Hii, I’m Pteyra 👋
I’m the creator of Library of Human Experience.

Library of Human Experience began as a project called Texterview. That early version shaped the foundation of this project, but it has since evolved into something broader.

Your story deserves to know the story behind the space that’s asking for it.
So, I want to share how all of this came to be. One person trying to understand the world, one story at a time.
It’s been years of growth, experimentation, reflection, and evolution to get here.
This story could honestly go on forever, but I’ll try to summarise it as best as I can.

I started this project years ago as a teenager, driven by a deep curiosity about the world.

It was inspired by a connection with Mel, my friend who lived on the other side of the world. We met online and got much closer over time, and they genuinely made me a better person.

I was super fascinated by them, and I found myself really curious about how they saw things.

I grew up as an oversheltered only child, and I hadn’t really spent time stepping outside my own bubble or connecting with people. Over time, through conversations and connection with people, I slowly started to find myself in a different way.

Especially being an only child, I was starting to unlearn a lot of the pressure I grew up with.

I used to scroll through and lurk on the r/onlychild subreddit. I was glued to it. It was so interesting seeing experiences of only children around the world, posts I really related to, and posts that were completely different from my experience in ways I found fascinating.

At some point it clicked that instead of just reading, I could actually text-interview people and ask them questions I was genuinely curious about.

Back then I used to jump between a lot of random projects and websites I never fully committed to lol. It was this loop of getting super excited about an idea, building parts of it, then moving on to something else. I always had too many ideas at once.

I set up a domain (I remember it was tooreads.site) and decided I’d have a diary-style blog where I’d interview people through back-and-forth text conversations and post them.

I genuinely thought it was weird, but I wanted to try it anyway. I just really wanted to understand people’s perspectives on the questions I had.

I finally posted asking if anyone would be interested in being “Texterviewed” about their experience as an only child, where I’d text them and ask questions and publish the conversation on my blog.

And, I never could’ve expected what happened next.

People actually responded. Not just one or two, about five or more people showed interest, and they were extremely kind about it. It completely shocked me. I was scared, overwhelmed, surprised, excited, all of it at once.

I sent the list of questions to the people who showed interest through DMs.

One of the first people who responded suggested using Google Forms instead for a smoother experience.

That feedback changed everything.

It was the moment the idea started to actually take shape and make sense outside my own head.

So I made a form and sent it to the people who were interested.

And they answered.

My questions were rough, disorganized, and mostly written from my own perspective and curiosity at the time. But people still responded openly, gave thoughtful feedback, and even helped me improve the process as I went.

After a while, I posted the responses on the subreddit, and even more people became interested.

I was genuinely mindblown. I couldn’t believe people were actually taking the time to answer my questions.

I remember reading their responses and realizing I was seeing life through completely different lenses. It impacted me deeply.

These strangers were treating this random teenager’s weird little idea like it mattered. That kindness, that willingness to take me seriously, meant everything to me.

And I’ll never forget it.

This exists because of them. They’re the origin of all of this.

After the only child responses, I started exploring other communities and topics I was curious about.

At the time, my questions came just from personal curiosity and wanting to learn. (but now I think I’ve found a much better balance to ask questions that not only satisfy my curiosity, but also give people space to reflect more deeply on their own experiences.😊 )

So I kept creating questions, posting forms, and listening.

People kept responding.

And they kept giving thoughtful feedback.

Looking back, the early questions were very rough 😭 They’re actually still on the website, and sometimes I reread them and feel slightly embarrassed by how chaotic they were. But they also remind me how much this project has grown over time 😊

I’d disappear from the project sometimes, then come back and explore another topic. Back then it still felt like a side project, something I was using to learn more about people and the world while juggling a million other ideas at once.

But the more people responded, the more it started to feel bigger than me.

People thanked me for creating space for them to share. That was really surprising and overwhelming to realize it was important to people sharing too.

What started as curiosity was becoming something more meaningful, not just for me, but for the people sharing too.

And it started to scare me, it was much much bigger than me. I knew I had to do better, but I also wasn’t sure how.

I had a gazillion ideas that I didn’t even know how to go about implementing.