After living here for a year, I can no longer tolerate the game of chance.

"This year of traveling has been a year of rapid flow." I thought about "speed" repeatedly while riding on a motorcycle in Bangkok.

After leaving my friends and walking out of the Thai bar, a silent man picked me up. Within a few seconds, I thought that compared to Yunnan, which is a slow electric donkey, there is no doubt that Bangkok is a fast, almost flying motorcycle.

The roar and sound of the wind bring a feeling of lightness, allowing the heat of the body and the stickiness of the soul to be swept away by the sometimes hot and sometimes cold wind. The brutal and domineering motorcycles shuttled in the middle of the wide road, which was quite frightening. Faster and more lightning-fast motorcycles kept passing by, like that motorcycle game I played on my previous switch that I couldn’t remember the name of. In the first-view rear-seat version, the driver is an invisible helmet.

I am exhausted after a day of walking around. Graffiti, cars, street lights, 711, white people, green leaf light signs, people lying on the road, glowing Buddhist temples, hot food stalls... The street scenes in Bangkok are like a movie with dropped frames. Stick together. Every stop at the traffic light and the narrow gap between vehicles is like an exciting and tense part of the game.

I felt relaxed, and the fragments I wanted to write about my one-year sojourn were stirring repeatedly in my mind. Words and sentences were being organized haphazardly. The next second I pulled away and realized that I was drafting, completing a nesting process.

When my editor Sharon and I agreed to live together for a year, I didn’t know where to start. I will never say "brave people enjoy the world first", nor will I say "life is not a track, but a wilderness", nor can I say "digital nomad". These words that appear frequently on social media this year make I'm a little dizzy.

I think of last September, when the epidemic was not yet over. One afternoon, I stood alone at the Pudong Immigration Bureau, my mask wet with tears.

On a very ordinary day, I took the documents and sat on the long subway to go there. I really felt that I was very close to the "passport" and the "world". At that time, the sun was shining on me, the temperature in Shanghai was pleasant in early autumn, and I had not been out for a week because I was preparing for the IELTS exam.

At that time, I needed an IELTS score and a reason to study abroad to get my passport. And when it was handed to me after all the hard work, the rush to get a New Zealand working holiday visa was over, and I threw the passport on the bedside cabinet as a ticket for a ship that didn’t know when it would sail.

When I was in Bangkok, tropical comic clouds were distorted like backdrops, I could have that, right? Yeah? right. I asked myself repeatedly.

Now, I will only tell you that in the year after graduating from college, I always wanted to "find a place to live casually." These days, the lyrics of "Single Hotel" have been circulating in my mind over and over again——

"Pick up my bags and go to a faraway place.

It’s so far away that you can forget the past;

I don't need a certain direction,

I just want the journey to be long enough.”

I silently said over and over again, "I can no longer stand the game of chance."

01

As a Shanghai college student who graduated last year, the moment that led to my first so-called "derailment" was the "stagnation" of the school closure, if there are still people who remember what we have experienced.

In March, I was anxious to find a job that would allow me to become a full-time intern, and then the whole of Shanghai fell silent. In May, I was still paying attention to various recruitments and opportunities, trying to grab something stable. In June, when I came out of home isolation, I just wanted to leave the space composed of six walls. I wanted to see the snow-capped mountains and blow the free wind. Some vague but strong wishes.

Before the trip, I stayed up late every day, had insomnia, and was mentally shaky. My mantra at that time was "I really can't live another minute of this b-day." And when the gears of travel started rolling, I breathed in the fresh air, all my senses were opened, and I was so happy that I could only Circling "It would be nice if time could stop at this moment forever."

In the past, due to the limitations of conventional travel methods, I have always harbored a certain distrust of the "dramatic changes brought about by travel" promoted by social media. As for me, I am simply suppressing my madness. Why can’t life go on? As usual.

The desire and inspiration in my heart were so strong that I turned down two offers that required me to return to Shanghai immediately after the lockdown was lifted. If I don't go out and take a breath, I can't continue this life that makes me so tired. Looking back now, at that time, I could hardly feel happiness, and my desire for "life" was also very weak.

