers every month. (now the fee is just 3£/month!!! less than a coffee<3 )

She feels like someone with many different worlds inside her. She is the kind of older sister figure I have admired since I was young.

I feel like I was a little butterfly captured by her energy and her story. I’m soooo grateful that she was one of the first people I met on this journey.

She is literally the BEST QUEENIE.

— The Courage to Create Your Own Universe

After meeting Yara, I started to realize something beautiful about the people I found here.

They are all so different. Each of them carries their own energy, their own way of seeing the world, and their own definition of what it means to live authentically.

alex feels like a little universe of her own, filled with creativity, imagination, and tiny details that only she could create.

From her profile, her website design, to the projects she is building, everything about her feels distinctive, original, and unmistakably her. You can recognize her work without even seeing her name attached to it, because everything she creates carries her own invisible signature.

What I love most about alex is how confidently she embraces herself. She is not trying to fit into a certain image or please everyone. She is simply walking along her own path, slowly becoming more and more aligned with who she truly is.

alex is also an incredibly sensitive person. She notices the smallest shifts in emotions, the subtle changes in relationships, and the feelings that many people struggle to put into words.

That sensitivity is exactly what makes her writing so powerful. She has this rare ability to capture the complicated emotional dynamics between people, the invisible thoughts and quiet moments that often go unnoticed.

Her words always feel deeply personal because they carry her own unique way of seeing the world.

— The Ability to See Magic in Ordinary Things

After meeting alex, I started to notice that the people I have encountered here each carry a different way of experiencing life.

Some people inspire us to create. Some remind us to become stronger. Some teach us to slow down and notice the beauty that already exists around us.

And Adriana is someone who reminds me that the world itself has always been full of magic, as long as we are willing to truly see it.

Even the deer that wander into her garden seem to sense her gentleness. They come close, unafraid, sharing the same peaceful space with her. It feels almost like something from a Disney story.

She has this rare ability to transform ordinary things into art. A fallen leaf, a delicate flower, or a small piece of nature that others might overlook can become something meaningful and beautiful in her hands.

Through her creations, you can feel her deep connection with the world around her. It almost feels like she can communicate with nature, like she belongs to the forests, oceans, and quiet corners of the earth.

There is something incredibly ethereal about Adriana’s presence, but what makes her even more special is that behind this dreamy, artistic energy is someone warm, gentle, and genuinely caring.

Her sensitivity toward life itself reminds me to slow down, observe more carefully, and appreciate the beauty hidden in ordinary moments.

Adriana also became my very first pen pal. I cannot wait to send her a little piece of my journey through a handwritten postcard someday.

Beauty is not always something we find. Sometimes, it is something we learn to notice.

— The Joy of Becoming Yourself

After meeting Adriana, I realized that the people I have found here each bring a different kind of light into my life.

Some people remind us of the magic around us. Others remind us of the joy of fully embracing who we are.

And Amanda is exactly that kind of person.

I first connected with Amanda through Instagram in the most unexpected way. We had somehow already found each other on two different platforms before we even realized it.

She is nostalgic, playful, fashionable, deeply connected to her own sense of girlhood, and completely comfortable being herself.

What I admire about Amanda is that she does not try to become someone else. She knows exactly who she is, and she allows herself to enjoy every part of it.

Every time I check her stories, I leave with a lighter heart, a bigger smile, and a little more courage to embrace my own weirdness.

Amanda also became my pen pal (yayyyyyy!!!!). I love the thought that our friendship, which started through screens and words, will eventually become something tangible we can hold in our hands.

— The Courage to Believe in Someone’s Dream

After knowing Amanda, I felt even more grateful for the kind of connections this space has brought into my life.

Looking back, every person I met here arrived in a different way and brought me a different gift.

Some inspired me with their strength. Some expanded my imagination. Some reminded me to appreciate beauty and joy.

And some people do something even more special:

Adeline is one of those people.

Adeline and I met in the comment section of another creator’s post. Our conversation started because of something small: we both travel with our resistance bands wherever we go.

But what makes Adeline especially meaningful to me is that she became my very first paid subscriber.

Right before launching my postcard project, I shared that anyone who subscribed before July 10th would receive a handwritten postcard from Yakumo, Hokkaido, the place where Kita-Sora began.

Adeline commented, “Okay, I’m in.”

I remember crying so hard when I saw the notification. Someone was willing to support not only my content, but also my journey, my ideas, and this little world I was building.

I had spent a year building this brand and learning almost everything from scratch.

Most people stayed outside the garden, looking in. They appreciated what I created, but Adeline was the first person who truly stepped inside.

The garden was still messy. It was unfinished. I was still figuring things out.

But she chose to enter anyway.

She is also building her own entrepreneurial journey, and the way she lives represents so much of what I hope to become:

She was the one who reached out first at a time when I had just returned from Hokkaido, processing a breakup and trying to rebuild different parts of my life.

Everything felt like a tangled ball of thread.

And then Adeline appeared.

She gently opened a space in that chaos and helped me see which thread I could pick up first, where I could begin, and how I could slowly move forward.

Now, Adeline and I are collaborating on a live session here on Substack, and maybe, eventually, something longer. More details will come soooooon.

Looking back, I think this is what community means to me.

It is not only about finding people who admire the finished version of you.

It is about finding people who are willing to sit beside you among all the scattered threads. Not because they already see the finished piece. But because they believe something beautiful is being created.

If you’re curious how this little community actually came together, from scratch, I wrote the full story here: how I grew my subscribers from zero to 500. It’s the piece that has resonated with the most people so far. If it helps even one more person feel a little less alone in building their own thing, that’s more than enough.

The next stretch, 500 to 800, has been a much more winding road. If you want to hear that story too, tell me in the comments.

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And speaking of new things being built…

Starting August 1st, I’m starting something new: a recurring live session every other Saturday with Adeline — the woman I met in the comment section, the woman who became the very first person to receive a Kita-Sora postcard.

We’re calling it Numbers & Nerve.

This isn’t just a conversation about building brands or making money. It’s a space where we explore the messy, exciting, and sometimes terrifying process of turning our creative worlds into something sustainable.

For our first conversation:

Come explore this question with us.

See you Saturday. 🤍

✨ Explore Kita-Sora — Your Gateway to the North Sky

hiiii, welcome to the North Sky.

If you’re new here, start with The Map of This World — a living guide to the stories, reflections, and creations that shape Kita-Sora.

Think of it as a map of a place still unfolding: a collection of thoughts, memories, and little pieces of life exploring creativity, intentional living, and the quiet process of becoming.

If this world feels like somewhere you’d like to stay a little longer, First Light is the deeper layer of Kita-Sora — where I share the stories behind the scenes.

For $5/month or $50/year, you’ll get access to

• Building Kita-Sora (the real, unfiltered process of building this brand and this life) and

• Creator’s Log (a monthly reflection on what’s been happening behind the scenes).

It’s for those who want to see not only the finished pieces, but also the messy, beautiful process of creating them.

And if you’d rather support this journey in a smaller way for now, you can always

buy me a matcha.

Every cup helps fuel new creations, reflections, and stories — allowing me to continue building this little corner of the world with care and intention.

I’m Lynn, the creator behind Kita-Sora — a visual world built around slow living, emotional clarity, and the quiet process of becoming.

Through creative work, everyday observations, and personal reflections, I share my journey of shaping both a brand and a life with more intention.

You can also follow along here:

• Pinterest — Kita-Sora Studio → where I build the visual language and atmosphere of Kita-Sora

• Instagram — @lynnurfavgurl → where I share real-time moments from my creative and personal journey

here’re some of my previous essays if you’re interested ;)

When I arrived in Yakumo this summer, I thought I had come back to rest.

Instead, I found myself confronting everything I had spent the previous few months trying not to feel.

Looking back now, I realize that the reason I had not allowed myself to fully feel everything was because I had spent the previous few months completely immersed in rebuilding my life.

After returning to China from Hokkaido in March, I threw myself into building Kita-Sora. My previous Substack account had been closed, so I had to start again from the beginning. At first, I only wanted to share my experiences in Yakumo, but as I continued writing, I gradually realized that I was searching for something deeper.

What exactly did I want to express?

Who was I creating this for?

What kind of value did I hope to bring to the people who followed my journey?

The process of building the brand became a process of understanding myself. Writing essays, designing my website, experimenting with different platforms, and slowly creating my own ecosystem were not just practical tasks; they were ways of answering a much larger question—what kind of life was I actually trying to build?

By the time I left for Yakumo, I had launched the first version of my website, received my first paying supporters, and completed my first small project that had grown directly from my own experiences.

From the outside, everything looked as though it was moving forward beautifully.

But inside, I was exhausted.

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Building something without a blueprint meant living with uncertainty every single day. Every decision required me not only to act, but also to constantly question myself: whether I was following my intuition, whether I was creating something meaningful, and whether the life I was designing truly reflected who I wanted to become.

For months, my mind had never stopped moving.

So when I arrived in Yakumo, my body had completed the journey, but my mind had not.

During the first few days, I remained in the same state of alertness I had developed while building everything in China. My thoughts continued searching for the next task, the next problem, and the next thing that needed to be solved.

It took time before I finally realized that I was standing in a place where I did not need to keep running.

And only after the noise gradually faded did I begin to hear the emotions I had been avoiding since winter.

When I finally became quiet enough to listen, I realized that what I had been avoiding was not simply a memory, but a part of myself that had remained frozen since winter.

Returning to Yakumo, the place where everything had begun, naturally brought me back to the relationship I had tried not to think about too much. Earlier that year, I met my first love in Hokkaido, and not long afterward, our relationship came to an abrupt end.

Looking back now, I can understand why he made that decision. Long-distance relationships require a level of stability, commitment, and emotional capacity that neither of us truly possessed at that time. We were both still trying to establish the foundations of our own lives, and neither of us knew exactly where we would eventually end up.

Understanding his reasons, however, did not make the sadness disappear.

What hurt the most was not only losing the relationship itself, but also the silence that followed. He said he hoped we could remain friends, yet gradually disappeared from my daily life. He stopped watching my Instagram stories, stopped reaching out, and when he learned through mutual friends that I would be returning to Yakumo that summer, he cancelled his own trip.

Read more

I returned to Hokkaido thinking I needed a break. Instead, I found the courage to finally face everything I had been carrying.

In late June, I returned to Yakumo, Hokkaido—a small town that marked the beginning of my journey of rebuilding myself and the place where the story of Kita-Sora quietly began.

This was my sixth visit in two years. With its breathtaking landscapes, cherished memories, old friends, and new connections, Yakumo has always held a uniquely special place in my heart. Every time I return, I feel an indescribable sense of peace, as if I am coming back to a place where I do not need to prove anything in order to belong.

When I arrived in Sapporo, everything felt strangely familiar, yet somehow more vivid than I remembered. The temperature was much lower than I had expected. The air was crisp and refreshing, with occasional gusts of cold wind sweeping past me, making me wonder whether it was truly early summer or perhaps already late autumn.

Only when I looked around and saw endless shades of green stretching into the distance did I finally realize that, yes, it was summer—just a colder one.

Sitting on the JR train and watching the landscape slowly pass by outside the window, I felt an unexpected sense of fullness. In that moment, neither the world nor I needed to accomplish anything.

