Original link: https://lutaonan.com/blog/say-in-28/
one
Today is my 28th birthday.
On my birthday in 2016, I wrote an article on my blog “What I want to say at the age of 21”. Ambitious article. I feel that I am getting closer and closer to the “success” I want. I finally want to use technology to impress others, use technology to do something meaningful, and help the company’s business move fast. What I dreamed of when I was 13 years old, in That year came true.
I am very grateful to myself who wrote that article and recorded my youth and frivolity. As Wang Xiaobo said in “The Golden Age”:
I was twenty-one years old that day, in the golden age of my life. I have a lot of expectations. I want to love, I want to eat, and I want to become a half-bright cloud in the sky in an instant.
But it wasn’t until I was 28 today that I deeply understood the second half of this passage:
I later learned that life is a slow process of being hammered. People grow old day by day, and their extravagant hopes disappear day by day, and finally become like a bull that has been hammered. But I didn’t foresee this on my twenty-first birthday. I felt like I would go on forever, and nothing could beat me.
two
Think back to my 18 years old, in 2013, my sophomore year in high school. I am very confused, and I have read “JavaScript Advanced Programming” on the side of the desk for countless times. Later, at a technical conference, I had the honor to have a meal with the translator Cao Li. I said that I grew up reading your translated books. We laughed it off. But he probably doesn’t understand how much this book means to me.
I can’t go home on weekends, so I go to Internet cafes to write code and open source libraries, hoping to make something in the community. At that time, I felt that no one understood my ambitions. The classmates around me didn’t know what JavaScript was. They only knew that I had bad grades and didn’t like learning. This is really unfair, I love learning more than most people.
I’m confused because I don’t know how to go my way. I missed my schoolwork because I learned programming, but do I really have a chance to make a living by programming? Am I too naive and too idealistic? Will I end up not doing well in both schoolwork and programming?
In those lost times, reading and writing saved me. Whenever I was free, I went to the school library to read, and read a lot of modern works (Qian Zhongshu, Hu Shi, Wang Xiaobo, A Cheng, etc.). I also read Maugham, and that “Blade” changed me a lot.
I am very happy every time I take a language test because I can write a composition. I like to make use of themes, and there are not enough grids. I don’t care at all about getting a low grade for digression, I want to express, I want to create beauty in words. The Chinese teacher at that time understood me very well, and he was one of the few people who made me feel understood. I am very grateful to him.
But I am still confused. Sometimes I would rather be like those “good students” who have no distractions, parents who are happy, and teachers who are at ease. But I can’t.
three
When I was 19 years old, in 2014, I took the college entrance examination. As usual, the school held a “coming-of-age ceremony”, giving everyone blood in the lobby to fight for the college entrance examination. I find it ridiculous, but also feel unqualified, I’m just a smug wretch who can’t handle high school classes.
In the first year of high school, I made up for it. I missed my homework. I taught myself the textbooks of the first and second grades like I taught myself programming. I read the entire textbook word for word, because I found that many test points were in the books. Some very secret corner. I seem to be doing an experiment, trying to improve my grades in the most efficient way. So I bought the real college entrance examination questions over the years, carefully studied the rules of each year, which things will definitely be tested, and the difficulty of the questions. Based on these rules, I customized my test preparation strategies.
After the college entrance examination, I felt a breath of freedom. The bird singing on the kapok tree outside the window, for those who are still in school, Duomei has nothing to do with her, but for me who finished the college entrance examination, I am that bird, I can sing whenever I want, I think Fly and fly.
Fortunately, my test preparation strategy was considered a success. Everyone thought I couldn’t get into an undergraduate degree, but I finally got into a not-so-good undergraduate degree.
Four
I don’t want to look back on my college, I’ve said enough on the blog. But one thing is very interesting, I also mentioned in the blog:
This is a letter I wrote to my future self in 2014. When I was a freshman, it was an assignment assigned to us by the teacher in the career planning class. After we finished it, we gave it to the teacher for preservation, and he would return it after we graduated from university.
