Self Maid

Exploring themes of the self, society, design, the environment, nature, and animals, for a balanced life and a more compassionate world. Also, like, mainly just a vapid lifestyle blog.

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  • Toronto is Trying to Revitalize a City That’s Lost Its Soul

    Cities rarely get to choose the moment when their economic model changes. More often, change arrives first, through technology, social behaviour, or crisis, and only later do governments decide whether to resist it or adapt to it.

    Toronto now faces such a moment. In response to a downtown core that has yet to fully recover its pre-pandemic bustle, city leadership has pushed for a return to full-time, in-person work. The argument is straightforward: fewer office workers mean fewer lunches bought, fewer coffees poured, and fewer customers for the small businesses that once relied on weekday crowds. The remedy, then, is to restore the crowds. Yet this approach treats a structural shift as if it were a temporary inconvenience. And it risks mistaking the symptoms of change for its causes.

    The Commuter Economy Was Always Fragile

    For decades, Toronto’s downtown economy functioned on a predictable daily migration. Hundreds of thousands of workers flowed into the core each morning and back out again in the evening. In between, they generated a reliable ecosystem of lunchtime restaurants, coffee chains, retail shops, and services designed around the rhythms of the workday.

    But the commuter economy was always more delicate than it appeared. It depended on long daily commutes, expensive real estate concentrated in office towers, and a culture of convenience: quick meals, vending machine snacks, and small daily luxuries consumed not always out of desire, but often out of psychological necessity.

    Few workers genuinely relish spending $18 and up on a hurried lunch eaten between meetings. These transactions are less expressions of preference than consequence of circumstance: fatigue, time pressure, and limited alternatives. Building an urban economic strategy around that pattern is questionable. Restoring it through mandate is even more so.

    The TTC is Already at Capacity

    There is also the question of whether Toronto’s infrastructure could comfortably sustain a full return to the old model even if it wanted to. The city’s transit network, run by the Toronto Transit Commission, remains heavily used even under hybrid work patterns. Rush hours already strain trains, buses, and streetcars. A universal return to daily commuting would place additional pressure on a system that has struggled with reliability and overcrowding for years.

    Let’s not even discuss how traffic congestion in Toronto is already among the worst in North America. Adding thousands more vehicles to the morning commute would not revive the city’s economy so much as intensify its daily frustrations.

    A Distributed City

    The deeper issue is that the geography of economic life has begun to change. Remote and hybrid work have dispersed economic activity outward, into neighbourhoods that once emptied during business hours. Local cafés now fill with freelancers and remote employees. Parks and libraries host informal meetings. Residential districts, long dormant during the day, have begun to develop their own daytime economies. This shift presents not merely a challenge, but an opportunity.

    Even the early wave of co-working companies revealed the uncertainty of this transition. The dramatic collapse of WeWork, which once reached a valuation of $47 billion before filing for bankruptcy in 2023, was widely attributed not only to aggressive expansion and expensive long-term leases, but to a moment when companies and workers were still figuring out how hybrid work should actually function. In other words, the failure was less a rejection of shared workspaces than a sign that early models of them did not yet provide what people increasingly seek today: flexible environments that offer genuine collaboration and community, not simply another version of the traditional office.

    Instead of concentrating commerce almost entirely in the downtown core, Toronto could nurture a more distributed urban economy where neighbourhoods function as local centres of work, creativity, and social life. That would mean encouraging different kinds of spaces: small co-working hubs, community studios, learning centres, and neighbourhood gathering places designed for both productivity and connection. There’s hardly anywhere to sit down and chill without spending money for god sakes.

    But rethinking the geography of the city also means rethinking its hours. Many public spaces still operate on schedules designed for the old commuter economy, closing just as people finish work. If neighbourhoods are to become real centres of community life, casual places such as libraries, cafés, and community hubs will need to stay open later into the evening, giving residents somewhere to gather, study, create, or simply spend time together without the pressure to rush to fit everything in before 6pm.