In early June, after I ended my quarantine at home, I bought a direct flight to Xi'an. When I was waiting at the airport with an 18-inch small suitcase and a backpack, I was still doing an online internship. The only compensation left for me by the quarantine life was the savings and internship salary that I had accumulated passively because I had no place to spend money. This also became the confidence for me to "notify" my parents before departure. It wasn’t really much money, but it was enough to survive for a few months.

The plane was in the clouds, and I could see there were still clouds above the clouds. The blue sky, I am so close to the sun. I was excited: the trip was finally about to begin! "I don't expect travel to solve any problems in real life, I just hope to be able to breathe in it." I wrote down my mood at the time in a memo.

Just like that, without any planning, without an end deadline, without knowing where to stay tonight, the trip started. I was still insomnia the night before departure, and I was thinking about something about "exile". I felt that I longed for a real exile, to go to a distant place and leave all the familiar people, but I couldn't tell to what extent, nor how to throw myself.

When I was in Xi'an, I rode bicycles under the ancient city wall with my "net friend" Socks, who was also unemployed, with the moon hanging high behind us. We went to a gay bar and had a hearty dance party without any restraints. Jolin Tsai paired with Cyndi Wang, who became popular at the time, and it was also the first time for the epidemic last year. It was the long-awaited crowd movement and people dancing.

Then I went to Dali, a "paradise" and lawless place at that time, crowded with young people who had fled from the north. After the last night of carnival at 404 Bar with my friends, we rode a small electric donkey to Erhai Lake in the early morning to wait for the sunrise. We climbed wild mountains to find a teahouse on Cangshan Mountain, or lay quietly by the Erhai Lake under the shade of a tree for an afternoon. I enjoy the brilliance brought to my life by hanging out, like a long and delayed adolescence that all East Asians long for.

Every summer after the college entrance examination, I always seem to have internships and part-time jobs. This relaxing and happy summer is really important to me. Live in a strange place with strange people, make new friends, re-introduce yourself, open yourself up and be with nature. Traveling not only heals my stomach, which was suffering from loss of appetite due to the epidemic, but also reawakens my desire to live and my passion for life.

At the end of the summer, I went on a family trip with a Xinjiang girl I met in Dali. During the road trip, rock music and Xinjiang folk songs were played in the car. Outside the window were all the Gobi, all the deserts, Populus euphratica forests, short shrubs and meadows, large cotton fields, red willow bushes with pink flowers, straight Highways and endless gray and white.

My head got out of the car roof, my hands wanted to touch the wind, I felt like my heart could be penetrated by the wind, I wanted to be on the road all the time. I said to myself, the time when I am looking for meaning is the most meaningful time for me.

Going back to the question of exile, what is exile?

At the end of the two-month trip, I wrote in the circle of friends. It was not something profound, nor did it point to any mysterious meaning. In summary, it was, "Those things I wanted so much in the past, now, I don’t want it anymore.” That’s not just some kind of vindictive psychology brought about by the epidemic closure, but that I no longer want to continue living according to the “inertia of old desires”, yes, “inertia”.

When I was studying in Shanghai, my ideal future was to rent a rental house, have a job I like, and go drinking with friends after get off work. There were some slow changes going on inside me, and I wanted to acknowledge them. I don’t want that fancy white-collar life anymore. I totally know I can have it, but I don’t want it at all.

If you ask, what did the 70 days of being locked up in the dormitory during the epidemic teach me? In the small dormitory shared with my roommates, I repeated nucleic acid submission, nucleic acid submission, and feeding myself. Day after day, the repeated routine cruelly erased my life. In the heart of the silent storm, small struggles, gray electronic tombstones on social media, time passes, life passes.

I then deeply realized that the essence of life is only time, and it is only about how we use time. The answer to life can be so simple. Those peer anxieties and society's rules of the game are all ineffective. Those good and good things that everyone wants, I don't mind getting them slowly. Or, never have to get them.