I could have stayed there forever, quietly watching the scenery outside the window. It has always been my favorite moment when returning to Yakumo—the moment when a long journey finally begins to dissolve, when my endlessly active mind gradually becomes quiet, and when I allow nature to guide me into a simpler and more spacious world.

Perhaps this is why I keep returning here.

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I have always been someone who fights. I know how to chase, how to endure, how to solve problems, and how to keep moving forward even when things become uncertain. Yet whenever happiness arrives quietly at my doorstep, I often find myself unsure of how to receive it.

For months, I had been carrying countless responsibilities, expectations, plans, and unfinished questions on my shoulders. I was constantly building—the website, the brand, the future I imagined for myself.

But as I returned to this place, I slowly began to put everything down.

The identity I had created for myself, the creator, the entrepreneur, the person who was always searching for the next direction, could temporarily disappear.

When I was in Yakumo, I did not need to perform or achieve anything.

And perhaps it is only when I stop trying to control every direction of my life, when I allow myself to fully immerse in the world around me, that I can finally reconnect with myself again.

That evening, I arrived at ochanoma, the place that has become one of the most familiar corners of my life in Yakumo.

As I walked down the quiet street, Sumi spotted me from a distance and immediately called out my name. She has always been like this—somehow, even from more than ten meters away and even in the darkness of the night, she always manages to notice me first.

The moment I saw her, I instinctively ran toward her, wanting to embrace her after such a long time apart, while she quickly turned her back toward me. I only learned why a few moments later. She was pregnant, and she was worried that my overly enthusiastic hug might accidentally hurt the baby. After she put her things away at home, we walked back to ochanoma together, arm in arm, chatting like two old friends returning home after school.

When we stepped into the living room, the atmosphere felt different from my previous visits. It was quieter than usual, almost a little empty, yet still filled with the familiar warmth I had always loved.

Three new helpers were gathered around the table, quietly doing their own things and chatting softly. Among them was Kay, a girl from California who immediately caught my attention. She had pale green eyes and long golden wavy hair (which she cut off a few days later, but still super cool!), and the moment I met her, she reminded me of a whimsical fairy.

She was incredibly warm and kind, greeting me with genuine curiosity and friendliness. Although she was still young and slightly shy, there was something bright and gentle about her presence.

Watching these new faces appear in a place that had once been unfamiliar to me reminded me of something I have always loved about Yakumo.

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Daachan had just finished work and was preparing to go out for dinner. We stood together beside the kitchen sink, exchanging small talk like we always did.

Then she gently asked me:

“Ryuhei is coming back this time, right? Are you okay with that?”

I paused for a moment before answering.

“I’m fine.”

But the truth was, I was not completely fine yet. During this visit, almost everyone asked me the same question.

“Ryuhei is coming back too, right? How are you feeling about that?”

“Are you okay?”

Their questions were never filled with curiosity or judgment. They asked because they cared. They wanted me to know that whatever happened, I would not have to face it alone.

They reminded me that I still had people standing behind me.

Later, when I finally opened up and talked everything through with Sumi, she told me something that stayed with me.

Those words were simple, but they reached a place inside me that I did not realize had been exhausted.

For so long, I had unconsciously measured my value through what I created, what I achieved, and how much I could give to others. I was always trying to become someone better, someone more capable, someone more deserving.

But Sumi reminded me that perhaps I had been searching for something I already possessed.

I did not need to prove my worth in order to be loved.

My existence itself already had value. ;)

Looking back now, I realize that the reason I had not allowed myself to fully feel everything was because I had spent the previous few months completely immersed in rebuilding my life.

After returning to China from Hokkaido in March, I threw myself into building Kita-Sora. My previous Substack account had been closed, so I had to start again from the beginning. At first, I only wanted to share my experiences in Yakumo, but as I continued writing, I gradually realized that I was searching for something deeper.

What exactly did I want to express?

Who was I creating this for?

What kind of value did I hope to bring to the people who followed my journey?

The process of building the brand became a process of understanding myself. Writing essays, designing my website, experimenting with different platforms, and slowly creating my own ecosystem were not just practical tasks; they were ways of answering a much larger question—what kind of life was I actually trying to build?

By the time I left for Yakumo, I had launched the first version of my website, received my first paying supporters, and completed my first small project that had grown directly from my own experiences.

From the outside, everything looked as though it was moving forward beautifully.

But inside, I was exhausted.

Building something without a blueprint meant living with uncertainty every single day. Every decision required me not only to act, but also to constantly question myself: whether I was following my intuition, whether I was creating something meaningful, and whether the life I was designing truly reflected who I wanted to become.

For months, my mind had never stopped moving.

Even when I was not working, I was still working.

So when I arrived in Yakumo, my body had completed the journey, but my mind had not.

During the first few days, I remained in the same state of alertness I had developed while building everything in China. My thoughts continued searching for the next task, the next problem, and the next thing that needed to be solved.

It took time before I finally realized that I was standing in a place where I did not need to keep running.

And only after the noise gradually faded did I begin to hear the emotions I had been avoiding since winter.

(to be continued…)

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✨ Explore Kita-Sora — Your Gateway to the North Sky

Welcome to the North Sky. If you’re new here, start with The Map of This World, your guide to the key reflections, stories, and creations in this space. It’s a living map of the journey, where you can explore fragments of life, creativity, and intentional living, and see how they connect.

If this world resonates with you, you can buy me a matcha — every sip fuels new creations, reflections, and stories, and helps me continue building this space with care and intention.

buy me a matcha

I’m Lynn, the creator behind Kita-Sora — a visual world built around slow living, emotional clarity, and the quiet process of becoming. I share fragments of this journey through creative work, everyday reflections, and the ongoing process of shaping both a brand and a life with more intention.

You can also follow along and connect with me here:

• Pinterest: @Kita-Sora Studio → where I build the visual language of Kita-Sora

• Instagram: @lynnurfavgurl → where I share real-time moments of my creative and personal journey

here’re some of my previous essays if you’re interested ;)

If I trace back the beginning of Kita-Sora, I don’t think it starts from the moment I decided to become a creator. In fact, before that, I had never seriously imagined that I would live from creating things. I simply wanted to recover my ability to create again.

At that time, I was still in graduate school. Since my undergraduate years, I had been studying English, and I had always deeply loved language itself. I loved the way different cultures intersect, and I loved using language to understand another person’s world. Because of that, for a long time, my future felt relatively clear. I was preparing for an entrance examination, and if I passed it, I would go to the United Nations Vienna office for an interpreting internship in the following semester. After that, I might eventually become a professional interpreter. That was not just an exam—it was the direction I had been working toward for years, and the future I genuinely wanted.

But when I failed that exam, what collapsed was not just the result itself. It was the sudden disappearance of a future that had once felt stable and certain. I still remember that feeling today. It was as if I had been walking along a road for years, believing the destination was right ahead, only to find one day that the road had suddenly ended, and I was left standing there without any idea where to go next.

At the same time, the environment around me did not offer much breathing space. The job market in China is extremely competitive. During my graduate years, almost all of my classmates were doing internships, job hunting, and preparing for exams. Everyone was constantly pushing forward.

There is a word that is often used in China—”landing on shore.” Getting into graduate school is called landing on shore, getting a government job is landing on shore, securing a stable job is landing on shore, even getting married can be seen as landing on shore.

More often than not, people are not doing these things because they truly want them, but because that social standard defines them as “successful.” When everyone is running toward the same goal, the pressure becomes amplified to an almost unbearable level. And I was someone who struggled deeply to exist within that system. But at that point, I no longer had the strength to resist it. I felt exhausted, lost, and without direction. So in the end, I chose to run away—as u might know—to Hokkaido.

Interestingly, Hokkaido was not originally a place I chose as an escape. Before the exam results came out, I had already bought the flight ticket. I had treated the trip as my vacation journey. I found a working-stay opportunity through Helpx and had already planned everything in advance. It was only when I bought the ticket that I realized I was going to Hokkaido—and in summer, not winter. So when I failed the exam, what changed was not the trip itself, but its meaning. What was supposed to be a bonus trip became an escape.

When I arrived in Hokkaido, I realized for the first time that life could exist in a completely different form. Back in China, I had been living in an environment that was extremely fast-paced and pressure-filled. Everyone was constantly running, constantly competing, and the air itself felt filled with anxiety. Even for someone like me, who is extremely sensitive to smoke, simply breathing sometimes felt like a burden.

Hokkaido, however, was completely different. Every morning, I would wake up and simply go to the garden to pull weeds, play with kids after they finish school, and help out in a small café. Sometimes I would go to the campsite to help set up tents and clean up for guests. In the evenings, everyone would gather to eat dinner and talk about our days. Sometimes, we also watch movies together. After the movie ended, we would walk outside and look up at a sky full of stars and the Milky Way.

I had never experienced a life like this before. A life that had no clear purpose, yet felt deeply meaningful. A life where I did not have to constantly prove my worth. A life where I could finally lower my guard completely.

It was also there that I began to cry for no reason. Not because I was sad, but because I felt overwhelmingly happy. So happy that it made me feel a strange kind of sadness for my past self. I would wonder why I had been living that way before. Why was this kind of simple, quiet, and free life so rare for me? Why couldn’t I live like this all the time?

During those two weeks, I truly took my first deep breath in a long time.

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It was only then that I began to realize that perhaps my problem was never that I was not good enough or not hardworking enough. It was that I had been living in an environment that did not fit me. When someone stays under long-term pressure, they start to believe that suffering is normal, that exhaustion is simply the price of growth, and that life is supposed to feel this way. But standing in the summer of Hokkaido—breathing clean air, looking at distant mountains, eating with people from different countries—I realized for the first time that life could be something else entirely.

But at the same time, I was also very aware that this was only a temporary experience. Two weeks later, I would have to return to my original life. I would still have to face all the unresolved questions waiting for me.

And so, during that time, a thought kept returning to me again and again: if this kind of happiness only exists in travel, then what happens after I go back? If I truly love this way of living, how can I make it more than just a temporary experience? How can I turn this feeling of being able to breathe freely into something permanent in my everyday life?

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A while ago, I wrote a post about a postcard project I had been thinking about for some time. At that time, it was still very loose—more like a sketch of an idea than something concrete. I didn’t really know what it would become, or even whether it would become anything at all.

But something interesting happened after I shared it.

some of my girlies left comments telling me that they found the idea beautiful. Some said they related to the emotional side of sending postcards. Some simply said they would love to see where this goes.

Those small responses stayed with me more than I expected.

Because they made me realize this wasn’t just something I was thinking about alone.

It was something that could actually exist outside of me.

And over the past weeks, instead of continuing to only think about it, I started building it.

Slowly, quietly, piece by piece.

And today, it finally has a form.

Vol. I — To Ithaca is the first completed version of that idea.

But to understand why this project matters to me, I need to go back to something much more personal…again (if you’ve read my previous post a postcard is my way of saying "I see u", you’ll understand what i’m talking about here ;))

why postcards?

Why does this postcard series exist in the first place?

The truth is, it comes from something very simple in my life that has existed for a very long time. Since I was young, I have always been deeply drawn to stationery, small paper goods, and anything that can hold traces of a moment.

Even now, whenever I travel, I still find myself spending a long time in stationery stores, looking at small objects that most people might consider unnecessary, but which always make me feel strangely calm and happy.

I have always collected small things. Wrapping papers, stickers, packaging from snacks, little fragments of daily life that most people would throw away. I often cut them out and paste them into my notebooks, turning them into small journals of my life.