    The Quiet Crisis of Loneliness

    Ironically, the rise of remote work has revealed a social problem that office towers once obscured: urban loneliness. Many people who work from home report greater flexibility and autonomy. But they also describe something else: days that pass with little spontaneous human interaction. During the pandemic, social media became the only practical avenue many people had for maintaining social connection. This caused many, especially those living alone or far from friends well into post-pandemic life, to have forgotten how to socialize normally in the real world. The solution, however, is unlikely to be a universal return to cubicles…only to continue hosting meetings virtually…

    What cities need instead are environments that enable social life outside the narrow structure of the workplace: spaces where people gather not because their employer requires it, but because community, creativity, and collaboration draw them there. A healthy urban economy should serve those needs as well.

    In practice, that may mean creating a new generation of neighbourhood social hubs: modern community clubs designed not for retirees, but for adults of all ages who need spaces to meet, learn, and connect.

    The Wrong Measure of Economic Success

    Underlying the debate is a broader question about what cities should value. Is the health of an urban economy measured primarily by the number of poke bowls sold during lunch hour? Or by whether residents have time, energy, and affordable spaces to participate in civic life? The traditional commuter model optimised for consumption. It encouraged daily spending tied to work routines. But it also produced long commutes, high commercial rents, and neighbourhoods that alternated between overcrowded and empty depending on the hour. A more balanced city might look different: less centralised, less frantic, and more attentive to quality of life.

    The pandemic also accelerated something big cities have been slow to acknowledge: the need for community is no longer something people can ignore until decades later in retirement. Years of forced isolation, combined with the prominence of social media as a substitute for real interaction, revealed how fragile many people’s social lives had quietly become. What Toronto lacks today are modern spaces for adult community after university. Places that function less like dated municipal facilities and more like social clubs. Imagine membership-based community hubs with different pricing tiers, not unlike a fitness studio, where people could join at a level they can afford and sign up for activities the way they might book a workout class: cooking sessions, board game nights, creative workshops, or collaborative arts and crafts. Condominium amenity spaces increasingly resemble private lounges, but they rarely foster genuine connection; they are typically rooms residents reserve for gatherings with friends they already have, which many people simply do not. Platforms like Eventbrite offer occasional events, yet they can be expensive, inconsistent, or downright scams. Traditional community centres gesture in the right direction, but many feel dated, under-programmed, and limited in scope. A new generation of social clubs that are relatively affordable, flexible, and embedded in neighbourhoods could complement the existing community centres: community centres are the no-frills option and modern social hubs as the upgraded model for a city that increasingly needs places for their high-potential and energetic young population that are constrained by the structures around them.

    Tomorrow’s Toronto

    Cities that attempt to freeze themselves in a previous era rarely succeed. Industrial districts become cultural districts. Warehouses become apartments. Entire economic geographies shift as technology and society evolve. The question is not whether Toronto’s old commuter economy will return exactly as it once was. The question is whether the city will spend the next decade trying to resurrect it or use this moment to build something better.

  • sort of new year sort of same me

    I’m gonna be honest. I started this blog to relive my glory days as a teen growing up in the height of the blogger and tumblr/rookie mag hipster era. But to get views I have been resorting to language that does not sound like me and stupid SEO keywords. I look back on the posts I’ve published so far and I can’t help but cringe at how SEO ruined writing. Do you really have to sound like a squeak toy that has become sentient in order to get clicks? I don’t even think SEO-addicted content gets meaningful engagement when you’re not trying to sell anything other than relatability and your openness to conversation (in the comments at the bottom by the way).

    I was also hiding behind this new gen version of blogging because I haven’t written in a while and have lost the spark and vocabulary. I once was a grammar pro and now I forget what punctuation to use in a sentence. Serves me right working a brain-atrophying desk job.

    Blogging to me is a place where I still feel safe being honest and critical. Can’t do that on Tiktok or else all the toxic positive/contrarian zombies will feed on your self worth in the comments for nutrition. You also can’t do it on Twitter because that’s not even a real place for healthy people anymore. But here. There’s no one here! I can type away and feel safe knowing I won’t get harassed for having an opinion. An opinion that at time festers into anger due to the current state of my life thanks to how strange everything and everyone has gotten post-pandemic and hyper-globalization’s increased velocity thanks to social media. I honestly have not acclimated to the shift. I don’t know if I ever will. It has created new anxieties in me and I need an outlet.

