On November 7, 2023, I celebrated my 24th birthday.
There are many thoughts that naturally come to mind that I want to write down, but when I pick up the pen, I still find myself speechless. It seems that everything I want to express is always lacking a little meaning when written down.
At 24 years old, I have already gone through two cycles of life's journey. This year was supposed to be my zodiac year, but it seems that I didn't encounter any particularly difficult challenges. Maybe it's because there was no September 30th in the lunar calendar this year, so technically I didn't have a lunar birthday this year 🤣
Writing is always a conversation with oneself. Some unclear questions and realities that I don't want to face seem to lack a starting point if they are never written down. After all, we are not Trisolarans and cannot directly communicate thoughts to efficiently convey information.
Words are a beautiful thing, and square Chinese characters are even more exquisite. Although what I have written may not express even a fraction of my thoughts and emotions, I still want to write them down.
This birthday monologue may conflict with the summary of 2023 (who made my birthday mark the end of the year 🥹), but I still want to reacquaint myself from another perspective.
I thought of a few keywords: growth & reflection, friends & reading.
Growth & Reflection#
Looking back on the experiences of the past 24 years, it may have been mostly smooth sailing without experiencing major ups and downs. It's also possible that those experiences, when looked back upon, were just small hills limited by my perspective.
In my mind, scenes involuntarily appear: the child who couldn't sleep the night before the mid-term exam in junior high school due to anxiety and cried alone, the child who blushed with shyness in Chinese class because they couldn't answer a question, the naive teenager who folded paper airplanes and wrote down their dreams during the coming-of-age ceremony, the teenager who first stepped into Wuhan University and proudly proclaimed the six characters "National Wuhan University," the teenager who left footprints in Xi'an, Tianjin, Fuzhou, Suzhou, and Guizhou during university, and the teenager who came to Shenzhen alone three years ago and became a worker in this city.
Memories of the past keep emerging, and those experiences that seemed ordinary to me have formed a parallel "me" in a different time and space.
Thinking about myself, I haven't experienced starting a business or going to faraway places. I haven't had any serious illnesses. Elementary school, junior high school, high school, university, work - everything has gone according to plan, seemingly without any problems.
I remember a moment when I was a child, sitting at a banquet, and my uncle, who was the director of the Education Bureau, asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I didn't know at the time, I was probably really clueless then, still stuck at the age of reciting answers from textbooks, what thoughts could I have?
Perhaps I never had the opportunity to become an extraordinary genius, and I don't hold any hope for that. I am just satisfying my ever-growing curiosity, along with a little bit of dissatisfaction and the ridicule from relatives that comes with being born, turning left or right at each fork in the road.
I have also been stuck in the mud, blocked by abysses, soaked in heavy rain, laid down due to weariness, and lost my way due to a malfunctioning compass.
I remember during my internship, because the work was more research-oriented, I spent almost every day with a headache. Even on weekends, I would come to the company to work overtime and search for ideas. But soon, I was overwhelmed by anxiety and spent a day playing the game "King's Canyon" to temporarily forget about my troubles. It seemed that only by immersing myself in the game could I briefly forget about my worries.
I also had dreams of being a heroic swordsman and recited the verse "With one sword, I once defeated a million opponents" and "With one sword, the frost covered fourteen provinces." These beautiful words seemed to penetrate through the paper, but they couldn't pass through the shallow pages of the screen.
I remember a year later, as I became more familiar with the job, it seemed that I was starting to handle it with ease. But the projects that followed seemed to mock my ignorance. At the most confused moments, I would lock myself in the company's meeting room on weekends, repeatedly going over things on the whiteboard. Exhausted, I would look out the window, hoping to see misty mountains, but all I saw were tall buildings blocking my view.
Fortunately, those obstacles that seemed insurmountable at the time have long been filled in by the soil.
After two years of work, I began to realize that I was falling behind. I looked back at my blog, which had been dormant for a long time, and marveled at my youthful ignorance. At the same time, a desire began to stir within me - to start writing. I thought it would be a short-lived interest, but I didn't expect it to last for over half a year and result in nearly 100,000 words. It seems that work has had a significant impact on me.
Friends & Reading#
It seems that I have always been a somewhat introverted person. But in the eyes of others, it's not the case. At every stage, there are always farewells to old friends and the acquaintance of new friends. The three MBTI tests I took also told me that fundamentally, I am an extroverted person.
I have always believed in the philosophy of "the friendship of a gentleman is as light as water" and have been unwilling to get involved in small cliques. This has led to me having a wide circle of friends, but perhaps there are not many friends with whom I can truly have deep conversations.
Friends have described me as someone who can talk about any topic. This is also due to my wide range of interests.
I have always believed that treating others with sincerity will bring sincere friends. Although I have been hurt many times in the process, those meaningless accusations that used to bother me, my changing mindset has gradually taught me that perhaps this is just how adults live - wearing masks and living with pretense. But I don't want to live that way, so burdened.
It seems that I have never really celebrated my birthday seriously. I also envy those friends who had a great time in college and had their friends fly over to celebrate their birthdays. I probably never received that kind of treatment, but I have slowly gotten used to it. But this year seems a bit different. I am very happy that Meilan remembered my birthday and took the initiative to celebrate it for me (I'll talk more about it in my future articles~).
I have always loved reading. When I was a student, on the nights of the Lunar New Year, back when I was still in the countryside, I would pick up dried firewood, light the fire, and listen to the crackling sound of the fire in the quiet night. My mom used to half-jokingly say that I didn't seem like her biological child because she and my dad didn't read much, so she didn't know why I loved reading so much.
I've written so much randomly, so I'll end it here for now. Just being able to read is enough. I'll slowly perfect it later.