By Jane Sonnenschein · July 27, 2026

“I write to find out what I am thinking, what I am looking at, and what it all means.”
— Joan Didion

At first, today seemed like any other July 27. I went out, walked around, dealt with a few everyday tasks. It did not feel very different from many other days.

But today, I received an email from WordPress. It told me that my independent website had just received its first like.

On a busy social media platform, one like means very little. Those places are like markets that never close. People keep pouring in, and the numbers never stop moving. A thousand likes, ten thousand, even hundreds of thousands no longer seem unimaginable. A single like dropped into a place like that is quickly swallowed up. Most people would not even notice it.

But when that like appeared on my own website, it felt different.

I once wrote that building an independent website is a little like opening a supermarket deep in the mountains. You decorate it carefully, turn on all the lights, and fill the shelves with things you believe are worth keeping. But the road is long, and very few people pass by.

There is an old Chinese saying: jiǔ xiāng bù pà xiàngzi shēn—good wine needs no bush, no matter how deep the alley may be.¹ But in an age overflowing with information, even the finest wine may remain unknown if the alley is too deep and no one knows there is a jar of it waiting inside.

My website officially went live on July 1. Today marks twenty-six days.

Judging by the numbers, those twenty-six days have not brought much success. I publish an article every day. Each one also has to be translated into English and German, given an image, formatted and uploaded. Then I have to connect all three language versions.

After all that work, the pages can still feel as quiet as a house no one passes late at night.

So when WordPress told me that a stranger had read my writing and left the first like, it did not feel like just another social media notification.

It felt more like hearing a faint echo in the distance after walking alone through the dark for a very long time. Or like someone finally reaching a house that had stood lit in the mountains for many nights, and gently knocking on the door.

That person did not say anything. I did not even know who they were. But that small action seemed to tell me: I was here. I read this. What you have written has not disappeared completely into emptiness.

Today was also the day I finally managed to download Threads.

For many people, downloading an app takes only a few minutes. On my phone, it somehow became unusually complicated.

My phone is signed in to a German Apple account, while purchases have long been made through a Chinese account, because many Chinese apps are unavailable through the German App Store. Threads, however, could not be found in the Chinese store.

Something that should have been very simple turned into several rounds of switching, searching and trying again. I did not finally understand how to make it work until today.

At one point, I did not even want to switch accounts again just for one app. It seemed like too much trouble. When Threads finally appeared on my screen, I almost felt as though, after an enormous amount of effort, I had finally managed to invite it into my phone.

My first habitual question was: Which language should I use for this account? Chinese, German or English?

But I soon realised that my website was already trilingual. The people who found their way there might come from different countries. So why should I force myself to choose only one language?

On a day when a thought comes to me in Chinese, I can write it in Chinese. If a sentence feels more natural in English, I can use English. Some observations belong very specifically to life in Germany, and there is no reason not to write those in German.

I used to think I could only write long essays and was not good at shorter forms.

My articles often begin with a small detail from everyday life. Then I slowly unfold the background and work my way through the relationships and meaning inside it. That kind of writing belongs on an independent website, but it does not suit every social platform.

People’s attention is increasingly divided into smaller and smaller pieces. Few people are ready at any given moment to sit down and read several thousand words.

But as I was walking today, I suddenly realised that we all have many small feelings and thoughts throughout an ordinary day.

We may see a flower, a tree or a cloud. We may simply remember a change in some number, and something inside us moves very slightly.

Those thoughts may not yet be complete enough to become an essay, but that does not mean they have no value.

On Threads, I wrote about the difference I had felt between TikTok and Instagram:

“One kind of growth sweeps you into the excitement and makes you believe, for a moment, that you are standing at the centre of the world. The other lets your work travel slowly outward, while people who didn’t know you begin to come closer, one by one.”

Late last year, I experienced a sudden wave of attention on TikTok.

For more than ten days, followers and notifications arrived so quickly that I almost lost my sense of time. Every minute, someone new followed me. Every time I opened my phone, the numbers had changed again.

When you are inside something like that, you cannot help slipping into a state of constant excitement. It feels as though you have suddenly found yourself standing at the centre of the world.

The feeling was so intense that even now, looking back, I still find it difficult to describe.

But once the wave has passed, your sense of scale has already changed.

Three hundred views, which once seemed perfectly respectable, suddenly feel as though nothing happened at all. A slowly growing follower count begins to feel unbearably slow.

Once you have heard the roar of a wave rushing onto the shore, it is difficult to adjust immediately to the quieter rhythm of a tide that moves forward only a little each day.

Since I began posting regularly on Instagram again this year, I have experienced something very different.

It has not suddenly brought me hundreds or thousands of followers. Instead, it sends out a little of my older content each day, bringing a few likes and, from time to time, one or two new followers.

There is none of the excitement that makes a person lose their head, but there is also none of the silence that suddenly falls back to zero.

It feels more like a slow, steady stream.

And today, the first like on my independent website gave me a sense of an even slower and quieter kind of connection.

Of course, it cannot prove that people will now begin reading my website. It cannot prove that this project will eventually succeed. But it feels like one small point on a map, showing me that I have not come this far without leaving any trace at all.

In truth, my path towards this website did not begin on July 1.

Since I returned to writing regularly on December 17 last year, I have written several hundred articles. Most of them are several thousand Chinese characters long. I write about family, education, relationships and culture. I also write about the slow process of understanding myself.