    So after a second hiatus, I’m back writing online again (not me reheating my own nachos [ew I can’t believe I said that]). Ready to rant (and hopefully rave) about whatever is bugging me again on this personal blog in 2026 in a post-pandemic internet. I might keep up the SEO charade, or I may just keep writing in my natural flow as I am right now. It all depends on how addicted I get to seeing those views.

    Are you still blogging in 2026, or did social media kill it for you? Let me know…

  • Where Dating feels more like Performing

    If you’ve tried dating in Toronto post pandemic times, there’s a chance you’ve also felt that the date felt more like anxiously going over a checklist instead of anxiously having a conversation. Swiping, matching, messaging, everything is performed in expectation, not curiosity. Encounters rarely feel surprising or energizing; more often, they leave you feeling empty, like you just a 1:1 meeting.

    Toronto is different. Not worse than other places, just… stale. In other cities in other countries, connections can feel immediate, even accidental because in other locations where our style of multiculturalism isn’t as prevalent, shared experiences are more common than shared social media posts or trending interests. These places often allow for more organic connections due to cultural context, shared values, and the subtle interplay of lived experience which transforms encounters from transactional to meaningful.

    Toronto, by contrast, offers something that feels carefully curated yet strangely hollow. It often feels like people are operating according to invisible scripts, influenced by what’s popular on social media, what’s “desirable,” what gets the most engagement, because there is no one deep-rooted culture to ground everyone.

    The Algorithm Shapes the Room

    Apps like Bumble and Hinge make the experience more frustrating. It’s not just that swiping is tedious, it’s that the people you actually might connect with are hidden by those who tick the algorithmic boxes. The system prioritizes extremes: models and influencers on one end, profiles that signal resignation on the other. Rarely do the “balanced,” nuanced people appear (the ones who enjoy life socially, intellectually, and emotionally, without performing either extreme).

    You might recognize this now when thinking about your swiping experiences: profiles that are either all ambition and curated perfection, dead profiles with 10 year old photos and one word prompt answers of people who’ve basically given up and don’t care, or those who are sweet but present an overly eager desire for a relationship instead of highlighting any relatable interests or desirable traits about themselves. There’s very little representation of those in between all these extremes.

    This mirrors a broader cultural phenomenon. Idealized behaviours such as frequent gym visits, curated entrepreneurial narratives, or social-media-friendly lifestyles, have taken over not just dating culture, but Millennial and Gen Z lifestyles as whole. And those uninterested in such performances often find themselves filtered out, invisible to those with whom they might otherwise form genuine connections.

    Where Are the Balanced People?

    The ones who enjoy both going out and quiet, meaningful activities. The ones who care about community, family, and friends, but aren’t obsessed with appearing “perfect” online. The ones who are fun, thoughtful, ambitious, but not exhausting. You know, humans. They exist, but they’re either hiding, married (RIP), or not being surfaced by the platforms we rely on.

    It’s hard to believe meaningful encounters in Toronto are rare but possible when the majority of interactions are filtered through algorithms, social signalling, and performative culture. Recognizing that doesn’t make dating easier but it helps explain why it feels like you’re rolling through motions. And if the city is structured in such a way that meaningful encounters are neither immediate nor inevitable. The challenge lies in navigating this architecture to find your people. But what does that even mean? Where would that even take you? If you ask me, to another country 🙂

  • A Body Is Just a Body: Why the “Perfect” Physique Will Never Be Enough

    We live in a world obsessed with bodies: shaping them, shrinking them, sculpting them, comparing them. Entire industries exist to convince us that if we could just change this part or fix that flaw, life would suddenly click into place. We imagine that the right workout plan, the right surgeon, the right diet, the right level of discipline will finally deliver the body that silences insecurity. The body we can finally love. The body others will envy.

    But here’s the anti-profitable truth no one selling you anything will admit: A body is just a body.

    That’s it. That’s the revelation. No matter what you do to it, train it into granite, enhance it with precision, starve it into illness, it will never become more than what it is. The human brain adapts fast. It normalizes everything. Even what once felt extraordinary becomes ordinary with enough repetition.