When I look back, I realize this is also where Kita-Sora actually begins.

I have always wanted to design the things I loved most when I was a child. But for a long time, these preferences were seen as impractical, unnecessary, or not meaningful enough. Now, having built my own brand, I finally have the space to take those instincts seriously.

And among all these things, postcards have always held a very special place.

Whenever I travel, I naturally fall into the habit of sending postcards to friends. Not because I want to show them where I am, but because I want to send them a moment. A feeling. The emotional state of being somewhere far away, at a very specific time, that can never be repeated again.

To me, a postcard has always felt more meaningful than a souvenir.

A souvenir can be bought anywhere. But a handwritten postcard carries something unrepeatable: the time, the weather, the emotional state, and the version of yourself that existed in that exact place.

And what started as a personal habit slowly made me realize something: I didn’t just want this to exist as a one-time act.

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why this became a series?

The reason I decided to turn this into a long-term series is because I already know one thing about myself very clearly: I will continue traveling for the rest of my life. I will keep encountering new places, new people, new cultures, and new moments of inspiration.

And if my life is going to continue being shaped by these experiences, then it feels almost natural to ask—why shouldn’t these experiences become something that can reach others as well?

Creating has always been my way of processing the world. So this postcard series feels less like a “project” and more like an extension of how I already live.

At the same time, I have also been deeply inspired by the idea of snail mail culture. I love the idea that people across different countries, living completely different lives, can still exchange something physical, something slow, something intentional. I have seen creators build their own small snail mail clubs online, and I found that idea incredibly beautiful.

They can hold relationships in place.

They can quietly say: I was here. I thought of you. I still do.

And more than anything, I hope my future community can eventually feel like that too.

Not just through digital interaction, but through something that can be held, kept, and returned to over time.

But the deeper I thought about this idea, the more I realized it wasn’t just about postcards at all—it was about the way I understand journeys themselves.

why ithaca?

If you have read some of my earlier writing about Kita-Sora—especially The Map of This World—you might already know that Ithaca is one of the core metaphors of this world.

Ithaca comes from Homer’s Odyssey, but the interpretation that stayed with me most deeply is Cavafy’s poem. In that poem, Ithaca is not a destination we are meant to reach. It is the reason we begin the journey in the first place.

It is the distant horizon that gives shape to movement itself.

For me, Ithaca represents something even more personal.

It is both outward and inward at the same time.

On one hand, it is the endless desire to explore the world, to travel, to meet new people, and to keep moving toward something that may always remain slightly out of reach.

On the other hand, it is the inward journey of trying to understand yourself, building a life that feels honest, and slowly learning how to live within your own inner world.

These two directions may seem opposite, but in my experience, they are deeply connected. The more I move outward, the more I am forced to return inward. And the more I understand myself, the more I am able to move outward again.

That is why Ithaca felt like the only possible name for the first volume of this series.

And in many ways, Hokkaido became one of my own Ithacas. It started as a place I escaped to, and over time became something I kept returning to again and again. A place that slowly shaped my sense of direction without ever fully defining it.

And once I understood the direction of this journey, the next question naturally became its structure.

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the six chapters

I also knew from the beginning that I wanted this series to consist of six postcards.

Part of it is simply personal preference—I have always loved the number six. In Chinese culture, it often carries a sense of smoothness, flow, and good fortune. There is something balanced about it. Not too many, not too few.

But more than that, six feels like a complete rhythm.

One is a moment.

Three is a fragment.

It is enough space for departure, uncertainty, transformation, clarity, arrival, and return. It is enough to hold a full emotional arc without becoming overwhelming or losing its intimacy.

That is why I have decided that all future postcard series will also follow this structure: six chapters at a time, each one capturing a different emotional movement within a larger journey.

That structure eventually took shape as the following six chapters.

These six postcards are not meant to be read as a strict sequence, but rather as different emotional states that we all move through at different points in our lives.

✦ Leaving Things Behind
This is the moment of departure. Not because we no longer care, but because we do. Life moves forward whether we are ready or not, and at some point we consciously choose to step into that movement, even while still holding onto what we leave behind.

✦ No Way Back
The point where leaving becomes irreversible. Not because the past disappears, but because we have already changed. There is a quiet realization that returning is no longer possible, even if we wanted to.

✦ Breathing Again
The stage where uncertainty slowly begins to loosen its grip. After stepping into the unknown, there is often a period of pressure and disorientation. But eventually, the breath returns. The path begins to feel less suffocating, more open.

✦ Still Becoming
A reminder that growth is never complete. We are always in a state of becoming, always shifting toward something we have not yet fully reached. This stage is about accepting that there is no final version of ourselves.

✦ Almost There
The moment where something begins to feel close. Not fully arrived, but no longer distant. It is a fragile space between hope and hesitation, where everything feels more real and more uncertain at the same time.

✦ Ithaca
Not an ending, but a reflection. Ithaca is the destination that is not really a destination. It is both the place we move toward and the place we realize we have been carrying within us all along.

And perhaps after Ithaca, there is only another departure.

a journey that loops

At first glance, these six chapters may seem like a linear progression. But the more I think about life, the more I realize it rarely moves in straight lines.

After Ithaca comes another departure.

After arrival comes another question.

After becoming comes another version of yourself waiting to be discovered.

A loop that continues unfolding as long as we are willing to keep moving.

what i hope this becomes

More than creating postcards, I think what I have always wanted to create is a way for people to stay connected—to moments, to places, and to each other.

Maybe what I have been collecting all these years was never just stationery, but fragments of time worth remembering.

And maybe these postcards are simply a way of saying:

✦ first postcard drop

If this chapter resonates with you, I would love to send a small piece of it your way.

This is the first physical expression of Kita-Sora—one handwritten postcard sent directly from Hokkaido.

Each postcard will be personally written by me and mailed internationally as part of a small experimental release.

This is not a product in the traditional sense, but a way to share a small piece of this world with the earliest supporters of this journey.

If you would like to receive one, you can find the details in the link below.

send me a postcard

This is Vol. I — To Ithaca. A series of six postcards, each capturing a different stage of a shared human journey.

This is only the beginning of what will become a long-term series—one that will continue to evolve as I travel, create, and build Kita-Sora.

With sincerity,
Lynn🧸✨

—

✨ Explore Kita-Sora — Your Gateway to the North Sky

Welcome to the North Sky. If you’re new here, start with The Map of This World, your guide to the key reflections, stories, and creations in this space. It’s a living map of the journey, where you can explore fragments of life, creativity, and intentional living, and see how they connect.

If this world resonates with you, you can buy me a matcha — every sip fuels new creations, reflections, and stories, and helps me continue building this space with care and intention.

buy me a matcha

I’m Lynn, the creator behind Kita-Sora — a visual world built around slow living, emotional clarity, and the quiet process of becoming. I share fragments of this journey through creative work, everyday reflections, and the ongoing process of shaping both a brand and a life with more intention.

You can also follow along and connect with me here:

• Pinterest: @Kita-Sora Studio → where I build the visual language of Kita-Sora

• Instagram: @lynnurfavgurl → where I share real-time moments of my creative and personal journey

For a long time, Kita-Sora existed in a very unstable form inside my head. It was not really a project yet, not something I could explain clearly to others, but more like a persistent pressure that never fully disappeared.

I could see fragments of it everywhere in my life—notes on my phone that didn’t connect, photographs from Hokkaido that felt emotionally heavy but structurally incomplete, half-written thoughts about identity, branding, and the kind of life I wanted to build—but I couldn’t yet hold any of it together.

May was the month I realized that was not true.

building before feeling ready

The website was supposed to be a simple starting point, but I kept delaying it because every time I opened the file I felt the same absence: not enough photos organized, not enough illustrations ready, not enough clarity about what this was supposed to become.

I kept telling myself I would start once everything was prepared, but “prepared” never actually arrived. What changed in May was that I stopped waiting. I started building anyway.

Read more

Over the past few months, I’ve been slowly building Kita-Sora.

Not only as a creative project, but as a life I am trying to build for myself.

A life where I can make things I genuinely care about, share them with people who resonate with them, and hopefully create enough stability to keep going.

For a long time, I thought I needed everything figured out before I could start.

The perfect website.
The perfect products.
The perfect system.

Introducing: The Postcard Project

So this summer, I want to try something small.

I want to send postcards.

This idea has actually been with me for a long time.

In one of my earlier posts, I wrote about how much I love sending postcards to my friends, and how a postcard, to me, has always been a way of saying: “I see you.”

Not in a loud or dramatic way, but in a quiet, almost private form of attention — a small object that carries presence across distance.

And I think that idea has never really left me.

Because at its core, Kita-Sora has always been about that same gesture.

A way of noticing.

A way of holding something still for a moment before it disappears.

So this postcard project is not something new I invented for a launch.

It is more like a continuation of something I’ve already been doing for a very long time — just now, I am finally giving it a form that can travel further than my immediate circle.

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The Origin: Hokkaido

All of the view photographs on this website were taken during my time in Hokkaido.

It was one of the most transformative periods of my life.

I arrived carrying a lot more uncertainty than confidence, and left with a quieter understanding of who I wanted to become.

Looking back now, those photographs feel less like travel photos and more like fragments of a life that was slowly rebuilding itself.

For a long time they stayed inside my hard drive.

Recently, I kept wondering:

What if they could travel a little further?

What if they could become something people could actually hold?

That question eventually became this postcard project.

What the Postcards Are

The idea is simple.

Throughout the summer, I will be creating a small collection of postcards using my own photography and illustrations.

Each design will be connected to a place, a memory, or a story that helped shape Kita-Sora.

Rather than launching them all at once, I want to share the process as it unfolds.

The experiments.
The failed versions.
The design decisions.
The moments of uncertainty.
The moments when something finally clicks.

Because to me, the creative process is often more meaningful than the final object itself.

And because of that, I want to start sharing more of the process itself.

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A Small Shift

Not in a corporate or strategic sense, but in a way that reflects how Kita-Sora is actually being built in real time.

For a long time, I’ve shared pieces of the finished work.

From now on, I also want to share more of the process behind it.

The experiments.
The uncertainties.
The systems.
The small decisions that slowly shape a creative life.

To make that easier to follow, I’ll be organizing the newsletter into a few ongoing series.

Letters from Kita-Sora (Free + Partial Access)

Reflections, stories, photographs, and observations from everyday life.

Think of them as postcards from a place that is still being built.

These letters may include memories from Hokkaido, creative thoughts, personal essays, and small moments that continue to shape the world of Kita-Sora.

Some Letters from Kita-Sora will be available to everyone, while full versions will be reserved for paid subscribers.

Building Kita-Sora (Paid)

A behind-the-scenes look at how I’m building Kita-Sora as a one-person creative practice.

I’ll be sharing the process of developing products, designing the website, making creative decisions, experimenting with new ideas, and slowly turning a personal project into a sustainable creative business.

Published 1–2 times per month.

Creator’s Log (Paid)

A monthly letter published on the 5th of each month.

In it, I’ll document what I’ve been working on, lessons I’ve learned, challenges I’ve faced, and what I’m focusing on next.

Less like a productivity report, and more like an honest record of building something from the ground up.

The part where nothing is fully formed yet, but everything is quietly taking shape.

Early Supporter Access

And if everything goes according to plan, these postcards will become the first physical objects I officially release through Kita-Sora.

