今年的年底非常没有实感，可能是日子过的平静，平静中没有那种对年底的期待。也可能是因为天气，暖和的一直没有冬天的感觉，一看才发现已经进入了一年中最后一个月。
今年可能是迄今为止最丰富的一年，翻看自己的日记，发现几乎每隔一两个月想的事情就完全不一样，生活方式也有巨大的变化。第一个季度一直在漂泊，日记里几乎都在描绘路上的风景和终于落脚歇口气，说起来也奇怪，这些密集的小感悟，如今不到一年，竟是一点也想不起来了。第二个季度，被小刘工作的潜在风险 trigger，过了比较鸡的一个季度，然后就发现了自己想做事情的一些问题，开始陷入痛苦和纠结。第三个季度，开启了新生活，搬进新家搞家装，去美国呆的两周又给我注入了一些人生能量，回来之后开始进入具体而平静的生活，开始做一些自己感兴趣又不那么功利的事情。
自己想的事情和思考的维度也发生了巨大的变化。
可能也是对职业这条路逐渐绝望，今年 Fomo 的心理比之前少了很多。倒是在做自己的事情中，感受到此前没有的心态波动和变化，说是对自己更多的探索，但也其实也是更失望的。
之前几年的思想变化核心大约在逐渐意识到很多事情都是社会的隐形枷锁，其实如果自己破除了这些枷锁，其实它也无法左右你什么了。今年则更是不同，真正破除了以后，一方面感到了极大的自由和自在，但是感到更加困惑，因为意识到之前的很多幸福其实建立在社会体系之中，甚至建立在比较之上，自己想要的快乐由什么组成，这些哪些是自发的，哪些是被塑造的，真的很难分得清。
在看《人性的枷锁》的时候，我也会有类似的困惑，为什么想了那么多，体验了那么多，最后却对那种平常的安稳所吸引。我不理解。也对抛开世俗，自己究竟想要什么，优先级的排序，时而清晰时而模糊。
对生活的体验也在变化中。
今年还有有趣的体验就是办了一场属于自己的轻松婚礼，结婚的感觉果然和我想的一样，的确没有什么变化。不过也是，即使再灵魂伴侣，很多课题终究还是自己的，还是需要自己去探索和解决。
年初的小 trip 不断，现在回想，整个人的漂泊感无法快速充电，虽有小小的新奇感，但是旅途不断消耗着自己生活的热情，以至于这种消耗在 5 月的土耳其达到了极限。我甚至开始怀疑起自己对生活的热情本身的意义。
不过下半年的生活安定感的回归再次给了我生活的养分，美国之旅，美网，Ladygaga 演唱会，朋友和自然的滋养，都给了我今年最佳旅行体验，也再次打开了感官和体验的大门。
年底还去了 Twice 演唱会，第一次站坑体验，真的太太太爽了，第一次用肉眼看 Kpop 舞台，太太太震撼了，原来体育场也是可以获得小剧场的体验的。
关于未来，这两年我真的想的少了。接受了随机性，享受着当下的生活。当下的生活已经是我能想象到最完美的样子了，也没有什么动机打破它，只能等待被动打破的那一天。
倒是花了更多时间和精力在探索自己真正擅长和想做的事情，毕竟这个 AI 快速进化的时代，感觉大部分人的工作都很快会被 AI 替代或变革，生产力真的提升了，自己想要什么变得更加重要了。是的，又回到了自己想要什么这个问题上。可能这个问题想明白了，我才能重新憧憬未来吧？
不过在年底时间，我被一个巨大的事件砸中了，就是亲人离去，让我重新开始思考一些事情。外婆 9 月的低血糖给她的身体带来了巨大的伤害，但是最后的离去也是真的猝不及防。原来人走了这个世界真的是一切照旧的，但是很难想象她真的已经不在了。走完整个流程，第一次去殡仪馆，第一次看着一个人真正走向消失，依然觉得痛心和震撼，看完她的一生，我也陷入了深深的思考。
我在想，关于人生的优先级。我拷问自己，关于自己在消失的那一天，到底是体验更重要，还是终究希望留下些什么吗。我觉得我还是不知道答案，但是似乎天平有它偏向的方向。接下来的一年，希望我能真正想明白这个问题。
想想年初的计划，其实没实现多少，倒是每天在纠结一些非常不具体的问题。回想过去一年，做了更多尝试，失败为主，而且似乎也变得更加迷茫了。做了特别多形而上的思考，想跟一些朋友聊起，都会被一句你就是太闲了打回来。甚至有时候都会觉得，自己有点在社会时钟上停下来的感觉。看着身边的人往前走，自己却总是纠结走哪一条路，走出去几步又回到原点。但是我的确觉得和去年的自己已经完全不一样了。不知是好是坏，但是在这个时间点，真的有些期待命运会把我引到哪条路上去。
The end of this year doesn't feel real. Maybe it's because the days have been calm, and inside that calm there's none of the usual anticipation of a year ending. Or maybe it's the weather — warm enough that winter never arrived — and then I looked up and found we were already in the last month of the year.
