And one thing hit me: not being allowed to rebel has cost us so much.

Rebellion doesn’t have to look like tattoos, piercings, or hair dyed five different colors. It can live in the mind — in how you think, in questioning what you’re taught, in doubting the whole machinery of school.

In high school, there was a stretch where I had to memorize a Mandarin literature text and an English text at the same time, on top of quizzes, on top of homework in every subject. I was the class assistant for Mandarin. I asked my Mandarin teacher: our workload is already so heavy — do we really have to memorize the text? Can we not?

That question got interpreted as defiance. The teacher went straight to our homeroom teacher and our math teacher.

So in class, they took turns explaining to us, patiently, sincerely, what the Analects and Mencius had meant for their own lives.

A while later, my homeroom teacher asked me: maybe it’s time someone else took over as Mandarin class assistant.

That was when I understood. You are not allowed to question the way they teach. You are not allowed to question their advice.

But I still didn’t understand why. Why couldn’t we ask. Why we had to memorize. That question has stayed with me ever since.

To this day, I’ve long forgotten whatever it was I memorized in class. But I still remember exactly what it felt like to be singled out, to be treated as if I’d betrayed someone. And I remember learning that inside an education system, asking “why” can put you at risk.

Even now, years later, I can still feel that same flicker of fear.

It shaped me more than I ever told anyone.

So I hid it. On the outside, obedient, well-behaved. On the inside, the rebellion stayed lit.

That feeling stayed buried for over a decade — until one day, it broke through on its own, past the point of holding it back. And once it broke through, there was no going back. I didn’t want to perform anymore. I didn’t want to hide anymore. Didn’t want to keep doing things that weren’t mine to do.

All that time, all those years, was spent trying to please people, trying to look good for the adults watching. And the whole time, that little seed of rebellion I never let go of kept growing — quietly, until it wasn’t little anymore.

I set out to interview founders and creators, to dig into their stories. I didn’t expect to end up interviewing myself.

I can’t help but ask — how much time spent discovering who we are did we sacrifice, just to become a “good kid”?

Hi! Thanks for reading. Yeh Project’s Instagram shares behind-the-scenes moments from interviews, reflections, and some thoughts on life in Canada. Would love to have you follow along: https://www.instagram.com/yeh.project/

我突然覺得，我們不允許叛逆這件事情，真的讓我們損失好大。

那個叛逆不一定是外表上刺青、穿耳洞、染五顏六色的頭髮，還有在心智上、在思考上，對學習、對教育的質疑。

高中的時候，有一陣子同時要背國文課文跟英文課文，上課要考試，還有各科作業要寫。那時候我是國文小老師，我曾經詢問國文老師：「我們功課這麼重，為什麼還要背課文？可不可以不要背？」

想不到這句話，被當時的國文老師認為我是在忤逆他，跑去跟我們的班導、數學老師說。於是班導跟數學老師在上課時，諄諄教誨我們，論語跟孟子對他們的人生來說有什麼樣的影響。

過了一段時間，班導師問我：「國文小老師是不是要換別人做做看？」

我那時候就知道了——喔，原來不遵照老師們的建議，或者對他們的教學方法提出質疑，這件事情是不被允許的。

然而我還是不知道為什麼不能做這件事，或為什麼要背課文。這個疑問一直放到現在。

直到今天，我早就忘記我課堂上背了什麼，但我依然記得那種被老師揪出來、被「背叛」的感覺是什麼；以及如果你在教育體制下提出你的「為什麼」，是有可能危害到你自己的。

過了這麼多年，我仍然記得那個膽顫心驚的感覺。

這件事情其實對我的影響很大，但我沒跟任何人說。

於是我就只能藏著。外表偽裝得乖巧溫順，但心裡一直有著叛逆的念頭。

那個念頭藏了十幾年之後，終於在有一天無法克制的情況下自己爆發了。爆發之後，就再也回不去了。不想再演、不想再藏，不想再回去做不是自己想做的事。

這中間浪費的時間跟歲月，就只是為了討好、展示大人看而已；而一路上自己培養出來的那株叛逆幼苗，早已經長大、茁壯了起來。

訪了創業家、創作者，挖掘他們的故事，沒想到會回過頭來訪自己、挖自己的故事。

不禁想問——我們為了成為一個「乖的小孩」，到底犧牲了多少探索自己的時間？

Hi ! 謝謝你閱讀到最後。Yeh Project 的 Instagram 會分享一些人物採訪幕後、觀點，還有一些生活在加拿大帶給我反思。歡迎追蹤：https://www.instagram.com/yeh.project/

“When you’re on the fence about doing something, ask yourself: ‘Why do you want to do this?’ Or flip it: ‘Why can’t you?’ And if you can: ‘Why not now?’ So whenever I think of something, I just go and do it. You only find out if it’s really what you thought after you try.”

The Habit of Starting

By late 2021, Yvon was a remote product designer at Sketch, freshly 30, with twins just over a year old. She wanted more flexibility to be present for them, and she wanted to step outside her comfort zone. The idea for a company took root in that in-between space.

But the seed had been planted earlier. At the startup Codementor, she’d worked on a developer mentorship platform, and to build empathy for the product, she became a mentor herself — applying to Designlab, an overseas design-education platform, where she guided four or five mentees. “Passing on what I knew, watching them grow into designers — that process was incredible. It really was mutual learning.”

She started writing about design resources on her blog, mostly to help her own mentees study independently. Readers multiplied. Commentors started asking if there anything in Mandarin.

At the time, there wasn’t. She didn’t deliberate long — she decided to write the curriculum herself. When she announced the course, she personally conducted nearly 50 one-on-one video calls with prospective students, trying to understand what each of them actually needed. UXY’s first cohort: 11 students.

No one pushed her into this. It was the habit — why not — that moved first, and everything followed.

An Answer She Hadn’t Designed For

As UXY grew, it began forming industry partnerships — Yvon cold-emailed startups, asked friends for introductions, pitched what UXY was building to people who had no reason to answer. The process sharpened her storytelling and her pitch. But what she really cared about was something else entirely.

Her original idea was simple: give students a portfolio piece they could bring to interviews. Startups would propose real problems; students would design solutions. But the interviews kept falling through anyway.

She looked closer. The real obstacle for career-changers wasn’t a weak portfolio — it was a résumé with no relevant experience, screened out before anyone even looked at the work. The startups she partnered with, mostly early-stage and unable to afford full-time designers, were often willing to offer internships instead. That internship — not the portfolio — was what actually helped students cross the threshold.

“These startups were genuinely willing to offer internship opportunities. For students changing careers, if they could land one, that gap in their résumé — no relevant background — could finally be filled.”

She’d designed one solution. The thing that actually worked was something she hadn’t planned for at all.

Where the Educator and the Businesswoman First Collided

The program grew from four weeks to twelve. Pricing climbed from roughly NTD 10,000 to nearly NTD 37,000 (from about US$314 to $1160). It required layering in teaching assistants, industry partnerships, an intensive bootcamp, one-on-one career mentorship... As enrollment grew, she brought in designer friends to help teach.

But there was one question she kept asking herself, without ever arriving at an answer.

“I kept thinking about how to help students actually learn — but the problem is, everyone learns on a different timeline. That’s the hard part.”

By UXY’s second and third year, she was trying to standardize the curriculum enough that she could eventually step back and hand off day-to-day operations. But every student’s needs were different; no single standard fit everyone. Some would vanish mid-course, unreachable, only for her to learn later that something had gone wrong at home and they couldn’t continue. Running an online program, she found, meant constantly managing dozens of individual crises — encouraging, pushing, because all of it fed into completion rates.

“When a student can’t make it to the end for reasons outside their control: ‘Is that on me? Or is it…’” She trailed off. “It’s genuinely hard to say.”

She recalled something an education entrepreneur she followed once said, which stuck with her: “People who go into education mostly carry good intentions. But the moment you have to make a business decision, you’re in conflict.” At heart, an educator moved by goodwill; on the surface, a businesswoman who had to turn a profit — you couldn’t fully be both at once.

This was the first time her why-not-just-do-it logic hit a wall it couldn’t answer. Because the question this time wasn’t whether to act. It was that two competing philosophies, inside the same decision, were pulling in opposite directions.

Asking the Question Inward

In 2023, her grandfather died of cancer. Her grandparents had been Yvon’s primary caregivers when she grew up and raised her to be caring and understanding. Not long after in 2024, her mother — with whom she’d had little contact — suffered a sudden stroke and was rushed to the hospital. Yvon and her sister scrambled to arrange care.

Running the company, raising her family, managing her mother’s situation — she described herself as a sandwich, pressed from all sides. Her wellbeing deteriorated. Relationships strained under the weight. “With everything happening to my family one after another, I wasn’t in a good place myself.”

In early 2025, she decided not to run the bootcamp that year. Around the same time, the college friend who’d become her business partner stepped away too, dealing with her own family matters. UXY was, once again, just her.

During that low period, she read I May Be Wrong: And Other Wisdoms from Life as a Forest Monk, and took from it a concept: detachment. “Letting your emotions be pulled around by other people is genuinely frightening. Everyone wants different things — they don’t necessarily owe you kindness.”

“I kept asking myself: ‘What does this moment actually need?’ So when UXY started to drain me, stopping felt necessary.”

Turning the Question Around

Deciding to close UXY still came with a great deal of grief.

Her accountant asked: dissolve the company entirely, or simply suspend operations? She sat with the question for a long time. This time, the theoretical question wasn’t: ‘Why can’t I do this?’ — it was ‘Why can’t I stop?’ This time, she directed that same methodology at stopping, and found the answer was, again: ‘Yes, she could.’

And she chose suspension over dissolution. Dissolving would have meant the company ceased to exist. “There’s at least a chance, someday, I’ll want to do something with it again.”

No Regrets

Looking back, she says she doesn’t regret it.

Ending the bootcamp is one of the decisions she’s most grateful for. If she hadn’t stopped when she did, she believes her wellbeing, her marriage, her family life — all of it would have kept deteriorating.

She doesn’t see it as failure. “There are a lot of different games in life. You get to decide whether you keep playing one that might not be winnable, or that doesn’t seem to have an end. Everyone is steering their own ship.”

In early August, she hosted a farewell gathering — mentors who’d taught with her, former students who’d built careers through the program, all coming back together. A way of telling everyone: UXY was closing on a comma, not a period. She wants it to keep existing, just as a community.

Those questions — ‘Why not do it? Why do it?’ — she still asks herself often.

This time, she’s simply in no rush to start the game again.

About Yvon : Yvon Huang is the founder of UXY, a product designer, and a mentor, as well as a wellness-minded mom of twins who loves healthy eating, yoga, and exploring the world, based in Taipei, Taiwan. With over 10 years of experience in software product design, she has specialized in 0-to-1 startup product design and cross-cultural GTM strategy, having built products at Sketch, Codementor, and KKBOX.
Yvon Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yvonhuang

About UXY: UXY, a design career accelerator, has seen hundreds of students complete hands-on bootcamps through its startup collaborations. UXY offers online courses, career consulting, and freelance matching, with many students going on to successfully transition into new careers. Along the way, Yvon has helped mentees find their direction while continuing to transform and grow herself, believing that empowering others is also a path to becoming a better version of herself.
UXY Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uxy.design/

Hi! Thanks for reading. Yeh Project’s Instagram shares behind-the-scenes moments from interviews, reflections, and some thoughts on life in Canada. Would love to have you follow along: https://www.instagram.com/yeh.project/

Yvon 創辦的公司 UXY 由思創新概念是 You Ask Why，來自 Simon Sinek 的黃金圈理論 Start with why，也是她自己的人生哲學——遇到猶豫的事，先問自己為什麼不能做。

「你今天在猶豫要不要做某件事的時候，就先問自己，為什麼你要做這件事？或是反過來問，為什麼你不能做這件事？那如果你要做，為什麼不現在就去？所以我常會想到要做什麼，我就馬上去做。嘗試之後，你就知道是不是真的如你所想的。」

四年後，輪到她問自己這個問題，是完全相反的方向：不是為什麼要開始，是為什麼要結束 UXY。

一個部落格，一份等候名單

2021 年底，Yvon 在 Sketch 做遠端設計師，剛滿 30 歲，雙胞胎孩子一歲多。她想要更彈性的時間陪孩子，也想跳出舒適圈。創業的念頭，就是在這個縫隙裡冒出來的。

但這顆種子種得更早。她在新創 Codementor 做產品設計師，負責優化一款 Developer Mentorship Platform。為了更有同理心，她申請成為國外設計學習平台 Designlab 的導師，帶了四、五個學生。「把自己所知傳授給他們，陪伴他們成長為設計師，那個過程我覺得非常棒，也真的是教學相長。」

她開始在部落格寫學習資源，方便自己帶的人自學。沒想到看的人越來越多，留言裡開始有人問：有沒有中文的教材？

那時市面上還沒有中文教材。她沒有想太久，決定自己寫教材。開課消息公開後，她親自約了將近 50 場一對一線上諮詢，了解每個報名者到底想學什麼、卡在哪裡。UXY 第一期，她收了 11 個學生。

