I Wanted To Know My Neighbors

I have a book called 3,000 Questions About Me. It’s exactly what it sounds like: three thousand prompts asking everything from your favorite smell to your biggest regret.

I love it ❤️.

I’m the kind of person who will walk up to you with a big smile, ask your name, and then follow it with a dozen questions. Learning small, specific facts about people is one of my favorite things.

Which is why my living situation was a little funny.

I lived in the same apartment building for years and couldn’t tell you a single neighbor’s name. I didn’t even know the people on my own floor. The building didn’t make it easy, either. There was no lounge, no gym, no common room, no group chat. Everyone came and went on their own schedule.

Around that time, I had the idea of starting a vending machine business (don’t ask me why 😂). There was just one problem: I had no idea whether anyone in the building actually wanted one. And to find out, I’d have to ask my neighbors. So I started thinking about what we all shared.

Not the hallways. Not the parking lot. The elevator. No matter which floor you lived on, chances are you used it. For a few seconds every day, it was the one space in the building we all occupied.

So I made a poster. A simple one: Would you like a vending machine in the building?

I taped it inside the elevator, and honestly forgot about it. I figured it would be the kind of thing people glanced at and ignored.

They did not ignore it. When I came back, people had actually responded. And suddenly I didn’t care about vending machines anymore. What I really wanted wasn’t snack data. It was this. I wanted to learn little things about the people I had been sharing a building with for years.

Around the same time, I was trying to learn how to draw. So I decided to combine the two. I’d put up a poster every two weeks: I’d leave it up for one week, then nothing for one week.

The questions were simple:

• What are some must-try coffee shops and restaurants around here?
• What is one book everyone should read before they die?
• What is your favorite hobby?

Each poster was hand-drawn (I know, my drawing skills are terrible lol). I taped a small envelope of pencils next to it so nobody had an excuse. I’d always go put them up late at night, around 2 AM, so no one could see me.

People recommended local restaurants, bakeries, and coffee shops. Some left notes explaining why a place is a must. Others seconded recommendations already on the board.

Strangers recommended different books. One person reminded everyone that they could borrow many of them for free through Libby.

The hobby board might have been my favorite. People weren’t just answering the questions; they were having conversations, using arrows to reply to one another across the page (look at the conversations in the bottom-right corner).

What I loved was that the answers weren’t really about books, restaurants, or hobbies. They were about people. Each response felt like a tiny window into someone’s life. I still didn’t know who had written what.

Then one day I walked into the elevator and saw something unexpected. A Question of the Week that I hadn’t made 😭. Someone else in the building had put up their own poster asking: What to do on a Tuesday night in the Upper Valley?

That was probably my favorite moment of the whole thing. Not because people answered my questions. But because someone else decided to ask one.

I never did start the vending machine business. But somewhere along the way, I realized I had been trying to solve the wrong problem. What I really wanted wasn’t a vending machine. It wasn’t passive income. It wasn’t even a better way to collect feedback. I wanted to learn about the people around me.

I still couldn’t tell you most of my neighbors’ names. But I knew someone loved gardening. Someone practiced Muay Thai. Someone thought everyone should read Crime and Punishment. Someone was having a rough time, and people wanted to help.

And somehow, that felt enough.