Preface#
I don't know if it's the right time to say the words I've been holding onto for a long time:
The only thing that can make me unable to lift my head is the sun.
Absence#
I am actually someone who works driven by passion, although many of the things I do are not particularly passionate. The very first time I wrote a blog was back in middle school; one reason was that I simply thought it was cool, and the other was that building a blog myself seemed difficult. The former was influenced by the popularity of figures like Han Han at that time, where self-hosted blogs were particularly cool among the many blogs on NetEase and Sina. The latter was due to the fact that even before AWS became widely available, the forum of Nanjing Airlines required a network cable in the dormitory, and you couldn't even buy a cheap server if you wanted to pay, let alone if you had no money. Free servers were also quite unstable, and data could vanish at any moment.
So, from the very beginning, I was a hamster who liked to hoard data.
Who would have thought that by 2025, writing a blog would still be cool... and that building a blog myself would still be difficult? Over the years, as blogging waned, Han Han moved into a villa in Shanghai, Xiao Si moved into the Shanghai fortress, Weibo became a bare swim, and the rise and fall of public accounts and self-media led to UGC under MCN on platforms like Xiaohongshu and Douyin. Writing a blog has even become cool and luxurious.
Oh my, the FED blog on Taobao is gone, the team has been laid off; this was once an important psychological support for me.
The difficulty of building a blog myself, even after I’ve been in this field for so many years... is still very challenging. Although I still hardly spend money on servers, we have more stable options like Vercel and Cloudflare to take advantage of, but it’s still tough. After leaving Taobao, I started using Next.js to completely rewrite my blog to replace the previous Typecho, but... right, it's been almost four years, and I still haven't finished. Of course, I gave up in the third year and switched to Xlog. (I also managed to escape from those teenage, cringeworthy articles.)
This doesn't prevent me from being absent from the year-end summaries of 2022 and 2023.
Expectations#
Actually, when 2021 was coming to an end, a few friends asked me, "Boss Yu, have you written your year-end summary this year? I'm looking forward to it." I felt quite excited when asked, oh my, someone actually cares about me.
Perhaps in 2022, everyone became dulled, and no one asked me anymore. Also, due to some personal reasons, I didn't write it. I didn't meet everyone's expectations.
Writing a blog really requires feedback. This is also one of the core reasons for the decline of traditional media. Short videos are just short and quick, while blogs, which are a self-indulgent space for individuals, have no survival space in this era. Individuals writing their own blog systems, even comment systems, are often the last to be implemented or not implemented at all.
In 2022, most of my peers in graduate school started looking for jobs. The COVID farce reached its peak.
In 2023, most of my graduate school classmates were about to graduate... Originally, I might have wanted to apply for Ding Dong Chicken, but then I found out that the village wasn't hiring for that position anymore.
The anxious heart finally died, so what are we really looking forward to for the future? Is it Boss Yu's pen name?
Past Events#
As I write this, I suddenly realize that instead of doing a year-end summary, mature people should do a three-year summary! And even more mature, it should be synchronized with Trump's term!
The entire year of 2022 and 2023 was filled with anxiety. This word is perfect, anxiety; how can two precise characters easily summarize more than three years of time?
2022 was quite terrible, right? Everyone would say so; it was a year without certainty. But secretly, I learned English in 2022, even quietly enough that it didn't impress anyone. It turns out that during the lockdown, studying for the IELTS for eight hours a day was not a difficult task at all. Then, because the IELTS test centers were closed, I switched to taking the PTE. However, no matter how you look at it, it was still very fulfilling to complete a TODO that I hadn't finished in 2021.
I applied for the NZ WHV. Although I never went until the visa expired, unexpected things always happen; who knew that many preparations made at that time would later be useful? And that morning at five o'clock Beijing time, battling with Immigration New Zealand's WAF made me want to become an agent selling spots. In the recently passed 2024, a spot's price has already reached 40,000 RMB; can you believe it?
In 2022, I also left a note saying, "Try to learn more diverse languages, both programming and REAL world languages." My goodness, am I a prophet? I'm really afraid Ding Dong Chicken might one day treat me as a prophet 🔪. Over the past three years, everyone has started transforming into S, training AI, and my goal has been achieved together with all of humanity.
