Preface
This piece is a record and reflection of my life from 2022-08-29 to 2022-09-04.
I’ve discovered that I’ve accumulated many unedited original photos from the past. I’m slowly organizing them now. Currently, I’m selecting a work that fits the theme as much as possible for each cover image. I’ll see if I can select some as specific themed portfolios later.
I’m quite surprised to hear from several friends in real life that they’re following my weekly reviews. When chatting about certain topics, they would say, “You mentioned this in your previous weekly review.” There’s also an unexpected person who resumed some contact because of the weekly reviews. It feels quite fascinating that the carrier of my desire to share is slowly connecting with and influencing my real life.
Returning to the Past, Regrets and the Present
Due to a conversation, I spent a sleepless night on Friday, with many memories from my student days constantly resurfacing.
The next day, feeling somewhat unsettled, I rewatched an old Japanese drama “Proposal Daisakusen”. It’s about the male protagonist returning to the past through photographs to make up for regrets, only to find that no matter how he tries to mend things, he can’t change the outcome. He ultimately decides to take action in reality.
Actually, when I watched it a few years ago, I was always a bit puzzled: Is it really meaningful to pick up old regrets after many years and try to achieve a happy ending? In other words, isn’t this just a blind pursuit of the beautiful imagination projected by the filter of memory? Just like the youth and beauty emanating from those time-traveling photographs, they exist in memory, and only in memory.
Returning to the Past
I don’t know whether to call it fortunate or unfortunate, but I once had an experience that could be called “returning to the past”. The story isn’t complicated. A girl I liked in middle school crossed paths with me again in my freshman year of college due to some connections. Perhaps it reignited some inexplicable feelings, and we got together, only to break up after a little over a month.
Perhaps because everything happened too quickly, there wasn’t time to leave behind much beauty. Only a post with the general meaning “Freshness isn’t experiencing known things with unknown people, but exploring unknown things with known people” was forgotten in some corner of memory.
In fact, the hurt brought by the end of that relationship is no longer important, but its existence itself has special significance. The me in middle school was probably dull and slow, unable to hide my liking for her but only able to express it clumsily. There was no protagonist halo in reality, naturally no happy ending, but that was indeed the first time I felt an emotion called “liking”. And “coincidentally”, this “continuation of fate” in college was also my first relationship.
The same person carried two different layers of emotion and meaning. Perhaps it should have been a beautiful story, the ever-popular love theme of “making up for the regret of first love after many years”. But when I truly entered this relationship, I found it wasn’t so. The obsession left after the wear and tear of time and growth on the original liking was torn to shreds by this reckless act.
Regrets and the Present
None of us have the superpower to return to the past and change memories, and because of the above experience, I’ve always been a bit afraid of repeating the same mistakes. I treat those regrets like Pandora’s box, with caution. I’ve always been used to sealing away these past things, sometimes even for so long that I feel I’ve forgotten them, only to find they’re still clear when some events or words stir emotions.
Since we’re on this topic, I want to tell another story, a long story hidden deep in memory.
After the division into arts and sciences in high school, I entered the arts class, a strange environment. Despite being severely face-blind, I inexplicably remembered a petite girl in the front row at first sight. She had a beautiful smile, and her unique “Guess who I am” when we first added each other as friends still makes me smile whenever I think of it. A chat during the National Day holiday brought us much closer, and a joking “I’ll call your dormitory” made me look forward to every Saturday noon for the next few months. Because we often talked for hours, I would walk along the small path by the canal, the rustling sound of stepping on fallen leaves and the gentleness from the other end of the phone painted the most beautiful autumn in my memory.
Later memories are mainly of companionship, interspersed with some small but warm daily moments: Every time after evening self-study, we would tacitly watch the night sky together in the corridor. Chatting with her as she drank QQ Star milk, trying hard to grow taller, became the happiest time of the day. I remember once overhearing her say that the candied haws brought by a classmate were delicious, but she was too shy to ask. So I walked several streets near the classmate’s home address I had inquired about, and finally found the same ones based on the packaging, just to see her surprised yet pretending to be calm expression when I handed them to her. I remember once during a school handicraft fair, I chose a blue wind chime I really liked and wrote her name on it, letting them deliver it to the class, a shy little thought swaying gently with the wind chime. A few months before her 18th birthday, I applied to be a day student, secretly recording birthday wishes from important people around her and audio messages from the whole class, editing them into a video that might seem incredibly crude now but was filled with a lot of heart at the time, just wanting to make this birthday a bit more special in her life…
It seemed that anything related to her was good.
But the beauty of the world often comes to an abrupt end with regrets, making one sigh at the mercilessness of fate.
After the college entrance exam, we argued, broke up, and deleted each other over something that perhaps now seems resolvable. Although I later asked about her scores and college choices, after much hesitation, I inexplicably avoided all cities related to her. It wasn’t until university that I inquired about her situation and restored some contact, but we were no longer who we used to be.
Actually, for so many years, I couldn’t calmly tell this story, and I’ve always been afraid of those regrets and the emotions they evoke. Until all these memories surged on this sleepless night.
These past beauties and regrets have shaped who I am now. In “Proposal Daisakusen”, Ken chose to face the present with these memories, while I chose to write them down. The manifestations of courage may differ, but at least, we’ve both taken the first step.
Other
This section will record some of my inputs and outputs, as well as other things I find interesting.
Work
This week at work, I was mainly busy with rehearsing for a demonstration, which involves system operation demonstration and explanation for over an hour. It’s quite challenging in terms of content arrangement and on-the-spot response, and I can’t help feeling a bit nervous. I hope everything goes smoothly when it’s official. The rest of the time was spent understanding new projects, I haven’t officially started my development tasks yet. In the past, I often had multiple tasks running in parallel, but they were mostly of the same type. This time, because there’s a lot that needs additional understanding and learning, I feel a bit overwhelmed.
Other than that, I learned a bit about PostgreSQL, and thought about organizing some commonly used tech stacks or tools in work practice, which can also serve as a reference. Let’s consider it an ongoing series (another Flag raised). I wonder when I’ll be able to write some in-depth articles more comfortably, still a long way to go.
Input
Books
- Hackers and Painters, reading this on my commute. Originally thought it would be some practical content like soft skills, and was reading it as a journey pastime, but surprisingly, many ideas are quite interesting, and the writing style is very comfortable. I’m about halfway through and still immersed in it.
- I’ll Gift You a Bullet, just started reading, more wanting to learn how to “scrutinize” the people and things around me.
TV Series
- Rehearsal, when watching the first episode, I was wondering, can the protagonists participating in the rehearsal really enter the role with a new identity? Or what would happen if people involved in the rehearsal gradually can’t distinguish between it and reality? It’s a short and interesting direction, like telling you from the beginning that this is a performance, less expectation for twists but more easily drawn into the development of events. I was amazed by the age transition coming down the slide, and there are many long shots.
- Proposal Daisakusen, an old drama, rewatched it because of some events this week that reminded me of high school days. The last time I watched it was probably in my freshman or sophomore year of college.
- Five Days at Memorial, talking about medical ethics, curious about how it’s handled in such a political environment.
- House of the Dragon, watched another episode, feeling like I might give up soon.
Anime
- The Genius Prince’s Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt, the ensemble feel is very good, with everyone connected around a main storyline. I quite like the line about the manzai comedy duo, reminds me of the Japanese drama “Spark” I watched a long time ago. Always thought this profession was very interesting.
- Summer Time Rendering, following the series.
- My Stepmom’s Daughter Is My Ex, following the series.
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