沒有人逼她做這件事。是那句問自己「為什麼不」的習慣先動了，一切就開始了。

產學合作，一個沒設計進去的答案

課程越開越多期，UXY 開始做產學合作——她主動寫信、請朋友引薦，向不認識的新創自我介紹。這個過程把她的表達能力練得很強，但她真正在意的，是另一件事。

一開始她只想讓學生做出一份能拿去面試的作品集。新創出題，學生照著做設計專案。後來她發現，學生去面試，還是常常被打槍。

她重新看了一次，發現真正卡住轉職者的，從來不是作品集不夠好，而是履歷上沒有相關背景，投出去就先被刷掉。而那些願意合作的早期新創，雖然沒有資源請正職設計師，卻願意給學生實習機會——這個機會，才能真正幫學生跨過那道牆。

「其實新創他們很願意提供實習的機會，對於一些轉職的學生來說，他如果能拿到新創團隊的實習，就有機會補足沒有相關背景這一塊」。

她原本設計的是一個解方，結果真正有用的，是另一個她沒設計進去的答案。

商人和課程之間，第一次被問倒

課程從四週開到十二週，價格從一萬多漲到接近三萬七。加了助教、產學合作、實戰營、一對一職涯輔導 Mentorship。學生越來越多，她找來設計圈的朋友一起加入。

但有一道題，她問自己問了很久，沒有答案。

「我一直在思考的要怎麼幫助學生學會，可是問題是每個人學會的時間點不同，這個很難。」

UXY 第二年、第三年時，她思考著要把整套教學方式 SOP 化，好讓自己抽身去想更遠的事，但每個學生的需求都不一樣，很難有一套標準符合每個人。有人上課上到一半就消失，聯絡不到，最後才知道是家裡出了狀況無法繼續。他發現做線上課程到最後，要面對很多人的問題，要一直鼓勵、push 學生，因為這也會影響到課程的完課率。

「有些學生因為某些因素無法走到最後，那到底是妳的錯呢，還是⋯⋯？怎麼說，這真的很難。」

她提到自己關注的一位教育創業者說過一句話，讓她很有感：「基本上做教育的人都保持著善意，可是你今天要做 1 個商業決策時，其實是會有衝突的。」骨子裡是善意的教育家，外表卻是一個獲利的商人——這兩者，不能兩邊都要。

這是她那套「為什麼不做就去做」的邏輯，第一次卡住。因為這次的問題不是要不要做，是同一件事裡，兩種身分在互相拉扯。

停下來，問自己的內心

2023 年，爺爺因癌症過世。2024 年底，久未聯絡的媽媽突然中風，被緊急送醫，她和妹妹手忙腳亂安排照顧看護。

要處理公司課程、要照顧孩子，還要處理媽媽的事，她形容自己像三明治一樣，被上下夾擊。那段時間，Yvon 的身心狀況變得很不好，婚姻也跟著出了狀況。「因為家人連續出狀況，讓我自己的身心狀況也不是很好。」

2025 年初，她決定那一年不辦實戰營。同一段時間，跟她一起合夥的大學同學夥伴，也因為自己家裡的狀況決定退出。UXY 又變回她一個人。

低谷期間，她讀了《我可能錯了：森林智者的最後一堂人生課》，學到一個詞：課題分離。「情緒被別人牽著走這件事情是很恐怖的。每一個人他們想要的東西不同，他也不見得要對你好。」

「我會問自己，不斷去觀察現在的狀態需要什麼，所以當 UXY 開始損耗我的精神時，我覺得停下來這件事，是必要的。」

把問句反過來問

UXY 決定要停下來，Yvon 其實有很多的不捨。

會計師問她：要註銷公司，還是先停業？她想了很久。這一次，她問的不是「為什麼不能做」，是「為什麼不能停」。

答案是，可以停。她選擇停業，不是註銷。註銷的話，公司就不存在了。「起碼有可能哪天，我想做點什麼的時候，我還是可以用。」

UXY 這個名字，來自 Simon Sinek 的黃金圈理論，Why 的簡寫。她說這是她的人生哲學：猶豫的時候先問自己為什麼不能做。這一次，她把這套哲學拿來問自己為什麼不能停——結果發現，答案一樣是可以。

不後悔的決定

回頭看那個決定，她說自己沒有後悔。

實戰營停辦，是她當初最感謝的自己的決定之一。如果那時候沒有停下來的話，她覺得自己個人身心狀況，或婚姻、家庭狀況會越來越差。」

她不覺得這叫失敗。「人生有很多不同的遊戲，你可以決定要不要繼續玩這個好像不一定會贏，或是看不到盡頭的遊戲，每一個人都是自己的掌舵者。」

8 月初，她辦了一場線下 farewell 小聚，邀請曾經合作過的導師和過去的學員，回來聚一聚，也讓大家知道 UXY 畫下了一個逗點，不是句點——她讓 UXY 繼續以社群的形式活著。

那句為什麼做與不做，她還是常常問自己。

只是這一次，她不急著開始了。

About Yvon : 黃苡芳(Yvon)是 UXY 創辦人、產品設計師、職涯導師，也是一對龍鳳胎的養生媽媽，喜歡健康飲食、瑜伽運動、探索世界，現居台北台灣。她擁有十年多軟體產品設計經驗，擅於 0 到 1 新創產品設計及 GTM 跨文化策略規劃，曾在 Sketch、Codementor、KKBOX 打造產品。
Yvon Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yvonhuang

About UXY 設計職涯加速器：產學合作實戰營有上百位學員結業，提供線上課程、職涯顧問服務、接案媒合，協助多位學員轉職成功。創業路上，Yvon 一邊幫學員找方向，一邊自己也持續轉型成長，相信利他、賦能，也能幫助自己找到更好的自己。
UXY Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uxy.design/

Hi ! 謝謝你閱讀到最後。Yeh Project 的 Instagram 會分享一些人物採訪幕後、觀點，還有一些生活在加拿大帶給我反思。歡迎追蹤：https://www.instagram.com/yeh.project/

Looking back now, I think I’ve been chasing something that was never mine. Trying to be more useful, more efficient, more competitive. And underneath it, an emptiness I couldn’t shake.

There’s a mindset baked into the culture I grew up in. You must keep moving up, keep growing. Fall one step behind, and it feels like you’ve already lost. Even after quitting a job, there’s this fear of having nothing to show. That you’re falling behind, becoming obsolete.

Push too hard for too long, and eventually something snaps back. People go numb, indifferent. Like a rubber band stretched too tight, finally let go.

I thought that was me. But then I wondered, maybe I’m not trying to be “useful” in the way society defines it. I don’t want to climb up. I want to wander around. I want to see a wider world.

Is that allowed?

Do I get to decide if I’m useful?

If a life is ultimately a journey taken alone, then as long as no one starves, no one gets hurt, shouldn’t a person be free to unfold however they want?

I don’t know why, but when I was an office worker, I always felt small. Not in a geographic sense, but rather a self-imposed restriction of mindset. I kept watching what people of my age were doing, thinking I should be doing the same. There was always a flag planted somewhere in my mind, marking where I was supposed to be. Over time, it wore me out.

That exhaustion was the exhaustion of not living as myself. Alive, but hollow, like living inside an NPC’s body. A character anyone could have played.

I don’t know what it means to live as myself. Being myself feels far away. I never dared try what I actually wanted. The only moments of joy were a good meal after work or on weekends. The job itself felt like being a machine. I felt like I was wasting my life.

When you’re in that state, with no future in sight and no sense of meaning, it’s hard to even think about what comes next. You go numb. You stop letting yourself imagine the next step. But somewhere underneath, the struggle stays, a quiet question: what would happen if I actually stepped forward?

Maybe starting this interview project was my answer to that struggle, to the helplessness, the numbness, the fear of having lived for nothing. I’d spent so long doing what was useful. Why not try something I love, even if it looks useless?

What’s the worst that could happen? It’s hard to starve in Taiwan. And if somewhere in the process I feel joy, feel the possibility of becoming more myself, isn’t that already a win? I’m starting from zero anyway.

It’s been just over a month since Yeh Project began, and the readers here have already given me more warmth than I expected. This is the first time I’m doing something shaking the whole way through, no idea where this goes.

But this morning, I still opened my laptop.

Let’s just see.

Hi! Thanks for reading. Yeh Project’s Instagram shares behind-the-scenes moments from interviews, reflections, and some thoughts on life in Canada. Would love to have you follow along: https://www.instagram.com/yeh.project/

現在回頭看，好像因為想要變得更有用、想要過得很有效率、變得更有競爭力，盲目地追求可能不屬於我的東西，心裡卻止不住地空虛。

我發現我們的文化中有一種根深蒂固的心態：一定要不斷進步、不斷成長。慢了一步，好像就跟不上大家、就輸了。就算辭職不做了，也很擔心自己沒有新的產出，深怕自己很廢、被淘汰。

一直都過得很用力，最後反撲回來，就是人會突然變得佛系。像一條繃緊的橡皮筋，鬆掉後什麼都不太在意了。

我以為我是這樣，但後來又進一步想——我不想往上爬，但我可能想往四處走，因為我想看看更寬廣遼闊的世界。

這樣可以嗎？

有沒有用，可以由我自己決定嗎？

如果人最終都是一個人的旅程，那只要在他可以承受的範圍之內，不會餓死、沒有做任何傷害他的事情，想要怎麼展開自己，應該都可以吧？

不知道為什麼，還是上班族的時候，我一直覺得自己活得好小。那種小的感覺，不是地理上的限制，而是心態上把自己限縮了。看著同齡的人做什麼，自己也覺得應該要這麼做，心裡一直有一個對標的旗杆，不停地跟同齡人比較，久而久之，覺得自己活得好累。

那個累，是沒有活出自己。活著卻像一句空殼，好像活在一個 NPC 的身體裡面——這個 NPC，不管換誰來做都可以。

我不知道什麼是活出自己。對於做自己這件事情，我覺得離自己好遠。不敢嘗試自己想做的，只有下班或週末吃一些美食會覺得開心，上班就像機器人一樣，覺得自己在浪費生命。

如果人在那個狀態底下沒有看到未來，也不知道生命的意義，是很難再進一步思考自己的人生要幹嘛的，因為已經麻痺、不敢想下一步了。但心裡偶爾還是有掙扎，想著：如果我跨出那一步，會怎麼樣？

或許專訪計劃的開始，就是在回應之前心裡的掙扎、無奈，活得無感，又擔心自己白活這件事。我已經做有用的事情太久了，那為什麼不做做看似無用，但自己喜歡的事情呢？

最慘的狀況會怎樣？在台灣應該很難餓死吧？如果在做的過程中感覺到快樂、感覺到發展自我的可能，那不就是賺到了嗎？

反正都要從零開始，不是嗎？

Yeh Project 專訪計劃剛開始一個多月，在這個平台上受到滿多讀者給的回饋，覺得溫暖。第一次邊走邊抖、邊抖邊做，不知道未來會怎麼發展。

但今天早上，我還是打開了電腦。

就先試試看吧。

Hi ! 謝謝你的閱讀。Yeh Project 的 Instagram 會分享一些人物採訪幕後、觀點，還有一些生活在加拿大帶給我反思。歡迎追蹤：https://www.instagram.com/yeh.project/

Three companies. Two of them are gone.

“I only had twenty dollars. I could only die twice.”

He comes back to this comparison often. “You get forty seconds to finish a lap. Don’t finish, you die. Can’t clear it, you need to keep feeding tokens. Some people have a pocket full of ten-dollar coins — they can play forever.” He pauses. “I only had twenty dollars. I would be able to play twice.”

His path didn’t start in Taiwan. After two years as an editor at Yahoo, he drifted through a few jobs before landing in Hangzhou, inside Alibaba’s campus — at Taobao. He was moved from content into product development, which meant factory visits, sourcing trips, business trips to third and fourth-tier Chinese cities he’d never heard of. One memory stuck: an entire morning spent hunting for coffee. There wasn’t any. No Starbucks nearby, no coffee at all — the concept didn’t exist there yet.

What set him apart from his colleagues wasn’t ambition. It was the absence of a rigid plan. “A lot of them already had a script — by middle school, they knew what they’d be doing at every age. Taobao was an accident for me. I never planned to end up there.”

No script. That’s what made him willing to keep dropping in tokens.

First Token

At his first company, he distributed foreign brands into Taiwan — a brand of sunscreen, a line of massagers. With Taobao, he’d watched China’s domestic market start to slow, watched product development look outward, with Taiwan often the first stop. Contacts from those years brought the first deals through the door.

Running the business quickly exposed what they didn’t have. “We only had online capability. Physical retail — the barriers were high.” He points to 7-Eleven: over 7,000 stores across Taiwan. Stock just two units per store, that’s 14,000 units of inventory to support. “We didn’t have that. That was just a fact — our offline distribution wasn’t there.”

A year in, the contracts weren’t renewed. No explanation. He could only guess: the brands hadn’t invested seriously in Taiwan, attention had shifted to Europe and the US. “It was more like mutual benefit. They needed an overseas KPI. For me, maybe a case study for my early career.” When they pulled the license, he wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t lost money either. It was fine.

Second Token

His second company partnered with an insurance brokerage to run an employee benefits marketplace — gifts, calendars, stationery, bought with points from a benefits package. A year in, the client decided not to continue. Group-buying was trending, so the team pivoted. It never caught on.

Eight employees, scattered across Taiwan. Eventually there was nothing left to do but shut it down.

“I was younger then, so it was pretty painful,” he says. “Keep operating, and we’d burn through what little of our money was left. That was the only decision left.”

At the termination meetings, his partner did the talking. He sat beside him, adding what he could. “I was upset, sitting there. I told them the first thing was I was sorry. I told them what was really happening.”

