Preface
This is a record and reflection of my life from 2022-09-13 to 2022-09-18.
The past week has been somewhat busy, oscillating between several projects, so I haven’t had much input. I had to work over the weekend but didn’t want to stay cooped up at home, so I went out and unexpectedly found a nice café where I spent a pleasant day.
Cyberspace
I previously learned about the concept of “cyberspace” from Reorx’s article “Using Automated Workflows to Aggregate Information Intake and Output”. The original quote is:
Cyberspace constitutes my spiritual world.
It’s hard not to agree with this description.
I’m not sure when it began, but I can clearly feel my dependence on information from the online world. Unlike gaming addiction or the often-criticized short video algorithm opium, my dependence isn’t about mindlessly scrolling or escaping anxiety. It’s a craving for information acquisition that has become internalized as a way of life.
Relying on the online world inevitably involves struggling with social media and algorithms. On one hand, we need to avoid being troubled by overwhelming anxiety-inducing information or “peer pressure” from our social circles. On the other hand, we must be vigilant against the information cocoons constructed by algorithms.
To be honest, this is quite difficult to achieve. Even though I have some ability to restrain myself and filter information, and I’m consciously trying to do so, it’s still hard to avoid being disturbed or guided by it. I eventually adopted a simple yet effective method - turning off the WeChat Moments entry and most app notifications.
I turned off my Moments entry one night in my junior year. The specific context and motivation are a bit blurry now, but this accidental act miraculously became a habit I’ve stuck to until now. I want to say that this doesn’t mean I no longer care about my friends or the people around me. After closing Moments, I often click into their avatars to check on their recent status when I think of certain people periodically, and maybe start a conversation about some content.
It might sound redundant. Compared to an instant red dot notification, we need to go through the cumbersome process of “remembering a specific person/thing -> finding the chat box -> clicking on the avatar -> viewing Moments -> understanding recent status”. But for me, it’s like a metaphor for ritual. This deliberately created trouble constantly reminds me of the effort needed to maintain a relationship. Gradually, I have fewer friends, but the remaining ones become increasingly important.
In the past two years, I’ve made some other changes. I turned off all app notifications except for instant messaging apps (WeChat, Telegram) and email. I also limited the number of follows on platforms that are mainly used for information acquisition without social attributes (such as Bilibili, Weibo) to within 100. If I add new ones, I filter and optimize previous follows to reduce irrelevant content interference.
My Information Flow
Through this article “Using Automated Workflows to Aggregate Information Intake and Output” and the subsequent “Building a Zero-Cost n8n Automation Platform with Railway and Supabase” iteration upgrade, I also built my own automated information flow platform - “Yu’s Life” using n8n and Telegram.
Referring to Reorx’s list, I also sorted out my input and output sources:
- Telegram, collecting my scattered information input and output on various platforms, and recently I’ve been posting my thoughts on movies, books, and other reflections in the channel. I also follow some channels and groups to get some information or meet like-minded people, occasionally forwarding manually.
- Blog, currently the output channel I’m most attentive to, now more like a life journal.
- Twitter, the main social platform I’m using now, also a carrier of my desire to share, where I’ve met and followed many interesting friends.
- Instagram, I just decided to resume using it recently, mainly to share some of my photography results and daily life.
- YouTube, I’m a heavy user, watching a lot of technical tutorials and digital news, occasionally there’s also a lot of fun content.
- Bilibili, mainly retained some bloggers I’ve been following for many years, watching travel vlogs more, only viewing dynamics not homepage and hot topics. I had plans to run my own account before, but don’t have any good ideas at the moment.
- Pinboard, a bookmark and website saving management tool, I’ve saved a lot of important content in just a few months of use, heavily dependent on it.
- Instapaper, managing read-it-later, mainly for saving some high-quality or long articles.
- GitHub, also browsing daily, looking at some good projects, also using lists to manage Stars.