    The Myth of Satisfaction

    We imagine there’s a moment of arrival, some finish line where we unveil our “perfect” body and finally get to relax. But bodies don’t work that way. Neither do minds. At first, the changes feel exhilarating. Compliments roll in. Clothes fit differently. Cameras become less threatening. You feel seen, admired, maybe even desired.

    But eventually, whether it takes days, months, or years, your new body becomes just your body again. The novelty evaporates. What once impressed you becomes expected. You adapt to the new baseline, and then you find new flaws. New goals. New dissatisfaction. You realize perfection is a moving target that only moves faster the closer you get.

    Your Partner Sees It Too

    In love or lust, bodies can be intoxicating. But even the most stunning physique becomes familiar to someone who sees it daily. Your partner’s awe fades. Not out betrayal, but because familiarity is the nature of human perception. We cannot remain amazed by anything forever. Trying to keep someone’s attention with a body is like trying to keep a flame lit with gasoline. It burns bright, then burns out.

    The Hamster Wheel of “Better”

    We need to stop treating our bodies like products, or as though there is a leaderboard we can climb, thereby objectifying not just ourselves, but others as well. The body changes, but the underlying hunger for validation remains. Swap the body, update the aesthetics, apply the enhancements, at the end of the day, you are still you. Is that what scares you?

    Chasing the perfect body doesn’t free you. It chains you to maintenance, comparison, and fear: fear of aging, gaining weight, losing attention and becoming undesirable.

    But the more “perfect” the body, the more fragile the identity that is built upon it.

    So What’s the Answer?

    Not complacency. Not neglect. Not surrender. Instead, we should use our bodies. Be curious about what it can do for us and appreciate it. But not obsess over the appearance of it.

    Your body is an instrument, not an ornament. It’s not meant to be a final product, it’s meant to be lived in. Run with it. Laugh with it. Age with it. Use it to connect, to create, to experience. When your body becomes a tool for living rather than a prize for display, the obsession dissolves.

  • When Healthcare Becomes a Distraction: The Pitfalls of Modern Advice

    In our era of abundant health guidance—ranging from medical specialists to life coaches, mindfulness instructors, nutritionists, and sleep consultants—it is tempting to assume that professional counsel will invariably lead to better well-being. Yet, the modern healthcare ecosystem is riddled with a subtle but pervasive flaw: an overemphasis on intervention over individualized understanding. The result is a performance of care, often more distracting than helpful, which leaves patients chasing information, supplements, and lifestyle “solutions” that are ill-fitted to their circumstances.

    The Illusion of Personalized Guidance

    There is a comforting allure to professional advice. Whether it comes from a physician, a nutritionist, or a wellness coach, the presentation of structured guidance, action plans, and measurable targets reassures patients that progress is being made. Yet in practice, much of this guidance is generic, delivered hurriedly, and insufficiently tailored. Recommendations about mindfulness, sleep hygiene, or emotional balance are often given without deep attention to the patient’s actual routines, preferences, or needs. Supplements are prescribed—even when there is no deficiency—and lifestyle advice is applied universally rather than individually.

    The result is a cascade of well-meaning but inefficient interventions. Patients are encouraged to adopt routines or consume products that may do little for their unique physiology or lifestyle, while the core behaviors that could yield meaningful results are left underexplored.

    When Advice Becomes a Distraction

    Consider the patient who seeks relief from chronic fatigue or low mood (🙋🏻‍♀️). They may encounter a flurry of advice: meditation apps, sleep trackers, herbal supplements, probiotics, or vitamin regimes. Each professional presents a plausible rationale, each intervention backed by a study (or trend). Yet, these interventions are often introduced in a rush, with little follow-up or individual assessment. The patient is left juggling multiple routines, feeling busy, responsible, and “compliant,” but with little tangible improvement.

    This is the paradox of modern healthcare: the more we seek guidance, the more distracted we become from practical, meaningful action. Patients are subtly taught to outsource responsibility for change, to follow suggestions that may not suit their bodies, and to treat health as a project managed by others rather than lived intentionally.

    Toward Self-Directed, Practical Well-Being

    Critiquing the healthcare system is not a call to reject expertise outright. Professionals can provide invaluable insight, but only when their interventions are truly contextual, individualized, and actionable. In the absence of such discernment, the most effective path often lies in what patients themselves can control:

    1. Discernment Over Deference

    Not every recommendation requires adoption. Question whether the advice fits your actual needs, circumstances, and prior outcomes.