Of course, I will also be very practical and tell you that such a trip requires money. If I look back on my life when I started making decisions for myself, it was undoubtedly when I had a sum of money at my disposal.

Because I come from a low-income family with heavy burdens and a slow way out of poverty, I can't really feel at ease many times. For a long time, I felt guilty about pleasure. Then, I realized that children across East Asia seemed to share this pain. The way I try to alleviate my own oppression is by starting early on in financial independence. Spending your own money, no matter what, has some moral immunity.

I was working as a PR intern for a luxury goods company, writing articles at the same time, which allowed me to travel carefree in the low-priced southwest region. My friend Wu Wu who later traveled with me, the money for her "defection" came from the small treasury she saved while working as a translator and host in college.

"The advantage of traveling is that you can clean up your life first and then give it new content." On the plane to Xinjiang, I read the end of "The Way of Travel". The author quoted a passage from Emerson,

”…and the benefits are real, because we have the power to make such expansions, and once we cross these boundaries, we will never be the same pathetic nerds we were before, ever. Won't."

At the end of the two-month trip, I wrote in my circle of friends:

"I am a very poor young man. I can't afford most of the "good" things in the world. A car, a house, a decent life, and even a soft kitten. But I have used my savings and fights to make a living. My work bought me this summer of escape. This summer, I will not be influenced by anyone or anything, and I will be completely loyal to myself. This is really good."

On the highway home, I looked at the Moments I posted and shed some tears for the first time in a long time.

02

For many friends at the time, that summer was just their GAP. By this year, they have all gone abroad to continue their studies.

Many friends around me choose to continue their studies, "Although I don't like studying, I don't like working part-time either." They are nostalgic about campus life, joking that the only thing they are good at is "solving questions". My good friend Xiao Zhong told me, "College is like the Chinese people's default legal utopia time period. After going to college, you have to enter society and live in pain."

I think of Qiu Miaojin saying that university temporarily provides me with some kind of career that prevents me from being overwhelmed by the framework of social and life responsibilities. To a certain extent, we long for a gap year. Deep down, we need those days to do nothing and explore ourselves.

In Chinese society, young screws are installed in the fast-moving machines. It seems that only "sickness" can make us stop. The myth of "depression, illness, and re-examination" as a gap year in East Asia only shows one thing: there must be a reason for unemployment. The gap also means that you will eventually get back on track.

But for me, there is no such gap year. A gap has the privilege of having fun before getting back on track. At that time, I just borrowed some courage from this word. I don’t have the money to study abroad, but I don’t want to step into the test-taking chance game of “thousands of troops crossing a single-plank bridge” again.

I have always known that I have a hidden worry of "falling", and it is even clear that this hidden worry is accompanied by anxiety and is pushing me to have the motivation to keep moving forward. From a primary school in the urban-rural fringe area, to a long-term maintenance of a junior high school where only the top few in the school can get recommended student examination places, to enrolling in a provincial key middle school, and passing the college entrance examination to enter a 211 school.

This mainstream "struggle" route through education summarizes almost all of my previous life. And on this road, the fault tolerance rate is so low. Many of my elementary school classmates went to work after completing nine-year compulsory education. Only half of my junior high school classmates were admitted to general high schools. I know that in this society, it is a more difficult road.

One day before graduation, I called my dad and said, "You know what? I'm finally going to finish my studies, and you no longer have to worry about my life going astray." Yes, I will never fall again. At that time, I really felt relaxed. There would no longer be a distinction between the "right path" and the "wrong path" in front of me, and there would be nothing that I had to do. Even though I am so tired and try my best to wash away the excessive aggressiveness trained by reason, I can still find a huge inertia in myself.

Society's tolerance and "punishment" mechanisms for people of all ages and genders still scare me to this day. We are being drawn into an increasingly convoluted "correct" path. Although realistically speaking, this is the best path with the lowest risk, the closest to success, and the best way to have some chips against reality. But this year's employment situation also shows that these bargaining chips will also depreciate and society will change.