For those who choose to support this work early on, I want to treat that support with care.

Paid subscribers who join before June 10 will be the very first people in the world to receive these postcards — mailed directly from Hokkaido this summer.

Not as a reward.
Not as merchandise.

But as a gesture of trust.

A small way of saying thank you for being here at the very beginning, when this world is still learning how to exist outside of me.

Because every postcard will be prepared and mailed by hand, I’ll need a little time to organize everything before I leave.

If you’d like to be part of this first mailing, please become a paid subscriber before June 10.

Closing

I don’t know exactly what Kita-Sora will look like a year from now.

I don’t know how large it will become.

What I do know is that every version of this project has been built through small, consistent steps.

One photograph.
One drawing.
One article.
One reader at a time.

This postcard project is simply the next step.

And if you’d like to follow along, I’d love to have you here.

— Lynn ♡

—

✨ Explore Kita-Sora — Your Gateway to the North Sky

Welcome to the North Sky. If you’re new here, start with The Map of This World, your guide to the key reflections, stories, and creations in this space. It’s a living map of the journey, where you can explore fragments of life, creativity, and intentional living, and see how they connect.

If this world resonates with you, you can buy me a matcha — every sip fuels new creations, reflections, and stories, and helps me continue building this space with care and intention.

buy me a matcha

I’m Lynn, the creator behind Kita-Sora — a visual world built around slow living, emotional clarity, and the quiet process of becoming. I share fragments of this journey through creative work, everyday reflections, and the ongoing process of shaping both a brand and a life with more intention.

You can also follow along and connect with me here:

• Pinterest: @Kita-Sora Studio → where I build the visual language of Kita-Sora

• Instagram: @lynnurfavgurl → where I share real-time moments of my creative and personal journey

You can imagine a 996 work environment: six days a week, nearly twelve hours each day trapped at a cramped desk. You cannot listen to music through headphones, let alone play it out loud. You must stay online, sitting for long hours that warp your posture, tighten your hip flexors, and affect your overall body alignment. Your body fat may increase, your kidneys might suffer from dehydration, and your eyes grow dry and strained from staring at the screen.

In this situation, you cannot escape the job.

After work, you have no energy left for anything you truly want to do. Over time, you may even forget what you enjoy, becoming increasingly dependent on this work that offers a fragile comfort.

No matter how much you are paid, leaving this “comfort zone” feels impossible.

Life gets locked into this narrow space, and this is never what I wanted.

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my recent experience with part-time work

Just yesterday, I finished a freelance interpreting session that was extremely exhausting. This was not because I lacked the ability to do the work—I could perform it—but because the time and energy required far outweighed the return.

The compensation did not reflect the mental and physical effort I invested, and more importantly, it did not generate long-term, compounding benefits.

Unlike my brand work, where each action builds connections, understanding, and meaningful engagement, this freelance job was temporary. The results were isolated and one-time, whereas investing in my own projects strengthens the foundation for future growth and sustainability. During my brand’s early stage, I may still take occasional freelance work to cover immediate financial needs, but it is only a temporary measure, not the ultimate goal.

All the results belong to someone else, and you are left with whatever fragments they allow. I do not want that. I want to build something where the entire tree is mine, where I decide how to nurture it and where it grows.

why i chose to create my own path

Entrepreneurship, for me, is “less is more.” I focus my energy and time on one pursuit, trusting in my abilities and in myself. I invest everything into this path, aiming for long-term leverage and compounded returns.

The truth is, I was partly forced into this. After graduating in 2024, I failed an important exam and suddenly found myself without a clear next step. I escaped to Hokkaido, and when I returned, it was already too late for conventional job opportunities.

I tried online freelance work in interpreting and translation, hoping to earn income while building my own brand. But the reality was discouraging: low pay, impossible demands, delayed payment, and no long-term growth.

Within six months, I applied to over a hundred positions and worked briefly in about twenty, but in one case, it took almost a year to receive payment for a month of work.

These experiences made me realize that working for others could never create the freedom I wanted.

This shift moved my focus from external validation to creating a life and work that are entirely my own.

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maintaining agency while employed

If you currently have a full-time job but still want to create something of your own, start with the smallest habits.

These micro-habits are your form of resistance against an unreasonable system. They keep you connected to yourself and preserve your agency.

• Record every spark of inspiration, even if you don’t use it right away. You never know which idea might become the seed for your future projects.

• Don’t suppress your interests. If you enjoy drawing, draw. If you love writing, write. If you love reading, read. Every passion you pursue has value and can contribute to your growth.

• Explore new things as often as you can. The more you try, the more you learn about your potential, your limits, and your boundaries.

• Take care of your body. Don’t over-restrict your diet for the sake of looking “slimmer” or “more beautiful.” Ensure balanced nutrition. A healthy body fuels your mind, keeps up with high-intensity work, and supports your creative energy.

• Maintain small health and productivity habits: follow the 20-20-20 rule to rest your eyes, drink 1–1.5 liters of water a day, and stretch or rotate your hips regularly if you sit for long periods. These micro-practices keep your body and mind ready for when you are ready to create something bigger.

Establishing these habits ensures that when you are ready to pursue entrepreneurship fully, you will have energy and structure in your life. These small frameworks allow you to withstand external pressures without being completely consumed by them.

the bigger picture

Working for others may feel safe in the short term—it provides immediate basic needs. But it rarely offers the compounding benefits that come from creating and controlling your own projects.

a question for you

So I want to leave you with this: look at your own life and your work.

• Are you building something that truly belongs to you, or are you constantly pouring your energy into a system that benefits someone else more than it benefits you?

• How much of your time, your creativity, and your potential is being confined, and how much could you reclaim if you allowed yourself to take even a small step toward your own path?

If any of this resonates with you, I encourage you to reflect, share your thoughts, or even start experimenting with one micro-habit today. Your experience matters, and your story is worth creating on your own terms.

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✨ Explore Kita-Sora — Your Gateway to the North Sky

Welcome to the North Sky. If you’re new here, start with The Map of This World, your guide to the key reflections, stories, and creations in this space. It’s a living map of the journey, where you can explore fragments of life, creativity, and intentional living, and see how they connect.

If this world resonates with you, you can buy me a matcha — every sip fuels new creations, reflections, and stories, and helps me continue building this space with care and intention.

buy me a matcha

I’m Lynn, the creator behind Kita-Sora — a visual world built around slow living, emotional clarity, and the quiet process of becoming. I share fragments of this journey through creative work, everyday reflections, and the ongoing process of shaping both a brand and a life with more intention.

You can also follow along and connect with me here:

• Pinterest: @Kita-Sora Studio → where I build the visual language of Kita-Sora

• Instagram: @lynnurfavgurl → where I share real-time moments of my creative and personal journey

If you’re new here, welcome.

I’m Lynn, currently in my mid-20s, documenting the ongoing process of rebuilding my life through creativity, femininity, and intentional living.

two years ago, after my life collapsed in ways I did not fully know how to process at the time, I left for Hokkaido alone. That experience quietly became the emotional starting point of everything I am building now — not only as a person, but also as a creator and founder.

It came into existence during a time when I was trying to make sense of direction, loss, and rebuilding.

I began to imagine the sky as something both distant and intimate — something that could hold everything I couldn’t yet put into words. A presence that is always above you, yet somehow still feels like it belongs to you.

At its core, Kita-Sora is my attempt to turn that feeling into a living space.

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This idea is also connected to the concept of Ithaca.

In C.P. Cavafy’s poem, Ithaca is not a destination, but a metaphor for the journey itself — for everything you become while you are still on the way there.

Kita-Sora exists in that same spirit.

Not as a place to arrive at, but as a journey that continues unfolding.

🌌 Ⅱ. WORLD LOGIC — what this world becomes

Kita-Sora is not a fixed place.

It is a living system that grows from experience, memory, and reflection.

My writing is the medium through which this system takes shape.

Some pieces come from emotional burnout, identity shifts, discipline, loneliness, and the attempt to create a life that feels more sustainable from the inside.

Others come from creativity, storytelling, branding, womanhood, and the ongoing process of becoming more visible while staying honest with myself.

Over time, these experiences do not remain separate.

They accumulate.

They form patterns.

And those patterns become structure.

This is what Kita-Sora is:

This page will continue evolving as I evolve too. ♡

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🧭 Ⅲ. HOW TO NAVIGATE THIS SPACE

This world is not meant to be consumed in a linear way.

You do not need to read everything in order.
You do not need to understand everything at once.

You might enter through a single writing, a feeling, or a title that resonates with you. From there, each piece may naturally lead you somewhere else.

There is no fixed path here.

There are, however, gentle starting doors:

🌿 INTENTIONAL LIVING

Pieces about rebuilding my life, surviving burnout, emotional reflection, and learning how to create a life that feels more intentional and emotionally sustainable.

• my life is a river that never begins, only circles back and moves forward again

on rebuilding identity, returning to yourself, and realizing growth is rarely linear.

• between letters: a journey to shangri-la (feat. notes for an inner kid)

a reflective piece about emotional memory, escapism, longing, and the quiet inner worlds we build to survive reality.

• i didn’t realize i was burning out because i never stopped functioning

what happens when your life still works from the outside, but internally you slowly stop feeling present inside it.

• how i built my abs while rebuilding my life

on fitness, discipline, and using routine as an anchor during periods of emotional instability.

✨ CREATIVITY

Pieces about storytelling, creativity, branding, emotional connection, and slowly turning my life into meaningful creative work.

• how i grew from 0 to 500 subscribers in 6 weeks

how genuine connection, emotional honesty, and community-building helped me slowly grow a small but deeply supportive audience on Substack.

• a postcard is my way of saying “i see you”

why small creative gestures matter to me, and how art can become a quiet form of emotional recognition.

🔥 FEMININITY

Pieces about womanhood, emotional sensitivity, self-image, beauty, identity, and learning how to exist more fully as myself.

• the hardest thing for me is to be a pretty girl

on beauty, visibility, femininity, and the emotional complexity of being perceived.

• the emptiness isn’t the problem, you are

a reflection on avoidance, emotional responsibility, and the uncomfortable process of confronting yourself honestly.

• a room for women who won’t be tamed

for women who are emotionally intense, deeply creative, overly sensitive, ambitious, and unwilling to shrink themselves to fit smaller lives.

Some pieces will feel like reflection.
Some will feel like structure.
Some will feel like remembering something you already knew.

📁 Ⅴ. CONTENT SYSTEM — how this world is shared

Kita-Sora exists across two layers.

🟡 FREE LAYER — fragments of a living mind

This layer is open to everyone.

It contains:

• daily reflections

• emotional fragments

• unfinished thoughts

• lived experiences

• creative notes

• memories and observations

This is the immediate surface of the world — intuitive, unpolished, and alive in real time.

It is not meant to explain everything.

It is meant to let you feel it.

🔵 PAID LAYER — The building process in real time

This layer shows the construction behind the world.

Here I share:

• how I rebuild my life structure and daily systems

• how I think about creativity as a system, not just expression

• how I build Kita-Sora as a long-term creative framework

• how I translate emotional experience into structure

• how I fail, adjust, and rebuild in real time

This is not theory.

It is the process itself.

You are not reading conclusions — you are watching the system form.

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You can choose how close you want to be to this world.