Third Token, Still in Play

His third company is his own brand: XOFIT. It started with a body composition scale and has grown past ten thousand users, with monthly active users regularly in the nine-to-ten-thousand range.

Choosing this space wasn’t only about opportunity. “I already had supplier relationships here. I knew which factories in China made the best scales.” That list came from his years chasing suppliers at Taobao.

“This time, it looks like we can actually plan for the long term. That’s not an easy point to get to.”

This company is different in a way he circles back to more than once. “It’s not a brand I’m distributing. It’s ours. It can’t be pulled back. It can’t disappear from the market because someone else decided so.” More than that — he can build it exactly the way he wants, full ownership over every call. “With a distributed brand, that’s not possible. The people who actually decide are back at the factory.”

The scale is just the entry point. What he actually wants is a full health ecosystem — a user’s measurements flowing into one secure place. “Now with AI, you can go further. Once you know your body better, your diagnostics over time, XOFIT can give you a recommendation that’s actually built for you.”

Why Keep Playing

After his second failure, Sean went back to a day job eventually, running his own company at the same time. Why keep going, with the cost this high?

“A lot of people keep crashing out at this and keep playing anyway. They know it’ll keep costing them. They want to keep going. Why? I don’t know. Maybe it’s fun.”

He describes his own decisions as someone managing a scarce resource. “Whether I bother doing something carefully — that’s a choice. Time and attention are scarce. I already think about both that way.”

He counts the reasons. First, every failure made him better, quicker to clear the lap. That builds its own satisfaction. Second, stubbornness. “You start to feel like everything you invested becomes a sunk cost. All that experience, wasted — that’s hard to accept.” Third, and this is the one that lingers: there’s an audience now. “There are people watching: employees, partners, users. You can’t just walk away from that seat. The people around you are still there. You’re not playing alone anymore.”

But underneath it all, one thing has to be true. “You have to believe this is fun, or you can’t keep going. Fun is basically what drives me to do anything.” What counts as fun? “The difficulty itself. Gain even a little ground inside something this hard, and that’s where the satisfaction comes from.” And beyond that: “knowing what you’re building has value. You put it out there, and people actually buy it, and give you something back.”

Going from nothing to a product on the market to a real response — “that path is long. Really long. The longer it gets, the more risks along the way.” One lesson stuck from years in e-commerce: “Every risk you’ve noticed will eventually happen. If you’ve clocked it, it’s going to hit you.”

Sharing Failure, Because It’s Rare

He used to be afraid of failure — the cost felt too high, and admitting to it publicly wasn’t something people did.

“If scarcity is what makes something valuable, failure is valuable too — because so few people talk about it.” Everyone watches the people who’ve made it. The ones who haven’t, still out there on the same track — there are far more of them. Nobody hears from them.

There’s something else he thinks gets overlooked: success can’t be copied.

“The reason it can’t be copied — once you pick a lane, there are variables you can’t control: the market, regulations... The same thing in 2016 versus 2026 produces a completely different result. So it can’t be replicated. The experience of succeeding matters less than people think.”

Same machine, same track — every lap is different. He believes the biggest reason startups die is bad luck. Clear a hundred laps without ever getting hit; the odds of that are low. Failing is the normal outcome, not the exception.

“Of the three companies, one endures. I wouldn’t even call it success. It just cleared every obstacle. I feel lucky about that.”

What He’d Tell Himself, Starting Over

Looking back — what would he say to the younger version of himself just starting out?

“If I’d known it would go like this, should I have just bought TSMC stock instead?” He laughs. “No — I’d tell him to keep going. It’s genuinely that hard. There were so many moments where quitting felt like the only sane option.”

He’s grateful for his business partner, the one who kept him going. Without him, he suspects he would have shut everything down right after the second failure, the one with the insurance company.

One more thing he’d tell himself is not to borrow from the bank to fund a company, no matter how low the interest rate looks. “The leverage gets too big. It’s dangerous regardless.”

The tokens in his pocket now — a few more than he started with.

About Sean: Co-founder of XOFIT. He’s worked in Taipei, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Hangzhou, moving from content and e-commerce all the way into product and supply chain. He has founded three companies — the first two didn’t make it to the end, and the third is XOFIT, where the team now runs day-to-day operations while he focuses mainly on strategic decisions.

Rather than defining himself as a successful founder, he prefers to think of entrepreneurship as a game that hasn’t ended yet: find a way to stay alive a little longer, run a few more laps, and see what interesting things show up in the next level.

About XOFIT: XOFIT is a health-tech brand built around a smart body-fat scale and companion app, with over 10,000 users to date. Users can continuously track body weight, body fat, muscle mass, and other health data, and use the app’s social features to keep an eye on the health trends of family and friends — extending into remote care and check-ins. Looking ahead, XOFIT plans to integrate AI, using each person’s long-term health data to offer more personalized analysis and recommendations.

Hi! Thanks for reading. Yeh Project’s Instagram shares behind-the-scenes moments from interviews, reflections, and some thoughts on life in Canada. Would love to have you follow along: https://www.instagram.com/yeh.project/

小時候 Sean 玩投幣式賽車遊戲，投了代幣車子開始跑，跑不完一圈就死掉，死了就要再投一次。你不能撞牆，不能被別人撞到，你只能盡量不要把手上的代幣用完。

Sean 開了三間公司。前兩間，收掉了。

他覺得創業很像小時候在玩的賽車遊戲。10塊錢換一個代幣， 40秒要跑完一圈，如果沒有跑完，你就死了。那如果過不去，你就要繼續投幣。有些人口袋裡有很多個10塊，他就可以一直投。「但我口袋只有20塊，我只能死兩次。」

他一開始在雅虎奇摩做了兩年編輯，中間換過幾份工作，後來到了中國杭州的阿里巴巴園區，進了淘寶。他從內容行銷被調去做商品企劃，開始要跑工廠、找供應商，去到很多中國偏遠地區、沒有聽過名字的三四線城市出差。有一次印象很深，早上想喝咖啡，走遍整個城市卻找不到一杯咖啡。

他發現自己跟身邊中國同事最大的不同，是他從來沒有一個規劃好的 pattern（模式）：「他們很多人已經有一個 pattern 了，可能國中或高中就已經想好幾歲要幹嘛了。可是我進淘寶是意外，我也沒有想過自己進去。」

沒有劇本，就是他願意投幣的原因。

第一枚代幣

第一間公司，代理防曬品牌與按摩品牌，把海外品牌帶進台灣市場。在淘寶那幾年，他看到中國內需市場的成長放緩，很多品牌開始往外找出海的第一站，台灣常是首選。淘寶時期認識的朋友，牽成了他的第一筆生意。

代理品牌，很快讓他發現不足的地方。「坦白說，我們那時候只有線上通路的能力，線下通路的合作門檻都蠻高的。」他拿 7-11 舉例：全台有超過 7000 家 7-11，一個店鋪兩個貨好了，就要 14,000 個貨。「我們沒有這種能力。這是非常客觀的一個狀況，我們那時的線下通路能力不好。」

品牌合約一年到期，對方沒有續約。沒有人跟他說明原因，他只能自己觀察：品牌後來沒有積極經營台灣市場，重心轉往歐美。「那時候的合作比較像各取所需。」當時他需要案例展示，品牌方需要出海的 KPI。他們收回去，他沒有太過驚訝，因為沒有虧到什麼錢，覺得還可以。

第一枚代幣，跑完了一圈，沒有死透，但也沒有贏。

第二枚代幣

第二間公司，跟一家保險經紀公司合作，經營員工福利金商城——賀年小物、桌曆、文具，員工用公司發的福利金購買。合作一年後，對方決定不再繼續。當時團購很流行，他們也嘗試做團購，但這個轉型後來不是很順利。

團隊有八個人，遠端分散在台北、台中，台灣各地，最後只能解散。

「我那時候比較年輕，所以還是蠻痛苦的。」他說，「如果繼續經營下去，我們本來就沒什麼錢，一下子就會把錢燒光，也只能做這個決定。」

面談的時候，合夥人負責開口，他在旁邊補充自己的想法。「我在旁邊真的是蠻難過的。我很坦誠地跟他們說，第一件事就是對他們感到抱歉，讓公司走到這一步。也跟他們說公司真實的狀況。」

第二枚代幣，用完了。

第三枚代幣，還在場上

第三間公司，是自創品牌 XOFIT。從一台體脂計切入，目前累積了一萬多名用戶，月活躍用戶就有9,000-10,000。選這個賽道，除了市場機會，還有一個更具體的原因：「我有這方面的供應商資源，我知道在中國體脂計做得最好的供應商是哪一些。」這份清單，是他在淘寶跑工廠時期留下來的。

「這一次，看起來可以做更長遠的規劃了，挺不容易的。」

他說這次跟前兩次差很多。「他不是代理的品牌，他是我們自己的品牌。他不會被收回去，不會在台灣市場上消失。」更重要的是，可以完全依照自己想要的商業模式，讓它百分之百體現在這個品牌上。「做代理品牌時是不太可能的，主要的決定權都在原廠手上。」

體脂計只是入口。他真正想做的，是把所有人的健康數據累積起來，變成一整個健康的生態系。「現在有 AI 幫助，我還可以做得更精細，有了體重體脂、健康數據的變化，可以客製化給你專屬的健康建議。」

為什麼還要繼續投

他後來開始上班，同時也創業，兩件事一起做。為什麼還要繼續？失敗的代價不是很高嗎？

「很多人一直死掉，但他還是會一直玩。他明知道會繼續造成損失，但他就是想繼續玩下去。為什麼我也不知道，好玩吧。」

他一項一項數：第一，每次死掉都會讓他越來越上手，所以後面可能沒那麼快死掉，可以壓線通過，這會帶來成就感。」第二，是不甘心。「你會覺得我前面投的幣都變成沉沒成本了，前面累積的經驗都浪費了，這樣很可惜。」

第三，是開始有觀眾了。「用打電動來說，旁邊開始有一些觀眾在看你了，像是員工、合作夥伴，還有用戶，你不能隨便走下那個位置。旁邊的人都還在——你已經不是一個人在打電動了。」

可以持續的內在動力，主要還是因為「好玩」。「你要覺得這是一件好玩的事情，你才會繼續。好玩幾乎是驅動我去做任何事情的一個很重要的原因。

「好玩」是什麼？「這件事夠難，所以當你在裡面可以取得一點成就，就會很有成就感。」還有，「你會覺得你做的東西是有價值的，丟到市場上真的有人買，會給你回饋。」

從零到一，到市場上獲得迴響，「這條路真的很長、很長，一條路越長，裡面的風險節點就越多。」他做電商後有一個心得：「所有你注意到的風險，幾乎都會發生。你只要有注意到，它普遍就是會發生。」

分享失敗，因為它太稀有

他說自己以前很怕失敗，因為失敗的代價很高，大家也覺得分享失敗的經驗不光彩。

「如果物以稀為貴的話，那失敗的經驗就非常珍貴，因為分享的量太少了。」大家都習慣地盯著成功的人看，可是在失敗賽道上的人其實更多，只是沒有人會出來說。

他還提到一件常被忽略的事：成功沒辦法複製。

「我覺得成功無法複製的原因是，當你選定一個賽道去做某件事，它會有各種節點，裡面很多不可控的變因，像是市場，法規。你在 2016 年跟在 2026 年做同一件事，結果是完全不一樣的。因此我覺得它沒辦法複製，成功的經驗反而沒那麼重要。」

同一台電動，同一個賽道，但每一圈的路都不一樣——這是為什麼失敗值得說，而成功難以模仿。他認為新創死掉最大的原因，其實是運氣不好。要開一百圈都不被撞到，都要跑得完，這個機率非常低，倒閉或失敗才是比較正常的一件事。

「這三個公司裡有一家活下來，不能說是成功，只是每一關都過了。我就覺得非常幸運了。」

跟第一次創業的自己說一句話

回到一開始，會想跟剛創業的自己說什麼？

「如果知道會這樣，那我是不是要去買台積電，不要把錢投到公司。」他笑著說。「沒有啦。應該會告訴他，要堅持下去吧，因為真的太難了，中間想放棄的時間點太多了。」

他很感謝合夥人，讓他一直堅持下去，不然應該在第二次跟保險公司合作失敗後，就直接收起來了。

他也告訴當時的自己一件事：「盡量不要借錢去跟銀行借貸開公司，即便利息再低都一樣，槓桿開得太大了，還是危險的。」

他口袋裡的代幣，比前幾次多了一點。

而場上的遊戲，還在繼續。

謝謝你閱讀完這篇文章！如果你喜歡 Becoming 系列的人物故事，歡迎訂閱此專欄：）

• 關於 Sean ：XOFIT 聯合創辦人。曾在台北、香港、上海、杭州打工過，從內容、電商一路做到商品與供應鏈。前後創辦過三間公司，前兩次沒有走到最後，第三次創立 XOFIT，目前由團隊負責日常營運，自己主要參與策略決策。

  比起把自己定義成一個成功的創業者，更習慣把創業看成一場還沒結束的遊戲：想辦法活久一點、多跑幾圈，看看下一關會發生什麼好玩的事。

• 關於 XOFIT ：XOFIT是一個結合智慧體脂計與App的健康科技品牌，目前已累積超過一萬名用戶。使用者可以持續記錄體重、體脂、肌肉量等身體數據，也能透過社群功能關注家人與親友的健康變化，延伸出遠端關心與照護的應用。未來 XOFIT將進一步結合AI，根據每個人的長期健康數據，提供更個人化的分析與建議。

Hi ! 謝謝你的閱讀。Yeh Project 的 Instagram 會分享一些採訪幕後、觀點，還有一些生活在加拿大帶給我反思。歡迎追蹤：https://www.instagram.com/yeh.project/

Yesterday, after I finished writing “A Self-Portrait: My Twenties, and I Had No Idea,” this thought hit me.

