You Used to Be Interesting

Hey Tranfold, today's issue might make you miss someone you used to be.

A few things worth your time today:

🪨 the smooth, easy-to-handle person you accidentally became
🪨 the public breakup that built someone's best year
🪨 why being ignored is more dangerous than being hated
🪨 the bucket with no bottom (and why you should stop filling it)

⁓Anyona, Editor

Read time: 6 minutes ⚡

Somewhere back there is a version of you that would make you cringe now.

You had strange interests. Dinosaurs, or a band nobody else liked, or collecting something worthless.

You could become obsessed with something for no reason other than it fascinated you. You had strong opinions about things that didn't matter. You said what you thought before checking whether everyone else agreed.

You wore things you liked. Liked things you couldn't explain. Wanted things that seemed unrealistic.

And you didn't spend nearly as much time wondering how you were being perceived.

You wouldn't describe that person as mature...But they were interesting.

Now let's be clear about what "interesting" means here. It isn't weird. It isn't quirky. It isn't having a personality you could print on a tote bag. Interesting people are unembarrassed. They care about specific things, out loud, and they don't apologize for it.

You used to be like that, then somewhere along the way, you started editing.

Nobody takes your personality in one go. You hand it over a little at a time, usually without noticing.

Think of a rough piece of wood. Every time it catches on something, you sand it down. Do that for fifteen years and you end up with something smooth, uniform, and easy to handle. It also has no grain left.

That's what the editing does. It rarely happens all at once. It happens through a thousand tiny corrections.

Someone called your interest weird, so you stopped mentioning it.
Someone laughed at your excitement, so you learned to hide it.
You realized certain parts of you were accepted while others weren't.

So little by little, you edited yourself.

You talked less. Became more agreeable. You learned which opinions were safe. Which jokes landed. Which parts of yourself made people like you. And which parts made them look at you differently.

Every adjustment made sense on its own. Added up, they built someone who is very good at fitting in and has almost forgotten what they were like before fitting in was the goal.

Then, at some point, the people correcting you stopped being necessary. You took over the job.

Now you edit yourself before anyone else gets the chance. You draft the message, delete half of it, and send the safe version. You think of an idea and kill it before it reaches your mouth. You imagine the reaction in advance and adjust to it, even when nobody is there.

Most of the audience you're editing for isn't even watching, and the ones who are, are busy editing themselves for you.

Social media took this further. Before, your audience was small: a classroom, a family, a friend group. Now it's everyone, all the time.

Every opinion comes with a number. Every hobby gets graded in public. You learn fast what gets rewarded, and without ever deciding to, you start making only that.

And before you roll your eyes, this isn't a speech about deleting your apps. You probably found this newsletter on one.

But it does something sneakier. It shows you ten thousand people who are better at your thing than you are, so why keep making the bad version? And if you do keep it, it nudges you to turn it into content, then a side hustle, then a brand. A thing you once did for no reason becomes a thing you have to justify.

There's a version of adulthood most people never question.

You become more serious. More practical. More predictable.

You stop doing things that might make you look foolish. You learn how to behave. You learn how to fit into rooms. You become better at reading people.

All of that can be useful.

But somewhere in the process, social intelligence gets confused with self-erasure.

It gets called maturity when sometimes it's simply fear with better vocabulary.
It gets called outgrowing your old self when sometimes you've only outgrown the freedom to express it.

And no, I'm not suggesting you return to being twelve. Or you develop a new personality; New habits. New identity. New mindset. New life as most of the self-improvement advice frames it.

Because perhaps you don't need to become someone new. Perhaps you need to become less edited.

I'm not suggesting that you need to start wearing your childhood clothes, resurrect every old obsession, or force yourself to be eccentric for the sake of being eccentric.

Keep the wisdom you've earned. Keep the discipline. Keep the lessons. Keep the ability to read a room. Keep the maturity that came from getting hurt and growing through it.

But don't try to keep every rule you learned while trying to belong.

Yes, some of them protected you once. But that doesn't mean they deserve to run your life forever.

Bring back the unnecessary questions. The obscure interests. The strong opinions. The things you care about for no practical reason.

Wear the thing. Make the thing. Say the thing. Learn the strange subject. Follow the curiosity.

Let yourself be a little difficult to categorize.

Not because being different makes you special. But because constantly trying not to be different can make you disappear.

You don't need to manufacture a more interesting version of yourself. You don't need another personality. You don't need to become someone worth noticing.