This might be the richest year yet. Going back through my journals, I find that what I was thinking about was completely different every month or two, and the shape of my life changed enormously as well. The first quarter I was drifting; the journals are almost all scenery on the road and the relief of finally landing somewhere to catch my breath. Strange to say, those dense little realizations — less than a year on, I can't recall a single one. The second quarter, triggered by the potential risk to Xiao Liu's job, was a frantic one, and then I ran into some problems in the thing I wanted to build and fell into pain and second-guessing. The third quarter I started a new life: moved into the new place and did the renovation, and two weeks in the US poured some life energy back into me. After coming home I settled into a concrete, quiet life and started doing things I'm interested in that aren't especially utilitarian.
What I think about, and the dimensions I think along, have changed enormously too.
Maybe because I've been slowly losing hope in the career track, I felt much less FOMO this year than before. Instead, working on my own thing brought swings and shifts in my state I hadn't felt before — you could call it exploring myself further, but it's also, really, being more disappointed.
The core of my thinking in earlier years was gradually realizing that many things are society's invisible shackles, and that once you break out of them they can't actually dictate anything to you. This year was different again: having genuinely broken out, I felt enormous freedom and ease, and also more confusion — because I realized that a lot of my earlier happiness was in fact built inside the social system, even built on comparison. What is the happiness I want made of? Which parts arose from me and which were shaped into me? It's genuinely hard to tell apart.
Reading Of Human Bondage I had a similar confusion: why, after thinking so much and experiencing so much, is one ultimately drawn to ordinary stability? I don't understand it. And on what I actually want once convention is set aside, and how to rank those priorities — sometimes it's clear and sometimes it blurs.
How I experience life is shifting too.
Another interesting experience this year was holding a small, easygoing wedding of our own. Being married feels exactly as I expected — nothing much changes. Which figures: even with the truest soulmate, most of the coursework is still your own, and you still have to explore it and solve it yourself.
Early in the year there was one small trip after another, and looking back, drifting like that meant I couldn't recharge quickly. There was a little novelty in it, but the traveling kept draining my appetite for life, until that drain hit its limit in Turkey in May. I even started to question the meaning of my appetite for life itself.
But the return of stability in the second half fed me again. The trip to the US, the US Open, the Lady Gaga concert, the nourishment of friends and of nature — all of it gave me the best travel experience of my year, and opened the doors of sensation and experience back up.
At the end of the year I also went to a Twice concert — my first time in a standing pit, and it was so, so good. Seeing a K-pop stage with my own eyes for the first time was so, so overwhelming. It turns out a stadium can give you the feeling of a small theater.
About the future, I've genuinely thought about it less these past two years. I've accepted randomness and I enjoy the life in front of me. The life I have now is already the most perfect version I can imagine, and I have no motive to break it — I can only wait for the day it gets broken for me.
What I have spent more time and energy on is finding out what I'm actually good at and actually want to do. In an era where AI is evolving this fast, it feels like most people's work will soon be replaced or transformed by it. Productivity really has gone up, and so what you yourself want matters more. Yes — back to that question of what I want. Maybe only once I've worked that one out can I look forward to the future again.
But at the end of the year I was hit by something enormous: losing a family member, which sent me back to rethinking some things. My grandmother's hypoglycemic episode in September did serious damage to her body, but her going in the end was still completely sudden. It turns out that when a person dies, the world really does carry on exactly as before — and yet it's so hard to imagine that she's really not here. Going through the whole process, my first time at a funeral home, my first time watching a person actually pass into disappearance, still felt wrenching and staggering. Having seen a whole life through to the end, I fell into deep thought.
I've been thinking about priorities in a life. I've been interrogating myself: on the day I disappear, will experience have been what mattered, or do I ultimately want to leave something behind? I still don't think I know the answer, but the scale seems to have a direction it leans. In the coming year I hope I can genuinely think this one through.
Thinking back to my plans at the start of the year, not much of it got done; instead I spent every day agonizing over very unspecific questions. Looking back on the past year, I made more attempts, mostly failures, and I seem to have become more lost. I did an enormous amount of metaphysical thinking, and when I tried to talk about it with friends, I'd get batted back with "you just have too much time on your hands." Sometimes I even feel like I've stopped on the social clock — watching the people around me move forward while I keep agonizing over which road to take, walking a few steps out and returning to where I started. But I do feel completely different from the me of last year. I don't know whether that's good or bad, but at this particular point I'm genuinely a little curious about which road fate is going to lead me down.