I’ve always thought of myself as someone who doesn’t write much.

A big part of that comes from old habits I picked up as an editor. I’m always writing and then changing it — one word, one phrase, a title, whether a paragraph feels right, any of it can hold me up for a long time. By the time I’m done fixing things, I’ve lost my patience, and sometimes even the idea I wanted to write about is gone.

But after I finished yesterday’s piece, I suddenly felt lighter.

“A Self-Portrait: My Twenties, and I Had No Idea” actually came out of me just talking to myself out loud.

I said a lot of filler words, used a lot of sentences I would never use if I sat down to write. But because it was spoken, not written, I didn’t have time to worry about getting it right. I just got the whole thought out first, and cleaned it up later. I know that means the writing probably isn’t as smooth, and might not read as well.

I talked this over with AI. After it read my piece, it wrote me a version that was, in some ways, better than mine.

But in the end, I kept my own version.

Because I knew that version wasn’t me.

Years from now, when I come back and read what I wrote, I want to remember right away what I was thinking and feeling in that moment, not just see a piece of writing that reads well.

What I want to leave behind isn’t just words. It’s myself, as I was then.

I wonder how many people are like me — after finishing an article, recording a podcast, or editing a video, they keep going back to watch or listen to their own work.

The views might be low, the work might be far from perfect, but when you go back and watch it again, it feels a bit like eating a dish you cooked yourself.

It’s not restaurant quality. You know exactly what could be better. But you still enjoy every bite.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t get better.

Actually, it’s the other way around, because this process feels good and heals something in you, you keep wanting to do it, and you slowly get better along the way.

I have come to believe that whether you can keep doing something for a long time has nothing to do with how good you are at the start. You just need to know why you’re doing it in the first place.

A writer once told me:

“Writing is the biggest adventure the mind can take.”

For someone who loves exploring, that line felt just right. Through writing, I get to explore other people’s stories, and my own mind too.

And along the way, what’s helped me most was never the writing itself, or any skill. It’s the process of sorting out my own thoughts.

Because you never really finish understanding yourself. Your world keeps changing, and so do you. What matters most about writing is that it keeps an honest record of who you were, at every point along the way.

A year later, two years later, even ten years later, you look back and you might be surprised:

So that’s what I was thinking back then.

Or you might find that the person you were ten years ago had already, quietly, drawn a picture of the person you’d become.

The process might be long. It might stop and start.

But if you can, I hope you don’t give up.

Keep recording. Keep talking to yourself. Keep writing.

You’ll find that looking inward like this is more interesting than you’d think.

And that steady, solid feeling you get from writing in your own words, no one can take it away from you.

• A Self-Portrait: My Twenties, and I Had No Idea

Hi! Thanks for reading. Yeh Project’s Instagram shares behind-the-scenes moments from interviews, reflections, and some thoughts on life in Canada. Would love to have you follow along: https://www.instagram.com/yeh.project/

昨天寫完〈自剖：不知道在幹嘛的 20 幾歲〉之後，我突然有這樣的想法。

我一直覺得自己不是一個產量很多的人。

很大的原因，是以前當編輯留下來的習慣。我總是邊寫邊修、邊修邊改，一個字、一個用詞、大標小標、段落順不順，都可以讓我卡很久。改著改著，耐心就沒了，甚至改到最後，連一開始想寫東西的念頭都消失了。

但寫完那篇之後，我突然鬆了一口氣。

〈自剖：不知道在幹嘛的 20 幾歲〉，其實是我拿著手機，在自言自語中完成的。

我講了很多冗詞贅字，也用了很多如果是寫文章，我絕對不會用的句子。可是正因為是口述，我反而沒有時間糾結，先把想法完整說出來，再慢慢整理。我知道，這樣寫出來的文章，精彩度可能沒有那麼高，可讀性也未必最好。

我跟 AI 討論過這件事，它看過我的文章後，幫我寫出了我覺得比原稿更好的版本。

但最後，我還是選了自己的。

因為我知道，那不是我。

我希望很多年之後，當我重新看自己寫的文章時，可以立刻想起當時的自己在想什麼、感受什麼，而不是只看到一篇「寫得很好」的文章。

我想留下的，不只是文字，而是當下的自己。

不知道有多少人跟我一樣，每次寫完一篇文章、錄完一集 Podcast、剪完一支影片，會一直反覆看自己的作品。

明明觀看數可能很少，作品也未必完美；可是當你重新聽、重新看時，那種感覺很像在吃自己炒的一盤菜。

沒有餐廳的水準，你也知道有很多可以改進的地方，但你自己吃得很滿意。

當然，不是說不用進步。相反地，正因為這個創作的過程帶來了療癒與滿足，你才會願意一直做下去，慢慢把它做得更好。

我一直覺得，一件事情能不能做得長久，第一步不是技巧多高明，而是找到自己為什麼想做。

曾經有一位寫作者跟我說：

「寫作，是心靈上最大的一次探險。」

對喜歡探索的我來說，這句話真的太美了。我透過寫作探索別人的故事，也探索自己的內心。

而這一路上，幫助我最大的從來不是文筆，也不是技巧，而是去釐清自己的思路。

因為了解自己，本來就是一件沒有終點的事。環境一直在變，你也一直在變。而寫作最珍貴的地方，就是它忠實地替你記錄下每一個版本的自己。

過了一年、兩年，甚至十年，再回頭看，你可能會驚訝：

原來那時候的我是這樣想的。

又或者，你會發現，十年前的自己，早就偷偷描繪出十年後想成為的樣子。

這個過程可能很漫長，也可能中間會停下來。

但如果可以，我希望你不要放棄。

持續記錄，持續和自己對話，持續書寫。

你會發現，這趟探索內在的旅程，比想像中更精彩。

而那些透過文字一點一滴累積起來的踏實感，是任何人都奪不走的。

• 自剖：不知道在幹嘛的 20 幾歲

Hi ! 謝謝你的閱讀。Yeh Project 的 Instagram 會分享一些採訪幕後、觀點，還有一些生活在加拿大帶給我反思。歡迎追蹤：https://www.instagram.com/yeh.project/

Now that I’m in my thirties, when I look back at my twenties, I still feel like I had no idea what I was doing.

I’ve done a bit of everything: startups, traditional industries, big corporations. Teams smaller than five people, companies with over a thousand. About five years ago I decided to try working at a multinational, and moved from content editing into B2B sales. I went from not knowing how to make a single cold call to closing a million-dollar deal.

Work went well, honestly. I always had bosses willing to teach me, and that gave me room to mess up and learn.

Everything looked fine. On paper, nothing was wrong.

But I knew I wasn’t fully happy.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t achieved anything. I had done a lot of things I thought I wanted to do. But I still felt lost, still felt hollow, like I was far away from myself.

But back then, I didn’t stop to ask why.

I just kept moving. Kept walking.

Because when you leave home to build a life somewhere else, you don’t get to stop and figure things out. You just keep going.

The thing is, what I actually wanted was simple.

Anything to do with different cultures, writing, or interviewing people made me happy.

But I also knew that in the media and publishing world back then, it was hard to make a living doing those things. I had seen plenty of full-time writers juggling side jobs just to keep writing.

I kept asking myself:

“Is this the life I want?”

I wasn’t sure.

Like most people, I chased better opportunities, better pay, more flexibility. I believed that if I just kept moving forward, the answer would show up eventually.

So I read books, joined communities, talked to people ahead of me and around me, all trying to move toward what I thought was the right life.

I really believed that if I worked hard enough, I would find the answer.

But the answer never came.

Past thirty, people around me started getting married, having kids, building families.

I was happy for them. But I knew, deep down, that wasn’t the life I wanted.

My own future still felt like a fog. And before I even knew what I wanted, I wasn’t sure if the direction everyone else was heading was the direction I should be heading too.

So I decided to go work and travel in Canada.

I told people it was just something on my bucket list, that I had to do it before the age limit ran out.

But really, I’d been stuck in the same loop for too long, and it hurt too much to stay in it.

I needed a different place, a different way of thinking, something to pull me out of the life I’d built.

Once I got to Canada, I almost forgot who I used to be.

In a place where nobody knew me, I found all these things I hadn’t tried yet.

I felt like I was back in my early twenties again — reckless, doing whatever I wanted.

It felt like getting a second chance to live.

But this time, with a few more years behind me, when I laid out all my choices side by side, I noticed something.

All that struggling and confusion in my twenties wasn’t really about not trying hard enough.

It was that I’d never let myself face one question:

How do I actually design my own life?

I spent so much time figuring out how to work better.

How to be more efficient, how to switch careers, how to earn more, how to raise my own value at work.

But I never once thought about using any of that to design the life I actually wanted to live.

I kept judging myself by outside standards, and rarely asked myself, honestly:

What do I actually want to do? What are my options? And why haven’t I taken the first step?

On my 24th birthday, I told myself something:

Be honest with yourself.

Looking back now, I think I forgot that the moment I said it.

I wasn’t honest with myself at all.

Something in me had been calling out for a long time, telling me I was running on empty.

And I chose to ignore it.

Looking back, Yeh Project wasn’t some sudden idea that came out of nowhere.

It was answering something I’d wanted for a long time without admitting it.

It’s not that I wanted to do interviews. It’s that I needed to.

I needed different perspectives, different cultures, to feed my own curiosity.

Understanding someone, piecing together their story — that process is more interesting to me than closing a million-dollar deal ever was.

Maybe what I actually wanted never changed.

I’ve always loved hearing stories, and I’ve always loved writing them down.

Am I any less lost in my thirties than I was in my twenties?

I don’t know.

But at least I have a bit more courage now.

I worry less about what people think, and I’m more willing to admit what I actually want.

I haven’t gotten there yet.

So I’ll keep looking. I’ll keep going.

At least now, I think I’m starting to understand what work and life actually mean to me.

Hi! Thanks for reading. Yeh Project’s Instagram shares behind-the-scenes moments from interviews, reflections, and some thoughts on life in Canada. Would love to have you follow along: https://www.instagram.com/yeh.project/

現在我已經是 30 出頭的人了，回頭看自己 20 幾歲做過的事情，還是有一種被蒙在鼓裡、不知道自己到底在幹嘛的感覺。

仔細回頭看那幾年做過的事：工作上經歷了新創、傳產、外商，從不到五人的團隊，到上千人的公司都待過。大概五年前，我想試試跨國外商，也順利從內容編輯轉職成 B2B 業務，從完全不會陌生開發，到後來簽下百萬等級的案子。

工作上其實運氣很好，總是遇到願意教我的主管，讓愚鈍的我有很多試錯的機會。

一切看起來都很順利，好像沒什麼問題。

但我知道，我並不快樂。

那個不快樂，不是因為沒有達成目標，而是做了很多自己以為想做的事情，卻還是一直很迷惘。心裡總是空空的，好像離真正的自己很遠很遠。

不過，那時候的我沒有停下來問自己。

我只是一直走、一直走。

因為身為一個北漂族，現實不允許你停下來。

其實，我真正想做的事情一直都很簡單。

只要跟跨文化、寫作、採訪有關，我就會很快樂。

但我也很清楚，在當時的媒體出版環境，做這些事情很難養活自己。我看過很多全職寫作者，一邊兼職，一邊努力維持自己的創作。

20 幾歲的我一直在想：

這是我想過這樣的生活嗎？

我不確定。

和大多數人一樣，我追求更好的機會、更高的薪水、更彈性的工作環境。我一直相信，只要邊走邊做，答案總有一天會出現。

於是我看書、參加社團、找前輩聊天、找同輩請教，努力朝自己以為理想的人生前進。

我一直以為，只要夠努力，就會找到答案。

但答案並沒有出來。

30 歲之後，身邊的人開始陸續結婚、生子，有了自己的家庭。

我真心祝福他們，但也很清楚，那不是我想要的人生。

我對自己的未來還是一團迷霧。在還不知道自己真正想做什麼之前，我不確定大家追求的方向，是不是也是我要的方向。

後來，我選擇來加拿大打工度假。

我常跟大家說，這只是完成人生清單上的一個 bucket list，因為年齡有限制，再不來就沒有機會了。

但實際上，是因為我困在原本的人生迴圈太久，也太痛苦了。

我需要換一個環境、換一個地方，也換一種思考方式，讓自己跳脫原本的生活。

來到加拿大後，我好像暫時忘記了原本的自己。

在一個沒有人認識你的地方，我發現還有好多事情等著我去嘗試。

我好像回到了 20 出頭，那個橫衝直撞、想做什麼就做什麼的自己。

居然有一種重新活過一次的感覺。

不過這一次，因為有了前面幾年的經驗，當我把不同的人生選擇攤開來看時，我突然發現，20 幾歲那些糾結、徬徨、不知道人生該怎麼走的時刻，真正的原因，其實不是我不夠努力。

而是我一直不敢面對一件事：

我要如何設計自己的人生？

我花了很多時間研究怎麼工作。

怎麼提高工作效率、怎麼轉跑道、怎麼加薪、怎麼提升自己在職場上的價值。

但我從來沒有認真想過，要怎麼把這些能力與時間，用來設計我真正想過的人生。

我一直用外在的標準評價，卻很少誠實地問自己：

我真正想做的是什麼？有哪些可能性？我又為什麼遲遲不敢跨出第一步？

24 歲生日的時候，我曾經對自己說：

「要對自己誠實。」現在回頭看，好像說完就忘了。

我一點都不誠實。我的靈魂早就在呼喊、在求救，在告訴我：「養分不夠了。」

而我選擇視而不見。

往後看，Yeh Project 的出現，其實是一件非常自然的事情。

它不是突然冒出來的靈感，而是在回應我內心深處一直存在的渴望。

與其說我想做採訪，不如說，我需要做採訪。

我需要這個世界不同的觀點，不同文化的視野，來餵養我的好奇心。

去理解一個人、拆解一個人的故事，那個過程，比我簽下一個百萬等級的案子還有趣。

30 幾歲的我，會比 20 幾歲更不迷惘嗎？

我不知道。

但至少，我知道自己比以前多了一點勇氣。

比較不擔心別人怎麼看，也比較願意承認自己真正想要的是什麼。

我想做的事情還沒有做到。

所以，我會繼續搜尋，也會繼續前進。

至少現在，我好像開始了解生活和工作對我來說的意義了。

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Hi ! 謝謝你的閱讀。Yeh Project 的 Instagram 會分享一些採訪幕後、觀點，還有一些生活在加拿大帶給我反思。歡迎追蹤：https://www.instagram.com/yeh.project/

Bass has spent over thirty years as an engineer in Silicon Valley. In that time, he’s been writing Silicon Valley Outliers — a column-turned-book that has earned endorsements from tech investors, media founders, and podcast hosts across Taiwan’s startup ecosystem, and that has been running for nine years without once writing about stock options or company perks.