So stop sanding yourself down every time a rough edge appears.

Because goal was never to become someone new. It was to stop being afraid of the person you were before you learned to edit yourself.

You don't have to grow into someone else. You just have to grow back into yourself.

For seven days, do one of these per day:

Day 1: Make the list. Write down three things you were obsessed with between ages ten and thirteen. Don't judge them. Don't ask if they're useful. Just write them down.

Day 2: Do one of them again. Badly, if it comes to that. Ten minutes is enough.

Day 3: Say the unedited thing. Pick one opinion you'd normally soften and say it the way you actually think it.

Day 4: Make something nobody will see. Spend an hour on something you like with zero plan to share it. No post, no caption, no audience.

Day 5: Catch the flinch. You know that tiny moment right before you say or do something real, when a voice in your head says "maybe don't"? You were about to share a weird interest, give your honest opinion, or laugh at your own joke, and then you held back. That's the flinch.

Today, notice it three times. Each time, ask yourself: Am I holding this back because it's wrong, or just because it's unusual? If it's just unusual, do it anyway.

Day 6: Ask someone who knew you early. What were you like when they first met you? What did you care about that you don't talk about anymore?

Day 7: Write down what came back. What did you forget? What surprised you? What are you not ready to let go of again?

You won't become a different person in a week. That's not the point.

The point is to find out how much of the old you is still there, waiting for you to stop crossing it out.

Over-explaining, shape-shifting, and burning yourself out trying to earn someone's approval is a losing game. When someone is committed to misunderstanding or undervaluing you, no level of effort will ever bridge the gap.

Stop pouring energy into a bucket with no bottom. Your value doesn't drop just because someone lacks the capacity to see it.

Takeaway: Stop trying to prove your worth to an audience that was never meant for you.

Three weeks before his thirtieth birthday, Jordan got dumped. Not quietly but publicly, at a dinner with mutual friends, the kind of ending designed to humiliate. He went home that night and stared at the ceiling, replaying every reason she'd listed like a verdict: unambitious. stuck. comfortable.

For about a week, he let himself drown in it.

Then something flipped. He'd been "waiting for the right time" to start his business for two years. Waiting to get "more serious" about the gym. Waiting for some future version of himself who felt ready. She'd just handed him, cruelly, the clearest list of everything he'd been avoiding.

So he stopped waiting.

He woke up at 5 a.m. the next Monday and didn't stop. Gym, every day. The business plan he'd shelved, pulled back out and finished in three weeks instead of three years. He didn't do it to win her back, he barely thought about her at all after month two. He did it because the hit had already landed; the only choice left was what he built on top of it.

A year later, colleagues who'd watched him get publicly dumped barely recognized him. Not his body, not his bank account, but the certainty in how he carried himself. Not revenge. Refusal.

Moral: Pain doesn't ask permission to visit but it doesn't get to decide what you build after it leaves. When life hits you down, don't just get back up. Get back up swinging harder than before.

Disection: When you isolate someone, their desire to connect doesn't die—it turns toxic. Pain demands to be felt, and if quiet contribution gets ignored, loud destruction becomes the only way to get noticed.

People don't burn things down because they hate the structure; they do it because chaos forces everyone to finally look at them. Sabotaging a team, wrecking a relationship, or blowing up your own life often starts with a quiet craving for warmth and validation.

Takeaway: Desperation always demands an audience. If you ignore your need for validation and connection, you’ll end up sabotaging your own relationships, career, or progress just to feel seen. Stop burning down your world, build your own warmth instead.

🧠 Your brain is doing something strange here.
🦍 Why Chimps Cuddle After Arguments
🪦 The dead man who helped win a war.
🌊 See how deep the ocean really goes.

🧠 Riddle

The more you take, the more you leave behind. What am I?

PS — find the answer at the bottom👇

What do you think of today's edition"?

What resonated with you? what didn't? what would you like us to talk about next?

Just hit reply and speak your mind. Even a few words can help us make the next edition better.

You've rehearsed the worst case a hundred times.
Every way it fails, every way you look stupid.
Word for word. Scene for scene.

Now picture the best case.

you can't, can you?

That's not caution.
That's cowardice with a better excuse.

You're just scared that if you imagine it working out
And it doesn't, you'd have no one left to blame but yourself.

Look— Picture the worst all you want. It won't protect you from anything. It'll just make sure you never try.

Answer: Footsteps.