    2. Prioritize Actionable Habits

    Focus on consistent, tangible practices that produce measurable improvement in your life. Sleep patterns, movement, and nutrition are best adjusted incrementally, based on your lived experience rather than generic protocols.

    3. Reduce Noise

    Limit the influx of conflicting suggestions. Too many interventions—especially supplements, apps, and trend-driven routines—can overwhelm rather than help.

    4. Retain Agency

    View professionals as consultants rather than directors of your health. Empower yourself to integrate advice selectively, testing interventions in ways that align with your unique physiology and lifestyle.

    A Call for Critical Engagement

    Modern healthcare and wellness industries thrive on the promise of optimization, but they often prioritize information over insight, busywork over effectiveness, and interventions over individuality. True health, by contrast, arises from discernment, consistent attention to one’s own body and mind, and deliberate, context-specific action.

    In a landscape crowded with professionals and advice, the most radical (or perhaps the most sophisticated) approach is to reclaim agency. Pause, reflect, and test what genuinely works for you. Real well-being is less about compliance with prescribed protocols and more about cultivating a relationship with your own experience, guided by knowledge rather than dictated by the next appointment or trending supplement.

  • Jobless Behaviour in the Office

    The Everyday Coarseness of Office Life

    Modern offices, with their standing desks and wellness slogans, like to imagine themselves as polished environments. Yet scratch the surface and a less flattering truth often appears: many workplaces are populated by unsophisticated colleagues. Not necessarily unskilled, but unrefined: people who confuse bluntness for honesty, volume for leadership, and familiarity for collegiality.

    From the entry-level employee who overshares personal drama to the executive who interrupts mid-sentence, the ill-mannered come in many guises. Their behaviour may not breach policy, but it corrodes culture all the same.

    Oafish Behaviour Knows No Rank

    Crudeness in the workplace is an equal-opportunity offence. It thrives at every level of the hierarchy—from the new recruit who treats colleagues like roommates, to the seasoned manager who believes barking orders counts as efficiency. Some lack self-awareness; others, restraint. The result is the same: a slow erosion of respect and focus.

    And yes, even those with advanced degrees, in fields such as business, finance, or engineering for example, are not immune. Education sharpens intellect, not necessarily civility. A polished résumé can mask a remarkably unpolished temperament.

    True professionalism is not measured by title or technical mastery, but by composure. Refinement, in this sense, is less about etiquette and more about emotional discipline—the ability to engage with others constructively, to disagree without condescension, to listen without performing impatience.

    It’s a quality that doesn’t shout, but steadies the room. The refined professional doesn’t seek to win every exchange; they seek to sustain the collective work. That distinction, subtle but vital, separates competence from leadership.

    The Real Cost of tactlessness in the office

    Few things sap productivity faster than a colleague who cannot manage basic decorum. The damage is rarely spectacular but is steady, cumulative, and corrosive:

    • Culture Corrosion: When incivility becomes routine, professionalism begins to feel optional.
    • Collaboration fatigue: Teams grow weary of navigating personality friction instead of solving problems.
    • Talent drain: The best people quietly leave; the loudest remain.

    For those obliged to share an office with the unpolished, the options are limited but not hopeless:

    • Maintain your own standards and model composure to elevate the tone of a room, even when it’s unreciprocated.
    • Document patterns when rudeness becomes routine and address them through private, composed conversations.
    • Escalate sparingly by seeking mediation through union stewards, HR, or leadership channels, before corrosive habits set in place.

    Beyond Degrees and Titles

    The higher the academic credentials, the lower, at times, the level of sophistication. Boardrooms bristle with MBAs, analysts, and specialists in business strategy—yet among them, one occasionally finds a surprising lack of poise, manners, and basic collegial grace.

    A degree proves that one can study; it doesn’t prove that one has learned. One can learn corporate finance and remain emotionally bankrupt. The same goes for promotions and corner offices. What distinguishes a refined professional is not what they know, but how they carry what they know: quietly, respectfully, and with regard for others. True advancement, the kind that sustains both companies and colleagues, lies not in credentials but in conduct.