He writes about what nobody else bothers to look at: the homeless sleeping on the all-night Hotel 22 bus, the underbelly of a city that sells itself as the future.

“90% of people chase 10% of the opportunities,” he says. “The other 90% — nobody’s looking there.”

He wanted to be a rebel growing up. He just didn’t have the nerve.

In Taiwan, back then, a child who stepped out of line got beaten. So he kept that energy buried — studied hard, took the exams, learned computer science, moved to Silicon Valley, became an engineer. Years later, he watched his teenage son come home with a tattoo and felt a pang of something close to envy.

“I wanted to do that too,” he says. “I just never dared.”

America showed him something he hadn’t expected: rebellion doesn’t have to be destructive. This country doesn’t just tolerate people who think differently — it rewards them. That compressed energy he’d been sitting on for decades finally found a channel.

It just didn’t look like a tattoo.

His rebellion became a way of seeing.

The Rebel’s Eye

The habit started with literature.

Before Silicon Valley, he translated English and American literature into Mandarin. The work taught him something that changed how he read everything afterward: literary writing never means what it says on the surface. The words are a door. What matters is what’s behind them.

He brought that lens into the tech world.

Most Taiwanese engineers who come to Silicon Valley talk about compensation packages, stocks, and which company has the best cafeteria. Bass looked at the same perks and saw something else — calculated business decisions dressed up as generosity. The lavish benefits, the free meals, the wellness programs: none of it was altruistic. It was a retention strategy, and a temporary one.

He wrote about it years before the layoffs came, before the perks disappeared, before the industry’s mood shifted. “It’s a pendulum,” he says. “It always swings back.”

“Almost everything works this way,” he says. “If you look past the surface.”

The Answer Always Comes Last

At work, his job title never quite captured what he actually did.

He was responsible for finding problems nobody had assigned him to find. Inside a massive cloud data platform that looked, from the outside, perfectly functional, he knew there were bottlenecks — resources burning quietly in the background, invisible to everyone else. He’d move through the system the way a detective moves through a crime scene: one anomaly here, another one there, are these connected?

Collect enough scattered points, and a story emerges.

It’s the same process he uses to write.

“Put the answer at the end,” he says. “Drop the clues first. Let the reader do the work.”

He didn’t write that I was in a dark mood today. He writes: there was a can on the ground, and he kept walking and kicking it, walking and kicking it, all the way down the street. He never explains why. He doesn’t name the feeling.

“Build the emotion into an image first,” he says. “Then find the words for the image. Never the other way around.”

One of his articles, The Red Jacket, traces the history of a piece of clothing between a father and a son. Readers wrote in to say they’d cried.

The piece turns on its final sentence — without it, he says, the essay loses 80% of its power.

Three Stages: Do, Think, Speak

Thirty-odd years of observing Silicon Valley from the inside has given Bass a taxonomy of how different people work.

Engineers, he says, move through three stages: learn to do, learn to think, learn to speak.

Taiwanese engineers are exceptional at first. Taiwan built its economy on manufacturing precision — doing things exactly right, on time, without complaint. That discipline travels well. Taiwanese engineers in Silicon Valley are reliable, thorough, and fast.

But most stop there.

The think stage is where things get complicated. In Taiwan, Bass’s generation was discouraged from independent thought early. A student who questioned the teacher’s answer didn’t get praised for curiosity — they got punished for insubordination. That lesson sticks. Decades later, in American conference rooms, it shows up as silence.

The speaking stage is the hardest. Many blame their English. Bass doesn’t accept that answer.

“If I gave you the same room, the same audience, and let you speak in Mandarin,” he says, “could you change the mind of someone who disagrees with you?”

Most people can’t. The problem isn’t the language. It’s that they’ve never been taught to argue, to build a case, to move someone.

Indian engineers, he’s noticed, have no such limitation. In India, the internal culture is fiercely competitive — but internationally, they’re extraordinarily cohesive. They sponsor each other, promote each other, pull each other up without embarrassment. Around 70% of senior directors in Silicon Valley are Indian. The CEOs of Google, IBM, and Microsoft are Indian.

And American engineers can walk into a room and make you believe they can build what you ask — even if they can’t. Their vocabulary is simple, their delivery is confident, and somehow it works. “A good presentation,” Bass says, drily, “can move senior leadership to tears.”

He once received a challenge from his own manager: Give me one reason to promote you.

He didn’t write a self-assessment. He wrote an analysis of the entire team — where the gaps were, where the territory could expand, what opportunities his manager was leaving on the table. Then he showed how the two of them could move forward together.

His manager called a meeting the next day. Every person on the team was asked to write a one-, three-, and five-year roadmap.

“One sentence,” Bass says, “can be worth ten hours of work. But only if you can deliver on what you say.”

This is what he calls slacking with integrity.

Survival, Livelihood, Living

He believes life moves through three phases: survival, livelihood, and living.

His parents’ generation lived in survival mode — enough food, enough safety, enough stability. His generation upgraded to livelihood: careers, mortgages, children’s school fees, the accumulation of things that signal a life well-managed.

Living is something else entirely.

Early in his career, he met an American who had graduated from UC Davis with a computer science degree. Instead of joining a tech company, the man had taken a job washing dishes at a luxury hotel in Yosemite.

Bass’s first reaction was judgment: What a waste.

Then he found out why. The man was an obsessive rock climber. Yosemite is one of the greatest climbing destinations on earth. He had taken the dish-washing job to be there — to climb every evening after his shift ended.

Bass never asked the question he was thinking. He’s thought about it many times since.

“You compare your 500 square feet to someone else’s 5,000,” he says. “Your salary to someone else’s. There’s always a bigger number. You chase it your whole life and run out of time before you figure out what you actually wanted.”

He’s in the back half of his life now, and he’s decided he wants to take some foolish risks.

Some of them are physical — mountain biking on trails that throw him off, riding over rattlesnakes, getting scraped up and going back the next weekend.

Then there’s the writing.

Once, on a bike ride, he turned left instead of right — he’d taken a wrong turn. He followed the unfamiliar road until it ended, and found a stretch of rivers running deep red, a geological phenomenon that had existed in Silicon Valley for a hundred years. Tens of thousands of Taiwanese immigrants had lived nearby. Nobody had written about it.

Bass went home and wrote about it.

“Physically, sitting at a desk, you’re completely safe,” he says. “But your soul — your soul is not safe at all.”

“Writing is the greatest adventure of the mind.”

About Bass : I got tired of translating literary classics, went along with everyone else heading to Silicon Valley, and ended up an engineer there — a job I turned out to be good at, unfortunately. Now that I'm sick of it, I'm back to do the things I wanted to do all along.

• Bass FB page：https://shorturl.at/NcQKW

• Silicon Valley Outliers vocus：vocus.cc/bass/home

Hi! Thanks for reading. Yeh Project’s Instagram shares behind-the-scenes moments from interviews, reflections, and some thoughts on life in Canada. Would love to have you follow along: https://www.instagram.com/yeh.project/

大家向右看，他偏要向左看。

他是鱸魚 Bass，在矽谷當了三十幾年工程師，同時寫了 9 年的「異類矽谷」專欄。他不寫股票、不寫福利、不寫哪家公司待遇好，他寫的是沒有人注意的那些：在深夜公車「Hotel 22」過夜的遊民、「失敗的」美式生活，矽谷光鮮底下沒人翻開看的那一面。

他說自己從小就想叛逆，但是不敢叛逆。台灣那個年代，小孩叛逆是會被打的。他把那股勁壓下去，老老實實地念書、考試，去美國學電腦，來矽谷當工程師。

後來他看到兒子高中時去刺青，他在旁邊看好羨慕。「我也想去，只是那時候不敢。」

美國讓他發現一件事：叛逆不一定是壞的。這個地方允許你跟別人想不一樣，甚至鼓勵你。那股從小被壓著的勁，在矽谷，終於找到了出口。只是他的叛逆，不是刺青、穿耳洞。

他的叛逆，是眼睛。

叛逆的眼睛

他在矽谷看到的東西，跟大部分人不一樣。

以前翻譯過英美文學，他在文字裡學到一件事：文學作品講的，從來不是字面上的意思，要看後面的意思。

他把這個習慣帶進矽谷，帶進每一件看起來理所當然的事情裡。

台灣人來矽谷，大部分的人在講待遇、股票、哪家公司福利好。

只看表面的話，會讚嘆矽谷的企業文化，但往深層挖，才發現這些福利的背後都是商業決策考量，不是什麼善意的表現。薪水不是白高的，翻臉可以快速無情。

「幾乎每一件事都適用。」他說。

真正的答案，藏在後面

在公司裡，他做的不是一般工程師做的事。

他的工作是找問題。不是別人交代的問題，是沒有人發現的問題。一個很大的雲端資料系統，外表看起來完美，但他知道裡面一定有瓶頸，一定有資源在底下悄悄燒掉，沒有人知道。

他就到處看、到處觀察——這裡看起來有點異常，那裡好像有點卡住，這兩者有沒有關係？那些零星的點被他找出來，最後拼湊出完整的故事線——工作跟寫文章，是同一個邏輯。

答案放在最後面。線索先一條一條丟出來，讓讀者自己去拼。

「假如寫今天心情不好，」他說，「我不會直接寫『心情糟透了』，反而會刻意避開。用周遭不同的景觀襯托出心境，不提他心裡的一個字。」

那個寫法，跟電影很像。「地上有一個罐頭，他一直走、一直踢，一直走、一直踢。」畫面先出來，不解釋為什麼踢，不解釋心情，什麼都不說。

「用情感編織一個畫面，再用文字去寫那個畫面，」他說，「而不是反過來。」

他的一篇文章〈那件送不出去紅夾克〉，寫夾克跟父子之間的關係，有讀者留言說：「看完流淚是正常的嗎？」

文章重點留在最後一段。

「那句話拿掉，精華就少了80％ 。」

工程師在矽谷三部曲：會做、會想、會說

身為台灣人在矽谷，他不只觀察，更善於分析。

他說，工程師有三個境界：會做、會想、會說。

台灣人最強的是會做。台灣靠著「會做」生存了四十年，台灣錢淹腳目，就是做出來的。來到矽谷，台灣人做得好、做得快、從不拖延，這是真的。

但是做完，大部分人就停在那裡了。

「會想」這個境界，台灣人做到的不多。不是不聰明，是從小就沒有這個訓練。在他的年代，你想的跟老師不一樣，就兩巴掌打下去。從此今生今世，不敢再想了。

「會說」，就更難了。很多人會說，這是語言的問題，畢竟英文不是我們的母語。鱸魚不這樣認為。他說：「假如今天全部用中文，你能不能說服台下跟你意見不同的人？」

大部分人不行。

因為問題不是語言，是他從來沒有被訓練去分析、去立論，去說服別人。

他發現印度人很會想，也會說。印度人在國內超級不合群，出了國卻超級團結，哥哥聰明就把哥哥拉進來，不會不好意思，完全不覺得有什麼問題。矽谷的高層主管，約有 70% 是印度人。幾個最著名的大公司CEO——Google、IBM、微軟，都是印度人。

美國人呢？不太會做，但很會想，更會說。講話用詞不需深奧，但精準有力道。他開玩笑說，「他上台簡報，高層主管看了會流淚。」

他給老闆寫過一封信。老闆說：給我一個理由升你。他說好，給我一個禮拜。

他沒有只寫自己有多好。他分析了整個團隊的問題，哪裡人力不足，哪些地方可以擴張，然後說：你的機會在這裡，我們可以怎麼接軌。

老闆看完，馬上叫全體十幾個人，每個人寫一年、三年、五年的產品路線圖（roadmap)。

他說，這是「有良心的打混」。

「這個時候，你講一句話，已經超過你做 10 個鐘頭的成果。但你說出去的東西，要能夠兌現。」

「當你只會做的時候，你不能打混；當你會想的時候，可以稍微喘一口氣。當你會說的時候，你可以打混打得一塌糊塗，別人還尊敬你，還給你升官，」鱸魚說，「抱歉，這個世界就是這樣。」

