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 weeks of working five and four days. 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, had only one day off on weekends, and often stayed late. The pressure of conducting experiments and writing papers was also greater. Moreover, during the three years of my master's program, I rarely went out to 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, exercising appropriately.
- Professional improvement: daily work and study, gradually familiarizing myself with project content, and exploring research topics.
- Leisure activities: input (information sources/books, movies, podcasts, following people) and output (organizing ideas, blogging).
- Hobbies: playing badminton, karaoke.
As for why I started writing a blog, as mentioned earlier, I have more free time after work, and my mindset is relatively relaxed this year. I remember seeing something written by a "middle school weirdo" on Jike (I tried to find the original text but couldn't find it at the moment), which roughly meant that relaxation and leisure bring new ideas and creativity, while being tense and busy hinders the reception of new ideas. Writing also helps organize thoughts and frees up mental capacity by recording them. 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 systematically organize them. Balance is important in everything, so while focusing on input, it's necessary to engage in some output, as they can mutually reinforce each other.
In fact, I had the idea of starting a public account and writing my own content during college. I even registered an account and published my first article (mainly excerpts). But later on, I didn't update it anymore. I also tried writing on some platforms, but I didn't continue.
Currently, my records on various platforms are as follows: on Weibo, I mainly post daily records and summaries, as well as clean up photo albums; on Douban, I mainly record books and movies I've seen and write short reviews; on Flomo, I do daily records and excerpts; on Jike, I've posted some thoughts.
Based on past experiences, I have summarized a few things to pay attention to when writing:
- Writing is a way to express and organize one's own 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 (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 sending it out.
- Once the writing is published, it's like handing over a piece of work. There is no need to have too many concerns afterwards. Even if you later think it's not good, don't delete it. Let it stay there; it is still a part of yourself. Move forward and iterate.
Creation is difficult, but I am willing to try and 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 of 2020, I participated in Xiaosa's 100-day writing training camp and wrote over ten articles in the early stages, but then became more and more slack). This time, I plan to continue updating my blog on xLog, with a current update 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 (reading books, watching movies, listening to podcasts, following people), life records, and learning records.