What I want to ask more is, will those values ​​that are the only ones recognized by the so-called mainstream society definitely become the value of my life, or will they definitely give my life value?

03

After the trip, I returned to Shanghai and stayed at a friend's house. Practice speaking, take IELTS, struggle to get a passport, miss the rush to get a New Zealand working holiday visa... I sit alone at an empty desk at home to study again, with a strong sense of stagnation and suspension, accompanied by the long-lost exam taking Nervous and apprehensive. What is very different is that this is no longer about meeting the requirements of certain tasks, but that I actively want to broaden my options.

At the end of September, I "picked up" a job as an editor for a sex toy company from a manuscript opportunity. I was also lucky enough to get a third-party quality inspection job for fruit trade import and export from a friend. Both jobs are part-time jobs, and neither job pays social security.

Living in the suburbs of Shanghai, I get up at 7 a.m. four days a week to work as a "quality inspection worker" in the fruit market and cold storage. The other three days I take a long subway ride to the Changning District office to act as an urban beauty. This state lasted for more than three months, which was a particularly peaceful time. The quality inspection work usually ended before two o'clock in the afternoon. I walked my friend's dog, cooked for myself, read, wrote, cleaned the room, and bought fresh flowers. .

During that time, I couldn't help but think of me riding a miserable pony on the Gongnais grassland in Xinjiang. A series of tourists made it kneel down on its front legs when it was carrying me, and then rolled me to the ground. It did not run away, it stood up slowly and stayed in place. People around came to see me, and the horse trainer was whipping it, and I thought to myself, "Sad pony, honest pony, how can he be so docile even in pain."

The day after I left Xinjiang, I canceled my dine-in meals, and then there was a long silence in Xinjiang, like a cycle of everything. I just stole a summer, and this summer was somewhat tainted with some luck.

November, the opening up of the epidemic, positive COVID-19, grabbing ibuprofen, fires in Xinjiang... Personal pursuits meet the turmoil of the times, 2022 is so ridiculous that I just want to show the middle finger. Both the general environment and my small fate were difficult. The pictures on the Internet of flowers being trampled at the end, the videos that cannot be posted, the dirty cities and false peace, I hate it all. Warmth and cruelty coexist, and words are abstract flakes of skin that are shaken off and blown away.

In my year-end summary, all I can say is: live first, and I will figure out the rest later (smoking). Escape seemed to be my only option for self-preservation. In both mental and physical condition, I finished my quality inspection work in early January and left Shanghai with a small amount of money I had saved. From then on, he began his "sojourning" life wandering around the country.

In fact, it was not my original intention to live there. My original intention was to spend the winter and rest in the warm southern town of Pu'er, Yunnan. It was somewhat outrageous that a child growing up in Zhejiang could not bear the oppressive humidity and biting cold. But then I realized that I had never liked such a boring winter, and I had never belonged to that small town. This was also the first time I didn’t go home for the New Year, and I made up some reasons.

On New Year’s Eve, my friends and I climbed to the rooftop of the B&B to watch the fireworks rising and falling over the city. Thinking about it, I still feel proud of myself. In the past year, I have supported myself, almost doing whatever I want. I said to Goumao, who is about to go to New Zealand for a working holiday, I hope you are happy. She said, you too.

Then at around one o'clock in the morning, I drove an overloaded shared electric car and ran wildly on the deserted streets. All the beautiful memories related to riding electric bikes in my life happened in Yunnan. I actually like battery cars very much. They travel around the city like a hooligan, and when everyone is crowded and stuck in traffic jams, they can shuttle easily and flexibly.

In those days, I turned around without listening to the navigation, and I always heard the navigation's words, "You have deviated, and we are re-planning the route for you." I was shocked. The road always extends in all directions and you will always arrive.

