Please note that the opinions in my weekly journal are actually quite immature and mostly lack rigorous argumentation. It's fine to just read and laugh; if there's any resonance or anything, feel free to bring it up for discussion. Generally speaking, after some time of reflection, I will write a separate article on what I find meaningful.
Challenge the rotten game of reality#
Yes, this article is actually my challenge to real life.
Reality is a rotten game - Escaping is useful but shameful#
In my view, real life consists of 60% boredom + 35% pain + 5% happiness. Comedy might be 70% happiness + 20% pain + 10% boredom, while tragedy could be 60% pain + 20% happiness + 20% boredom. When we cannot empathize with the happiness and pain in some dramas, that portion of happiness or pain actually turns into boredom, leading us to feel that the drama is not good. To me, the fact that it " almost eliminates the boring parts " is what attracts me most to narrative works. After all, not being boring means being interesting. ( This is just a casual remark, don't take it seriously 😄 )
At some point, I realized I am a reality escape artist. This probably started when I was struggling to find a job in machine learning just before graduating from university, realizing that real life is indeed much harsher than I imagined. After graduating and feeling the exhaustion of work, my learning time outside of work basically stagnated. I bought various game consoles and games, immersing myself in the ACG (Anime, Comic, Game) otherworld during my spare time. Looking back, this was a form of escape from real life.
Like many corporate slaves in dramas, they go to bars to drink after work. My obsession with reading manga after work is also a behavior similar to drinking. I am deeply immersed in the stories of other worlds because I find life in those worlds much more interesting than my own. My life is composed of manga, and that's not an exaggeration; I've basically read all the manga that everyone else has read ( There should be around 400, my subscription count in Tachiyomi is 415 ). It should be said that apart from learning and work, my knowledge is mostly related to ACG.
I have hardly touched apps like Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Honor of Kings, LOL, Weibo, or similar competitive games, and I rarely watch TV dramas or movies, nor do I follow trending topics, and my offline life is even less. As a result, I lack common sense like a normal person; I am basically a cybernetic being. Moreover, people naturally have many distractions, and I often think about things from other worlds during daily development. ( The solution to this is still unclear to me; perhaps the key is to go out more )
Challenge to Earth Online - Setting Goals#
There is only one true heroism in the world: to love life despite knowing its truth.
Yes, I don't want to be someone who drowns sorrows in alcohol anymore. This week, I saw so many articles from young people in xLog. They mentioned tools, especially various automation tools for daily life like n8n, Toggl Track, Auto Bangumi, etc. This made me realize that "I have become somewhat out of touch," as I am still stuck in the era of IFTTT~~ (Actually, I've felt this way since last month, which is why I've been frequently switching between different tools). However, I don't think I need to rush to integrate these things into my workflow; I want to clarify my needs in real life and introduce them one by one. After all, you can't become fat in one bite.
Monthly Random Tasks are my challenge. I originally planned to organize this at the end of the month, but while writing this weekly journal, I decided to sort it out. This time, I adjusted the ACG-related tasks to 7.6%, which was previously as high as 30%. As for why it's Random? Because I have quite a few things I want to do, and randomness might sometimes bring me some delightful surprise tasks to write about. Here are some key points about the Random tasks:
- Time control within 60 hours: How much time can one have in a month? When I played Octopath Traveler, I managed to squeeze out 80 hours in 40 days, basically starting the game right after work. Now, I estimate that I can have 60 hours in 30 days.
- There should be clear and measurable goals: This is also about "forcing myself to output something to prove that I understand."
- Tasks should be within reach: It's best to focus on things and problems encountered in work and life, as there should be a demand, and being able to reuse and verify them is what allows for deeper engagement.
- There should be a little progress every day: This could be sharing links to relevant knowledge points or reading comments; start as simply as possible. I plan to create a daily repository to specifically store this progress and then sync it to Telegram and Twitter (X?) using GitHub Actions or n8n.
(Trello Random list)
(Previous month's performance in Octopath Traveler)
Action is the key - How to implement#
Theoretical successful people are not successful themselves; yes, I am the type of person who is keen on writing plans.
Thus, the framework for how I do things and grow has been established: Elegant Philosophy + Weekly Articles + Monthly Random Tasks. I probably won't write about these things for a long time. At this stage, I still talk too much and do too little. Next, I need to prove and eliminate these flags through action. Doing things is much more important than making plans; words are not enough. It should be:
- Weekly reports: This should include my practice regarding Elegant Philosophy. This needs to move towards automation, generating data automatically every week.
- Report on Random Tasks: This will be about daily updates and a summary article on one of the Wednesdays of the month.
Regarding this week's small practice situation.
Ramblings#
- This week I started to restore my GitHub commit streak. It sounds like I had one before? I should have had one in college. After graduation, especially after finishing my graduation project, I stopped. However, the slight change in this is that I found a reason to maintain the streak: writing one or two small automation scripts for work daily to handle some tasks.
- A significant issue with writing a weekly journal is that I cannot record the fine-grained thoughts of daily life. Often, when you finish a week and start summarizing, you have already forgotten some things, especially on weekends when you are relaxed and cannot empathize with the pain from Monday to Saturday. ( But I never had the habit of writing about real-life events anyway~~ )
- I think putting my diary into LangChain is actually of no use. Because I realize that most of the time, my articles only output a small part of my thoughts, and before being polished, most of them have logical issues or are incoherent.
- "Kamen Rider Geats" is the first time in my life that I am really following a Kamen Rider series. It's really the first time I feel like, "Why hasn't it reached the grand finale yet? New characters keep appearing." It's just too addictive; the plot is so long. But thinking back, "Oh, that character's story hasn't been told yet," makes it feel somewhat reasonable.
- I believe my work is more interesting than 90% of the "screw-turning" type of jobs. How should I put it? What we do is actually quite interesting. However, the normalized 996 lifestyle over the past two years, and even if you love something, it gradually becomes mundane after long-term interaction. Thus, I gradually feel like a robot trapped in a loop in Westworld; working in a startup is indeed quite tough.
- Roughly calculating, as a pure shell programmer, I have almost been doing this for two years. Adding in some miscellaneous tasks, am I considered a small shell expert in the country? ( Just kidding, that's not true; I think my understanding of shell is merely a drop in the ocean )
News Reading#
I didn't read much news this week, or rather, I didn't seriously read a few articles~~
- github-production-user-asset-6210df.s3.amazonaws.com: The storage service in GitHub issues actually uses AWS S3.
- Building a Personalized Digital Diary: Automating Workflows for Information Aggregation - raye~: Looking at this tutorial to do n8n automation.
Postscript#
This article accidentally took a long time to write. I feel that my weekly journal is a bit incoherent this time. The time spent was indeed huge, but the benefit is that I clarified things that I originally planned to sort out at the end of the month this week. In fact, there are still many things I haven't written about, such as Volume 6 of "No Game No Life" and "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya," both of which are the original sources of my Random tasks.
(Spent nearly seven hours writing with materials)