This note is the fourth letter in the 104-days-of-summer-vacation series. You can also follow the full twitter thread here.

Dearest Reader,

Today, I wish for you, new memories which build on old ones. It’s hard to describe the feeling of meeting people who you used to spend all your time with, after a long time. I had the lucky fortune to have the opportunity to catch up with old friends, teachers, and mentors from my high school and it felt like for a moment, I was back to being the 16 year old boy with not a care in the world.

I also caught up with some comparatively newer friends, from my time at Audacity which is a moonshot venture building collective based out of Singapore. These are the incredible, and inspiring people that I now treasure knowing, who kept my curiosity and passion for creating alive throughout my National Service.

Perhaps, it’s just the age I’m at, but the general theme of meaning kept coming up in both conversation and thought over the day. I’ve been writing about meaning a lot recently (see technomorality, technology-is-ideology, and answer-the-call) but it’s interesting for me to see the diversity of meaning that I encountered throughout the day.

One of my friends was talking about getting married to his high school sweetheart within the next six months. A bunch of us were thinking about internships and masters programs, some were working on side-projects and others were scaling their startups. In both groups, we spent a lot of time talking about the various things we were doing, and how they made us feel. Themes that came up were; imposter syndrome, fear of failure, fear of not doing enough, confusion about why they’re doing what they’re doing etc.

And everyone had their own ways of handling these challenges, the entire conversation became a beautifully positive space for exchanging good vibes, support, advice and techniques. And through these conversations, I’ve felt first hand how warm, supportive and necessary these sorts of spaces are for people who are just trying to figure out where they fit in.

If you haven’t seen my summer-2023 note where I drafted out my plans for summer, I mentioned something called the Poiesis Network. To summarize briefly, the Poiesis Network was a space that I wanted to create for young individuals to share knowledge and support each other. And many of people I’ve invited into the network, have asked me what the one unifying thing about the group is going to be, especially since the profile of the people I’ve invited ranges from artists, to engineers, to entrepreneurs and writers.

So far, I’ve answered that question in somewhat of a hand-wavy sense, by saying it’s a group of people who are excited to create and give something to the world. But today, I’m starting to see a clearer picture, of what I’m really seeking.

I want a space of not creation for creation’s sake, but rather one which can help people discover what meaningful creation is for them. I would like members of Poiesis to make meaning, in every sense that the word meaning might be made to each of them - regardless if it’s art, design, poetry, code, construction, and all other mediums of expression.

Being meaningful, demands what I feel is the highest level of honesty with yourself and the peers that surround you. Which is very hard, but if a space can empower and encourage us to pursue our meaning openly, I think that would really be magical.

P.S - If anyone reading this is based in Singapore, and wants to join us, please DM me on Twitter!

~ Shan