The free layer is for fragments and reflections as they appear.
The paid layer is for the ongoing process of building this world in real time.

The paid subscription is for those who want to follow this journey more closely and consistently.

There is no hierarchy here — only different ways of staying with the same unfolding process.

☁️ Ⅵ. CONNECTION — outside this world

Some parts of my world exist outside of Substack too.

If you’d like to follow my work more closely, explore the visual side of Kita-Sora, or simply keep up with the small everyday moments behind everything I create, you can find me here:

✷ Instagram — real-time thoughts, creative process, daily life, and personal reflections
@lynnurfavgurl

✷ Pinterest — the visual universe of Kita-Sora
@Kita-Sora Studio

✷ Website — my creative world, projects, and everything I’m slowly building
@kita-sora.com

🍵 SUPPORT THIS WORLD

If these writings, reflections, or creations have resonated with you in some way, you can support my work by buying me a matcha.

It is a small gesture, but it allows me to continue building this world with more time, care, and consistency.

buy me a matcha

🌌 CLOSING

This is not an archive.

It is a living map.

A world that continues to change as I change.

Thank you for being here.

with sincerity,

Lynn🔮✨

If you’ve read my previous writing, you probably already know that I tend to think in long time horizons.

I started training in 2017, and over the past decade, fitness has not just been a habit—it has been an anchor that slowly helped me rebuild my life from the inside out. That experience shaped how I approach almost everything else, including writing, content, and now, Substack.

So when I decided to build my personal brand and use Substack as a base for it, I was never approaching it with a short-term mindset. This was never about quick visibility or fast numbers.

I have always set goals in a slightly extreme way. In the past, I would often set targets that felt almost unrealistic, like “reach 1,000 subscribers by April,” not because I truly believed in the timeline, but because it kept me in motion. It created pressure, and that pressure kept me consistent.

But recently, something in me has shifted.

Instead of relying on distant, almost abstract goals to stay motivated, I now find that I am sustained by something much quieter and more immediate: real connection.

A very small group of people who consistently read, respond, and resonate with what I share. A small circle where there is mutual recognition. People who tell me they look forward to my writing, and people I genuinely enjoy hearing from in return.

That has been enough to keep me going.

Not because the ambition disappeared, but because the foundation became more real. I no longer feel the need to chase something distant in order to justify continuing. I can simply build, step by step, while staying close to the people who are already here.

And with that in place, I want to shift into something more practical.

Because beyond mindset, there are also very specific things I did that helped me go from 0 to 500 subscribers in 6 weeks.

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2. the real starting point: Substack is a connection platform, not just a publishing platform

One of the things I noticed very early on is that Substack is not just a place where you “post essays.”

It is a platform that is fundamentally built around connection.

If you’ve spent any time here, you’ve probably seen posts that start with something like:

“Dear Substack, please connect me with…”

These kinds of posts are very common, especially for new writers. And in my experience, they actually serve an important function. For people who are just starting out, they are one of the fastest ways to enter the ecosystem and be seen.

When your account is new and you have very little history, a post like that can genuinely bring in your first small wave of readers. It works because there is still curiosity around new voices, and people on Substack are generally open to discovery.

But what happens after that first wave is where most people get stuck.

3. what actually worked for me: intentional, selective connection

The method I used afterwards was much less visible, but much more consistent.

Instead of waiting for people to find me, I actively went out to find people I resonated with.

This meant reading other writers on Substack, and then engaging with their work in a very intentional way.

Not by commenting everywhere, and not by trying to promote myself randomly, but by paying attention first—who they are, what they write about, and whether there is actual alignment in values or perspective.

Only when I felt that there was genuine resonance, I would leave a comment, often including a short introduction of myself and what I am building.

Like this note published by , I left my comment right away the moment I saw it, because I genuinely wanted to connect with her and support her growth here too.

Over time, this created something much more stable than random exposure.

Because the people who responded were not random audiences—they were people who already shared similar ways of thinking, creating, or experiencing the world.

And naturally, many of the early subscribers I gained came from this kind of interaction. ;)

4. what this eventually became

What started as a very simple act of commenting and connecting slowly turned into a small but meaningful circle of readers and writers.

There is a sense of mutual recognition that is difficult to describe as “growth,” but feels much more like a shared ecosystem of support.

I would not describe it as a large audience.

But it is an active one.

And more importantly, it is real.

There is a continuous exchange happening—people supporting my writing, and me supporting theirs.

Over time, that mutual presence became the actual foundation of my growth, far more than any algorithmic visibility.

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5. the real mechanism behind growth: seeing people, not just reaching them

There are also a few more practical details I want to share, because I think they matter just as much as the mindset.

One of the simplest things I did in the beginning was write a short self-introduction and leave it under posts I resonated with in the comments.

Not everywhere, and not randomly—but selectively, where I genuinely felt aligned with the person and their writing.

When people were curious, they would naturally check out my work. Some of them would subscribe. And from there, something more important than numbers started to happen.

I did not just “gain subscribers.” I started building real connections.

Because what matters more than being seen is actually seeing others.

Whenever someone subscribed to me and I felt even a small sense of curiosity about them, I would read their work properly. I would try to understand what they were writing about, what they were processing in their life, and what kind of thoughts they were trying to work through at that moment.

Not as usernames, but as individuals.

Some of them were in completely different stages of life. Some were studying, some were working, some were rebuilding something, some were still trying to figure out what they even wanted to say. I knew which languages some of them spoke, what they studied, what they were interested in, sometimes even small personal details they had shared in their writing or bio.

Without planning it, I started forming a very real mental map of people.

And I think this is what surprised me the most.

Even though everything was happening online, I felt like I was slowly being let into different people’s lives at very specific moments of their becoming. Their confusion, their reflection, their small breakthroughs, their in-between states of growth.

In a strange way, it felt like witnessing people bloom in real time.

And at the same time, I realized I was also being witnessed in the same way.

This is what I consider real connection.

Not a superficial “sub for sub” dynamic, but something much quieter and more mutual than that. A kind of exchange where people are not just consuming each other’s content, but actually recognizing each other as real, evolving human beings.

Not as a strategy. Not as a transaction. But as a genuine act of attention.

Of course, this does not mean people will automatically respond to you. And it should never be used as a form of expectation or emotional leverage.

But over time, I’ve found that when the resonance is real, it tends to move both ways.

People who are aligned with you will eventually respond in the same language of attention.

6. how I actually found my community

A lot of people have asked me how I specifically found the kinds of people who eventually became part of my small community, so I want to explain that process more concretely.

In the beginning, one of the main things I did was search for “Dear Substack” posts directly through the search bar on Substack.

I would spend time scrolling through those posts one by one, because they were essentially places where people openly expressed the kinds of connections they were looking for. And whenever I came across someone whose interests, values, or creative direction felt aligned with mine, I would leave a comment using a short self-introduction I had already prepared beforehand.

I would also like the post so I could remember that we had already interacted, and then I would simply wait to see whether a more natural interaction developed afterwards.

Sometimes nothing happened, which is completely normal.

But sometimes we would end up subscribing to each other, and that was usually where the real interaction began.

Once that happened, I would start reading their writing more carefully. I would leave thoughtful comments, continue following their daily notes, keep up with the things they were reflecting on, and slowly build a more continuous form of interaction over time.

What became interesting was that after connecting with one person, Substack would naturally begin showing me posts that they had liked themselves, including other “Dear Substack” posts from people similar to them.

And because we already shared a certain kind of resonance, the people they interacted with often ended up resonating with me as well.

So the process slowly became organic.

One connection would naturally lead to another.

One person’s circle would gradually overlap with another’s.

And over time, this slowly formed a small but very interconnected ecosystem where many of us were mutually subscribed to one another, consistently reading each other’s writing, supporting each other’s work, and witnessing each other’s growth in real time.

I think this is also why the connections felt surprisingly genuine.

The community was not built through aggressive networking or visibility tactics. It formed through repeated moments of resonance between people who were already emotionally or creatively aligned with one another.

And honestly, I still think that is one of the most beautiful things about Substack.

6. i don’t really have a content strategy—and that is the point

To be honest, I don’t really have a content strategy in the way people usually mean it.

I did try before. I tried to set schedules, plan posts in advance, and think more systematically about what my audience might want to see. But none of it really worked for me in a sustainable way. I always eventually drifted back to a more intuitive rhythm.

Part of it is simply how I am wired. I am an INFP, and I don’t function very well under rigid systems. The more I try to force myself into a fixed structure, the more disconnected I feel from what I am actually trying to express.

So instead of trying to optimize a strategy, I’ve been slowly learning to pay attention to something else entirely: whether I actually want to say something.

Most of what I post now comes from that place. If I feel the urge to express something, I write it. If I don’t, I don’t force it. There is no fixed publishing schedule, and there is no attempt to artificially maintain a certain level of output. Even my daily notes exist more as a form of overflow rather than a planned system.

And I know this approach is not always “efficient.”

Sometimes I worry that I might be posting too much, or that I might be overwhelming people with too many updates in a single day. But at the same time, I’ve come to accept that I cannot tailor myself in a way that satisfies everyone.

Some people will resonate with my way of expressing, and some people won’t. Both are fine.

Over time, I’ve realized that what people often call “strategy” in my case is actually something much simpler.

It is learning to trust my own timing.

To speak when I want to speak.

To share when something feels alive in me.

And to allow myself to be seen even when what I’m sharing feels vulnerable or unpolished.

Because I’ve noticed that the moments when I feel the most exposed are often the moments when someone else feels the most understood.

There are many people who are carrying similar thoughts or emotions, but they have not yet found a space where they feel safe enough to express them. Sometimes, when I write something honestly, it becomes that space for them.

And in that sense, content is not really something I “strategize.”

It is something that happens in the space between self-expression and mutual recognition.

A kind of quiet exchange of honesty.

7. closing — a small milestone, and a beginning

This piece feels like a small milestone in my process of rebuilding my life.

Reaching 500 subscribers means more to me than just a number. It means there are people here who have chosen to stay, to read, to respond, and to witness this ongoing process of rebuilding alongside me. I’m genuinely grateful for that.

If anything I’ve shared resonates with you, thank you for being here and for seeing me in this moment of my life.

I also hope that some part of this journey can offer you something in return—whether that is clarity, encouragement, or simply the reminder that it is possible to rebuild slowly, in your own way.

This is not something that is ending here.

If anything, this feels like a beginning.

I am someone who does not stop once I set something in motion. And more importantly, my life is still unfolding. This project—Kita-Sora—is not separate from that. It is simply a reflection of it.

I am writing while living, and living while constantly reassembling what I learn from my own experience.

Thank you for being part of this early stage of the journey.

If you enjoy this kind of writing, or if something in this piece stayed with you, you can support my work by buying me a matcha below 🍵

buy me a matcha

It genuinely helps me continue creating, reflecting, and sharing more of this process in a more thoughtful way.

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about the writer

I’m Lynn, the creator behind Kita-Sora — a visual world built around slow living, emotional clarity, and the quiet process of becoming. I share fragments of this journey through creative work, everyday reflections, and the ongoing process of shaping both a brand and a life with more intention.

