by: Mumu

二十九岁以来的几个感悟。第一个是发现自己无论在哪里都过成了一个样子。这么些年也没个实质的长进。依然还是一个很private的person。写东西也逃不过“提人名、感谢、当妈妈”的路数。在北京在坡县在三番过了一个礼拜的新鲜劲之后生活就开始固化：上班下班宅跑圈和许久未联系的小伙伴们吃喝叙旧。第二个是有些事情越发看开。悲观的讲生活里的麻烦本就是endless的，乐观的看唯有当下一时一刻才是重要的。out of control的事情劝自己不再执拗。第三个发现是国内域名备案过期了。国内人民不翻墙暂时打不开这网页。国外的小伙伴能顺溜读下中文的人也寥寥。这让我写起来安心很多。

过去半年很多意料外的重聚。去年八月回京，机场见到穿着mayday的tshirt的sure，暴发户式的关怀让人温暖又蒙逼。解铃还需系铃人还是治愈的。和晴，云在南站吃饺子，云见面给我一本 阿弥陀佛么么哒 回家三天看完，大冰讲故事渲染虽重但读起来也是津津有味。和洋洋红梅逍遥在南锣鼓巷吃春饼，听过来人交流当妈经验，完全是我知识储备之外的另一个大天地啊。十月去三番，共享办公桌离sun公司步行十几分钟。一起吃饭他直接绕了门禁走到桌边。十几年前我在教二三楼画板子他在附近磕GRE，画完一块就msg他过来看了再教下一部分怎么画。时空平移，好像还都是在自己的地盘上。和惠平安吉拉相聚一个周末，”分开旅行后的第一次团聚，同吃同睡半夜差点被挤掉床。见面之前是激动又忐忑，分别的时候各种不舍。uber司机肯定又看我们是拉拉。还好还是互相喜欢，每晚夜聊，过去很温暖，成长很惊喜。我们是朋友，相同又不同，会问hard question，也会默契把伤到对方的刺收好。听到彼此讲新的朋友会吃醋，同时真心祝福对方在新的旅途中开心快乐不寂寞。”大选那天和张同学吃饺子，讲完大选，讲湾区各家公司面试待遇晋升制度工作风格，你看你看，大家换了个地方依然过着似曾相识的日子。春节回京和万同住俩礼拜，她夜夜换了不同曲调高歌徐木木来睡我。周末一起逛菜市场做饭，边吃饭边吐槽脑残剧，去北邮科技大厦找云叙旧，那些乱七八糟的细节就一下子涌了出来。和GR喝酒她讲自己这一年的一事无成，我感慨自己的求之不得还有三十岁的尴尬浅薄，单曲循环一夜《可不可以不勇敢》借着酒劲自恋自艾泪流满面。博老师教导说人生分四年一个档儿的话，一共也没有几波可以冲的，好好考虑做些什么promising的事情。丁core总结一年一篇，从柳暗花明到铆劲前行，住院五次临危受命面对健康和事业做选择，雾霾天里背负大家期待又被投资人一次次否定，真心不易。

我的幸福总是建立在别人的痛苦之上。当我发现大家各自有各自的麻烦的时候，对着自己的烦恼心底才会淡然许多。你羡慕她有家有娃有牵挂，她可能也羡慕你自由自在没那一地鸡毛。你羡慕别人朝九晚五规律安稳，别人又羡慕着你起伏动魄跌宕的精彩。生活就是个任性的孩子，不按常理出牌也不会等你准备好，哗啦啦的剧情就铺开来了。无谓好坏，如鱼饮水，冷暖自知。

如许阅读线下做了三期。问题很多。每期总怕冷场，期待多些人气。可是阅读本是很私人的事情，不在一个频道上很难共鸣。我也没有好的解决办法，空有一腔情怀，听到的也多数是不看好的声音，可这是我的mission我的dream，越是千万人不看好越是需要我来护着她。下一个目标是7月2号上线换书web。快手可能两天就搞定，我吭哧吭哧不知要捣鼓多久，像自己的宝宝，虽然难也想自己生。

也认识了一些有趣的人。icho夜里修片子我偶尔和她聊天。她一面讲给谁都可以拍出美的照片，一脸的自信。一面讲有时候修片子修着修着就很自卑，觉得别人比自己好看。也因别人闪闪发光的自律品格心动，搬家来的第一个晚上，情绪颇low。心底里的话对初识不久的icho讲。她不紧不慢的娓娓道来自己的故事。我惊讶眼前风情万种魅力无限的姑娘也会“在自己喜欢的人面前紧张做不了自己。”同一个桌子上和yl聊起结婚的事情，“觉得结婚有了自己的家了就踏实了，不然总还觉得是飘着的”，似曾相识。

去年年末在普吉岛放孔明灯许愿。有人心怀天下的愿世界和平每个人都平安健康。我没有那么大理想，唯愿有自己的家然后可以和爱的人一起看世界。不过这么些年，奖中过几次，许下的愿望却是从来没有实现过。不知道今年的如何。

AI-generated translation.

