The Medium Time

So we recently finished watching the Netflix Korean drama When Life Gives You Tangerines, and we were just decimated by the slow heartbreak of it all. IU and Park Bo-gum carry the series with such quiet emotional force. Over sixteen episodes, time passes gently but relentlessly. The modernisation of Jeju Island unfolds at a disjointed pace, always slightly out of step with Seoul in the background, as the characters are swept up in the growing pains of a nation now firmly fixed on the global stage... and when the end finally arrives, it’s both expected and crushing.

This scene was absolutely hilarious.

There’s a sense throughout the series that you can never quite see what’s around the corner. Life might appear to follow a steady path, even as things begin to come apart. And as we follow them over the familiar seawalls, the compressed streets lined with basalt (the doldam walls), the gritty corridors of the big smoke...it's as if, just beyond the edge of our vision, we see the unravelling pacing us.

And after all that catharsis and ache, and the final, almost-silent acceptance of a life lived for as long as we're given, I found myself reflecting on an undercurrent I’ve been noticing. I see it in my former law students, in junior colleagues, and, truthfully, I catch it in myself sometimes. It’s that quiet panic: the fear that we’re not doing enough, fast enough. That all the furious paddling we do beneath the surface still won’t let us break free of the current washing us away. It’s the anxiety we wake up to, whispering that we’re behind, that we’re not really in the game unless we’re already in the big leagues.

Of course, if you were a rubber duck, you'd never have to paddle frantically (you might need a tugboat though).

But can I offer this song as a counter to that?

In the final episode of Girls5eva, Sara Bareilles sings something quietly devastating. The tv series had been cancelled after season two, then miraculously revived... but maybe Bareilles sensed that this would be the end of the project and crafted an extraordinary goodbye.

Richard Kind - his turn on Mid-Century Modern (the latest tv offering from the pair behind Will & Grace) was just incredible.

Her character meets Richard Kind, who delivers this brilliantly awkward, oddly profound advice: that the blind chase for the big, brassy BEST (in all caps, no less) can be a trap. What’s real, he suggests, is steady work, supporting roles, and the table of Craft Services to keep you going. It’s a moment played for laughs, full of Kind’s genius discomfort—but it returns, transformed, in Bareilles’ final song: The Medium Time.

In her hands (and vocal cords), she smelts that moment into this quietly luminous song that speaks to imperfect struggle of the boring, mediocre Now. Not the big time. Not the dream deferred. But the tender, imperfect middle: where the growing happens, where trust is built, where meaning is made if we’re brave enough to look.

And I was wrecked.

That moment—of slipping something profound into the middle of a scene—reminded me of Markus Zusak’s astonishing novel, The Book Thief. It’s been out for almost 20 years now, of course, but it still guts me every time I revisit it. Maybe because it's narrated by Death, who is confounded by the contradictions of what it is to be human. Or maybe it was that innocent kiss between the two young characters at the end that still gives me pause and waters my eyes. Ah.

You see, midway through the novel—just there, quietly nestled—is a story within the story: a handmade book given to a child. And when you reach it, everything shifts. The plot pauses. And what emerges instead is grace. A sketch, a page, a fragile offering of meaning in the midst of collapse.

I remember thinking that the Book Thief would've inhabited such a space as this when I was standing in the middle of the library in RONE's installation 'TIME'.

When I left academia late last year, I worried that starting over meant throwing myself back into the middle—just when I’d begun to reach beyond it. It felt like I was giving up momentum, letting go of a version of success I’d been chasing for years. But the truth is, what I’ve always longed for isn’t just the big stage—it’s the big feast. Not the kind actors get at Craft Services, but a sprawling Peranakan spread of home-cooked dishes that could last a lifetime. Different flavours, different moods. Work that nourishes and challenges. Stories shared with all kinds of people who find themselves at the same table.

I loved the academy—researching, writing, teaching—but it was an incredibly heavy time. Around me, the pressure of politics from within and without the university seemed to be pressing in... colleagues crying in their offices, people not making "the cut". It felt like everyone was paddling furiously just to stay still. And somewhere along the way, I realised I didn’t want to keep treading water for a place at a table that kept shrinking. I’ve always been drawn to something else entirely: not the single plated course, but the abundant feast. A lifetime’s worth of dishes. Shared stories. A rhythm of work that is textured, surprising, and sustaining.

So I stepped sideways. The work I loved had started to pull in ways that no longer fit the shape of my life. And I wrote about that shift in a photo essay called The Researcher is Dead! Long Live the Researcher! (read it here) Not to close a door, but to name the transformation. To make something by hand, in the middle of it all.

So if you’re in the middle right now—treading water, switching paths, or quietly wondering if you’ve fallen behind—I want to offer this as comfort (from my decades of wandering the proverbial career desert): the medium time isn’t a mistake. It’s not a failure to launch. It’s where the substance is. It’s where the real work begins, the slow growth unfolding in fractals, and where the quiet building happens. But I also know how hard it can be to stay here. The middle invites comparison—against others, against your younger self, against the imagined future that hasn’t quite landed.

And maybe that’s why I’ve been thinking about friendship lately. My oldest friend is visiting soon from San Francisco, and I keep returning to that scene in The White Lotus Season 3 finale, where Laurie (played so, so beautifully by Carrie Coon) delivers that monologue reflecting on her search for meaning. Here, she admits that traditional belief systems have failed her, but in these repeating moments with her oldest friends, she finds this profound significance: “I don’t need religion or God to give my life meaning because time gives it meaning”—time measured in these mundane conversations, “just happy to be at the table.” I’ll write more about that next—about old friends, and the quiet measuring that happens when we sit with the people who once knew us before all of this.