If this world resonates with you, you can find more of my work and daily creative updates here:

Pinterest: @Kita-Sora Studio→ where I build the visual language of Kita-Sora

Instagram: @lynnurfavgurl →where I share real-time moments of my creative and personal journey

If you’ve followed my previous writing, you probably already know that I started training in 2017. Over the past nearly ten years, fitness has functioned as an anchor in my life, gradually helping me rebuild an entire internal system of living. Later, after graduating from my postgraduate program in 2024, I began rebuilding again—this time my work structure, my content structure, and my direction for the future.

I have always been very aware that my life needs a stable framework.

I cannot rely on emotion to drive my life forward, because emotion is fluid, and real life does not pause just because you are not in the right state. Starting from my undergraduate years, I slowly came to understand that I needed to build long-term habits. I needed something stable enough, repetitive enough, almost automatic, to carry me through periods when I could not rely on motivation or clarity.

Training, working, learning languages, writing, creating content, documenting life, organizing plans—over time, these things stopped being activities I only did when I felt inspired to do them.

They became the structure of my life itself. They formed a kind of internal skeleton that held everything together. Because of that, even during periods when I felt emotionally unstable or exhausted, I could still maintain the most basic form of functioning without completely collapsing.

But at some point, I slowly began to realize something.

Because burnout does not always look like collapse. Most of the time, you still wake up, still work, still train, still post, still respond to messages. From the outside, you may even appear more disciplined, more stable, and more productive than many people around you. Everything still looks fine. Still highly functional.

But internally, something begins to empty out very quietly.

You start losing access to genuine anticipation. Many things are no longer driven by curiosity, excitement, or emotional connection, but by habit taking over the body. You still complete everything that needs to be done, but it starts to feel less like conscious living and more like a system continuing forward through inertia.

And that is the state I recently found myself in.

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the body knew before I did

Before I consciously realized that I was burning out, my body had already been giving me very subtle signals. The problem was that those signals were too quiet, too ordinary, and too easy to dismiss.

I started noticing that my mouth naturally rested in a downward expression, and that I needed to consciously apply effort just to make myself look “normal.” I also realized that when I watched TV shows I used to genuinely enjoy, I no longer felt emotionally pulled into them. Sometimes I would finish an entire episode only to notice that my face had remained almost completely expressionless the whole time.

More noticeably, my attention became occupied by a constant undercurrent of anxiety. I was always thinking about data, feedback, audience response, content optimization, and what the algorithm might prefer to see. Without fully realizing it, I had started breaking my own expression down into structures, labels, strategies, and performance metrics, instead of simply expressing myself.

In this state, I was almost never truly stopping.

Or rather, I was not stopping because I did not allow myself to stop.

Eventually, I reached a point where I realized I no longer had the energy to continue moving forward in the same way.

i don’t know why I couldn’t switch off

I don’t know why I couldn’t truly switch off.

Even when I was not doing anything in particular, my body and mind remained in a constantly activated state. It felt as if something inside me had learned that being “on” was the default mode, and anything else required deliberate effort.

Even when I was physically exhausted, my mind never seemed to follow my body into rest.

Instead, it stayed trapped in repetitive loops, replaying conversations, reviewing small decisions, anticipating future tasks, and quietly scanning everything for possible improvements. It was no longer the kind of clear or productive thinking that leads somewhere meaningful. It felt more like a system endlessly running in the background without ever fully shutting down.

At first, I did not even recognize this as a problem.

Because from the outside, nothing looked wrong.

But internally, there was never a real “off.”

More precisely, it felt like I was constantly in a state of being on standby, rather than actually resting.

Then there were the physical signals I slowly began to notice, although at the time I did not fully understand what they meant.

Sometimes my heartbeat would feel slightly faster than usual, even when nothing was happening. Falling asleep became increasingly difficult, as if my nervous system could no longer fully settle at night. In the mornings, my body often felt heavy in a way that sleep did not seem to resolve, as if I had spent the entire night carrying something invisible.

Even my dreams became unusually vivid. I would wake up still remembering them clearly, almost as if my mind had never truly stopped working in the first place.

At the time, I did not connect these signals together. They felt too small and too ordinary to mean anything on their own.

But looking back now, I understand that they were never separate phenomena.

They were simply my body speaking to me slowly, long before I was ready to understand what it was trying to say.

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maintenance instead of living

What I called “rest” gradually became something closer to low-efficiency productivity, always accompanied by a quiet sense of guilt.

I realized that I had forgotten how to truly rest.

I would try to change environments, force myself into a different rhythm, or temporarily step away from work, but it became increasingly difficult for that internal shift to actually happen.

Because wherever I went, I carried the same internal system with me.

And slowly, without fully noticing it, my life had become something I was maintaining rather than inhabiting.

I was still pursuing my goals, still moving forward, still trying to build the future I wanted for myself, but somewhere in the process, I had once again lost sight of what I actually needed most.

closing

At some point, I started to realize that I had been trying to solve what I was experiencing by making myself more efficient, more disciplined, and more optimized, as if the discomfort I was feeling could eventually be fixed by refining the system I was already operating in.

But what I am slowly beginning to understand is that this is not a question of how well I function, but whether I am actually present inside the life I am functioning in.

For a long time, I believed that as long as I could maintain structure, consistency, and output, I was doing enough. And from the outside, maybe I was. Nothing had fallen apart. My routines were still there, my goals were still moving forward, and my life still appeared functional.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped feeling fully present inside it.

Not suddenly, and not dramatically, but slowly enough that I barely noticed it happening.

I am still learning what it means to stop treating my life as something to maintain, and start experiencing it as something I am actually inside of again.

If these words resonated with you, you can leave a small matcha here for me 🍵
Your support gives me more space and energy to continue creating meaningful work like this.

buy me a matcha

about the writer

I’m Lynn, the creator behind Kita-Sora — a visual world built around slow living, emotional clarity, and the quiet process of becoming. I share fragments of this journey through creative work, everyday reflections, and the ongoing process of shaping both a brand and a life with more intention.

If this world resonates with you, you can find more of my work and daily creative updates here:

Pinterest: @Kita-Sora Studio→ where I build the visual language of Kita-Sora

Instagram: @lynnurfavgurl →where I share real-time moments of my creative and personal journey

One thing I want to make clear from the beginning is that fitness, for me, has never been a short-term project. It is not something I picked up for a transformation arc or a temporary goal. It has been almost ten years now, and if I include all the misunderstandings and detours in between, the timeline becomes even longer. That alone has changed the way I think about training.

When I first started, I was not trying to become healthier. I was trying to become acceptable.

The image I had of university girls at that time was very specific: thin, delicate, effortlessly pretty, almost weightless in the way they existed. I did not question where that image came from. I simply accepted it as something I needed to move toward. In hindsight, I can say clearly that at that time, being pretty was still the hardest thing for me.

Not because I thought I was ugly, but because I believed womanhood itself came with an invisible performance requirement. I thought being loved, accepted, admired, and even taken seriously depended on how closely I could align myself with a very specific version of femininity — thin, delicate, effortless, disciplined, beautiful in a way that never took up too much space.

ps. I actually wrote more deeply about this feeling in another piece recently, because I eventually realized that my relationship with fitness was never only about my body — it was also about my relationship with femininity, validation, and self-worth.

So in the beginning, my relationship with fitness was not really about strength at all.
It was about trying to become easier for the world to approve of.

I restricted food. I tried to force change through control. I dropped below 50 kg and discovered something very quickly: my body became lighter, but also weaker. My energy dropped, my focus collapsed, and even walking felt like something I had to negotiate with my own system. There was a version of thinness that looked acceptable from the outside, but felt completely disconnected from life itself.

After that, I shifted again. I added cardio, I started running, I tried to “balance it out.” But even then, something still felt off. My body was reacting, but not adapting.

What changed everything was not a method, but a change in what I found beautiful.

At some point, I started paying attention to the bodies of Victoria’s Secret models. Not the extreme thinness, but the structure underneath it: the symmetry, the softness of strength, the way muscles held shape without losing femininity. That was the first time I consciously desired a body that was not just smaller, but more capable.

That shift quietly pulled me toward strength training.

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But even then, I could not really do it properly. I was too weak to lift even the lightest weights in the gym, so I started training in my dorm room instead, slowly learning how to move my own body without equipment, without guidance, and without any certainty that I was doing things correctly.

And somewhere along that process, I realized something important: I was still training for an outside gaze, not for myself.

That realization changed the direction of everything that came after.

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For a long time, my understanding of beauty was very simple and internal. I felt comfortable with my natural face. I did not wear makeup, not out of resistance, but because I genuinely felt at ease in my own skin. It was the most honest version of myself, the most effortless one. I did not think I was missing anything, and I did not feel the need to perform beauty in order to feel valid.

That understanding began to shift when I entered a more public space in my life, especially as I started building my own brand and creating content online. I began to notice a gap that I had never consciously acknowledged before. The way I saw myself did not necessarily translate into the way I was being seen. My internal sense of “enoughness” did not automatically become external recognition.

And that is where the idea of “pretty” started to change its shape.

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I started to realize that “pretty,” in a social sense, is not simply about self-acceptance or personal comfort. It is also a form of currency within attention-driven systems. It is something that increases visibility, improves reach, and quietly influences how much space you are allowed to take up. It is not only about beauty, but about legibility within a system that rewards certain visual codes more than others.

This realization does not come from insecurity about my appearance. It comes from the friction between two truths that I now have to hold at the same time. One truth is that I feel okay with how I naturally am. The other truth is that being okay is sometimes not enough when you are trying to build something, share something, or be seen at scale.

This tension reminds me of another experience I had in my life, around fitness and body image. Like many people, especially women, I once believed that the goal was to become thinner, lighter, and more controlled. I did not start with healthy habits. I started with restriction. I tried to discipline my body through avoidance rather than understanding it. Eventually, that approach collapsed. It did not bring me stability; it only created imbalance.

It was only later that I slowly shifted into a more sustainable relationship with my body. I began to exercise regularly, eat more consciously, and rebuild a routine that was not based on punishment but on care. That process taught me something important: any system that is built purely on external standards will eventually require reconstruction if it does not align with internal stability.

Now, I feel like I am standing in a similar place again, but with a different subject. This time, it is makeup and presentation. I understand intellectually why makeup matters in the context of visibility. I understand that it can enhance presence, refine perception, and even influence how content performs. But emotionally, I am still negotiating with it. Because unlike fitness, which eventually gave me a sense of balance and strength, makeup does not yet feel like something that brings me joy in the same way. It feels more like a requirement I am learning to navigate than a practice I naturally gravitate toward.

And I think this is where the sadness comes in, not as a dramatic emotion, but as a quiet awareness. It is the awareness that self-contentment is not always enough to be seen. That liking yourself does not automatically translate into being recognized by the systems you are trying to move through. And that sometimes, in order to reach certain goals, you are asked to translate yourself into a version that fits better within external expectations.

This is not a rejection of makeup, or beauty, or effort. It is more a question that I keep returning to. Why is it that self-acceptance alone does not feel sufficient in certain spaces? Why does visibility sometimes require translation rather than authenticity? And how do we hold onto ourselves while still learning the languages that the world responds to?

Right now, I do not have a fixed answer. I am still learning how to move between these two states. Between being someone who feels enough internally, and someone who is still learning how to be seen externally. Between comfort and strategy. Between authenticity and adaptation.

Maybe the goal is not to resolve this tension completely. Maybe it is to stay aware of it, and to keep choosing consciously rather than unconsciously drifting into it.

Because the hardest thing for me is not becoming a pretty girl.