The teacher contacted me via WeChat saying that he had a letter and took this photo. I had long since forgotten that I had written this letter, and after reading it I remembered it all.
I remember my longing for the unknown when I first entered college, I remembered listening to boring web design classes in the classroom, and I remembered the song “All the way to the north” that I listened to when I returned the key to the dormitory aunt on the day I dropped out and took a minibus to return to downtown Guangzhou. “.
five
After dropping out of school, I officially joined a start-up company. Strictly speaking, I decided to drop out of school to do full time from the part time before dropping out. No one gave me advice, it should be said that no one could give me advice. Choice is difficult because no one knows what the outcome of the choice must be. At that moment, I realized that I was an adult. Unlike the questions in the exam, the questions in life have no fixed answers. The meaning of the choice is given by what you do after the choice.
It was a difficult and happy time.
I am happy because I feel that the door of the whole world has been opened for me. Writing code is no longer my “doing nothing”. I have finally come to my home field.
It’s hard because I don’t have money. I work in Zhujiang New Town, and I rented a 600 yuan a month house in an urban village in Dashi, Panyu, along the subway line. The house is on the second floor, there is no light, and the windows are walls. Tap water has a peculiar smell, I can only buy bottled water for washing. Wear a mask when you go to work, because there are trucks passing by, and the dust is billowing.
The house is only 600 yuan, because I have to deposit two and pay one, and I just got out of school, so I can’t afford it. I rented out the next month’s salary to the boss in advance.
At that time, I started to listen to “IT Public Review”. The sound of the podcast made me feel that even though I was in this dark little house, I was participating in this wave of the Internet like them, and I was no longer trapped in the school. There are many people, I want to flex my muscles in it.
six
Getting Ali’s offer was completely unexpected. Even though I liked the startup company and the two founders very much, I still chose “Dachang” in the face of such an opportunity.
I remember several rounds of interviews that day, and finally met with HR to talk about expectations, and I said a number. On the way home, I felt that I was driving a little too high. Did I miss this opportunity because I drove too high? At the subway station near my home, I was notified that there was an offer.
Afterwards, I began to face the halo attached to me by others – young, out of school, young and promising. I’m not at all proud of it, I’m just terrified. I’m not young and promising, I’m just a stupid bird flying first, I entered the society early when others were still in their sophomore year. I always think that my classmates are very smart. After they graduate, maybe they can learn what I learned in advance in just one year.
I enjoy this kind of work very much, because programming is my life, and I enjoy her. Back then, I was even surprised, why did some people not want to go to work? Writing code at work is the happiest thing for me. It brings me a sense of accomplishment, and I am using my ability to create value.
This drum of blood is really full of charm.
seven
Time has passed, and the drum of blood has been spent at the age that should be spent most. Only when the enthusiasm subsided, I realized that programming is the most superficial layer of what I really want to pursue. What I care about is what I achieve with code and what value it brings to users. I want to use my taste and values to create something beautiful to solve practical problems, and make a sustainable business model, or create a business model.
Business is an art, and there are thousands of ways to make money. I want to survive in this world with decency and beauty and leave something behind.
I hope that I will always be strong, and nothing can beat me.
You see, Kamala, if you throw a pebble into the water, the pebble will sink to the bottom along the shortest path. Just like Siddhartha had a goal and made up his mind. Siddhartha did nothing, he waited, he thought, he fasted. He walks through the world like a stone flies to the bottom of the water—no effort, no struggle; he will be guided, he will let himself sink. The target guides him, for he forbids anything that interferes with the target from entering his soul. This is what Siddhartha learned when he was a recluse. Fools call it magic. Fools think it is the work of the devil. Actually, the devil does nothing, the devil does not exist. Everyone can cast spells. Everyone can achieve his goals if he thinks, waits, fasts.
——Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
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