One day at year’s end,
I routinely logged into Weibo,
and received a punishment notification:
@Floating Cloud Weibo is gone?
Got Censored
For me,
on one hand this was expected.
The reliability of internet services
is like the experience Baidu Space gave me.
On the other hand it was sad,
because over ten years of heartfelt words I didn’t post on WeChat Moments
all stayed in Weibo,
and it held my chains of online relationships with people I’ve never met in person.
I tried to appeal. Weibo sent me an email, the gist was:
“After our review, your Weibo is too dirty, so it’s banned. (Note: can never be unbanned)”
This left me very headachy.
I both wanted my account back,
and didn’t want to be forced to admit I’m not pure.
After friends learned my appeal was useless,
they all expressed indignation for me,
and asked me to show what I had actually posted.
I was helpless, I just had them follow Heye.
Only my anti-going-viral declaration may need to be restated:
Writing to here,
I decided to hold a small funeral for Weibo.
The contents of the funeral are my random thoughts of 2021.
Finished the Exam
The fathers’ generation has more siblings than ours,
which is probably why they can enjoy family warmth more than us.
At the start of the year I was inspired by my aunt’s husband’s (whom I call “uncle”) friend to “buy a diploma,”
so at year’s end Mia and I took the national exam together.
The interview went smoothly. The written exam went numb.
Because I haven’t been in the interviewee position for a long time,
going back to my alma mater for the interview felt especially disorienting.
There’s an extra tree here, an extra construction site there filling my pre-exam brain.
Like a conflicted Wen Yiduo,
sometimes I say without doing, do without saying,
but more often I speak first then do, doing while saying.
For me, wanting to start a business is like wanting to cross a river.
I know in the end I’ll be on the other side,
and understand there are many ways to cross.
But I also feel the journey is still long,
I can always wait a bit more.
“The advantage is on my side.”
Got to Work
Even in the software industry,
the past two years I’ve also felt the surging current from “anti-involution” to “anti-grind.”
Sometimes I feel this current is like a table of people having dinner together,
where the well-fed advise the malnourished “eat less unhealthy meat, eat more healthy vegetables.”
It’s like being carried by clouds, going along only because you’re floating.
I often feel many truths in the world are very obvious,
like the “labor is most glorious” I often heard when I was little,
or my grandpa’s mutterings of “work, then eat five bowls of rice.”
The moment of genius becomes the permanence of genius under daily persistence.
Ah, permanence.
Oh right, my favorite character in ‘21 was Raiden Shogun.
Got Stronger
At year-end, I lamented to Mia that none of my three goals were met.
Weight reached 145, books only read 10, investment returns at -8% (then to -20% after New Year…)
But I also comfort myself: “There’s nothing shameful about being weaker than you.”
We call each other’s companies “school”
Sometimes we discuss how other couples get along.
Comparing, we jokingly call ourselves “mutual competitors.”
After all, my behavior of secretly doing math problems at midnight before the entrance exam made Mia very disdainful.
Looking through 21-year self,
relativity is verified again:
past time always passes like a shuttle,
future time always drags on agonizingly.
People can’t live in the world uniquely.
Maybe in a thousand eyes there’s only one Hamlet,
maybe the mathematical expectation is five hundred plus,
or maybe a thousand.
But overall, Hamlet seems pretty similar to me,
also not lonely.