生存、生計、生命

他說人這一生，有三個層次：生存、生計、生命。

他父母那一代追求的是生存——只要能吃飽，能活下來，就是恩典。他這一代追求的是生計——找到工作，養家活口。

再下去，是生命。

「可是大部分人，」他說，「連這個念頭都沒有。」

他剛出來工作的時候，認識一個美國人。對方拿了頂尖大學的電腦科學學位，沒有去科技公司上班，反而跑去優勝美地國家公園，在一間五星級酒店洗碗幫廚。鱸魚心裡想：你拿了這個學位，跑去洗碗，這不是在糟蹋自己嗎？

後來才知道，那個人酷愛爬岩。優勝美地有全世界最好的爬岩聖地。他去那裡洗碗，是為了每天下班以後可以爬。

沒有問出口的那句話，他後來想了很久。

「你說我家五十坪，外面有五百坪的。你說我月薪六萬，有人月薪二十萬。你一直比，永遠有比你大一百倍的數字在外面等你。」

「當然生計要照顧，可是照顧夠了就好了，永無止盡追求下去，只是付更多的錢、繳更多的帳單。比到最後，你會沒有時間出來追求自己的生命。」

現在的他，要走入人生的後半場。他說，他想開始冒一些愚蠢的險。

那些險，可能是騎登山車摔得滿頭包，騎車跳過響尾蛇，還有，繼續寫作。

「我坐在那邊，身體很安全，但靈魂一點都不安全，」他說，「寫作，是心靈上最強大的探險。」

關於鱸魚：那年厭倦了當代名著翻譯工作，看著別人都往矽谷跑總覺得沒有跟著做一定是錯的，所以只好出國唸電腦，到了矽谷做了工程師。糟糕的是竟然做得很成功，不知不覺也就吃了一輩子的科技飯。現在吃膩了，再回頭補一些當年想做而沒做的事。

• 鱸魚粉專：https://shorturl.at/NcQKW

• 異類矽谷 vocus：vocus.cc/bass/home

Hi ! 謝謝你的閱讀。Yeh Project 的 Instagram 會分享一些採訪幕後、觀點，還有一些生活在加拿大帶給我反思。歡迎追蹤：https://www.instagram.com/yeh.project/

Few paintings stayed with her.

In one, a boat floated on open water. A life ring drifted nearby. She knew exactly what the life ring was.

In the other, she painted herself lying down within an encompassing outer self. Inside of that was a smaller, darker shape — her inner self. The outer Steph was still. The inner Steph kept asking the same question, over and over:

Can I rest now? Can I rest now?

“I was the boss. I could make my own decisions. But the version of me acting as the boss questioned every single one of them.”

The Thing That Won’t Be There Later

Growing up in Taiwan, Steph was the kind of child who held funerals for butterflies.

She planted mung beans with classmates. She tracked ant colonies. She noticed, early, that the things she cared about weren’t quite the same as what interested everyone else.

In high school, she loved basketball. But, she joined the school band instead.

Basketball could wait until university. The band couldn’t.

“I realized I have a pattern. I tend to choose the opportunities that might disappear.”

She studied Materials Science, became an engineer, then left for a nonprofit when she realized she’d rather work with people than materials. The pay dropped significantly. People around her didn’t understand. She didn’t spend much time explaining.

For most of her adult life, she always knew what came next. A goal, a role, maybe a direction. She’d finish writing one chapter and already know the first line of the next.

Until 2022, when she looked at her checklist and realized she’d checked everything off.

For the first time, there was no next step.

An Ideal Day, Five Years From Now

To find her way forward, she wrote an essay.

She titled it: My Ideal Day, Five Years From Now.

She imagined mornings spent working, evenings spent moving. Painting on good-weather days. Walks with her partner at night, sharing small things. A few days each week with collaborators, in person. Weekend trips. Remote work. Projects chosen because they interested her, or because the people involved were worth learning from.

When she finished, she saw two potential paths. A multinational company. Or freelancing.

“A corporate job would always be there. But I’d always been curious about what it felt like to build something myself. My parents were still healthy. It seemed like the right time to take a risk. Worst case — I could always go back.”

She became a freelancer.

And discovered that freedom looked nothing like in her essay.

When Time and Money Stopped Making Sense

She hadn’t gone in blind.

Before deciding, she interviewed every freelancer she knew. Monthly income. Annual income. What survival looked like. She mapped it out carefully, the way she had always done things.

“I figured — if they’re still standing, I’d probably have a shot. But no one tells you about the middle part. Knowing something and living it are completely different.”

What surprised her most wasn’t the uncertainty. It wasn’t loneliness.

It was money.

She had never thought of herself as someone who cared about money. When she left engineering for the nonprofit sector and took a pay cut, she barely registered for it. The number changed; her life felt the same.

Freelancing was different.

“Back when I had a salary, I could go to McDonald’s without thinking. But once the fixed income stopped, I’d look at the price and think — will I earn this back?”

“That’s when I realized. I do care about money. It just used to live inside a safe container — my monthly paycheck. I never had to feel it.”

Time stopped feeling stable. Money stopped feeling stable.

During her first year, anxiety followed her everywhere — even rest felt suspicious. She’d find herself thinking about going back to a full-time job. At her lowest point, she thought about dropping the education label entirely. She’d open her laptop at night and find herself on job boards, cursor hovering.

The first year almost broke her.

One Purpose Is Enough

Looking back, she can name what went wrong.

“Freelancing is like surfing. The work finds you partly by chance. Everyone tells you to standardize, to productize. But I don’t like repeating the same pattern. I wanted to do new things, build a real portfolio, and earn well — all at once. That combination nearly destroyed me.”

Somewhere in the second year, she started taking the framework apart.

She stopped asking for a project to do everything. Instead, she divided her work into three purposes: survival income, exploration, or building strong work. If a project fulfilled even one, she took it.

The anxiety didn’t disappear. But it began to have softer edges.

She also knew this wasn’t just a principle for freelancing — it was something closer to her entire logic. She didn’t only turn down projects that felt meaningless before accepting them. She’d walk away from ones she’d already said yes to.

A friend once came to her wanting a course designed. Midway through the conversation, she realized her friend didn’t need a course at all — the real problem could be solved faster another way. She withdrew from her own project and helped with something else instead.

“I realized this quality of mine is kind of ridiculous. If I don’t think something is meaningful for you, I’ll just remove myself from the work.”

By the third year, she could feel the difference.

“I Don’t Have to Prove Myself Anymore”

The answer, when it arrived, came quietly.

A client — someone who she’d connected through a friend, someone she’d never met before the project — returned this year to work with her again.

“At that moment, I realized: I don’t need to prove myself anymore. I already know I can do this.”

She had spent years trying to find out whether everything she’d built could sustain her without an institution behind her. The question had felt loud for a long time.

Then it wasn’t.

She had also started to understand something about value — the way it moves between people when there’s not a company in the middle. A cross-cultural course she designed performed well; the client sent a bonus afterward, unprompted. Sometimes instead of money, they exchanged something else: access, expertise, time.

“When you solve someone’s problem, they want to return the favour in some form. Like barter, there’s something very raw about it. Like trust before it became more systematic.”

The Day She Wasn’t There

She had always assumed she needed to be present for things to work.

Then she ended up in the emergency room the night before a dragon boat camp she’d organized. She coordinated three partners to take over, sent the instructions, and let herself rest.

The event ran the next day. Participants were happy. Her team was happy.

She lay in bed and felt something she hadn’t expected: relief. Not because it was over. Because it had worked without her.

“I realized I could design the structure, bring the right people together, and let everyone find something in it. Before, I was always testing what I could do alone. Now I think the order can change.”

When she was younger, she dreamed of building a school. It seemed too large, too impractical. She didn’t want to give up the life she’d built.

Recently, she remembered that she already has plans to buy land and build a small wooden house.

Maybe there’s room for more than a house.

She doesn’t know yet. Maybe the timing just hasn’t come.

And those paintings from her first year —

She can no longer draw them.

About Steph: Learning Design & Content Strategy Consultant, partnering with experts and organizations to create knowledge products and meaningful learning experiences. Through thoughtful conversations, I help untangle complex challenges and turn ideas into practical solutions. Passionate about cycling, skateboarding, and the Satir Model. Exploring better ways to learn, work, and live. Tiny cabin dream, in progress.

• Steph Instagram : https://shorturl.at/pXqK6

• Steph Linkedin: https://shorturl.at/gBKDA

Hi! Thanks for reading. Yeh Project’s Instagram shares behind-the-scenes moments from interviews, reflections, and some thoughts on life in Canada. Would love to have you follow along: https://www.instagram.com/yeh.project/

接案第一年，Steph 畫了很多畫。

其中幾幅，她記得很清楚。

她畫了一艘船，旁邊有救生圈。她很清楚那個救生圈就是正職工作。

「我知道我隨時可以跳下去，對我來講很安全。但是我又知道，我面對的東西，那個恐懼感——幾乎超過了我以前到現在經歷過的所有恐懼。」

另一幅，她畫了一個粉紅色的自己，已經躺下來了。裡面有一個黑黑的，是內心的自己。外在躺了，內在沒躺，一直在問：我現在可以躺了嗎？我現在可以躺了嗎？

「明明我已經沒有老闆了，老闆就是我，我可以自己決定。但我身為老闆的角色，卻一直質疑自己。我可以主控，但我對於自己的任何選擇，每分每秒都在自我懷疑。」

選擇機會比較少的先嘗試

幼稚園時期，Steph 就會拿起像百科全書般厚重的昆蟲圖鑑，一頁一頁翻著看；小學時，她會跟著幾個同學種綠豆、仔細觀察螞蟻，看到死掉的蝴蝶說要幫他下葬。她那時發現，自己在意的東西好像跟別人不太一樣。

高中時，比起熱愛的籃球隊，她選擇先加入樂隊，籃球留在大學——因為她知道，一旦離開高中，以後就沒機會了。

「我發現我有一個思維模式，我會選擇當時機會比較少的事情先去嘗試。因為過了時間點，以後很難有機會嘗試。」

大學讀材料分子，畢業後順理成章當了材料工程師，卻發現自己更喜歡跟人在一起，轉身跳進非營利組織。薪水直接少一階，外人看來不解，她並不特別在意。

大四暑假去海外當國際志工，物質條件窘迫，她卻過得很快樂。那時她明白，決定她快樂的條件，不是吃什麼住哪裡，而是人跟人之間最真實的交流與對話。

每隔幾年，她都有明確的生涯規劃要去哪裡；直到 2022 年，人生第一次的空白期。

五年後理想的一天

從第一份工作開始，Steph 會用很理性的方式，去分析工作上哪些喜歡、不喜歡的內容。用原型測試探索各種職涯，列出自己在這一份工作上想探索或想達成的目標。

2022年，當列出項目逐一打勾，發現自己人生每個階段想做的事情都做完了，她開始覺得迷惘。

那時她用了一個方法，寫了一篇文章「未來五年後理想的一天」。

「我想像五年後的生活畫面：早上工作，傍晚運動，天氣好就去畫畫；晚上跟另一半散步分享心情；一週內有兩三天可以跟夥伴實體交流激發創意，週末可以去小旅行，並且可以遠端工作。挑選的專案是自己覺得有趣的，或是跟厲害的人一起工作。」

當時她給自己兩個選擇：去外商公司或當自由工作者。

「我覺得外商隨時可以去，而我一直有創業的想像，當自由工作者更接近創業，趁父母還不需要我操心，可以做冒險一點的嘗試，大不了再回去上班。」

於是她成為自由工作者，卻發現自由長得不是那個樣子。

時間與金錢的概念，一瞬間崩解

她不是沒做功課。決定接案之前，她去訪談身邊接案的人，問月薪、問年薪。

「我大概知道，他們既然都活下來了，我應該有機會。但是實際上，他們當然不會跟你講說那個中間過程——自己理解跟體驗，是不一樣的事情。」

書上說，當你想做一件事，應該會一邊恐懼、一邊興奮。「但那時我感受恐懼比興奮還要大。滿滿的恐懼。我感受不到裡面的快樂。就明明是我想要的，可是就是恐懼到爆炸。」

最讓她意外的是錢。她從來不覺得自己在意錢——從材料工程師轉去非營利組織，薪水往下掉，她沒什麼感覺。

「比如我之前薪水可能五萬塊，吃麥當勞不用太在意價錢。當我沒有預期每個月有固定薪水的時候，我就會開始想：靠，我現在付的這個錢，之後賺不賺得回來？」

「我才知道，原來我對是金錢在意的。只是以前金錢在我的安全區域，被每個月的薪水包在裡面，所以我根本不會有任何感覺。」

時間跟金錢的概念，突然一瞬間崩解。

第一年，她焦慮到連休息都充滿懷疑，常想著要不要打開求職平台找正職工作。最低潮的時候，她甚至想把教育領域專業的標籤整個丟掉。甚至想著如果去台積電當工程師，是不是賺更多？

