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.
Life#
I 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. 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. I only eat lunch and dinner, occasionally with a late-night snack. This has a big impact on my stomach and energy supply for the day.
I hope that by the time you read this, you will be able to gradually change these unhealthy routines and replenish 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 when you read this. But I still hope that you have established your own unique dressing style.
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 with people in ancient times, modern people are all "multitaskers". I am undoubtedly an extreme example of this. I think I know a lot of things. When someone asks me, I can give some introductory and guiding advice. But when it comes to really getting into it, I can't accomplish anything myself. 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 am doing various research projects, so I can only say that I am "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 only be done by oneself, and things that can only be done by oneself.
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 type of things in the remaining time.
Relationships#
Until I find a stable job, I probably won't think about relationships, especially relationships with the opposite sex. Taking care of myself is already enough for me to worry about.
The premise of loving someone is loving oneself. I think I am currently not doing enough in this regard and still treat myself as a machine. I hope that by the time you read this, you will love yourself more.
As a Computer Worker#
Information Theory#
The information here is not limited to electronic information, but includes all information in the world.
As a computer professional, I think I am not good at collecting and organizing information. I rarely use search engines. Compared to many classmates who didn't even touch computers 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. When faced with computer components (CPU, GPU, graphics card, sound card, etc.), I have no idea about their models. 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. And so on.
Recently, I disabled personalized recommendations, and it seems to have some effect. Some people say that personalized recommendation systems are like gambling. They recommend things you like, and it's hard to find what you want. When it recommends something you don't like, 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 characteristics of a researcher, such as extreme concentration. When I am truly focused on something, I can completely forget about eating and sleeping (although this 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 to wait 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 sacrifice of Java. In the following days, I have also come into contact with 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 popular, 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 relatively "unusual" user. One thing that impressed me was when I reinstalled my computer. I asked my friends for help while installing, and encountered many funny and unexpected problems. As a result, they summarized my computer usage methods as follows:
Use less domestic software, don't use antivirus software, don't change system settings unnecessarily, install software on the C drive, enable automatic updates, don't change what doesn't need to be changed, use what must be used, and be completely clueless about computers.
Originally, due to considerations of hard disk space, I also read a lot of tutorials, and I didn't install software on the C drive (although because I didn't install it 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 that I am good at doing some testing work from another perspective. As soon as I joined the development team, I found many small problems (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—meaning 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 so far, I have explored my creativity to the limit in terms of breadth—music, painting, graphic design, animation, literature, games. I may not be good at graphic design or animation, although I have accumulated some theoretical knowledge. I think I may have to abandon them in the future and only rely on them for aesthetic training.
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 didn't want to create for profit, but only for interest. I also hope to become an "all-in-one" author, composing my own music, creating my own artwork, and independently creating my own games, like Daifu Tani (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 reveal strong thoughts and emotions. I know that they are far from enough. The completeness of the visuals and the depth of the concepts are still far from my expectations.
I will probably use the spare time in the future to learn more programming knowledge, for future work, interests, and for creating content out of 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 music, analyze songs, create beautiful illustrations with characters and scenery, have a deeper understanding of psychology and philosophy, and even if you can't independently create games, you will have a solid foundation to communicate and complete part of the work.
Conclusion#
At the age of 25, standing at another starting point in life, I hope that you can find your passion in the future and that your creative path will become broader and broader.
Best wishes to all.