Overall, this year has been a somewhat somber one.

Work#

At the beginning of the year, during my performance review, my boss said I still needed to work harder and that there were areas where I wasn’t doing well enough. Shortly after, I was nominated for a promotion, which felt quite surreal. I then diligently prepared my promotion materials for over a week, even rehearsing them several times with my girlfriend at home, and ultimately passed the promotion as I had hoped. However, the stock options and compensation increase after the promotion were significantly less than what was rumored externally, reportedly only half of previous years’. The joy brought by the promotion wasn’t substantial; instead, the accompanying work pressure visibly increased.

I’ve also gained new perspectives on certain things. For instance, whether to pursue a task isn’t about its technical difficulty, but about its broad applicability. Don’t be afraid of others saying, “this is too simple, how dare you share it?” As long as what you do genuinely helps others, that’s enough.

Investments#

This year’s investment performance was quite good, largely thanks to a favorable market trend, allowing me to make a modest profit by following it. In terms of results: investment income accounted for 23.2% of my total annual income. Due to being too busy and tired with work this year, many investment operations weren’t recorded, making it impossible to calculate the exact return on investment. However, I conservatively estimate this year’s return to be over 50%, which I’m very satisfied with. On the downside, the excellent market conditions meant that even some speculative, “gambling-like” operations turned a profit, which negatively impacted my investment mindset. I became a bit restless, for example, starting to frequently trade options, which made me unable to tolerate the minor fluctuations of regular stocks. To describe it with an apt idiom: “It’s easy to go from frugality to extravagance, but hard to go from extravagance to frugality.”

Unity of Knowledge and Action#

A young woman, born in ‘98 and a recent graduate, died suddenly at Pinduoduo. It’s truly tragic; such a promising life cut short. Companies like Pinduoduo should be delisted and not allowed to continue dragging down the industry’s standards. So I shorted Pinduoduo in the US stock market, but who knew Pinduoduo would surge by 12 points, leading to heavy losses. But it doesn’t matter; it expressed my stance: companies that don’t treat people as human beings should be delisted and go bankrupt. In contrast to Pinduoduo, on the other side of the world, Google established a workers’ union to protect labor rights. Yet, a Pinduoduo employee’s sudden death led to a stock price surge. Sometimes, I truly can’t understand, or rather, I’m unwilling to understand.

Life#

Increased Pressure#

I’ve always considered myself an optimistic person, but this year, after several people told me I was sighing a lot, I realized something was off. I paid attention and found it was indeed true. I don’t know when my mood started to decline, but after much thought, I attribute it to a few reasons:

• Increased responsibilities due to aging
• Increased work pressure

As I get older, I can feel my responsibilities growing. My parents are getting older, and their health isn’t as good as it used to be; my mom has back issues, and my dad has leg problems. Every year, I urge them to get physicals, hoping they stay healthy. At the same time, my parents also hope I’ll settle down soon, as I’ll be thirty in a few years. My girlfriend and I are from different places, which has led to some disagreements about our future plans. My expectation is to live a slightly more relaxed life in any provincial capital. However, my girlfriend’s family requires us to be in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, or Shanghai, none of which are low-pressure places to live. Take Hangzhou, where I work, for example: the average housing price is almost 40,000 yuan per square meter, and those are often in relatively remote areas. If we were to buy, not to mention where the down payment would come from, just thinking about a monthly mortgage of over 20,000 yuan for thirty years gives me a headache. Although I don’t dwell on these things too much, it’s still a significant source of pressure.

At work, the pressure at Alibaba is quite high; anyone who’s worked there can attest to that. And this year, having been promoted to P7, the pressure has increased even further.

Perhaps these pressures have subtly affected me, making me smile less often than before, but even so, compared to others, I still maintain a generally cheerful demeanor.

In daily life, I’ve also frequently noticed a disconnect between my hands and brain. For example, when typing, what my mind thinks is different from what my hands type, to the point where I can’t understand why I made the mistake (just now, while typing this sentence, I typed ‘能不’ instead of ‘不能’). I don’t know the reason for this; it rarely happened before, or at least I didn’t notice it.

Renting and Moving#

After living in the talent apartment for over two years, despite its many advantages, I still had to move out. Firstly, a space of less than 40 square meters is too small for two people. Secondly, the construction across the street was too noisy. Moreover, talent apartments have a maximum stay of three years, so if I didn’t move this year, I’d have to next year. Coincidentally, when I had dinner at a colleague’s place, I found their residential complex quite nice, so I decided to move.

