It starts with the hesitation of what to even talk about, and from there feels a bit like being up in the air without a map. The path spirals from the social performance of reading books to a more unsettling thought: that reading is like selling your soul to the author, letting them live through you for a moment.

From there, it becomes a conversation about conversation itself. How the simple act of trying to put an idea into words changes its shape, the quiet fear of sharing a thought that feels too hazardous, and the way we constrain ourselves just by the presence of another person. It all ends up somewhere near the very human search for an "off switch". Seeing validation not as simple praise, but as a fundamental signal that what you've done is good enough, that it's okay to stop striving and finally rest.