接案像衝浪

她發現，造成自己痛苦的來源，是她把目標設太高了。

「接案模式對我來說很像衝浪，案子來源很講緣分。外面教你要模組化、商品化，但我又不喜歡重複的 pattern。我想做沒做過的事，想要累積作品，又想要年薪百萬——這組合真的要把我逼瘋了，讓接案本身都變得極度痛苦。」

有了第一年的痛苦經驗，她開始學著把框架拆開。「我不能要求一個案子要滿足所有目的。我把目的拆成三件事：這個案子是為了活下來賺錢？是為了有趣探索？還是為了累積厲害的作品？只要有達成其中一項我就接。」

她自己也知道，這個選擇標準不只適用於接案，某種程度也適用於她整個人的邏輯——她不是只接有意義的案子，接了覺得對對方沒用的，她也會推掉。

有一次，一個朋友找她設計課程。談著談著，她發現對方根本不需要課程，商業模式的問題用別的方式解決更快。她就把自己的工作給推掉了，改幫對方做別的事。

「我發現自己這個特質真的超瞎的。如果我覺得這件事對你沒意義，我就會把自己的工作弄掉。」

到接案第三年，才讓她慢慢感覺到不那麼焦慮。

「原來我不用一直證明自己了」

接案第一年，她還有一個很清楚的感受：她想證明自己。

「我想知道我身上所有累積的能力，到底有沒有辦法不靠任何一間公司或組織活下來。那個赤裸感很嚴重，因為再也沒有人可以幫你擋了，你也沒有品牌、沒有招牌，你人本身就是一個招牌。」

答案在第三年出現。一個客人——朋友的朋友，對她來說是隔了一層關係的陌生人，今年又回來找她做別的案子。

「我就突然覺得，原來我不需要狂證明自己了。我知道我有能力了。就是我在知道這個東西的瞬間，我很快樂。」

另外是對於「價值交換」的體悟。以前在公司領薪水覺得理所當然；但當自由工作者，能深刻感覺到別人是因為想跟你合作、尊重你的價值而來。

她之前接一檔跨文化溝通的課程設計案，雖然一開始因為預算折衷了價錢，但後來課程賣得好，對方包紅包把錢補回來給她。有時也會用資源交換的方式，例如請對方作為她的諮詢對象。

「當你幫對方解決問題創造價值，對方也會用同等方式讓你知道你值得。這裡面有一種很原始、以物易物的信任感跟情誼，這跟一般工作很不一樣。」

她不在場的那一天

她一直以為自己是需要親手落地的執行者，直到去年底，她接了一個龍舟體驗營的案子。

活動前一天，她生病送急診，知道自己隔天絕對沒辦法出現，趕快調度 Partner 支援，之後她就安心休息了。隔天她不在場，活動還是順利進行，體驗者跟工作夥伴都很快樂。

這是她第一次感受到「不用執行的快樂感」。

「原來我也可以做一個單純的規劃者，把資源湊起來，讓參與的每個人都感到快樂成長。以前我做的事都在探索我能力的極限，但我現在發現順序可以調整了。我好像可以準備創造一個地方讓別人覺得快樂。」

小時候她有個夢想，想蓋一間學校的夢想，但覺得很困難，也不想捨棄目前的生活品質。

後來她想到，自己一直有買地蓋木屋的計畫，會不會其實在那個很大的地裡面，可以做很多體驗活動，是她原本想做的事情？

她還不知道，或許時間到了它就會出現。

至於那些畫——她再也畫不出來了。

關於 Steph：學習設計 × 內容策略顧問，協助專家與組織打造知識產品、設計學習體驗，透過深度對話梳理複雜問題，找到適合的解決方案。熱愛單車旅行、滑板與薩提爾，持續探索工作與生活的各種可能，木屋計畫進行中。

• Steph Instagram : https://shorturl.at/pXqK6

• Steph Linkedin: https://shorturl.at/gBKDA

Hi ! 謝謝你的閱讀。Yeh Project 的 Instagram 會分享一些採訪幕後、觀點，還有一些生活在加拿大帶給我反思。歡迎追蹤：https://www.instagram.com/yeh.project/

Yuwen is the owner of Bisheng Bakery, a homegrown dessert shop in Shengli Star Village, Pingtung, Taiwan, run with three close friends. Their cakes have earned recognition as one of Taiwan’s Top 100 and Pingtung’s Top 10 souvenirs. Before all that, he spent years in the United States and Puerto Rico — without speaking a word of English or Spanish — and became a training manager at Panda Express.

But rewind a few decades, and you’d never guess this man was once a boy too afraid to buy a bowl of braised pork rice.

A Food Soul Rooted in the Blood

Yuwen has always been obsessed with food. The obsession runs in the family. Growing up, the men cooked. His father made braised tilapia and mei gan kou rou (Braised Pork Belly with Preserved Mustard Greens). His grandfather, from Shaanxi, made noodles and cold dishes. His maternal grandfather ran a Hong Kong-style dim sum restaurant in Pingtung.

“I realized early on that eating well — really eating well — is one of the greatest pleasures in life. By the time I finished junior high, I knew I wanted to work in food. I wanted everyone who ate what I made to feel happy.”

He set his mind on culinary school. His family said no. He wanted to study philosophy. They said no again. Two things he wanted most, both taken away. His family pushed him into military school instead.

After his service ended, his family asked what he wanted to do. His answer hadn’t changed.

The food industry in Taiwan wasn’t what it is now — limited career paths, little prestige. But his uncle had a restaurant in the States. His mother asked if he wanted to try. From the day he was discharged to the day he boarded a plane, less than a month passed.

Can’t Speak English? Get on the Plane First.

He describes his younger self as timid.

There was a braised pork rice shop near his house that he loved. He’d ride his bicycle over, see the line outside, and circle the block. He told himself he’d wait for the crowd to thin. He circled again. Still crowded. He kept going for half an hour.

Then he went home. He never got the meal.

Military school changed something in him. You learn to solve things yourself. You stop waiting for conditions to be perfect.

“The hardest part,” he said, “was getting on the plane from Taiwan to America. Everything else — I’d figure it out when I got there.”

When he arrived, his English was four words: yes, no, okay, thank you. At McDonald’s, the cashier asked if he wanted apple pie, a milkshake, large fries. Yuwen couldn’t understand a word. He said okay to everything.

When the tray arrived, he stared at the pile of food. He didn’t quite know how to send anything back.

“I eat a lot. Better too much than nothing.”

His first stop was Miami — where not speaking English is more acceptable than not speaking Spanish. He started at the bottom of his uncle’s Chinese restaurant, learning the kitchen from scratch. It was a good time to arrive: American Chinese food was booming. Five dollars got you rice, a protein, and a side — close to a Big Mac in price, but more filling, with fried plantain added for the Latin American crowd. He rode that wave to Puerto Rico, and picked up Spanish along the way.

A Blank Exam

In Puerto Rico, a Taiwanese store manager at a nearby Panda Express noticed him and put in a word with HR. There were three rounds: interview, practical, and written test.

He nearly aced the first two.

The written test, he sat and stared at. Not because he didn’t know the answers. He couldn’t read the questions.

Most companies would have stopped there. But the Vietnamese-Chinese manager who’d vouched for him went to bat: “Look at him — he works hard, he wants this. We all came here without English. That can be learned. What can’t be learned is whether someone actually wants to do the work.”

He got the job. He stayed for six years.

He went in thinking he’d learn everything and then go start his own brand to compete. “I was young and didn’t know any better,” he said. “I understand now it’s not that simple.”

Every Morning, Pull Back the Curtain

He rose from assistant manager to training manager. The company’s goal that year was to expand from 900 locations to 1,200. His job was to get new store managers ready.

The hardest part of scaling Chinese food, he says, isn’t hiring or logistics. It’s consistency. Western fast food is easy to standardize — freeze it, fry it, assemble it. The variance is small. But Chinese cooking is different.

“Same dish, same ingredients, same proportions — two different cooks, two different results. That’s the core problem.”

Panda’s SOP was precise from the first cut. Onion cubes: exactly 3cm × 3cm, tolerance no more than 0.5cm. Every vegetable — broccoli, zucchini, carrot — had its own specified size and shape, laid out in a chart. Sauces measured to the milliliter. Stir-fry times counted in seconds.

The job kept him moving across the country. The hotel rooms all looked the same.

“I could be in Miami one week, Orlando the next.” Every morning, the first thing he did was pull back the curtains to see where he was.

Sixty Years of Family Business, and a Road He Hadn’t Finished

In 2012, his father died. His maternal grandfather died the same year. His mother was in her sixties. His grandmother, in her seventies. Yuwen couldn’t leave them. He flew back to Pingtung to help run the family business.

For two years, he sat in the family jewelry shop every day. The television was on. He couldn’t tell you what he watched. When it was time to eat, he ate. Then he sat some more.

A friend came to visit, looked at him, and said: What happened to you?

He knew he still wanted to be in food. But the jewelry shop had been in the family for nearly sixty years, passed down through four generations. If it closed, someone would have to be the one who let it end. He told his mother: that someone would be him.

A friend heard that a French bistro in Pingtung was looking for new owners — the aging proprietor wanted to retire. Three friends wanted to take it over but had no restaurant experience between them. They came to Yuwen.

“If you’re in, we’re in. If not, we walk away.”

What It Takes to Make Something Ordinary Extraordinary

The four of them were not always easy to agree with. They spent an entire night drinking in the office just to settle on a name — no one giving an inch, waiting to see who’d fold first.

On May 5, 2021, Bisheng Bakery opened.

Two weeks later, it closed. COVID.

They didn’t stop. Delivery, online sales, a complete overhaul of the product line — decorated cakes didn’t survive shipping, so they switched to frozen. They tried everything. Eventually they started doing pop-ups at department stores, letting people taste before buying.

“Good food speaks for itself. You can talk all day — or you can let people try it. I learned that at Panda.”

Their signature cake, the Grandma’s Lemon Glaze Cake, entered a national souvenir competition. A judge raised an eyebrow: isn’t lemon cake everywhere?

“I told him: our whole point is to take something ordinary and do it better than anyone else.”

Pingtung grows 80% of Taiwan’s lemons. The cake tastes like something fresh and familiar.

One afternoon, Yuwen was on a beach eating cake when the warm sea breeze came in — salty, clean. He thought: what would cream cheese taste like with sea salt?

That became the Basque Burnt Cheesecake with Salted Milk Topping — the shop’s other signature. Basque cake can get rich and overly indulgent fast. He didn’t want something that dazzled for three bites and then became too much.

Straight from frozen, it tastes like milk ice cream. Let it sit, and it softens into something closer to a flan or an egg pudding. You eat one bite, then another, and somehow it’s gone.

At the end of our conversation, Yuwen said: “When are you coming to Pingtung? I’ll let you try the cake.”

The boy who used to circle the block on his bicycle, too afraid to join the line —

He’s standing at the door now, and he’ll be the first to say hello.

• Bisheng Bakery Website: https://www.bishengbakery.com/

• Instagram：https://www.instagram.com/shengbakeryno.1/

Hi! Thanks for reading. Yeh Project’s Instagram shares behind-the-scenes moments from interviews, reflections, and some thoughts on life in Canada. Would love to have you follow along: https://www.instagram.com/yeh.project/

一句英文都不會，你敢為了圓兒時夢想，自己飛去美國工作嗎？

他是「必勝烘焙研製所」的老闆，大家都叫他毓文哥，和 3 個好朋友合夥創業，在屏東勝利星村經營在地特色甜點店，蛋糕曾獲得台灣百大、屏東十大伴手禮的殊榮。在這之前，他赴美國、波多黎各拓展事業，一句英文、西班牙文都不會說，卻成為美國知名連鎖餐廳熊貓快餐 Panda Express 的教育經理。

時間倒轉回幾十年前，你絕對想不到這位老闆，曾經是一碗肉燥飯都不敢買的小男孩。

扎根在血液裡的餐飲魂

毓文哥對「吃」有著天生的執著，而這份執著，來自於扎根在血液中的飲食文化。

有記憶以來，家裡由男生掌廚，爸爸的拿手菜紅燒吳郭魚、梅乾扣肉，爺爺做麵食和涼拌菜、外公開港式飲茶餐廳；「那時我發現，可以吃飽、吃到好吃的東西，真的是一件非常享受的事。因此我國中畢業就決定從事餐飲業，希望每個吃到我做的東西的人，都能感受到幸福快樂。」

早早就立定志向想往餐飲走，卻被家人壓著逼念軍校。「我大學想念餐飲，被家人拒絕；想念哲學，也被否定，兩件想做的事都不能做，就有點自暴自棄，隨便念些什麼。」退伍後家人問他想做什麼，他還是想去餐飲業。但那時台灣餐飲環境不佳、職涯規劃也不完善，剛好有親戚在美國開餐廳，媽媽問他要不要去試試看？於是從退伍到去美國，不到一個月的時間，他就出發了。

英文只聽得懂 “yes, no, ok, thank you,” 在幾乎零基礎的程度下，怎麼敢一個人去美國？毓文哥回想起當初敢做這個決定，討厭的軍校環境對他影響最大。

不會英文闖美國？先上飛機再說

他說自己從小就懦弱膽小。

小時候家裡附近有一家他喜歡的肉燥飯，店就在附近，他騎腳踏車過去，看到外面排著人，就沒有進去。他在旁邊繞了一圈，想說等一下人少了再去。又繞了一圈，人還是那麼多。他繞了半個小時。