    In an age that prizes disruption and speed, elegance may seem quaint. But as workplaces grow more complex, it may prove to be the rarest and most valuable skill of all.

  • When People THINK They Know You Better Than you know Yourself

    You know that sharp, stinging, ringing in your ears type of irritation that comes from someone trying to explain you to yourself. You know the type to do it: the friend who tells you you look tired (as if it’s news to you that you barely slept last night), the family members who loves to define you based on the few traits you show during the rare times you see each other, or the wannabe psychologist acquaintance who decides they’ve diagnosed you over lunch. It’s not just annoying… it’s kind of dehumanizing.

    The Arrogance of Assumed Knowledge

    When someone presumes to know you better than you do, what they’re really saying is they don’t think your self-understanding is up to par with their own. It’s an invalidation of personal agency dressed up as helpfulness. The tone might be breezy, the intentions might be good (though usually they’re just taking out of their ass), but the message lands the same: “I prefer giving out opinions over finding out how little I really know”. What’s frustrating is how normal this behaviour is for some others. The problem isn’t the act of giving advice itself, it’s the assumption behind it: that you need to be corrected, enlightened, or explained to because they know more.

    Unsolicited Advice and the Discomfort of Being “Managed”

    There’s something particularly invasive about unsolicited advice. It doesn’t matter if it’s about fitness or fashion, unsolicited advice is annoying and discredits your autonomy. You never asked for a life coach, nor do you need one, yet for some reason there’s always someone around who tries to project-manage everything from your feelings, to your appearance, to your itinerary.

    For women especially, this kind of social micromanagement is constant. We’re told how to look, how to feel, how to behave, and how to “work on ourselves.” The performance of care is really just a cover for control.

    The Pop-Psychology Problem

    Then there’s the modern epidemic of people diagnosing others as if they’ve actually studied the DSM-5. If you mention being distracted, someone will say, “That’s your ADHD.” If you’re introverted, “You must be on the spectrum.” Tired? Oops, you must be depressed. Somewhere between TikTok therapy and the rise of mental health awareness, empathy has been replaced by pseudo-expertise.

    To be clear, understanding mental health is good. But applying diagnostic labels to people without context, consent, or proper education, only creates confusion and distrust. It turns lived experience into content fodder. And, again, it assumes the speaker’s insight outranks the subject’s own understanding of their emotions.

    Why People Do This (and What It Says About Them)

    It’s tempting to think these people are simply arrogant (and sometimes they are). But more often, their behavior reveals something else: a deep discomfort with uncertainty. Many people feel safer when they can categorize others neatly, when they can translate your complexity into something legible and manageable, even if they’re way off due to their crude analytical ability.

    Psychologists sometimes frame this as a form of ego defense: the mind’s attempt to maintain control over the social world. If I can explain you, I don’t have to face the ambiguity of who you really are. The unsolicited advice-giver often sees themselves as the hero of their own narrative: the one who helps, enlightens, rescues. Beneath that self-appointed authority is usually a need to feel competent or needed.

    In some cases, it’s projection: people seeing in you what they’re unwilling to acknowledge in themselves. A person hyper-focused on “fixing” others might be avoiding their own unresolved chaos. What looks like confidence can actually be anxiety in disguise: a fear of irrelevance or of losing social footing.

    Understanding that doesn’t make it less irritating, but it reframes the dynamic. When someone insists they know you better than you do, it often has less to do with you and everything to do with their own need for certainty, control, or self-worth.

    Why It Hurts

    It’s easy to shrug this off as a minor social annoyance, but it cuts deeper than that. When people treat you like a puzzle to be solved, they flatten you. They turn your complexity into a caricature. It’s not just that they’re wrong, it’s that they refuse to let you be right about you. And honestly… what the fuck is up with that…

    Self-knowledge is hard-won. It’s shaped by years of observation, mistakes, and quiet self-reflection. When someone swoops in and overwrites that with a single comment or casual label, they’re not just misjudging you; they’re interrupting your narrative.