2022 was the year I desperately tried to go to Happy Valley/Maya. I attempted to create a legend of riding the fastest roller coaster 20 times a day to get dopamine. But it didn't go as planned, so 2022 and 2023 also turned into a time of desperately taking paroxetine. What dopamine? Serotonin is more reliable! Indeed, SSRIs can make people gain weight quickly, and I still miss that time, even somewhat nostalgic for Dr. Lu Zheng.
At the end of 2022, I was also very happy to walk on the streets with everyone, creating our own Shanghai. I saw particularly united college students, which was very comforting.
In 2023, I first witnessed the rise of the legendary unfinished building Tianan Qianshu, just like those days when everything seemed to rise from the ground.
In 2023, I also returned to Shantou, searching for the footprints I left behind. I went to CP29, and sure enough, after gaining weight, I couldn't fit into my favorite little dress. I watched Michelle Yeoh on the big screen at the Shanghai International Film Festival, deeply resonating with my first-generation immigrant self. I traveled to Xinjiang, driving recklessly for two thousand kilometers. Then, after returning to Shanghai, I found the company was gone. I went skiing madly in winter; it was so refreshing, and I stayed at home for a long time.
At the beginning of 2024, things started to go wrong, and I began a continuous struggle with IRCC. I consciously started more city walks in Shanghai. In between, I went to Guilin and Liuzhou, and for the first time, I played in the caves outside the city.
I helped someone get married for the first time!
But as summer approached, the anxiety grew. From fearing he wouldn't come to simply fearing he wouldn't come.
Before many grand narratives, the suffering in between is often automatically overlooked.
So, many of the joys and sorrows in between, the drama and the absurdity, I actually don't remember very well when I compare them with Google Photos.
With a slight daze, in October, I began preparing to come to Melbourne.
And then I came, bought a car, rented a house, and life became very simple.
Now#
Actually, if you ask me, or if I ask myself, is there a big difference between life in Melbourne and Shanghai? I have to answer that the difference is really not that big. And if you continue to ask, does it meet my expectations? I also have to answer that it meets my expectations very well.
The difference is not big, but it meets expectations, and changes have occurred; this is the contradictory reality.
Over the past ten years, more than ten years, I have always thought about escaping, escaping, escaping, like many people. What sets me apart from many others is that I have made many specific expectations, accompanied by a lot of extra anxiety. Therefore, most things in Melbourne were within my expectations. It's like a piece of youth pain literature; as I sing along, I naturally arrive at the chapter of the most ordinary and boring white moonlight.
If you are very wealthy, life in Shanghai is better than in most major cities in the world.
This statement is very true. Shanghai can have a very low cost of living, but the price is that you are not allowed to lift your head.
Political issues are always unavoidable in China, whether for political opportunists or ordinary citizens. Even in recent years, as the situation has intensified, people are no longer willing to bring up political issues in situations where self-censorship is not required—because it has truly become a serious illness. Political issues have led to a series of economic, living, social, and technological problems, so pessimistically, even if political issues were immediately resolved out of thin air, like a soap bubble, poof, gone, economic issues would still be very difficult to resolve in a short time. An unreasonable population structure and an unreasonable economic framework are indeed a pessimistic reality. How can these harsh and pessimistic facts around us, along with the high political pressure, allow people to lift their heads?
Future#
Simply put, think about future goals.
- Continue to reconcile with myself. Over the past four or five years, I have been persisting in this. The changes in the environment make me feel that I can do better and deeper on this issue.
- Clarify what I can do without. For decades, I have always been trapped in a logical loop of what I want. I hope that in the coming time, at least for a while, I can clarify what I do not need.
- Spend more time outdoors.
Well, that's it.
Farther Places#
I actually started writing this article at the end of January. I kept procrastinating.
The past lunar December and January was the first winter in a long time without skiing.
Skiing has only become a relatively popular sport in China in recent years. Countless people have come into contact with skiing for various reasons and have persisted. If you ask me why I initially liked skiing, it was actually just because of a comment from a teacher I didn't particularly like in college—"You can experience speed while skiing."
The snow is getting faster and faster, but what makes me enjoy it is not just speed; it's hard for me to clarify whether speed is still a factor. As I age, the things around me that can make me feel speed are indeed becoming more and more numerous. Being friends with time is not as good as being friends with speed.
Indeed, I have proven that a person won't die without skiing. I have also indeed proven that a person won't die without freedom.
In a far, far place, I hope I can find a way to prove that lifting my head might make life just a little bit better.