Through writing, I have looked back at the past and tried to understand why I made certain choices. I have also tried to understand my relationships with my parents, my husband, my child and the world around me.

Sometimes, I still wonder whether any of these words have meaning.

I have been writing for a long time on my WeChat public account² and Xiaohongshu.³ My follower count on Xiaohongshu has continued to grow very slowly, even though the account already had more than three hundred followers when I began.

In an age increasingly shaped by short videos, strong stimulation and fragmented information, carefully writing several thousand words can feel like walking against the rhythm of the platform itself.

When I am tired, I sometimes ask myself: What is all this for?

But gradually, I have come to understand that writing gives me more than results I can measure in numbers.

It helps me sort through experiences that once felt chaotic. It allows me to understand my own life again. And in situations I was once unable to explain, it gives me a small place where I can finally put myself.

That is probably why I have never truly stopped writing.

A few days ago, I saw an AI-generated animation on Instagram.

In the image, a person stood beneath an impossibly high staircase, struggling to climb. The first step was so tall that it barely looked like a step at all. After that, the path seemed much gentler.

Many people stood below, trying everything they could think of, but they could not get over that first obstacle.

The image stayed with me.

In many things, the hardest part is not travelling a great distance. It is going from zero to one.

From the outside, people see a website updated every day. They see new articles appearing, followed by videos and images. It may look as though the person doing all this finds it easy.

Only someone who has actually made that journey knows how high the first step really is.

Over the past year, from last May to this July, I have tried many things.

I have experienced the madness of numbers suddenly exploding, the disappointment of a platform becoming quiet again, and the loneliness of continuing for a long time without any response.

Most of the time, persistence does not come with an inspiring scene. It simply means finishing what needs to be done on one ordinary evening after another.

On July 19, I began updating the social platforms I had left untouched for more than half a year.

This time, however, something was different: I had my own independent website.

The videos and short pieces of text no longer floated alone in a feed. Behind them were full articles that people could trace back to, complete thoughts, and a place where those fragments had originally grown.

For the first time, I felt that my independent website was the source of everything I wanted to express.

A short video can carry a story farther. Instagram can hold moments that belong in images. Threads can become a container where thoughts that have not yet grown into full articles can leave a small trace.

When an idea becomes complete enough, it can eventually return to the website and be preserved there.

Only recently have I begun to understand that what I truly need is not a more efficient way to manage platforms. I need a rhythm that will allow me to remain here for a long time.

I do not want to force myself to produce content for platforms every day as though I were reporting to another job.

Instead, I want a real current to run between life, writing and the platforms.

Something happens in life, and something inside me is touched. The thought flows into words. The shorter ones stay on Threads. Moments that belong in images go to Instagram. The thoughts that become complete return to the website.

In this way, platforms are no longer machines that constantly demand more content from me.

They can begin to hold pieces of life, preserve thoughts, and create the possibility that two people might unexpectedly find each other.

Perhaps what I received today was nothing more than one ordinary like on an independent website.

In the noisy world of social media, it was so small that it hardly seemed worth mentioning.

But to me, it was not ordinary.

It told me that someone had finally stopped outside the small shop I had kept brightly lit for so long, deep in the mountains.

It also reminded me that after walking through darkness for a long time, even the softest knock on a door can make one day feel different from all the others.

That is why I want to remember July 27, 2026.

It was the day my independent website received its first like. It was also the day I finally downloaded Threads and began to understand how different platforms could hold different kinds of writing.

Nothing dramatic seemed to happen.

And yet, it allowed me to feel once again that the words I had written, the wrong turns I had taken, and the silences I had lived through had not disappeared completely.

Words can remain for a very long time.

And somewhere I do not yet know, perhaps someone really will find their way towards them, slowly.

Postscript

Just before publishing this essay, I noticed another small coincidence.

The first like my independent website received today was on the English essay When a Child Can Already See Far Ahead, but Her Hands and Emotions Haven’t Caught Up. Later, when I opened Medium, I discovered that the same essay had also received a clap there. The person who left it is an author with around 13,000 followers.

These are still only two very small numbers, yet they feel especially precious to me. In two different places, two people who did not know me stopped at the same essay and left a sign that they had been there.

This essay is the first in a seven-part series that began with nothing more than a drawing my daughter had torn up. I never expected it to return to me today in this way, carrying two quiet echoes from afar.

Perhaps some words do not disappear after they are published. Perhaps they simply keep travelling in silence, until one day they are seen by someone far away.

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Notes

1. Jiǔ xiāng bù pà xiàngzi shēn (酒香不怕巷子深): Literally, “good wine is not afraid of a deep alley.” It is a traditional Chinese saying meaning that something of genuine quality will eventually be discovered, even without advertising or a prominent location. Here, it is used to question whether that belief still holds in an age of information overload.

2. Wēixìn gōngzhònghào (微信公众号): A publishing channel within WeChat where individuals, organisations and businesses can post articles for subscribers. It is widely used in China for long-form writing, news, commentary and personal essays.

3. Xiǎohóngshū (小红书): Literally “Little Red Book.” It is a Chinese social media platform built around lifestyle posts, personal recommendations, images and short videos.

This essay is also available in other languages:

Chinese version: 7月27日，一个普通又不普通的日子

German version: Der 27. Juli: ein gewöhnlicher und doch ungewöhnlicher Tag