Introduction#
This article is a record and reflection on life from 2024-09-19 to 2024-09-28.
Adulting#
Recently, I saw a description on a favorite blogger's channel:
Because I went straight to a PhD after graduating from college, and continued working as a researcher after graduation, it’s said to be work, but there’s not much difference from studying, so I always feel that I’m not much different from a student now. Even though I’ve taught many college students, I don’t think I’m different from them, just that I learned a few years earlier. However, the difference must have occurred at certain moments. Occasionally, I feel surprised in life, for example, when watching a show or when consuming, realizing that my income is already much higher than my parents, although the memories of scarcity are still vivid, but those seem to have happened to another person. Also, when I look at some artistic works that talk about those older sisters and brothers, the people I want to take as life goals, I find that they are younger than me. Furthermore, every morning when I wake up and wash up, I can truly feel my age increasing.
My knowledge has grown, but my emotional capacity has completely remained at the student level. Although I have read many exciting literary works, I am still fascinated by stories about adolescence, and I am still following related new series and moved by them. I suspect that I am still in my adolescence, as if I have just grown older in an ivory tower. What have I been doing for the past ten years? I don’t understand. How do people around me enter my life, and how does the torrent of life swallow an individual? I don’t understand. But what makes me feel worse is that when I see today’s middle school students, I also don’t understand.
I feel that there are many problems in human experience that need to be solved. I don’t know how others solve these problems, but if I don’t solve them, I can’t enter the next stage. When I set them aside, I am not growing; physical time, mental time, and emotional time are completely out of sync. I am now also confused about whether I can become a seemingly normal adult like others, or whether I have the ability to protect the life I have now that allows me to think freely. Every time I think about this, I feel sad. I don’t have the courage to enter a new life, like a ghost that still exists in the world because of obsession.
A certain part of my heart seems to have been hit, and I thought of a term I recently heard, "Adulting." I remember that the blogger learned that if a stone flying from the road breaks the car window, it can be covered by insurance, which is a piece of cold knowledge, referred to as "Adulting skills." I really like this description — “learning to become an adult.”
As I grow older, even without deliberately comparing, the changes from my student and childhood days are already significant.
I have been working for more than three years, living independently, and it seems I can relatively "do as I please" when shopping; I have traveled to many places, far more than my parents have; when faced with major life decisions, I no longer seem so flustered.
A few months ago, I got my driver's license, and now I often drive out; recently, I was sorting out my messy financial information, applying for some cards, and buying some fixed deposits, etc. While doing these, I told a senior, “I feel like an adult now, I can drive out and have many bank cards.”
The senior replied, “Only children care about how many cards they have; adults don’t feel happy just because they seem like adults.”
Perhaps it has something to do with my experiences; after high school, my parents didn’t really manage me, and after college, I lived according to my own ideas. The benefit is that I seem to handle things calmly, and my personality is somewhat mature and steady; the "downside" is that I am not bound by the standards of my parents and elders, and I early on closed my social media to block the influence of peer pressure, leading to a sense that my life seems somewhat out of sync with what my peers are experiencing.
In the past two years, I attended three high school classmates' weddings, and two pairs of children are expected to be born in the next two months. No one would still be happy for several weeks about getting their driver's license or be upset for several days over a "wrong bouquet" of flowers.
Most of the time, I am still happy about this; it seems that trying to retain a bit of "student spirit" allows me to face the world with more optimism and courage, keeping me a bit further from the murky, stagnant truths of the world.
But can I really keep it this way?
When I first started dating my senior, there was an occasion when she attended a company event, and after work, she looked exhausted and confided in me that the same matter needed to be reported to different leaders in several completely different ways, and the part of reading the atmosphere was very draining and tiring.
I suddenly realized that I couldn’t provide effective comfort. It’s not that I don’t understand the intricacies and "human relationships," and I know that life is constantly consuming everyone, but when these matters first appeared so vividly in the life of someone close to me, I felt powerless.
I once boldly claimed in my weekly report that I would pursue the moon and not become someone I dislike just to pick up sixpence, but the world operates this way; even if I can escape these shackles by luck, I have no ability to shield the important people around me.
The senior said, “You are lucky to have the choice not to become such a person, it’s better than adding another boring adult to this world.” I felt a bit ashamed and guilty, as if the self that should have learned to grow up stubbornly set these aside. Is that really right?
Do I really have the ability to maintain this life where I can continue to be willful and think freely?
Interesting Things and Items#
Input#
Although most interesting inputs will automatically sync in the "Yu's Life" Telegram channel, I still selected a portion to list here, making it feel more like a newsletter. Additionally, I built a microblog using Telegram Channel messages as content sources — "daily.pseudoyu.com," which makes browsing more convenient.
Articles#
- How the Raycast API and extensions work
- How I write HTTP services in Go after 13 years
- B-trees and database indexes
- No One Builds in Public
- Using Traefik with Cloudflare Tunnels
- Some self-inflicted troubles and thoughts in writing