Summary: I graduated from graduate school in June, went home for a few days, then went to Shanghai and Wuxi to visit my college roommates for a few days. After that, I stayed at a friend's place in Wuhan for a few days. I started my job on July 1st and have been working for over two months now. Currently, I feel more relaxed at work compared to when I was studying for my master's degree. The pressure is not as great, and I have alternating weekends off. I work eight hours a day during weekdays and have my own time after work. During my master's program, I spent six days a week in the lab, with only one day off on weekends. I also stayed late at night, and there was a lot of pressure from conducting experiments and writing papers. Moreover, during the three years of my master's program, there were few opportunities to go out and have fun due to the pandemic. Anyway, that's all in the past. Let's move forward.
Currently, my daily life can be divided into four main areas:
- Physical health: Maintaining regular sleep patterns, eating meals on time, and exercising appropriately.
- Professional development: Daily work and studying, gradually familiarizing myself with project content, and exploring research topics.
- Leisure activities: Input (sources of information/books, movies, podcasts, people to follow) and output (organizing ideas/writing blog posts).
- Hobbies: Badminton, karaoke.
As for why I started writing a blog, as mentioned earlier, one reason is that I have more free time after work, and my mindset is relatively relaxed this year. I remember seeing something written by a "middle school syndrome" person on Jike (I tried to find the original text but couldn't find it at the moment). The general idea is that relaxation and leisure can bring new ideas and creativity, while being tense and busy can hinder the reception of new ideas. Writing also helps organize thoughts and clear the mind. By recording thoughts, it frees up some of the brain's working memory. Usually, I focus on inputting information, and during that process, I do some thinking. However, that kind of thinking is relatively shallow. Writing down my thoughts allows me to further contemplate and organize them systematically. Balance is important in everything. While focusing on input, it's also necessary to do some output, as they can mutually reinforce each other.
In fact, I had the idea of starting a public account in college, where I could write and share content. I even registered an account and published the first article (mainly excerpts). However, I didn't continue updating it. I also tried writing on some platforms, but I didn't continue with it either.
Currently, my records on various platforms are as follows: On Weibo, I mainly post daily records and summaries, as well as clean up photos in albums. On Douban, I mainly record books and movies I've read/watched and write short reviews. On Flomo, I do daily records and excerpts. On Jike, I've posted some thoughts and records.
Based on past experiences, I have summarized a few things to pay attention to when writing:
- Writing should be for oneself, a way to organize and clarify one's thoughts, rather than focusing on gaining others' attention. If the focus of writing is to seek recognition from others, one's "actions" will become distorted, and the mindset will become imbalanced.
- Establish a basic writing process. First, open a writing page (such as Word on the computer or a note-taking app on the phone), set aside a block of time to write the first draft, and then check and revise it before publishing.
- Once the content is published, it's like handing over a work. There's no need to have too many concerns afterwards. Even if you later feel that it's not good, don't delete it. Let it stay there. It's still a part of yourself. Move forward and iterate.
Creation is difficult, but I am willing to try to create something and continue to do so as much as possible. To make something last as long as possible, one needs to minimize the use of willpower. (During the summer vacation of 2020, I participated in Xiaosa's 100-day writing training camp and wrote over ten articles in the early stages, but I became more and more slack towards the end.) This time, I plan to continuously update my blog on xLog, with a frequency of once a week. The topics I plan to write about may include but are not limited to: extending daily thoughts, organizing and inspiring input (books, movies, podcasts, people to follow), life records, and learning records.