The ceiling fan turns slower than I thought

Ten at night, rented room,
I sit down on the edge of the bed.
The fan on the ceiling
turns slower than I thought.

Each pass of the blades
carries a thought by:
rent, a message I never answered,
the bowl still in the sink.

I meant to chase them off.
They would not go.
They followed the blades
and came, and came again.

Then I stopped chasing.
Only the sound of the fan:
one old, steady creak
where the shaft sits slightly off.

Five minutes.
The fan still turning.
I was still sitting there,
and for the first time
nowhere I had to go.

I am Tín, thirty, working the afternoon shift at a warehouse and renting a room in Thủ Đức. That night I got back close to ten, my shoulders still sore from a whole shift of stacking boxes, and I sat down on the edge of the bed without wanting to open my phone. The ceiling fan came with the room, its shaft slightly off, so it creaked with every turn.

That was my first time meditating. No app, no guided track, just the fan and a five-minute timer. I wrote the lines above afterwards, lying in bed, because something felt worth keeping and I did not know what to call it. I did not write about peace. I wrote about how I tried to chase my thoughts off, how they refused to leave, and how I stopped chasing.

Later, reading a piece about wandering thoughts when you first start meditating, I learned that this "stopping the chase" is something people often mention. You can try it exactly the way I did that night, with any steady sound in your own room.

The first time I tried it, there were more thoughts than usual, because a quiet room lets you hear them more clearly. Some people find the same. After about a week, some nights I could hear that the creak had a rhythm, and some nights I heard nothing and that was fine too. On a very tired day I sat for just one minute. If sitting still leaves you with heavy sadness, or worry that lasts for days, stop and talk to a friend you trust or to someone with professional training. If you would rather listen to rain than a fan, listening to the sound of falling rain is about exactly that.