    The Case for Curiosity Over Certainty

    Maybe the antidote is humility, not just in others but in ourselves as well. The best conversations come from curiosity, not certainty. Instead of assuming we know what’s best for someone, we can ask what they’ve already learned. Instead of diagnosing, we can listen and support.

    Because, at the end of the day, the only person who truly knows your story—every chapter, footnote, and omitted phrase—is you.

  • Create Comfort in your Toronto Condo: From Cold to Cozy

    I’ve been renting a small condo in downtown Toronto for just over a year now, and I still can’t decide if it’s a home or a holding cell. You know the Toronto condo type: the white cube designed for transience. Every new building in this city seems to be full of them: floor-to-ceiling windows, glossy white walls, exposed concrete (ok I do like that…) and the promise of “modern living.” In practice, it feels more like being trapped inside a commercial art gallery I toured when in art school… except they forgot to install the art.

    During the day, the living room turns into a literal fishbowl. The sun hits the south-facing glass like a magnifying lens, flooding the space with glare so intense that I can’t work, cook, or even sit on my own sofa without squinting. Blinds help, but only in that “I live in a concrete cave now” sort of way.

    At night, it’s worse. The whiteness of the walls doesn’t disappear; it amplifies. The walls reflect every bit of artificial light until the place feels like a refrigerated display case: sleek, sterile, and lonely. I want warmth. I want a home that feels like a hug, not a temporary box I could be asked to vacate at any moment.

    1. Softening the Surfaces

    The first thing I learned: hard materials make for hard living. The glass, the drywall, the concrete ceilings, they all bounce light and sound in the most unsettling way. I started layering textures like my sanity depended on it: a wool rug here, a wool throw there. Suddenly, the echo calmed down. The light softened. The space started to feel slightly less like a temporary space.

    2. Introducing Real Colour (and Real Objects)

    White walls are supposed to feel expansive. Mine just felt loudly bare. So, added the missing art gally art! I was on a budget so I used pieces I already had and found sneaky ways to have the art I wanted for cheap. I also opted for larger pieces to highlight the high ceilings.

    Although I was allergic to clutter at first (and still am), I’ve been carefully adding in certain relics of my past to create a sense of “me” in the space. Suddenly, the space feels a little more lived in. Less Airbnb, more mine.

    3. Fighting the Fishbowl

    Those giant windows that developers love? They’re psychological warfare for me. The glare during the day made my condo borderline unusable. Am I alone in this? I feel like everyone always gushes over lots of light coming into their condo. I can’t stand it. The fix: sheer curtains layered with blackout panels.

    The sheers diffuse the light like a soft box, still bright, but not retina-searing. If I really want to concentrate on work, I pull the heavier panels across, and the place finally feels enclosed. Private. Contained. Like I’m no longer on display in a downtown terrarium.

    4. Reclaiming the Lighting

    Nothing says “temporary” like cold LED downlights. The kind that make everything — your dinner, your skin tone, your soul — look slightly worse. I added multiple other sources of light around my place but I’m still struggling with lighting. Nothing seems to light up my bedroom enough. Any tips for a glowy, cozy vibe?

    5. Drowning out the Silence

    The laminate floors, thin white walls, and concrete ceilings do strange things to sound. Even the hum of the fridge can feel oppressive. I added a few upholstered pieces and area rugs to absorb the echo. It’s a small, barely noticeable thing, but now my space sounds more like a home and less like a morgue.

    The Ongoing Experiment

    I’m not done. This place still feels cold sometimes but it’s improving. The more I touch it, personalize it, edit, and push back against the white-cube aesthetic, the more it begins to feel like a space that’s mine, even if I don’t technically own it.

  • The Performance of Confidence

    I discovered something about myself yesterday (with the help of my psychologist) that took years to put into words: I have very high internal self-esteem but, often, low external self-esteem.

    Internally, I know who I am. I like myself. I trust my values and my sense of right and wrong. I believe I am capable, kind, thoughtful, and deserving of love. That’s my inner foundation, and it’s strong. But when I step into certain social settings, especially ones where I feel I am being watched or judged, that inner confidence doesn’t always translate. I don’t crumble, but I do become hyper-aware and struggle to express myself naturally.

