One useful piece of advice I came across early on in my writing career was to do interesting things. I travelled cheaply with friends. I met artists and authors. I worked with tech companies at the forefront of software, like Shopify and Figma. I moved out of the suburbs to downtown Toronto, then to Hong Kong and New York City. 

These experiences helped shape the way I think, in significant and subtle ways. For example, if you visit a bookstore in Asia, you’ll only find the english titles in the foreign books section. It’s a healthy reminder of how big the world is, how many perspectives there are, and what we still all have in common. 

What I wish I appreciated sooner was how interesting my life already had been, even before I started intentionally doing interesting things. I’d taken many of my childhood and teenage experiences for granted because they bored me, and because I knew many other people had gone through the same thing. But these experiences matter, too, when you can find the right context. 

For example, I grew up going to church and stopped in my early 20s. This sounded boring, I talked to an interesting new friend who told me that many people had stopped going as well. As I did some research, I realized that 40 million people in the U.S. had gone through this. There was a name to the trend: dechurching. What did we have in common? What was going on? Why is Canada so high up on the list? Why was my friend and I talking about it? Why have we not continued talking about it?

There were so many other boring things that became interesting to me. Being 5’6,” i.e., a short king. Lifting weights to get stronger. Being an only child. Wanting to be creative, without knowing how to do it. First dates, first kisses, and this study claiming Asian men needed to earn a lot more money than other men to be seen as equally attractive. Being a generalist. Being a third-culture kid. Being super loud because I was running away from being stereotyped as a quiet Chinese kid.

If you ever find yourself feeling like you live a boring life—and possibly having very few things worth saying—remember that you can make the experience matter. You can make your boring thing interesting to somebody else. Engage your curiosity and let it run wild.

You can decide your so-called boring thing matters. You can add context to it. You don’t need to be famous. You do need to write something from the heart, and refine the story. Only boring people get bored. You can decide to be interesting, as long as you’re willing to do the work.