I quickly found a decent apartment and signed a contract with an agent, preparing to move. During the process, there was a slight unpleasantness: when looking for a place, I told the agent countless times that we weren’t looking at apartment-style properties, only residential properties, because we needed to apply for rental subsidies. Despite the agent repeatedly assuring me there would be no problem, I still ended up signing for an apartment-style property. I can only blame myself for being too trusting of strangers, which led me to sign the rental contract under a somewhat strange property certificate, all while ignoring my colleagues’ advice not to trust agents. After all, I thought, I had made it very clear: I was only looking for residential properties, not apartment-style ones.

For the move, I hired Lalamove, adding a pack of Zhonghua cigarettes and 50 yuan on top of the platform’s agreed price. With the help of colleagues, I finally completed the move. During the move, I realized I have more and more belongings, haha. I’m quite happy about that, because I haven’t given up buying things just because I’m renting; I’ve managed to maintain a relatively good quality of life:

This was my fifth move since coming to Hangzhou. Calculating it, five moves in six years is quite frequent and a bit of a hassle.

Musings#

I’ve always believed that “people live to experience different things,” as only what one personally feels is truly real. I often joke with others that if given two choices – one to plug into a desired world via a neural interface, and the other to continue striving in the real world – I would choose the neural interface, provided I could remain in that plugged-in state indefinitely. After all, how can one prove that the so-called “real world” isn’t itself a virtual, plugged-in world?

At the same time, I still firmly believe that work is for a better life, and for that reason, I won’t compromise too much on life for the sake of work.

Throughout the year, in terms of entertainment, besides my usual activities, I added a few new ones. One is listening to podcasts, such as “Gushi FM” (Story FM), which features different people sharing their diverse life experiences – quite interesting. I also regularly check “STN Kuaibao” (STN Express) and the “Steam Weekly Sales Chart” every week.

My diary, which I used to diligently write, has slowly evolved over recent years from daily entries -> weekly entries -> monthly entries -> quarterly entries, to the point where even this year-end summary takes one or two months to write.

Sometimes, I also lament not having made a greater contribution to society. I’ve only done what an ordinary person can do. When I see young teachers going to rural areas to support education, I admire them from the bottom of my heart and feel I fall short.

My girlfriend and I have also slowly developed disagreements on some matters, and I’ve realized how incredibly difficult it is to articulate one’s thoughts clearly. People can barely understand each other; the term “empathy” might truly just be a description. Because there’s always information loss when expressing thoughts or problems through words; by the time it leaves your mouth, a significant portion of the information is already lost. Therefore, for two people to communicate something clearly, both the speaker and the listener need to share a similar knowledge base and comparable life experiences. This way, even with information loss from the speaker, the listener can fill in some of the gaps themselves. Improving communication methods and skills can also enhance the quality and efficiency of communication. I need to work on this in the new year.

Perhaps what I’ve written above doesn’t sound very bright and positive, maybe a bit melancholic. But it’s not that serious, haha.

2020 Review#

Last year’s goals:

• Organize a personal financial planning scheme
• Relearn English

To my shame, neither was completed, or rather, neither was even started.

A reflection:

• Work pressure is indeed quite high. Any free time I have now is spent relaxing, whether it’s daydreaming, playing games, or watching videos. After work, I rarely do anything that requires mental effort.
• Firstly, I genuinely didn’t prioritize these two goals much. They fall into the “important but not urgent” category, and their short-term impact isn’t visible, so subconsciously, I didn’t take them seriously.
• Another reason is that the implementation cost is a bit high. The first goal is manageable, but the second requires years of persistent effort, and I simply wasn’t prepared for that.

2021 Goals#

The core idea for this year is to adjust my mindset. Only with a well-adjusted mindset can I work and live better. I also need to learn from last year’s goal-setting mistakes: goals must be actionable, and the difficulty shouldn’t be too high. I shouldn’t solely focus on major life events; taking a year or two off from such pursuits is perfectly fine:

• Archery, invest at least 3,000 yuan
• Take my girlfriend out at least once, investing no less than 5,000 yuan
• Continue last year’s goal: Organize a personal financial planning scheme

Summary#

This year, I got a promotion at work, my relationship with my girlfriend progressed smoothly, I moved into a decent (rented) apartment, and I even upgraded to a high-performance PC. It should be considered a year of good development. However, subjectively, I feel increased pressure and a slight sense of confusion.

In the new year, I’ll strive to adjust my mindset!