Weekly Report #82 - Brand New Year and Keeping a Diary

Preface#

weekly_review_82

This article is a record and reflection of life from 2024-12-29 to 2025-01-05.

The first week of 2025 seems to carry special significance due to the change of year. I have more plans for habit formation, managing my schedule with paper and pen, and I have also started writing a diary to record some fragmented thoughts about life; I arranged a photo shoot for my parents, capturing memories in Hangzhou; I played "Mario Kart 8" and "It Takes Two" on Switch with my senior, which was very relaxing; and there are many other interesting things.

Brand New Year#

This year, as per tradition, I wrote an end-of-year summary. Although it is a tradition, I have been consistently summarizing my birthday since 2022. However, I put it aside at the end of last year due to not feeling well, and before I knew it, a year had passed. This year, although busy, I still want to be more disciplined and leave something for my future self.

After writing it, I felt a bit down. I divided it into several small themes to express some thoughts, and in the end, it had a bit of value, but my actual emotions were much lower. I should have worked hard, right? I have been making progress in work, improving my skills, and working on side projects, spending more time with family, and meticulously preparing for the wedding.

I have tried to balance everything well, but it still seems difficult to do everything right. Even I, who deeply despises short videos, found myself aimlessly scrolling through Bilibili's algorithm recommendations at night, and the person who usually closes Moments early sometimes unconsciously scrolls through Twitter, ultimately still seeking something from the virtual world.

The first day of the New Year didn't go smoothly; my car got scratched, and for some inexplicable reason, I was scolded by an irritable driver while waiting for the car in front of me to move. The self-proclaimed emotionally stable me ended up affecting my senior after a whole day of buildup, which was truly a terrible version of myself.

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In the evening, I even had a few moments of pessimism, thinking that the new year might just be like this. Later, my senior sent dozens of photos from her album, saying, "This is you in 2024," which was warm and touching.

In fact, I tried and accomplished many interesting things in 2024:

Sticking to personal training for a long time
Experiencing oil painting and oil pastels, painting my current avatar and some fragments of life
Traveling to Bali and experiencing surfing in Kuta
Family trip, taking my parents and sister to Inner Mongolia to play/meet my senior's parents
Summoning the courage to meet my idol Randy in Beijing, and subsequently doing many fun things together
Serving as a mentor in many events like Adventure X, ETH Shenzhen, OSPP, and trying English teaching for a month in Chiang Mai's Invisible Garden, where I also met some interesting other mentors
Wall painting in my dad's auto repair shop
Picking up my love for skateboarding again
Learning to drive, going on road trips around Hangzhou and Nanjing
Starting a (not so strict) vegetarian diet from September 2024, which I have maintained for over a quarter
Traveling to Chiang Mai and Bangkok with my senior, experiencing yoga and meditation for the first time, and watching the sunrise
Returning to Hong Kong together, meeting some important friends and teachers for both of us
Even though I can't sing, I signed up for vocal lessons with my senior, learning "Special Person" by Khalil Fong, "A Little Moved" by Jeff Chang/Liu Jialing, and currently learning "If Love Has Destiny" by Li Jian
Buying a new Fuji camera and arranging a photo shoot for my parents and sister in Xiahe Park
Proposing, getting a marriage certificate, and preparing for the wedding

It turns out that when I count this year, I have done many interesting things, many of which were first-time experiences that my past self could never have imagined doing, and almost every single thing had my senior by my side.

In this already arrived brand new year, I hope to continue moving forward.

Diary#

I am a very electronic person. I have fiddled with Notion, Logseq, Obsidian, Apple Notes, and Things for a long time, and I tried to write a diary daily on Notion, but I always felt it was very hard to stick with, or the content I wrote seemed to be more form than substance when I looked back.

Recently, after watching the YouTube video "A notebook to save you from infinite scrolling.," I started to rethink this issue. Coincidentally, I read in "Camus' Notebooks" about the rules he set for his own record-keeping:

Regularly record, and do not say too much. Persevere, focus, and do not write for any external eyes or to satisfy one's own vanity, and focus on the cultivation of body (actions) and mind (thoughts) while achieving a balance between the two.

I also tried updating some fragmented thoughts daily in a Telegram Channel and organizing them into a weekly report. After sticking to it for more than a week, I found that once I set the mindset to "write in public," the things I wrote became more embellished, with more beautification, making it difficult to showcase the duality of the present. When reviewing, I needed to spend extra effort to peel away the more authentic underlying thoughts from those words.

My senior, on the other hand, is someone who writes diaries regularly. In her previous blog post "Lost Desire to Express," she expressed similar thoughts:

Because the world I perceive constantly shifts due to increasing reflection and understanding, my desire to express gradually diminishes. I always feel that what I can articulate is too superficial, and some conclusions are too hasty. Additionally, I often write diaries, but when it comes to blogging, I inevitably think of imaginary readers. Just like lying around at home, I might occasionally be messy, but when guests visit, I inevitably tidy up to present a beautiful scene. Once I start to express publicly, I can't help but embellish; I dislike the vanity or arrogance that I might reveal. (At this moment, my arrogance lies in proclaiming myself as someone who does not love to show off and is not arrogant.) (Just a moment ago, my arrogance lay in the fact that although I am arrogant, I do not take pride in being arrogant.)

Although starting to write inevitably requires overcoming these obstacles, the diary format can still have fewer shackles, without needing to worry too much. So, in the new year, I added two daily routines: one is a diary to record some daily events and thoughts; the other is a planner, serving as a Life Tracker to record habit formation, important matters/nodes, and some daily to-dos or random thoughts.

journal_2025_project

The planner is very interesting, with boxes to record some of my habit formations, just like described in the Fogg Behavior Model; just a little bit of ritual might change my entire state; and the diary has evolved from initially writing long, verbose thoughts to now being able to express the most important thoughts in just a few sentences, more authentic and casual, and with less of the mental burden of "writing it down."

For me, the planner and diary focus more on recording and reflection, while daily work and notes will still be completed on the computer using Obsidian and Things, and the weekly report on weekends serves as a sort of organization and presentation of the aforementioned records.

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, feeling more like a newsletter. Additionally, I built a microblog using Telegram Channel messages as content sources — "daily.pseudoyu.com," making it easier to browse.

Books#

Sugar Control Revolution, currently reading.
Camus' Notebooks, looking at what the author writes in his diary.

Articles#

Videos#

Series#

Squid Game Season 2, the first season was just something to watch while eating, and I feel the second season is even less grounded, with rebellion and twists being somewhat predictable, and the characters are not very three-dimensional.