致我的 2023To My 2023

In early December, by chance, I re-read all eleven of my past year-end reviews, and found that reading them really is a great window into what I was actually thinking in a given year.

My summary: in high school I was nostalgic and afraid of being alone — though underneath it was really unease about the changes ahead. In university I kept pushing at my own boundaries, feeling out what I could and couldn't do, trying to figure out what I wanted, and starting to think about stepping away from the mainstream and from peer pressure. After starting work, every year brought new difficulties, becoming aware of my emotions and learning to regulate them, and beginning to think about shaking off the world's constraints and finding a way of living that fits me.

It's funny — I noticed that the tone of each post-work year-end review lines up almost exactly with the market's mood at the time. The ends of 2019 and 2021 were beset-by-difficulty and slightly pessimistic; the ends of 2020 and 2022 were both wildly energized, ready to charge at building something. By that logic, having started this year deep in pessimism, I seem to have freed myself up somewhat. And if everything is a cycle, shouldn't I try to step outside the one-to-three-year swings and look at what changes and what doesn't over a longer horizon?

I also noticed that since university I've had a quiet but strong resistance to mainstream and conventional pressure, and some of the pain in my earlier reviews came from exactly that. Only in the last two years have I really worked it out: there has never been any rule that I have to do what other people do. It's all just social conditioning, and loosening those ropes on yourself makes life a lot lighter. Ask, about everything, why am I doing this — why work a job, why get married. Not to be contrarian for its own sake, but to actually be accountable to myself. Deconstructing it is a further step into exploring who I am.

For three years the world's doors were shut in front of me; this year they flew open. I still remember going to Phuket in early January having completely forgotten how border formalities work, and having an unforgettable trip to restart the world. In the first half I went back to Thailand for a Blackpink concert, and to Hong Kong, Macau and Japan — it feels so good to be able to escape daily life on a regular basis. Over National Day I spent fourteen days in Italy, my first return to the Schengen area since my 2016 exchange; it felt familiar and foreign at once, and Rome really is an eternal light. At the end of the year I came to London to hear in 2024. This year's travel really can be called revenge travel, but it genuinely served as redemption from daily life too — if there's one part of this year I'm most satisfied with, it's probably this. Standing at the end of 2023, I no longer long to get out of the country the way I did a year ago, but travel still carries a lot of my thinking about myself and about the world. And I notice my state of mind has shifted: partly because many of these places aren't firsts anymore, I can slot into local life quickly after arriving, without the sense of inferiority I used to carry when looking at the world. I experience different cultures more at ease, very calmly, without a trace of fear or anxiety. That's this year's new experience of exploring the world. Next year's itinerary carries a lot of anticipation too: a Southeast Asia trip with my parents, a Taylor Swift show, the Olympics. They're mostly places I've already set foot on, but years have passed, so surely the way I do it and the way it feels will be completely different.

At work, this year seems to have stalled. Around March and April I thought the year held real promise; then I found the economy moving in a completely different direction from my thinking, and sank into deep anxiety. I'd spot an interesting opportunity and agonize over whether to do it. By the second half, both the industry and I hit a bigger crisis, and I genuinely didn't know where the industry or I were headed if I stayed on this road, with downward pressure on the economy still heavy and public markets falling hard. Maybe it was forced, but I did need to think about my way out: stay on this ship in private markets that's destined to sink, switch into another professional field, or take a road with more pressure but more autonomy? In this strategy game of a life, am I chasing win rate or payoff odds? After half a year of thinking I feel I've slowly arrived at my own answer. Either way the road ahead can't be called smooth — the era's easy gains are gone — but the wheel of history keeps rolling forward, and there's always something worth looking forward to.

In life, I made a number of big decisions this year too. I moved out of my first home in Shanghai and into the city center, where I walk, bike or take a cab basically everywhere. Lost some things, gained some things — I should make the most of this year living in Huangpu. I kept playing tennis and improved a bit. I felt some moments of being truly alive, especially at one live show after another. I tried activities I'd never tried before, learned more new things, and collected a lot of different experiences. I broke a few of my own rules and lived a little more as I pleased. I seem more tightly connected to Shanghai now, and I like this city more.

But who knows whether I'll be in a different city in the future? The question of whether to live in a different country has come up often these past two years, and as circumstances shift the scales keep tipping back and forth. Short term or long term? Experience or life? Endless thoughts surface. I've talked with friends living abroad about what life is like there — even in one place, everyone's situation is different. Trying to hear what people are thinking in their own lives and what reasoning they use to decide is itself interesting. But when it comes to me, sunk costs have to be considered, and it matters to be clear about what I'd gain and what I'd give up. On this question I only have a preliminary framework; which way the scales finally tip I'll leave to time.

This year, like many years before it, I felt my mood rise and fall. I used to describe how painful that was; this year I'd say the swings were always there, and as what I carry keeps growing, it's only natural that the amplitude grows with it. There's nothing to do but keep adapting and building mental strength. No need to celebrate it, no need to panic about it.

Standing at year's end, I wouldn't claim I made much progress, but on a lot of questions I seem to have thought things through more clearly than before — though this coherence may well be remade tomorrow; who knows about the future. I'm finally not nostalgic the way I was ten and five years ago, not pumped full of adrenaline the way I was in 2020 and 2022, and I refuse to feel, as I did in 2019 and 2021, that tomorrow is the end of the world — even though next year really will be difficult. I seem better able to live in the present: calmer, and steadier.

I've been reading a world history lately, following the threads of how history develops, and realizing that we're only an instant in it, and that the wheel rolling forward is unavoidable. But information and technology iterate faster and faster, things change faster and faster, and our finite lives can hold more density of experience while also drawing nourishment from history — which is genuinely interesting. So: explore the world from a different angle, and explore myself along more dimensions. Let that be the new goal for 2024.

The QQ Music year-in-review came out a few days ago, and my song of the year was, of course, IVE's I AM — the song I've been using to psych myself up since May. End-of-year me needs the same pep talk: life is a brilliant galaxy; be a writer; the genre is fantasy; and what's waiting for me tomorrow is a bigger stage.

To my 2023, my twenty-seventh year.