A few realizations since turning twenty-nine. The first is that no matter where I am, I seem to live out the same kind of life. After all these years, there has been no substantial progress. I am still a very private person. And when I write, I still cannot escape my usual patterns: mentioning people by name, thanking them, and talking about wanting to be a mother. In Beijing, in Singapore, in San Francisco — once the freshness of the first week passes, life starts to solidify into the same routine: work, get off work, stay home, run, and eat and drink with old friends I have not seen in a long time. The second realization is that I have grown more and more able to let certain things go. Pessimistically speaking, life’s troubles are endless. Optimistically speaking, only the present moment matters. I keep telling myself not to stay stubborn about things that are out of control. The third realization is that my domestic domain registration filing has expired. People in China temporarily cannot open this page without using a VPN. And among friends abroad, only a handful can read Chinese fluently anyway. That makes writing feel much safer.

There have been many unexpected reunions in the past half year. Last August I went back to Beijing and saw Sure at the airport wearing a Mayday T-shirt. His nouveau-riche style of care was both warming and bewildering. The one who tied the knot really is the one who unties it too — still, it was healing. I ate dumplings with Qing and Yun at the South Railway Station. Yun handed me a copy of Amitabha, Mua Mua Da; I finished it in three days after getting home. Da Bing’s storytelling is admittedly heavy-handed, but still tremendously readable. I ate spring pancakes with Yangyang, Hongmei, and Xiaoyao in Nanluoguxiang and listened to experienced mothers exchange stories of motherhood — a whole other universe beyond my existing knowledge reserves. In October I went to San Francisco. The shared office desk was only a ten-minute walk from Sun’s company. When we met for a meal, he walked around the access gate straight to my desk. More than ten years ago, I drew circuit boards on the second and third floors of Teaching Building Two while he studied for the GRE nearby. Each time I finished one section, I’d message him to come over and look before teaching me how to draw the next part. Time and space shifted, yet somehow it still felt like we were on familiar ground. I spent a weekend with Huiping and Angela. “Our first reunion after traveling separately. We ate together, slept together, and nearly got squeezed off the bed in the middle of the night. Before meeting, I was excited and nervous; when parting, I couldn’t bear it. The Uber driver probably thought again that we were lesbians. Thankfully, we still liked each other. We talked late every night. The past was warm; our growth was full of delightful surprise. We are friends: similar and different. We ask hard questions, but also quietly tuck away the thorns that might hurt the other person. Hearing each other talk about new friends makes us jealous, and yet we sincerely hope the other will be happy and not lonely on the new journey.” On election day I ate dumplings with Zhang, and after talking about the election we talked about Bay Area companies — interviews, compensation, promotion systems, work styles. See? Even after changing places, everyone still lives strangely familiar lives. During Spring Festival, I stayed with Wan in Beijing for two weeks. Every night she sang in a different tune: Xu Mumu, come sleep with me. On weekends we went to the market, cooked together, complained about idiotic dramas over meals, and visited Yun at the Beiyou Technology Building. All those messy little details came flooding back at once. I drank with GR; she talked about having accomplished nothing that year, and I sighed over my own unsatisfied desires and the awkward shallowness of approaching thirty. I put Can I Please Not Be Brave on repeat all night, drank, wallowed in self-pity, and cried. Teacher Bo said that if life comes in four-year phases, there really are not many rounds when you can still charge hard, so think carefully about what promising things you should do. Ding Core summed up the year in a single piece: from emerging into brightness to pushing forward with full force, being hospitalized five times, facing choices between health and career under emergency pressure, carrying everyone’s expectations in smog-filled days only to be rejected again and again by investors. Truly not easy.

My happiness is always built on other people’s pain. When I realize that everyone has their own troubles, I become much calmer toward my own worries. You envy her for having a family, children, and ties of belonging; she may envy your freedom from all that domestic chaos. You envy others for their regular nine-to-five stability; they envy your dramatic, vivid, up-and-down life. Life is a willful child. It does not play by the rules, and it will not wait until you are ready; the plot simply spreads out in a rush. There is no absolute good or bad in it. Like fish drinking water, only the fish knows whether it is warm or cold.

Ruxu Reading has done three offline events. There are many problems. Each time I worry the room will go cold and hope for more buzz. But reading is such a private thing that if people are not on the same wavelength, resonance is hard. I have no good solution. All I have is a heart full of feeling, and most of what I hear are voices that do not believe in it. But this is my mission, my dream. The more ten thousand people doubt it, the more I feel I have to protect it. The next goal is to launch the book-exchange web app on July 2. Someone quick-handed might finish it in two days. I have no idea how long I will have to labor over it. It feels like my own baby — difficult as it is, I still want to give birth to it myself.

I have also met some interesting people. At night, when Icho retouches photos, I occasionally chat with her. On one hand she says, with great confidence, that she can photograph beauty in anyone. On the other, she says that sometimes while editing photos she suddenly feels terribly insecure and thinks other people are prettier than she is. I too was moved by the shining discipline in other people. On the first night after moving, I was in a fairly low mood. I ended up telling some of the things in my heart to Icho, whom I had not known very long. She slowly told me her own story. I was surprised that such an enchanting, glamorous woman could also say, “In front of the person I like, I get nervous and can’t be myself.” At the same table, YL and I talked about marriage. “I feel like once you’re married and have a home of your own, you feel settled. Otherwise you still feel like you’re floating.” It sounded so familiar.

At the end of last year in Phuket, I released a sky lantern and made a wish. Some people, with the whole world in their hearts, wished for world peace and for everyone to be safe and healthy. I do not have such grand ideals. I only wish to have a home of my own and then see the world with the person I love. But over all these years, I have won prizes a few times, while the wishes I have made have never once come true. I do not know what this year’s will bring.