What is Little Bench Project?
A quiet digital place to read honest stories, leave an anonymous note, and return to your words later using a private Bench Key. A note can be public for a stranger to discover or private for only you to revisit.
About the bench
The story behind
a quiet place.
Little Bench Project started with a simple belief: when a thought becomes too heavy to keep carrying, giving it words can create a little room around it.
Why this bench existsFour honest answers
What this project is and why it became personal.
Why a bench?
The first article I ever wrote began while I was sitting on one. A bench does not ask why you came, require an introduction, or rush you to leave. It simply gives you somewhere to pause.
Why did I create it?
Writing helped me when anxiety and depression filled my mind with thoughts that felt constant and impossible to stop. Readers also told me that my stories awakened memories from their own lives. I wanted those memories to have somewhere to go.
Who created it?
I'm Shail S. Choksi, a writer, product manager, and theatre artist. I spend much of my professional life turning complicated problems into products, while writing and acting give emotions a language they do not always find in ordinary conversation.
How the bench works
A thought surfaces. The bench gives it somewhere to go.
- 1ReadAn honest story stirs something from your own life.→
- 2WritePut the thought into words without attaching your name.→
- 3ChooseLeave it publicly for a stranger or keep it completely private.→
- 4ReturnUse your Bench Key whenever you are ready to meet your words again.
No likes. No rankings. No expectation to sound okay.
The person behind the bench
Shail S. Choksi
Writer · Product Manager · Theatre Artist
“The person making everyone laugh can also be carrying something no one else can see.”
The person people see
People who know me often describe me as an extrovert. I talk a lot, make jokes, and usually try to keep everyone around me laughing. That person is real, but it is not the whole story. Behind the laughter, my heart has carried loneliness, sadness, struggle, and emotions I did not always know how to explain.
After I lost my father, that heaviness became much harder to carry. Grief found its way into anxiety and depression. The experience was new to me: constant unwanted thoughts, worries that would not stop, and moments when I cried without fully understanding what had triggered them.
What writing changed
Talking helped. I spoke with friends, my wife, colleagues, and my therapist. My therapist suggested that I write every thought, even the frightening, uncomfortable, irrational, or embarrassing ones. I was told to spend a few moments with what I had written and then step away from it.
Honestly, it helped. Writing did not magically remove everything I was feeling, but once a thought was on the page, it was no longer moving endlessly around my mind. The page could hold it for me.
The artist who kept waiting
Writing had been part of me since childhood. Around the age of ten or twelve, I wrote in a diary about friendship, loneliness, comments about my height, and the small experiences that felt enormous at that age. I was not trying to become a writer. I was simply trying to understand myself.
Acting was another unfinished dream. For years, the practical parts of life moved forward while the artist in me waited quietly. In 2023, I finally stepped onto a theatre stage in It's a Wonderful Life. Since then, theatre has become another place where I can express what ordinary conversation cannot always hold. A character gives me permission to be vulnerable, funny, frightened, or completely present.
Product management, writing, and theatre may appear to be different worlds, but I experience them in a similar way: each begins by listening carefully to what someone is trying to say, even when they do not yet have the right words.
What I believe
This space is about you. You do not have to sound positive, grateful, intelligent, or emotionally strong. You only have to be honest.
Little Bench Project is not a replacement for therapy or professional support. It is simply a quiet place to express yourself honestly and unapologetically without being judged.
A bench for your words
I created this bench because writing gave my thoughts somewhere to go.
I hope it can offer the same small pause to yours.