At the end of October, I woke up.

Not from sleep, but from a life that had quietly been repeating itself for two years.

Every day looked the same. Wake up, work, store, dinner, distraction, sleep. Days off were just a softer version of the same loop. Nothing was wrong, but nothing felt right either. And slowly, without noticing, I stopped feeling like myself.

Have you ever had that moment where you suddenly think: Is this it? Is this really my life?
That question led me to something unexpected… a dream that changed everything. In this post, I want to share how that dream pulled me out of autopilot, how I reconnected with creativity after years of feeling stuck, and how I’m rebuilding a life that actually feels like mine again.

Then one night, I had the longest dream of my life.

It felt like a full length movie, with a plot I had never seen before. When I woke up, I remembered everything. Every scene. Every detail. So I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote it all down. Everything I could remember.

At the end of that dream, I was the main character. I ran away from a place I did not belong, and I found myself in a quiet bookshop. Inside, artists were talking about their work. About books. Filmmaking. Drawing. Music. People I had never met before, yet I recognized their faces.
I started browsing the shelves, picking up books, holding them like something precious.

In that dream, I felt something I had not felt in a long time.

Happiness. Joy. Excitement.

When I showed the story to my friend, she looked at me and said, “Why don’t you write a book? This is actually really good. I like it.”

That question opened a door I had quietly closed years ago.

When I was younger, I had a blog. I was majoring in IT, so I built it myself as a side project. I used to write stories all the time. Every night before sleeping, I would put on my earphones, close my eyes, and create a new story in my head. I was always the main character and all the stories were inspired by my day, but I would rewrite the ending into something I wanted instead of what had actually happened.

Looking back, some of those stories feel strangely prophetic.

In my third year of high school, I wrote about myself in Tokyo, going to a concert of my favorite band in a huge hall surrounded by Christmas lights, a market, and ever a Ferris wheel. It was colorful and magical. At that time, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I thought about studying photography, but we did not have the money. I considered biology because I loved animals and volunteered at a shelter. Somehow, I ended up choosing East Asian Studies.

In the winter of 2016, I stood inside Tokyo Dome at my favorite band’s concert. Outside, the lights were glowing everywhere. Now, I want you to Google Tokyo Dome, because at that time I wrote that story, I had never head of that place. Yet it was an exact copy of the image I had in my head when I wrote it.

When I recently found that old story, written long before the real event happened, something inside me clicked.

After that October dream, I decided to follow it literally.

I went to a bookstore and bought the books I had wanted to read for years. I had not properly read for almost a decade. I started watching films again, studying storytelling, and thinking deeply. I brushed the dust off my camera. I edited over 2000 photos I had taken but never finished. I started playing basketball again. I began running. I returned to listening to music before bed and imagining stories.

I bought a journal and began planning each day intentionally. I wrote about my ideas for characters, website designs, scenes, concepts, and personal growth. I reorganized my life to resemble the version of me from high school, the one who was always creating, always moving, always dreaming.

Since November, I have not had time to lie in bed doing nothing.

And I feel alive.

This is not about productivity for the sake of being busy. It is about reconnecting with the version of myself that feels curious and creative. I am writing because it makes me happy, reading because it inspires me and photographing because it helps me see.

I want to share this journey with you. My progress in photography. My training. The books that inspire me. The stories that shape my own writing. The process of building something from imagination into reality.

If a dream could wake me up after two years of drifting, maybe sharing this journey can wake up something in someone else too.

Honestly, it felt like a factory reset. Like the happy version of me had been sleeping somewhere deep inside my mind and finally decided she had enough. She opened her eyes, looked around, and asked one simple question:

What the hell are you doing?