A friend offered me a suggestion.
We were talking about making tools versus making content. She said:
Between tools and content, I wonder whether content might suit you better. Visual expression is one of your strengths.
I understood the kindness behind it. Aesthetic judgment and visual expression are abilities I want to keep using. Video is also a form worth exploring.
But my reply was direct:
For now, I want to make the tools that meet my own needs and delight me.
Making content does not delight me in the same way—at least not yet.
After sending those lines, my priorities felt a little clearer.
Something can be valuable, and I can be good at it, without it deserving most of my energy right now.
Begin with the work you are willing to invest yourself in.
The List of Things You “Should” Do Keeps Growing
You know design, so you should post more work.
You can express ideas, so you should make videos.
You are building products, so you should keep publishing updates, show the process, and run your accounts.
Each suggestion sounds reasonable on its own. Put them together, though, and it feels like opening a dozen windows at once—each one reminding you that it is next.
The hours and energy in a day remain the same.
If I accept everything, I can easily end up advancing every task while becoming less certain about which one I actually want to do today.
So I ask myself a small question:
If nobody were urging me and no metric needed checking, where would I choose to spend the next few hours?
For now, my answer is to make the tools that meet my own needs.
Make Something You Will Still Want to Open Tomorrow
In my previous essay, I wrote about building several products with AI and slowly piecing together the life I want.
I look at the world in the morning, read a chapter before noon, and rest for a while at midday. These needs are specific, and the products are things I genuinely use in my own life.
Using a tool every day reveals the problems hidden in details: an extra tap here, a passage that is harder to read there, a sound that is not yet comfortable enough.
That feedback is close to me.
When I improve something, I can feel the difference directly. I open it again tomorrow, and it works a little better than yesterday. That gives me a reason to continue.
Of course, liking something myself does not prove that other people need it, much less that anyone will pay for it.
The next step still requires listening to real feedback, observing use, and gradually validating value.
But at the starting point, I at least know why I want to make it.
Meditation Music Is Content I Do Want to Make Now
Interestingly, this does not mean I am postponing every form of content.
I immediately added another reply:
Making meditation music delights me, so I will do that first.
Music is content too. But making a meditation track I personally want to hear gives me a very direct source of motivation.
I look forward to finishing it, and I want to bring it into my own daily life. Then I can gradually add it to Yixiu Meditation so that people with similar needs can hear it too.
The act of creating makes me want to invest myself, and the finished work returns to ordinary life.
That is enough reason to begin.
Under the same label of “making content,” some tasks make me think, “I should publish an update.” Others make me think, “I want to try one more version.”
I want to leave more time for the second kind.
Perhaps, after a while, I will discover a way of expressing myself through video that I truly enjoy. I can move more energy there when that happens.
The words “not yet” are there to leave room for change.
Let Doudoulong and Xiazi Grow into Their Own Characters
I will keep developing the characters and content of Doudoulong and Xiazi.
In the conversation, I said, “One step at a time. I will make it.”
What stories can a character tell? What voice should it use? What kind of images suit it? Each answer needs small experiments.
I want these characters to have their own humour and personality while carrying the things I care about: looking at a larger world, noticing opportunities, appreciating different forms of beauty, and living well.
That requires a body of work. It also requires me to find a way of working that I can sustain.
Begin with an image I like and a story that feels natural to tell. Then try turning it into a short video. Finish it, notice how I and the readers respond, and decide what comes next.
Seen this way, the pressure of “so much content I must make later” becomes curiosity about “what would I like to try next?”
Content Should Help the Right People Find the Tool
My friend later said, “Content can be more valuable than tools.”
I understand that view. Content has value of its own, and it can help more people discover a creator.
At this stage, however, I am more interested in connecting the two.
My original reply was blunt:
Content brings attention and guides people toward the tools.
Put more fully, aesthetics, stories, sound, and ideas can create interest first. Then people can see how a work might enter their lives.
A meditation track someone wants to hear until the end can naturally reveal the kind of rest it supports. An entertaining comic can invite someone to keep reading.
Content creates discovery. A tool gives that interest somewhere to land.
But the content itself still has to be worth seeing or hearing. Anyone gets tired when every spark of interest is immediately answered with a demand to download something.
Even if a reader never uses the tool, I hope the content gives them some pleasure, insight, or a new perspective. People with a real need can follow the path further.
Whether this has commercial value ultimately depends on practical questions: how many suitable people arrive, whether they use the product, why they remain, and what they are willing to pay for.
View counts can help people notice you. Whether a product continues to matter can only be answered by the experience itself.
Give Yourself an Order—and Permission to Change It
Here, “delighting myself” has a concrete meaning: I want most of the time I invest each day to remain connected to genuine interests and needs.
Work we love still brings trouble. It still contains tedious revisions and responsibilities we must carry.
But when the direction is one we believe in, the less interesting parts have a reason to be completed.
For now, I want to improve the tools I am willing to use, make music I want to hear, and let the content of Doudoulong and Xiazi grow gradually.
When new opportunities or new enthusiasm appear, the order can change.
I do not need to rank every form of creation for the rest of my life today.
I only need to move the thing I truly want to do now a little further forward.
Yixiu—care for the body and emotions, and leave a little space for energy to return.
Buer—accept that I am good at some things and do not want to do some others, at least for now.
Sanman—slow down, go gradually, and become over time.
Like water—take root within and flow outward; adapt to change without losing what matters.
Begin with what you love, then gradually find people who carry a similar need.
Let the work grow—and leave room for your own life as it does.
#RestWholenessSlowness
Works mentioned in this essay:
- Yixiu Meditation
- Xiazi · Yesterday’s World
- Xiazi Style Atlas
- WonderElian · Along the Way
The illustrations draw on the Shojo manga style recommended by Style Atlas, using delicate lines, soft light, and emotional expression to portray adult creative life. The conversation is represented only through short text excerpts; no participant portraits or group-chat information are shown.