    It’s strange to come to terms with this because I am not someone who sees themselves as seeking approval. I don’t expect people to love me, and honestly, I don’t think anyone (other than my parents) ever could love me as much as I love myself. And despite how that sounds, please don’t read it as arrogance; it’s simply a recognition of how deep my self-understanding runs. I know the full picture of who I am–my intentions, my history, my heart–and no one else ever will.

    Now, this doesn’t mean I’m claiming to be immune to social pressures concerning “image”. Despite being raised to love my external appearance and not care about keeping up with the Joneses, the world keeps pushing its expectations on how you’re “supposed” to look, behave, or perform in public. I find myself exhausted by this tension and constantly fighting the internalization of these standards. I was nurtured with unconditional support, encouragement, and the confidence to trust myself, so it’s frustrating that society–namely social media influenced society–keeps trying to make me feel “less than” simply for not conforming to its ideals or for resisting its attempts to shape the way I think of myself.

    I realized recently, while looking out my living room window onto the busy street below, that this internalization manifests in strange ways: I sometimes catch myself using people as mirrors. What I mean by this is that their presence becomes a kind of reflection. Not of how they see me, but of how I see myself. When I am around others, I imagine them holding the same standards I hold for myself, and I silently ask, “Am I living up to my own expectations right now?” It’s less about their judgment and more about me projecting my inner critic onto them.

    This ties into my perfectionism. I have incredibly high standards, not just for what I do, but for who I am, how I think, and what I know. I want to embody the best version of myself at all times. And when I feel eyes on me, I start evaluating whether I am matching that image. The discomfort doesn’t come from a fear of rejection; it comes from a fear of falling short of my own ideal.

    So yes, I have high internal self-esteem, but I am still learning how to let that inner steadiness stay with me even when the spotlight turns on. My next step is learning how to be fully at ease in front of others and to feel okay in the discomfort until that day comes.

  • The Age of the Acceptable: How Standards Are Quietly Slipping

    For the first time in recent memory, decline is being met with apathy, or at least toleration. From customer service to craftsmanship, from civic etiquette to the small courtesies of daily life, standards are softening not under the weight of scarcity or crisis, but through a cultural recalibration of what’s “good enough.”

    Until now, we have not been under the austerity of wartime or the improvisation of recession. But a quiet complacency has taken over in an age of convenience and abundance. When next-day delivery, frictionless subscriptions, and algorithmic recommendations promise non-stop satisfaction, the incentive to demand better has eroded. The result is a society content with mediocrity dressed as accessibility. Where speed is preferred over thoughtfulness and where “fine” has replaced “excellent.”

    When Lowering the bar is Disguised as a Progress Bar

    Walk into a café that prides itself on “artisanal” coffee, and you might find a cup that’s tepid, hurriedly made, yet still commanding a premium. Call customer service, and you’ll likely meet a script, not a person. Even in personal conduct, politeness and punctuality, once cornerstones of civil life, now seem optional.

    It’s not that people are incapable of higher standards; rather, the cultural pressure to maintain them has faded. The pandemic normalized a certain looseness: sweatpants on video calls, delayed responses, half-efforts justified as self-care. Many of these shifts were understandable at the time, but they have since hardened into habit.

    The Paradox of Plenty

    Ironically, this decline arrives at a time when access to quality has never been easier. Knowledge, design, and education circulate freely online. Yet the abundance of choice has dulled discernment. Why seek the best when “good enough” arrives faster and cheaper? Why refine taste when trends change hourly?

    This flattening of expectation stretches from products to people. Influencer culture prizes relatability over refinement; corporations prioritize speed over substance. The collective result is an ambient lowering of the bar, a soft cultural shrug.

    A Call for the Demanding

    If there’s hope, it lies in the growing number of quiet dissenters, craftspeople, restaurateurs, perfectionists, consumers with taste, who resist the erosion. They still iron their shirts, walk on the right side of the sidewalk, try things on in person instead of trusting the online photos, and don’t believe every review. Their rebellion is not nostalgic but civic. They remind us that standards in service, in production, in taste, and in behaviour are not elitist affectations but expressions of care.

    To demand better is not to be difficult; it is to participate in the maintenance of civilization.

    As the age of the acceptable deepens, the challenge will be to remember that “good enough” is rarely that.