The hardest thing is understanding what “pretty” is being asked to do in a world where being seen is never neutral.

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about the writer

I’m Lynn, the creator behind Kita-Sora — a visual world built around slow living, emotional clarity, and the quiet process of becoming. I share fragments of this journey through creative work, everyday reflections, and the ongoing process of shaping both a brand and a life with more intention.

If this world resonates with you, you can find more of my work and daily creative updates here:

Pinterest: @Kita-Sora Studio→ where I build the visual language of Kita-Sora
Instagram: @lynnurfavgurl →where I share real-time moments of my creative and personal journey

you’ve been trying so hard. so why does it still feel empty?

I. the real reason you feel empty — and why you already know it.

There is a kind of emptiness that has nothing to do with not trying hard enough.

Most of us have been there. We push ourselves to the limit, pour everything into a goal, chase it with everything we have — and then we get there. And instead of the rush of joy and satisfaction we were expecting, what rises up from somewhere deep inside is a strange, hollow letdown. A quiet confusion that says: this is all that was worth it? The feeling of a curtain dropping too soon on a show you thought would last longer.

So you carry both things at once — the confusion on the inside, and the performance of fine on the outside. You earned the recognition. You got the validation. By every external measure, you are more successful than before. Except by the one measure that actually matters to you.

Why?

Even asking that question feels like a small act of rebellion — like you are ungrateful, difficult, impossible to please. After a long time of resisting and arguing with yourself, you finally admit the truth in private:

None of this is what I actually wanted.

We have always known why.

We just never let ourselves say it.

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II. Why working harder will never fix this.

Because effort and meaning have never had a direct cause-and-effect relationship. Trying harder does not guarantee you will find meaning. It depends entirely on the direction you are trying in.

If everything you are pouring yourself into exists only to meet a social standard — to appear less “unconventional,” to keep up with what is expected — and not to answer something real inside you, then the harder you try, the further you drift from yourself. The emptiness is not a flaw. It is a signal.

We are taught early on that external validation is the path to a good life. Get the grades, get the job, get the approval, and happiness will follow.

And meaning works the same way. So why do we keep believing that fitting ourselves into someone else’s idea of success will ever feel like enough?

Effort can be measured by external standards. Meaning can only be felt from the inside.

Effort spent chasing external approval is, in some ways, a constant attempt to prove your worth to the world. Meaning asks for something different entirely — it just asks you to follow your own instincts, and trust that your worth does not need to be proven.

You are not doing something wrong.

You are just trying to fill one kind of hole with the wrong kind of thing.

Before I share what this looked like for me —

I want to pause here for a moment.

Because this is usually the part where people get stuck. You understand the pattern. You can see it clearly now. But naming the general thing is different from naming your specific version of it.

If you’re reading this and something in you is saying “this is me, but I don’t know exactly what mine looks like” — that’s exactly what Sip of Convo is for.

It’s a free, quiet 20-minute space where we name it together. You bring the blur. You leave with clarity.

[→ Claim one of three free spots here]

book a sip of convo for free🍵

III. What “the right choice” actually costs you.

During my postgraduate years, I once went to intern at a company — partly for the experience, partly to earn a little extra money.

Because my university was in a remote area, my friend and I got up before six in the morning, put on clothes that were more formal than comfortable, and squeezed onto the early metro. Nearly two hours later, we arrived at the building.

The company looked decent enough. An “academic company.” It sounded respectable.

Then the work started. Our job for the day was to categorize academic papers and attach classification labels to each one.

Eight hours. The same motion, repeated. An old monitor that never stopped glowing. No lunch break. No moment to breathe. Office lights on the whole time.

By the time the day ended, we were exhausted, and still had two hours of peak-hour commute ahead of us.

We had planned to stay for three months.

We quit on the way home that same evening.

And then, because our work was deemed “below standard,” we were told we would not be paid for the day.

We had essentially paid to go to work.

That was probably the hardest I worked during my entire postgraduate degree — in service of meeting an external standard.

And my most accurate summary of that day: entirely self-inflicted.

I realised something on that commute home. Packaging yourself for a resume, making yourself look like someone walking the right path — it costs real pieces of your actual life. More than you think.

Was I trying hard? Absolutely.

Four hours of commuting. Rush hour both ways. A full day of mechanical, meaningless repetition. By social standards, that is practically admirable.

But what I felt that day was only emptiness.

Because none of it meant anything to me.

This is not about being someone who avoids effort or refuses to work hard.

The real issue is simpler: when something cannot give me any real growth — when all it gives me is inner friction — I am not willing to spend myself on it.

IV. How I learned the difference — the hard way.

At the end of my first postgraduate year, I did not look for an internship.

One afternoon, a professor I really liked shared a post in our course group chat. It was a call for volunteers to go to Africa.

My first thought was simple:

I have never been to Africa.

I have nothing planned this summer.

And this is a chance to do international volunteer work in a Kenyan slum — not the kind of thing you can just decide to do any time you want.

It felt meaningful.

So I wanted to go.

In the context of Chinese graduate job applications, this kind of experience carries almost no weight. No prestigious company name. No professional certification. No polished line item on a CV. Just a few weeks running activities in a slum — which, to most people, probably reads as “went to play abroad for a month and called it volunteering.”

My whole family was against it.

Too dangerous. Not worth it. Pointless.

My mum did not openly support me, but she did not stop me either. She told me to decide for myself.

So I bought my own ticket, arranged my own visa, and flew alone from Sichuan to Hong Kong, where I met a group of teammates I had never spoken to before. We flew to Nairobi together, landed, adjusted to the time difference, spent two days getting used to the environment, and then started work in the slum.

Everything was unfamiliar. The conditions were genuinely difficult.

Do I regret it?

Not for a single second.

That experience changed the way I see the world. It tested a kind of resilience I had not needed before. And it was a path I chose for myself — not one I walked because I was trying to look right to anyone else.

The difference between those two things is something you feel in your whole body.

V. The only move that actually works: stop thinking, start walking.

I cannot tell you what your path looks like.

Only you know that.

But I can tell you one thing:

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We are very good at analysis. We turn a decision over and over, map out every risk, build a thorough case for staying still, and eventually conclude: better not.

But more analysis is rarely what you actually need.

What you need is to take a step.

Even a small one.

Without thinking too hard. Just move in the direction that feels true, and see what opens up.

Because once you actually start moving, you will find that other paths exist. They were always there. You just could not see them from where you were standing.

No one is forcing you down the road you are on.

You are the one who quietly covered over the other options, and told yourself there was only one way.

You are not stuck here because there is no way out.

You are stuck here because you have not yet decided to trust the voice you have always been able to hear.

-

If this resonated with you —

Kita-Sora is where I write about all of it. The slow unraveling, the quiet rebuilding, and everything in between

Come find me:

📌 Pinterest : Kita-Sora Studio, for the words that find you when you need them

📱 Instagram: @lynnurfavgurl, for the unfiltered version of who I’m becoming

And if this piece meant something to you, you can always buy me a matcha. 🍵 It keeps this space going — and it means more than you think.

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You don’t have to have it figured out to belong here.🧚🏻✨

What cannot be replicated, however, is a postcard written by hand, stamped locally, and sent from that exact place and time.

The first time I seriously started this habit was in early 2024, when I traveled to Russia with a friend. Some postcards were lost along the way, but many of them eventually reached their destinations.

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When my friends told me they had received them, I felt something shift. While traveling, I often can’t stay in constant contact due to unpredictable schedules and situations. But those postcards crossed time and space and reconnected us. In the moment they arrived, they felt something soft and warm, and so did I. It felt like we were suddenly back in sync, sharing the same emotional frequency again.

Since then, writing and mailing postcards on-site has become something sacred to me whenever I travel.

You might ask why I always want to entrust important emotions to physical objects. The truth is, I want these feelings to be recorded. In our limited lifetime, physical objects are often what stays with us the longest.

Of course, memories, conversations, and emotional bonds can live on digitally, but they are not always “present.” For me, presence matters deeply. I need something tangible as a reminder that what I am creating is real, that it can truly touch others and bring them peace. A physical object creates a kind of emotional field, one that quietly holds the same frequency as what I feel inside.

Sometimes I wonder if postcards feel like a form of “relationship confirmation” to me. In a sense, yes, but even more than that, they are emotional anchors. The journey of a postcard is always uncertain, especially across countries, and it can be lost so easily. It is precisely this fragility that makes every successful delivery feel so precious. Every time someone tells me they received my postcard, I feel a quiet sense of gratitude that lingers for a long time.

The people who receive my postcards are those I hold close in my heart. They are the ones who have truly seen me at certain points in my life, who understand what I deeply long for.

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The most recent ones happened at the beginning of this year, across two different trips to Hokkaido.

In January, I went back to Yakumo to join a snow house building event we had planned with friends. Before leaving, I had intended to mail a postcard to a friend I deeply care about, but when I arrived at the post office, it had already closed.

In February, I returned with my mom, bc she had simply said she wanted to see snow. We stopped in Yakumo for a night, and I brought her to meet the people I had quietly grown close to there. (def my gems!!) It felt important for her to see that part of my life, the part that exists beyond family and work, where connection had formed in an entirely different language

.

It was also during this stop that I finally slipped the postcard into the postbox.

The friend I was sending it to now lives in France. We had met in Yakumo the previous summer during a work exchange at a place I had taken to calling the crystal ball village — for reasons that made perfect sense to me at the time. She had to leave the day before the summer festival began, and even though our time together was brief, the conversations we had stayed with me much longer than I expected. Sending the postcard from Yakumo felt right, because that is where our connection first began. It felt like closing a small circle that had stayed open for a long time.

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When she later told me she felt cherished, that word stayed with me for a while.

What I didn’t expect was what happened next. Inspired by that moment, my friends in Yakumo decided to send me something back. Each of them wrote a small line on the same postcard — just a sentence each, nothing elaborate. When it arrived, I couldn’t stop crying. I hadn’t realised until then that receiving a postcard carries just as much warmth as sending one.

Those postcards now live tucked inside my laptop case. On days when everything feels a little too heavy, I take it out. It reminds me that somewhere out there, people are quietly rooting for me.

If one day all those postcards disappeared, what I would fear losing the most is not the paper itself, but the emotions attached to them. The surprise of receiving one, the warmth of being seen, the quiet joy of knowing someone thought of you across oceans.

That feeling is irreplaceable.

And it is part of why I am quietly building something new.

A mail club — not as a product, but as a slower kind of correspondence. Each month, I will write you a long letter, something that does not rush to be consumed, but slowly unfolds in your own time. And depending on where this journey takes me, there might sometimes be something small enclosed inside as well — a postcard, a print, or a little handmade piece of the world I am building. And if you ever feel like writing back, I would truly love that too.

Postcards will still appear from time to time, quietly and unpredictably, like little fragments of where I have been. That feels more honest to what they are anyway: not content, but presence.

The mail club is still forming, just like everything else around Kita-Sora. But I wanted to gently let you know it is coming, because in a way, you are already part of why it is being created.

Stay close. 🧚🏻

with love & warmth,

Lynn, founder of Kita-Sora 🧸✨

--

If you’re new here, hi~

I’m Lynn, the person behind Kita-Sora, a small creative world I am slowly building through writing, imagery, and fragments of lived experience. I write about memory, distance, emotional connection, and the quiet ways we try to stay close to people and places that matter to us.

