致我的 2018To My 2018

Sitting in the car to the airport, my procrastination has pushed this to the point where there's nothing left to push it to. The last two days have been almost too dreamlike: I got a group of good friends together for a night in a villa in Changping plus skiing, and it was so much fun it felt like being back at school with that crowd — organizing things together, going off to see mountains and water together, ribbing each other. Good enough to feel slightly unreal.

The keyword of 2018 is change: graduating from sixteen settled years of school and starting a new phase of life. So the year splits fairly cleanly into a graduation half and a working half.

The theme of the first half was roaming. Right after New Year I went to Australia and then Thailand back to back. Going somewhere warm in winter really is bliss. Australia finally fulfilled my dream of planning a study trip abroad — I went with my best friend, and successfully skydived in Sydney. Flying at altitude really is a rare experience: a 4,000-meter leap. In Melbourne I went to the Australian Open and felt the heat of a Grand Slam in person. Thailand was my second time; just playing around isn't that interesting on its own, but bringing my parents made it happy and easy. Over the May Day holiday I went to Taiwan and saw the scenery I'd missed last time. My favorite was Green Island, riding a scooter around it, the wind seeming to speak to us. At the end of May I did a road trip in the US — a crash, budget travel, everything I'd planned actually happening, plus no end of surprises. I sometimes think back on those two weeks with a little regret, feeling we could have gone harder; but from here it's already good enough to miss.

The idea of giving up the graduate-school recommendation had been building since early in the year. Partly I felt the added value to me was limited; partly the economy looked all right at the start of 2018 but two years out was anyone's guess. If there were a crisis, someone with a job could always go back to study — but someone who graduated from a program might not find the job they wanted. So once my boyfriend and I both had offers, we decided to work.

Since starting in mid-July, time has flown as expected. I did a few big things and kept iterating on my own ability and understanding. I'm about to close out a project — nervous and excited at once. I hope it grows well. I hope it grows fast.

Working life really is enormously different from school. But most of the time I feel much happier: good friends are still nearby, no tangle of nonsense to deal with, only two things day to day — life and work — with more self-realization and more responsibility.

Next year I hope I can work a bit harder, be a bit luckier, and be a bit more decisive.

The plane lands, the door opens, and Shenzhen's damp cold hits me. For a disoriented second I'm back in my first year of university, on the night we walked from the Guanghua building back to the dorms after rehearsing for the club gathering — one of Beijing's rare rainy days — with Youth, More or Less coming up on shuffle in my headphones. It's as if the me of four years ago is talking to the me of now.

Right — youth, more or less as you said: there are regrets, but I believe it wasn't lived for nothing.

Growing through change. In the new year, I'm hoping quantity turns into quality.

In memory of my 2018, my twenty-second year.