Weekly Review #03 - Health, Goals and the Rhythm of Life

Preface

It seems that every time I start with the title, I try to set a theme for the past week. Sometimes it’s not that easy to summarize, but I still persist in doing so. Perhaps this way, life will be like a series of chapters pieced together, and when looking back after a long time, it will feel like a fulfilling book.

This piece is a record and reflection of my life from 2022-07-04 to 2022-07-10.

Health

I’m not sure if it’s due to work fatigue or some lingering mental effects, but recently I’ve felt that my health has been declining. It’s not particularly serious, but I often feel a sense of weakness, sometimes even feeling as if my body isn’t my own.

It seems that for so many years, I haven’t really paid much attention to my health. Although I’ve had medical check-ups, not exactly regularly but still done, there haven’t been any major issues. Therefore, I didn’t pay much attention. Sometimes I even felt a little proud that after so many years of staying up late, my eyesight and body hadn’t been affected much. However, the recent symptoms have made me start to be more vigilant about changes in my body.

The first thing that needs attention is diet. Because I’ve been practicing intermittent fasting (16+8), which means keeping 16 hours without food and concentrating the main two meals within the remaining 8 hours, I haven’t eaten breakfast for a long time. Due to the regular schedule of going to the office on workdays, I can basically ensure lunch around 12 o’clock, occasionally having a light meal with colleagues after work or eating something at home. However, on weekends it’s much harder to control, sometimes having only one meal a day or just fruits. This part also needs adjustment, and I need to pay attention to nutritional balance.

Sleep has always been a known issue that’s difficult to adjust. For the past two months, it’s as if I’ve been deprived of sleep, falling asleep around 4 or 5 am every day, waking up after 8, then commuting and starting a day’s work. Actually, my mental state hasn’t been affected much, surprisingly, not even needing a nap. But there has been some invisible consumption. This week, I’ve intentionally adjusted to sleeping from around 2 am to 8 am, which feels a bit better.

I’m going to have a full-body check-up in July. To be honest, I’m quite worried about the results. It’s like those two years of intense entrepreneurship during university when I didn’t dare to go to the hospital for a check-up. It seems that without a definite index, I could continue to overdraw my health with peace of mind. Fortunately, everything was fine then, and I hope it will be the same this time.

Goals

More than two years ago, when I was restructuring my blog, I wrote these paragraphs on the “About” page:

In terms of life, I hope to continue to support each other with my current close friends, maintain the current relationship with my family that is both intimate and friendly, face life’s challenges together with the people I care about, and also meet more interesting people. Professionally, I hope to continue to make progress and be able to leave some traces in the open-source world. Economically, I hope to be self-sufficient, able to support doing what I want to do, and explore a more diverse future life. Socially, I hope to have the opportunity to participate in more charitable activities or other forms of good deeds, to bring some small changes to the world.

Interestingly, perhaps because what I set at that time was not very specific, or because I haven’t made much progress in this aspect, looking back at this point now, I don’t have much to add. I just think more concretely about what kind of person I want to become.

Overall, I want to be an interesting person, to live a life that’s a bit different. And the difference I pursue, I hope, is not just relying on changes in work content or environment, but rather to find or try and explore what I want to do and perhaps happen to be good at doing. Even if I don’t have the ability to do it full-time or wholeheartedly, I hope to find it and persist.

Of course, I want to be more specific. This part will also be recorded in the weekly review from now on, as a record of continuous exploration. At least I should look at some of the lifestyles I aspire to, and break down what I need to change and pay for to achieve what I want to do.

The Rhythm of Life

This week, I went out to eat with two friends separately. This is probably the most face-to-face communication I’ve had in the past few months apart from colleagues, and they are also among the very few friends I can talk to in Beijing.

One of them is a senior from my undergraduate school, one year ahead of me. We’ve always maintained a relatively close contact, regularly chatting about recent situations. When I traveled to Guangzhou before, I also received a lot of care from her. But meeting or chatting is far from frequent. I don’t know if it’s because of the identity of “President -> Department Head” or “Senior -> Junior” from university times, it seems that we’ve never had very deep inner communication. On the contrary, after we all started working, we have a deeper understanding of each other’s life states, and can be more empathetic, giving mutual care and support.

The other is also a senior from my undergraduate school, but I met her through my tutor Liangliang after graduation. At that time, I was about to go to Hong Kong, and Liangliang said she had previously studied for her master’s degree in Hong Kong and subsequently worked there, so we could exchange ideas and have someone to rely on. However, just a month after I arrived in Hong Kong, she left due to personal planning. Here were some of my thoughts at that time:

Unconsciously, it’s been almost two years. I didn’t expect that I would come to work in Beijing later, which is quite a coincidence. Her lifestyle and attitude have always been what I aspire to. Whether it was in Hong Kong before or now in Beijing, even though the work environment and rhythm are completely different, she can still learn violin, paint, go surfing, boxing, rock climbing, dancing, etc. on weekends or in her spare time.

She said she hopes to do something at least meaningful to herself every weekend from now on. I feel that she has always been able to practice some of her ideas. I think it’s not just a matter of execution, in this aspect I might not be bad, but I can clearly feel that she is able to clearly define the boundaries between her work, life and personal ideas. I call it the rhythm of life, and I hope I can do better in the future.