If this piece resonated with you in any way, or if something inside it stayed with you a little longer than expected, you can support my work here:

buy me a matcha

Every bit of support means a lot, and it directly helps me continue writing, traveling, and building Kita-sora as an ongoing living archive of connection.

And if you ever feel like replying instead of supporting, I would honestly love that too.

-

Kita-Sora is a quiet playground for girls who are healing in their own time.

We have all been hurt in different ways, and we are all learning how to heal at our own pace. This is a space where you don’t have to perform strength, or explain your softness, or protect every part of yourself.

You are allowed to simply exist here, without being reduced, without being judged, and without having to become anything other than what you already are in this moment.

A place where tenderness is not something to hide, but something that quietly belongs.🧚🏻💗✨

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”

— Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

I want to tell you how I became a feminist - not because I studied theory first, but because something inside me always resisted.

Maybe it’s because I grew up in a deeply patriarchal family and lived under that pressure for so many years. My dad and granddad were always the ones who started arguments at home; they controlled everything. My dad often told me I must do whatever he said. I still remember, when I was very young, he said that if he asked me to jump off a bridge, I had to obey.

At the time, I didn’t understand anything, so I just nodded. Only years later did I realize how terrifying that sentence actually was.

My mom and grandmother had been obedient within the family for many years, taking on most of the household responsibilities. My dad was lazy and did little at home, and my granddad barely took care of himself during meals, so my grandmother had to prepare all the food and even feed him if necessary.

All this responsibility fell on my mom and grandmother’s shoulders, and I watched them comply quietly.

Growing up, I was told to obey my dad and granddad. They were like emperors in our house, and whatever they said was right. But unlike the female elders, I never stopped questioning and fighting for myself. I didn’t feel comfortable following their model blindly. I tried talking to my mom, encouraging her not to depend entirely on my dad and to assert her own independence, coz she is strong, capable, and earns more than him.

Why should she have to follow orders blindly???

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Seeing all of this, my feminism naturally grew from these experiences.

The sad reality is that many women are constrained by tradition and expectations—whether in my family or in society at large. Being a feminist, to me, means refusing to be limited by these traditional norms. It means staying true to yourself regardless of your upbringing or background. It means you can have ambition, you can be assertive, and you can pursue your dreams without needing to conform to ideas like: “as a woman, you must be gentle, obedient, or only care about family life.” Feminism, in my definition, is about reclaiming your freedom to live authentically and fully.

I never intentionally chose feminism. I simply could not accept being obedient.

As a child, I loved climbing trees, running around with boys, getting mud all over myself. I didn’t care. I just wanted to be who I was. But as I grew older, invisible barriers began to appear, including expectations that subtly asked me to shrink myself.

Before graduation, voices buzzed around me: “As a girl, you don’t need to work so hard; just marry early, have children, support your husband.”

Yet I kept asking myself:

why should I erase myself for that? If I choose to build a family, it doesn’t mean my ego dissolves. Why should my existence revolve around pleasing others? Why can’t I simply be myself?

I was confused and afraid to voice these questions, but I reached out to women who shared the same discomfort and silent rebellion. Their energy resonated with mine, and I realized I wasn’t alone. Reading became my anchor. Works like The Second Sex struck me deeply: women are not born obedient - they are taught to be.

Society tames us to be considerate, sweet, self-sacrificing, less ambitious, and less wild. I couldn’t accept that. I had already compromised enough. Why shouldn’t I grow wildly, tap into all my potential, and pursue my own dreams?

As I reclaimed my autonomy, I also began reclaiming my memories and the small things that shaped me. I collected objects, notes, and pieces of my past—tiny anchors that reminded me of joy, freedom, and curiosity. Each of these held a version of myself that had survived despite the pressures to conform. The inner child who climbed trees and refused to obey quietly is still here. She never really disappeared; she was simply waiting to return.

This spirit of reclaiming, preserving, and nurturing inspired me to build Kita-Sora. It is not a literal reflection of every experience I’ve had, but the brand embodies the values I hold dear: resisting being tamed, dreaming wildly, and holding onto the parts of ourselves that society often asks us to sacrifice.

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I am not a perfect feminist, but I am a woman who refuses to let patriarchal voices dictate my future. I fight for my own rights, and I hope more women can live according to their own wishes rather than being tamed by societal expectations.

To me, feminism isn’t about being flawless or radical. It’s about honoring your inner truth - choosing your own path even when the world doubts you. It’s the courage to protect your dreams, your voice, your wildness.

If something in this piece stayed with you, perhaps there is something within you that has been waiting for a place to land.

That is what Sip of Convo is for.

A quiet fifteen-minute text space, held gently between us.

You do not need to have the right words, nor arrive fully figured out. You can come exactly as you are.

find it here🧚🏻

“What is called a bottomless abyss, once you step into it, is also a vast future ahead.” — Mu Xin

When I was a senior in high school, I copied this sentence down and placed it in front of my desk. I didn’t truly understand it then. I just needed something that sounded like a reason to keep going.

Because the honest answer to why I was trying so hard — why I gave everything to the Gaokao, China’s college entrance exam — was that I didn’t have one.

The irony is, I wasn’t afraid of falling. I was afraid of looking back one day and realizing I’d never really tried.

That question — what any of this was actually for — followed me past the exam, past the results, past the gates of a university I’d worked so hard to enter.

And once the noise stopped, it got louder.

Gradually, this sentence became a kind of internal suggestion for me, and Mu Xin became one of my favorite writers during that time.

But what truly unsettled me was not the exam itself, but a question I had never answered: why was I trying so hard to do this in the first place?

What did getting into a good university actually mean for me? Beyond the repeated answers I kept hearing, such as having a better chance at a respectable job after graduation, what did it mean for me as a person?

I did not know.

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I was being pushed forward without any real sense of direction. That confusion was not temporary. It felt like a continuous, unnameable weightlessness. The further I went along this path, the harder it became to recognize who I actually was.

After entering university, this feeling did not disappear. Instead, it brought me back to a more fundamental question: what do I actually like?

Not the things that would earn admiration from others, not something that would make me seem more accomplished or “right,” but the things I had genuinely loved since I was young.

Soon, I realized something even harder to face. It was not that I could not find the answer. It was that I did not dare to admit it.

The things I had once truly loved, such as comics, imagination, spending time with my pet parrot, going on small outdoor trips, dressing up my Barbie dolls, or simply wanting a dog of my own, had not disappeared. They had just been sealed away, placed in a corner I chose not to touch, as if I had deliberately cut off a part of myself.

Because in the framework I had gradually formed, these things were not recognized. They were seen as meaningless, without value, and not worthy of being taken seriously.

Under these choices, I slowly became hollow.

I no longer knew what I liked. Hobbies became decorative objects that could be displayed. Dreams became something too indulgent to even consider.

Questions began to repeat themselves. Why was everything I did wrong? Why were the things I liked always unrealistic? Why did trying to be true to myself make me someone who could be laughed at?

I gradually lost the ability to trace myself back, and I lost the ability to confirm who I was from within.

Yet even in that state, a person still needs a way to keep moving forward.

So I chose to follow.

Later, I came to realize that this state had not suddenly appeared around the time of the Gaokao. It had started much earlier.

When I was still very young, when my father, in a literal sense, tore apart the comics I had just bought, dismissed all of my interests as meaningless, and forced me to memorize classical texts I could not understand without ever explaining why, something had already begun to break.

I started to believe that the parts of me that were truly mine did not matter, that they could be sacrificed, and that they had to give way to something more “correct.”

For the version of me back then, carrying my true self forward was simply too heavy.

I could not bear being devalued for holding onto my interests, nor could I endure the harsh criticism that came with fluctuations in my academic performance, sometimes even accompanied by physical punishment. In that environment, staying true to myself was not a romantic choice. It was something that came with a cost I could not afford.

So I let go.

More precisely, I abandoned myself.

I did not suddenly lose myself at a specific moment. It happened gradually, over a long period of time, until one day I looked back and realized that inside, I was already empty.

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When I no longer knew who I was or what I truly liked, I shifted my attention to something more measurable and controllable: my body.

At the beginning, fitness became an obsession. More accurately, it was evidence that I had been shaped by mainstream standards.

I initially started working out simply to lose weight. Looking back, that motivation itself says a lot. At a height of 168 cm, I weighed around 52 kilograms during my undergraduate years, yet I was still determined to become thinner, even approaching an extreme form of leanness.

At that time, I never seriously questioned where that desire came from. I vaguely believed that if I could be thinner, I might be more attractive to the guys, or appear more disciplined in the eyes of other girls, or simply look better in clothes, closer to the widely accepted image of “that girl.”

For a long time, I did not realize that this constant urge to align with external standards came from a deeper sense of lack. For an ordinary girl, conforming to mainstream beauty seemed like the safest and least risky choice.

So I followed that path.

Looking back, I can see what I was really doing. I was handing over the authority of defining who I was to anyone willing to take it.

Every choice — how I looked, what I pursued, how much space I took up — was filtered through an imagined audience. Not even real people, most of the time. Just a version of “them” I’d constructed in my own head, and then spent years trying to please.

This led to a paradox I kept returning to. If I could not firmly stand on my own side, why would I expect others to stay? I was the only person who would accompany myself for life, yet I kept hoping that people who had nothing to do with me would provide me with a sense of security.

That expectation itself was a form of self-abandonment.

What fitness eventually brought me was not limited to physical change, but a slower and deeper transformation.

The body I once thought was unattainable, lower body fat, clearer muscle definition, a stronger physique, gradually became something within reach. But more importantly, through consistent action, I began to build a sense of trust in myself.

That is also why I gradually stopped relying on external enhancements. I rarely edit my photos, and I slowly gave up beauty filters, choosing instead to document myself in the most direct way. I never made an effort to master complex makeup techniques, partly out of laziness, but also because I began to realize that what I wanted was a state that could exist without excessive modification.

So I chose a path that felt more real to me, starting from my daily habits, with fitness being only one entry point.

Throughout this process, I did not escape appearance anxiety. In fact, it was quite intense at the beginning. But over time, it shifted from pure self-denial into a form of motivation that pushed me to act.

I stopped comforting myself by imagining a “better version” of who I could become, and instead began to confront the parts of myself I had once avoided, laying them out, understanding them, and gradually making changes from there.

This was not a form of self-acceptance built on illusion. It was something more concrete and costly. You have to first acknowledge those imperfections, even the parts that once made you feel ashamed, before you can begin to truly change.

Growth, for me, has never been about pleasing others. It has been about becoming someone who can willingly stand on my own side.

Not to impress others, but to impress yourself.

—

sth about me <3

hiiii, im Lynn

I’m building Kita-Sora, a small and gentle world shaped by the moments that feel too quiet, too soft, or too easily overlooked in everyday life. Most of what I create is inspired by my time in Hokkaido, and the slow process of learning how to return to myself. If you’d like to know more about me and what I’m building, you can read my about page here.

welcome to Kita-Sora 🧚🏻

If something in this piece stayed with you, you’re always welcome to support my work with a small matcha 🔮 — it helps me continue writing, creating, and holding space for these stories to exist.

buy me a 🍵

Or, if you ever feel like talking — I offer something called Sip of Convo: a quiet 15–20 minute conversation, just the two of us, over whatever feels real to you. $6 to book your seat. 💗 You’re always welcome.

join me for a sip of convo