最後他回家了。那碗飯，他沒有吃到。

但在軍校生活，訓練他相對獨立、什麼事都得自己想辦法解決，讓他性格上有很大的轉變。「那時我覺得最大的困難，就是從台灣搭飛機到美國這一段。其他的，到那邊再說。」

剛到美國時英文不好，去麥當勞點餐時，服務生問：要不要加一個蘋果派？要不要多一杯奶昔？薯條加大？他聽不懂，都說ok。拿到餐點時，才恍然發現自己點了一大堆，但他沒有退回去。「我食量大，總比沒東西吃好。」

幸運的是，他的第一站是邁阿密，邁阿密講西文的人口多，在當地你可以不會英文，但不能不會西班牙文，因此對於不會英文的容忍度相對高很多。

他在舅舅的中餐館從基層開始學習，那時剛好碰上美國中餐業的迅速發展期，一份餐 5 塊美金，有炒飯或白飯，可選配菜，價格跟大麥克差不多，但份量多、碳水足夠，也融入了中南美洲客人喜歡的炸香蕉（Plantain），對藍領勞工來說性價比高，很快拓展至波多黎各，也在當地學了西班牙文。

一份零分的筆試

在波多黎各時，他被熊貓快餐（Panda Express）挖角，同是台灣人的店經理引薦他給公司 HR，卻差點被刷掉。總共有3關，面試、實作、筆試，他前兩關幾乎滿分，第三關是筆試，他坐在那裡，看著題目，卻一個字也寫不出來。不是不知道答案，是連題目在問什麼都看不懂。

筆試幾乎交白卷，一般公司早就刷掉了，認識的越南華僑店經理幫他說話：「重點是有沒有心想做。沒有心想做，你讓他進來，英文再好都沒有用。」這番話，讓他在熊貓快餐待下來，一待就是6年。

進到熊貓，他滿懷好奇，想知道為什麼一間中餐館可以發展成這麼大的規模？甚至想要「偷學」完自創品牌，跟他拼了。「當時年輕不懂事，現在才知道，事情沒那麼簡單。」

從副理做到教育經理，公司目標當年從 900 家店面擴張至 1200 家，而他負責訓練新的店經理。要做到這種規模的快速擴張，難的部分在哪裡？毓文哥認為，是如何讓上千家店端出來的東西，品質一致。

西餐很容易標準化。拆解美式連鎖快餐，基本上不需要上炒台，冷凍食品、油炸、組裝，每次出來的東西差異很小。但中餐不一樣。「同樣是番茄炒蛋，每家的味道都不一樣」。就算給你一模一樣的食材跟比例，別人炒出來跟你炒的，味道就是不會完全相同。這才是中餐要規模化最困難的地方。

熊貓的 SOP 非常嚴謹，從備料就開始。切洋蔥的時候，每一個洋蔥丁必須是 3公分 x 3公分的正方形，正負誤差不超過 0.5 公分。每一種食材——花椰菜、櫛瓜、胡蘿蔔，都有各自規定的尺寸跟形狀，有圖表可以對照。醬汁比例全部固定好，炒的時候連開大火幾秒都規定好。

這份工作讓他全美到處跑，商務旅館住起來都差不多，「我今天可能在邁阿密，下禮拜就去奧蘭多（Orlando）。」因此每天起床第一件事是拉開窗簾，看窗外的景色，才確定今天自己在哪個地方。

60年的家業，和他還沒走完的路

在美國做著想做的事，直到 2012 年，父親與外公相繼過世，放不下 60-70 歲的媽媽與外婆，他飛回屏東老家幫忙銀樓家業。

兩年的時間，他每天坐在店裡。電視開著，他不太記得看了什麼。時間到了就吃飯。吃完繼續坐。

有朋友來找他，看了他一眼，說：你怎麼變成這樣？

他知道自己還是想做餐飲，但家業放不下。近 60 年，傳了四代，如果就這樣收掉，不好聽的名字得有人扛。他跟媽媽說，就由他來。

後來朋友聽說屏東有一家法式簡餐，老闆年紀大了想退休。3個朋友想接，但沒有一個做過餐飲。他們找到毓文哥，說：「只要你肯做，我們就做。你不做，我們就放棄。」

做著做著，原物料一直漲，售價跟著調，老客戶反彈。他開始算成本，發現甜點跟麵包吃掉一大塊。他想，不然自己開一個甜點品牌，一樣的師傅做一樣的事，多賣的就是多賺的，而且新品牌天生就有一個穩定的買家，就是自己的餐廳。

把平凡的東西做到極致

4個創辦人，每個人的想法都不一樣。可以為了取名字，4個人坐在辦公室喝了一整個晚上的酒，誰都不讓，看誰能撐到最後。

2021 年 5月5日，必勝烘焙開幕，兩週後，因為疫情關門了。

兩週後關門，他們沒有停下來。外送、網路銷售、品項全部重來，改以冷凍蛋糕為主。後來做百貨公司快閃，帶著蛋糕讓人直接試吃。「東西好不好吃，說得天花亂墜都沒有用。這個，是我在熊貓學到的。」

店裡招牌「老奶奶檸檬糖霜蛋糕」參加全台百大伴手禮比賽，評審老師看到時詫異，問這款蛋糕不是哪裡都看得到、吃得到嗎？「我跟他說，我們最大的底氣，就是把再平凡不過的東西做到極致。」

有一個下午，他在沙灘上吃著蛋糕，海風吹過來，鹹鹹的。他想，乳酪加海鹽，會是什麼味道？海水的鹹味結合乳酪的自然香氣，誕生了海鹽奶蓋巴斯克蛋糕。

巴斯克蛋糕容易變得濃郁甜膩，他不想要前三口驚艷、後面吃不下去。蛋糕口感可以很有層次，剛退冰像牛奶冰淇淋，退久一點像雞蛋布丁。可以一口接一口，不知不覺吃完。

採訪末了，毓文哥說：「什麼時候要來屏東？帶你品嚐我們家的蛋糕。」

當年踩著腳踏車，只敢在巷子繞圈圈的小男孩，

現在站在店門口，大聲地跟你說嗨。

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搬到南奈莫（Nanaimo） 、成為自由攝影師，在小島上過她現在過的生活。

「我甚至不覺得這是我主動選擇的，」她說，「事情就這樣發生了。」

崩解的人生

在百慕達（Bermuda)，T 是掌管一切的人。高階財務職位、高壓工作環境、管理整個組織。後來，工作意外結束了，人生轉了一個大彎。

她因為家人的關係來到溫哥華島（Vancouver Island），以為自己會在這裡找到工作，接續原本的生活。但緊接著 COVID 襲來，她的男友發生車禍意外，導致下半身癱瘓。她開始照顧他，也重新審視自己的生活。

「那時我才發現，生命裡還有更多東西，」她說。她沒有選擇攝影。攝影，是當其他一切都消失之後，剩下的東西。

另一種自由

T 來自安大略省（Ontario），搬去百慕達工作，對那時的她來說，自由就是財務自由——努力工作、賺更多錢、存更多錢。T 很擅長這些，非常擅長。

但現在的她，對自由有了不同的想法。

「自由，是成為我想成為的人，」她說，「是擁有頌缽和塔羅牌，是在森林裡漫無目的地亂走。」

她還是不斷被要求承擔更多——她現在加入一個董事會，他們還希望她再加入另外兩個。去年她試著接了一份小工作。「那太像原本工作的模式了，我覺得不快樂。」

她寧願坐在車裡，朝著某個美麗的地方開去。

「我已經不認識你了」

她姊姊在聖誕節說了這句話。

T 跟她說自己的日常——在海邊坐幾個小時、看鳥、修照片、敲頌缽、翻塔羅牌。

「你什麼時候要重新回去工作？」她姊姊問。

她姊姊比她年長，錢賺得比她多，只要她想，隨時可以準備退休，但她不理解 T 做的決定。

「我已經不認識你了。」

T 把這句話當作某種證明。

以前認識她的人，聽說她曾經是那個掌管一切、工作導向的人，都會嚇一跳。「現在的我溫柔多了，」她說。不只是生活方式變了，連她認識新朋友時問的問題也不一樣了。

「聊天時，我們不再只問你做什麼工作，」她說，「而是真的去了解你是什麼樣的人。」

在南奈莫，大家聊天第一個問題不是「你做什麼」，而是「什麼讓你快樂」。如果有人開始講自己的職稱和工作，對話就會被帶到別的地方去。

森林裡的女人

跟著 T 在雨後的森林裡走，你的速度會變成別人的一半。

她會為蘑菇停下來——不只是顯眼的那些，還有樹幹上細小的、藏在倒木下的、紫色的、藍色的、綠色的。在古老雪松的步道上，她數過至少五十種。經過的人都好奇地問：

「你在看什麼？」

她指了一個，又一個，又一個。

他們什麼都沒注意到。

森林裡有一棵樹，樹上長的蘑菇從側面看，像一個小精靈——帽子從樹皮捲出來，大鼻子，還有一件裙子。T 知道那棵樹在哪裡。

這就是她現在的樣子。走得很慢，看著別人都往前大步走過去，她仍放慢腳步慢慢走。

「當大家的鏡頭都朝那個方向，」一個朋友曾告訴她，「你在後面，朝著另一個角度的方向拍。你總是注意到別人注意的地方。」

她自己沒意識到，直到有人點出來。

蜂鳥女士

她的朋友叫她蜂鳥女士。

蜂鳥每天都來她的花園。她走出門，牠們不只飛向餵食器，而是飛到她面前，在她臉前停著。散步的時候，一隻蜂鳥會突然出現，懸在她旁邊，像在打招呼。

朋友 Mano 曾告訴她一個異象：T 被蜂鳥圍繞著，半人半蜂鳥。

「我們之間有種特別的連結，」她說。

這是她從沒計劃過的生活——對大眾來說可能有點奇怪、緩慢，卻也更加柔軟，比她離開的那個生活更有朝氣。

她不會回頭。

「拿著相機，去尋找美麗的地方，我覺得快樂多了。」

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Not Nanaimo. Not the camera. Not the life she’s living now.

“I wouldn’t even say that I consciously made it,” she tells me. “The right things just happened.”

The Life That Fell Apart

In Bermuda, T was the boss lady. Senior position, high pressure, running organizations. Then her job ended unexpectedly, and the course of her life changed.

She came to Vancouver Island thinking she’d find work. Then COVID hit. Then her boyfriend had a motorbike crash and was paralyzed. She became his caregiver.

“I just realized there was more to life,” she says. “I was much happier with my camera and nature.”

She didn’t choose photography. Photography was just what was left when everything else fell away.

A Different Kind of Freedom

In Ontario, in Bermuda, freedom meant financial freedom, working hard, earning more, accumulating enough. T was good at it. Very good.

Now she defines it differently.

“Freedom is the freedom to be who I want to be,” she says. “It’s having singing bowls and tarot cards and wandering and getting lost in the woods.”

She still gets asked to take on more. She’s agreed to be on one company’s board; they want her on two more. She took a small job last year to test the waters.

“It was too much like work. It didn’t bring me joy anymore.”

She’d rather be in the car, driving toward something beautiful.

“I Don’t Even Know Who You Are Anymore”

Her sister said it at Christmas.

T had been talking about her days, sitting by the ocean for a couple of hours, watching birds, editing photos, playing her singing bowls, reading tarot cards.

“Well, when are you going to start working again?” her sister asked. “How can that be all you do?”

T tried to explain. Her sister — older, with more money, who could retire tomorrow if she chose to, didn’t understand.

“I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

T takes this as a kind of evidence.

The people she knew before, when she tells them she used to be the boss lady, they’re surprised. “Now I’m a much gentler soul,” she says.

The shift wasn’t just in her schedule or her job title. It was in what she asks when she meets someone new.

“It’s no longer focused on what you do,” she says. “It’s focused on who you are.”

In Nanaimo, the first question isn’t what do you do. It’s what brings you joy. And if someone starts listing their job title and responsibilities, the conversation gets redirected.

The Woman in the Forest

Walk with T through the forest after a rainfall and you’ll move at half the speed of everyone else.

She stops for mushrooms — not just the obvious ones, but the teeny tiny ones on tree trunks, the ones hiding under logs, the ones that come in purple, blue, and green. On one trail through the ancient cedars, she counted at least fifty different types. People passed her, curious.

“What do you see?” they’d ask.

She pointed. And pointed. And pointed again.

They hadn’t noticed any of it.

There’s one tree in the forest where mushrooms grow in the shape of a female gnome — a hat that curls out from the bark, a big nose, a dress. T knows exactly where it is.

This is how she moves through the world now. Slowly. Looking at what’s underneath, what’s behind, what everyone else has already walked past.

“When everybody’s pointing their cameras over here,” a friend once told her, “you’re somewhere back there, pointing in a completely different direction.”

She didn’t know that about herself until someone said it out loud.

The Hummingbird Lady

Her friends call her the hummingbird lady.

They come to her garden every day. When she steps outside, they don’t just fly to the feeder, they hover in front of her face. On walks, one will suddenly appear and hang in the air beside her, as if greeting her.

A friend named Mano once described a vision he’d had: T, surrounded by hummingbirds, half woman, half hummingbird. He described it in detail. She doesn’t dismiss this kind of thing.

“I’ve got a special connection,” she says simply.

This is the life she didn’t plan — slower, stranger, softer, and more alive than the one she left behind.

She wouldn’t go back.

“I’m much happier with the camera in hand, going to pretty places.” Her home is no longer full of things, but instead of many beautiful photos taken on the road.

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