An interesting episode was chatting with the owner and a group of friends at the Japanese restaurant. Maybe it was the Beijing accent and the bizarre experiences, the whole conversation was like a stand-up comedy. It was also the first time I felt that I was quite good at catching jokes. It was also a rare purely relaxing experience in the past few months.

Learning, Input and Output

This part will record some of the various audio-visual books I’ve seen, interesting things I’ve tinkered with, and some progress in work and study.

Technical Learning

I have to admit that both my work output and my own learning progress during leisure time have fallen behind this week. This is mainly because the project has come to an end, most of the work tasks are to cooperate in completing some tests and document changes, as well as discussing some technical solutions, without any substantial development work; the rest is explaining our products and implementation solutions to new project clients of the company.

Even so, there are still many trivial matters. I often get home after 9 o’clock, and haven’t taken out a complete time to watch courses or read books. I need to make some adjustments next week, mainly focusing on contract development and CSAPP.

I was invited as a guest to participate in a technical sharing on July 14th, facing a quite famous community, about half an hour, with the theme “How web2 engineers can enter web3”. It’s also my first time participating in such a large-scale technical sharing, and I’ve just entered the industry not long ago, so I’m a bit nervous and need to prepare well.

Input

Books

In terms of books, this week I finished “Lolita” which I had been reading during my commute, and started reading “The Stolen Bicycle”. I’m gradually getting used to reading books on crowded subways, accumulating slowly this way can allow me to read a lot.

I saw this thread by @yihong0618, and I also want to revisit many of Murakami’s books. I remember reading “1Q84” with my classmates in high school, and was deeply impressed by its form of expression; during university, reading books like “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” also gave me a lot of thoughts about life. Perhaps rereading some at this stage will bring a different experience.

TV Series

1. The Boys, a novel anti-superhero theme, the quality of the three seasons has been consistently high, very worth recommending
2. Mr. Robot, I watched the first few seasons a few years ago, but I rewatched it and followed the latest season. It’s very exciting, and many places are also thought-provoking
3. High Score, a documentary about the history of electronic games that I watched during meal breaks every day. It’s not outstanding but it’s a good popular science

Movies

1. Blade Runner 2049, some apocalyptic themes plus elements of love. Perhaps now that technology has developed to the present, looking at these themes again, there’s less sense of surprise but more worry and even despair about the future
2. Her, also with elements of technology and love, telling a story of falling in love with artificial intelligence. To be honest, there’s quite a bit I can relate to. Perhaps I’m also too reliant on and addicted to technology, even ignoring the sense of reality in many people’s emotional lives
3. Nomadland, describing the living conditions of a group of homeless people in America. It can serve as another perspective, but the sense of deliberate rendering is too heavy to truly move
4. Roman Holiday, a classic is a classic, Audrey Hepburn is truly beautiful
5. Groundhog Day, I had seen a Groundhog Day-style short film made by a Japanese YouTuber before, and had always wanted to watch this. Finally caught up
6. Persian Lessons, I remember missing it when it was re-released before, so I’m catching up. But it wasn’t very surprising. Among similar war themes, I might still prefer “Life Is Beautiful”
7. The Wind Rises, also a war theme. I was recommended it in high school but never watched it. Finally caught up, and I quite like it

Anime

1. Kaguya-sama: Love Is War Season 3, a romantic comedy, I really like it. Every season has been quite amazing, and the ending was really sweet
2. SPY×FAMILY, also leaning towards comedy. The first few episodes were quite surprising, but later it became a bit too exaggerated. Some character settings are also not very consistent, but overall it’s very joyful
3. Summer Time Rendering, the most surprising new anime. The worldview and sense of rhythm are both amazing. It’s also a half-year series, will continue to follow
4. My Stepmom’s Daughter Is My Ex, it feels like my second dimension attribute suddenly awakened, and I started to follow some anime again. The name is weird but after watching one episode, it’s not bad

Output

This week I still wrote two articles that I’m quite satisfied with:

1. Thin Client Development Workflow Based on frp Intranet Penetration
2. Warp, iTerm2 or Alacritty? My Terminal Tinkering Notes

The surprise is that the first one was selected for the member’s selection of Sspai, which is also unlocking a new achievement; the latter has just been completed and sent to the editor, waiting for feedback; but the blockchain-related article that was commissioned much earlier, I haven’t started yet, maybe it should also be put on the agenda.

Gradually, I’ve developed my own style of writing such articles, writing logic, and have some of my own writing rhythm and fixed frequency. I will continue to accumulate some topics I want to write about in the future.

Habits, Interests and Changes

There’s no progress in cultivating habits and interests this week. Later, at least Ring Fit Adventure should have a fixed frequency to start, and some things I want to learn should also begin. I need to overcome the sense of weariness towards life.

Then I want to dye my hair, currently considering granny gray or flaxen green, haven’t chosen yet.

Others

The most noteworthy thing is that my 6th-grade sister has started writing a web novel series, which is about immortal cultivation. She stays up an hour late every night to type for an hour on her iPad, has persisted for about a week with daily updates, published on a web novel platform, and has received quite a lot of reads and exposure. Many people are urging for updates, and we often compete with each other now, frequently asking each other if we’re writing articles.

Next week I plan to start taking compensatory leave to accompany my parents and family. The last time I went back was during the National Day holiday last year. I also want to find an opportunity to travel, but the pandemic has really brought many variables.