2022-Birthday

I originally planned to write this a few days ago, but as expected, waiting until the day itself has more of an atmosphere~

I'll just write a casual essay.

Counting it up, I've already been working for several years since graduation. Looking back, what I learned in more than a decade of schooling may not necessarily be more than what I've learned in these few years of work—truly living up to the name 「university of society」. The biggest impact is probably on my worldview. Understanding of society: the previous peeking at a leopard through a tube versus now being in the thick of it are completely different feelings.

When studying, especially people in STEM, it's especially easy to fall into a misconception, thinking the world runs linearly, moving strictly according to some kind of law, but actually the world is a chaotic system, and everyone is like a tiny butterfly, flapping their wings as hard as they can, but nobody knows whether it has any effect on this system. Put in a more understandable way:

• When studying: the degree of effort in grinding practice problems and grades are positively correlated
• In the real world: the degree of effort at work and income are not positively correlated

This counts as a shift in thinking. Of course the general direction still isn't wrong: in the absence of external interference, effort doesn't necessarily bring rewards, but not putting in effort definitely means none.

So external interference has also become a very important factor. As the saying goes, 「on the windward side, even pigs can fly」. It's true that a person's fate depends on their own striving, but you also have to consider the course of history. I don't fully agree with 「fatalism」 and 「the times make the hero」, but I can also accept the various 「pigs on the windward side」 that appear in the real world.

But first, seeing the overall trend clearly is already a very hard thing. Nowadays in all kinds of settings people always blurt out that you need a big-picture view. What is a big-picture view? Is being an ostrich a big-picture view? A true big-picture view is generally hard for ordinary people to grasp, after all 「being in the midst of this mountain」, and those who 「do not fear floating clouds blocking the view」 may have already understood most of the information and made their choices (it's not always like this, otherwise a certain Yin and a certain Duo wouldn't have grown wildly from the cracks).

Actually what ordinary people can do is quite limited. For me, the only thing that makes me feel relatively at ease is to keep learning and keep producing output. It seems only this way I won't lose the ability to think inside an information cocoon.

It's a bit late. Actually there's nothing particularly special to write. I'll write whatever comes to mind, and then continue writing my several serialized series, trying to finish two of them before the end of the year, so I can better satisfy my own sense of accomplishment, haha.

As for outlook on life and values, I am indeed still someone with relatively firm goals, still the rather vulgar idea of making money well and achieving financial freedom as soon as possible. After all, according to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, people can only pursue higher-level value realization after satisfying their material foundation~

And then, the most important thing is still taking care of one's health! Exercise, body first, making money second. Another year older—let's go!