- Apple Music, daily music software (after all, the ecosystem is convenient), but the interaction with playlists feels very average.
- YouTube Music, subscribed to YouTube Premium so it came with this, don’t use it much, but occasionally use it for retrieval.
- Spotify, mark good songs heard on the above two music softwares in Spotify and automatically sync to the channel.
- Douban, recording my books, TV series, movies, anime and games, also heavily used, trying to write my own review for every work I’ve watched/played.
- Weibo, rarely post, also retained some familiar follows, occasionally will sync and share some updates but don’t have much motivation.
- WeChat Moments, post photography and some articles I’m happy with writing, basically at a frequency of occasionally proving I’m still alive.
I’m like having an obsessive-compulsive disorder for information organization. I feel genuinely happy when I see these scattered digital traces of mine gathered into my personal little space. Flipping back when writing weekly reviews can also pick up quite a few interesting points. I hope to accumulate more and more things in the future.
Self-Definition and Boundaries
This weekend I might have been a bit rebellious, watching two teenage movies, “The Breakfast Club” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, both very old films. The themes are similar to “Dead Poets Society” which I’ve watched several times - the insistence on one’s own personality, the cognition and rebellion against authority, the impact on the boundaries of life and future possibilities, but perhaps more relaxed and humorous in comparison.
As experiences grow, I may not be timid in facing life and changes, and often make some different choices. But even now, I still feel that I am a person defined by inner boundaries, and I use this way and habit to define everything around me.
I don’t consider myself a person with strong “creativity”, so I often instinctively avoid related things or choices. I consider “friendliness” and “politeness” as my labels, so I’m often unwilling to break them in some communications, and “rationality” and due “persistence” often give way to them. I might be willing to take responsibility for some of my seemingly crazy choices, but actually, I’ve already assessed their cost and whether I can bear it in my heart, so I actually lack the courage to truly “take risks”.
It’s the same with family, friendship, and intimate relationships. I seem to have made some definitions for each relationship in my heart, and I believe I’m following the boundaries within them. But emotions are not so clear-cut, I’ve intentionally or unintentionally ignored this point, yet still feel that I’m maintaining this balance.
This week, some subtle changes occurred in my relationships with people around me. My first feeling was at a loss, like the instinctive fear of facing changes. In addition to overcoming it, it’s also very difficult to immediately sort out my emotions and thoughts. Perhaps this state can be called “emotional overload”. In this repeated process, I often wonder if I’ve always been too obsessed with boundaries themselves and given up feeling the real changes in emotions and feelings, or if boundaries are just a self-protection mechanism.
It’s so hard.
Others
This part will record some of my input and output and other things I find interesting.
Input
Books
- “Sending You a Bullet”, currently reading
- “Details of the Rule of Law”, currently reading
TV Series
- “Five Days at Memorial”, it talks about some events during Hurricane Katrina in the United States. It inevitably reminds people of some things during the Wuhan epidemic. I don’t have enough knowledge reserves on medical ethics or law to evaluate the justification of euthanasia in emergency situations. I just indeed saw the arrogance of politicians, the authenticity of human nature, and the insignificance of ordinary people in it. As it says in it, often without personal experience, one doesn’t have the right to judge its rights and wrongs condescendingly.
Movies
- “The Breakfast Club”, the sense of era and theme of old films might remind me a little of “Dead Poets Society”, but it’s more relaxed and interesting. The student’s perspective, a limited space scene, and a sufficient amount of dialogue combined in this way of expression make it easy for people to empathize. The natural display of rebellion and instinctive fear of authority (family, school), and the collective monologue at the end also makes one smile knowingly - a group of teenagers who don’t want to be defined.
Anime
- “Cyberpunk: Edgerunners”, the plot is relatively conventional, and the art style is not particularly likable, but some designs and scene art are okay. Maybe because I haven’t played the game itself, I don’t have much empathy for the worldview and characters in it. It’s a standard game peripheral animation.
- “Summer Time Rendering”, following the series
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