As the first blog post on XLog.
I will soon be a graduate student, and roughly speaking, I will be around 25 years old when I graduate from my three-year graduate program.
Let's review my creative work and life since 2016, as well as the future direction I will take.
Life#
I have decided to talk about life first.
Daily Life#
I always feel that in the past period of time, I have been too focused on my spiritual life and neglected my material life, and this situation has become more serious as my years of study have increased. The most obvious change is that since my junior year, I have hardly had breakfast anymore, which means I only eat lunch and dinner, occasionally with a late-night snack. This has a big impact on my digestive system and energy supply for the day.
I hope that by the time you read this, you will have gradually changed these unhealthy habits and replenished your energy through three more years of independent living.
I am not good at taking care of myself, and maybe I will still be like this by the time you read this, but I still hope that you have established your own unique style of dressing.
Social Life#
I have always been an advocate of energy conservation and do not actively participate in unnecessary social activities. On the one hand, this allows me to focus more on my difficult creative work, but on the other hand, it also makes me feel more lonely and helpless.
Compared to people in ancient times, modern people are all "multitaskers". I am undoubtedly an extreme example of this—I know a lot of things, and when someone asks me, I can give some introductory and guiding advice, but when it comes to actually doing something, I can't accomplish anything on my own. This situation has put me in a dilemma. When someone asks me, "What have you been doing in your free time?" I feel embarrassed to say that I have been doing various research projects, so I can only say that I have been "playing games" to pass the time.
During the time I wrote this blog post, I joined a development community and gained a clearer understanding of a fact:
There are two types of things in the world: things that can't be done by oneself, and things that only oneself can do.
I have been too focused on the latter in the past period of time. Although the former may be of a lower level than the latter, it still requires the help of others to solve it, which is much better than trying to do everything on my own. I hope that in these three years, you can maintain energy conservation while trying to establish an effective network of contacts and solve as many of the former type of things as possible, so that you can focus more on the latter in the remaining time.
Relationships#
Until I find a stable job, I probably won't think about relationships, especially relationships with the opposite sex—just taking care of myself is already enough for me to worry about.
The premise of loving someone is loving oneself. I think I still haven't done enough in this regard, and I still treat myself as a machine to some extent. I hope that by the time you read this, you will love yourself more.
As a Computer Worker#
Information Theory#
Here, information does not only refer to electronic information in a narrow sense, but also includes all information in the world.
As a computer professional, I think I am still not good at collecting and organizing information. I rarely use search engines. Compared to many classmates who didn't even touch a computer until college, I started using electronic devices, computers, and phones at a very early age, and learned a programming language. But I feel that I know very little about them—I don't know the models of computer components (CPU, GPU, graphics card, sound card, etc.), and when faced with difficult problems, I can only resort to reinstalling the system. I haven't made any effective adjustments to my phone, I just tolerate the advertisements.
Recently, I disabled personalized recommendations, and it seems to have some effect—someone said that personalized recommendation systems are like gambling. They recommend things you like, and it's hard to find what you want. When they recommend things that don't suit your taste, you naturally think of learning and using search systems, and finally make good use of your spare time to do many things.
Work#
Although I have always loved computers and aspired to work in the computer field, I don't really know which specific part I like the most.
Perhaps I have some traits of a researcher, such as extreme concentration—when I am truly focused on something, I can completely forget about eating and sleeping (although this also has a great impact on my health). I can sit in front of the computer and debug with great interest, and stay alone with the machine at night waiting for data, and so on. But I don't think I have the ability to do cutting-edge research, otherwise I wouldn't be lamenting here. I think the reason I chose to pursue a master's degree is mainly to extend my learning period as a buffer before formally entering the workforce.
If we are only talking about code or syntax, since the first language I learned was Java (although I haven't delved into the level of JVM), I prefer the readability and performance trade-off of Java. In the following days, I have also been exposed to Python, the front-end trio of web development, Spring, Git, and recently joined a development team to learn Vue3, Nuxt, TypeScript, Kotlin, Rust, and so on. I have gradually realized that the Java style of code is no longer in vogue, and I need to gradually transition to more modern languages. I want to try more and see what I like.
As for my inclination, I feel that at this stage, I am more inclined to do "bug hunting" work—many people have commented that I am a rather "unusual" user. One thing that left a deep impression on me was when I reinstalled my computer once, I asked my friends for help while installing, and encountered many funny and unexpected situations. As a result, they summarized this method of computer usage for me:
Use fewer domestic software, don't use antivirus software, make fewer changes to system settings, install software on the C drive, enable automatic updates, don't change what doesn't need to be changed, only use what is necessary. The computer is dumb as hell.
Originally, due to considerations of disk space, I also read a lot of tutorials, and I didn't install software on the C drive (although because of not installing on the C drive, some software did have problems, and I did report an issue). But since then, I have defaulted to installing on the C drive—until I have enough knowledge, I won't "mess around" anymore. However, I discovered from another perspective that I am good at doing some testing work. As soon as I joined the development team, I found many small issues (although I didn't use testing tools like professional programmers, I just used some special user behaviors, and when I found a problem, I didn't know where it came from).
Regarding my work, my internship experience made me realize more clearly that I want a "decent" job—by "decent," I mean doing what I love. Of course, I am not sure which specific part of computer work I am good at and what I like.
I hope that by the time you read this, through three years of programming and learning in the development team, you have become a competent computer professional, know what you are good at and enjoy doing, and have found a job that satisfies you.
Creative Work#
Choices#
I think that up to now, I have explored my creative work to its limits in terms of breadth—music, painting, graphic design, animation, literature, games, I have made some basic attempts in all of these areas. I may not be good at graphic design or animation, even though I have accumulated some theoretical knowledge. I think I may have to give up on them in the future and only rely on them for aesthetic exercises.
Literature and games are too demanding, especially the philosophy in literature and the gameplay in games—they are extremely mentally and physically exhausting. I think I should temporarily stop them. In the next period of time, I will focus more on practicing and experimenting with voice acting and painting.
Goals#
Since I started creating in 2016, I have never wanted to create for profit, only for my own interest. I also hope to become an "all-in-one" creator, composing my own music, creating my own artwork, and independently creating my own games, like Daifu Tenguya (Cave Story), Toby Fox (Undertale), Omocat (OMORI), Billy Basso (Animal Crossing). However, I currently don't have any ideas about what I want to do.
I have some fans who say they really like my works because they convey strong thoughts and emotions. I know that they are still far from enough, the completeness of the visuals and the depth of the concepts are still far from my expectations.
I will probably spend my spare time learning more programming knowledge, for future work, interests, and for love. I will continue to practice voice acting and painting. I hope that by the time you read this, you will truly have the ability to compose and analyze music, create beautiful illustrations with characters and scenery, have a deeper understanding of psychology and philosophy, and even if you can't independently develop games, at least have a solid foundation to communicate and complete part of the work.
Conclusion#
You, at 25 years old, standing at another starting point in life, I hope that in the future, you will find your passion and that your creative path will become broader and broader.
Best wishes to everyone.