04

After the Spring Festival, I went to Hainan and then Anji. During that time, I had in-depth contact and experience with several domestic digital nomad communities and co-living spaces. But I gave up right away at the beginning. “Geographical arbitrage”, “information arbitrage”...the elitist and colonial overtones carried by these words made me feel uncomfortable. The most important thing was the tone of the conversation.

According to my observation, there is also a lot of homogeneity among the digital nomads. Web3, programmers, designers and writers are the most common occupations among them. Relying on intuition, I can feel that this has a lot to do with the casualization of liberal arts professions after the economic downturn. Of course, it is more based on the way of working on the Internet.

The concept of "digital nomad" was originally an ideal lifestyle for me when I first came into contact with it, but I am rejecting this identity. I am still too poor and can only call myself a "freelancer" . I soon realized that leisurely and controllable mobility has always been highly elitist, both in terms of geographical space and gender identity, and I was still quite embarrassed most of the time.

At the beginning of this year, I truly recognized and chose to “live in sojourn” as my way of life for a long time to come. Because the most important thing that sojourn brings to me seems not to be "freedom", but to be closer to my own nature, and to have the opportunity to observe the world from multiple perspectives due to "flow".

This year, I have frequently traveled to the southwest and northwest regions, and I can feel that the geographical displacement has broken many of the limitations of my perspective (I often joke that it is Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai-centrism).

I went to Xi'an for the first time last summer. I listened to my friends Socks and Xingxing chatting under the old city wall about very local topics, such as the migration of Hui people and the reform of junior high school zoning. I focused on the differences in topic selection between local media at the bottom and mainstream media. This year Socks told me "The Life of Hanshui", her story with the Hanyuan River Basin. Listening to friends tell stories about people who left Xinjiang, Shanxi County, and the story of Christ on Haidian Island... these are all gaps where media content can easily collapse.

This year, I also began to make many friends from ethnic minorities, such as the Wa, Tibetan, Miao, Mongolian, and Yi... These people appeared very naturally and talked about their experiences, the experiences of being on the margins. The crowds of people that are difficult to see in the mainstream word order exist continuously and naturally in another geographical space. Walking makes people feel the insignificance of themselves and the vastness and richness of the world. Traveling is a great stay, with enough immersion to avoid being hasty and superficial.

I also started to read about ethnic minorities. In "My Liangshan Brothers", Liu Shaohua described how the Yi people, as an example, faced inequality in the face of modernization. The Southeast Asian studies book "The Art of Escape from Domination" subverted my understanding of The view of "How the Margin Became the Margin" writes that the mountain tribes of Southeast Asia may have actively escaped the rule of the "valley" countries. They are not a relic of backwardness, but have actively chosen a state of anarchy.

These studies and thoughts on “margins” are all new texts for me, new shaping of values. At the same time, I also took the initiative to move further and further away from the center. Being on the edge, whether it is a dissociation in the order of life, a distance from Internet hot events caused by too much real life, or a creative bias towards "lust, labor, marginalized people and subcultures", all make me I often feel that the world is not divided but wrinkled, and everyone is alone in a small whirlpool.

I have described a need for me to be on the “margins,” places outside the center that are always less squeezed, less violent, and less dominated. In my actual life, living far away from first-tier cities and the center of social media topics has indeed given me a lot of space. Dali, which healed me last summer, also allowed me to pick up the gaps in daily life and rules during the epidemic era because of its remote location.

06

When I wrote this article, I had just arrived in Chiang Mai. Tired of transportation, re-searching for information and searching for houses, I also felt dissatisfied with my stay at some times, and wasted my energy on the basics of life such as "food, clothing, housing and transportation".

In March of this year, when I first started living abroad, I also experienced the most depressing period of the past year. At that time, under the persuasion of my friends, I lived in the DNA digital nomad space in Anji. The bad weather, chaotic schedule, being alone, and financial anxiety have left me in a bad state. At the same time, I am always feeling tired due to the physical effects of the sequelae of COVID-19.

It was then that I realized that I was a happy puppy! I needed necessary social interaction, close relationships, and familiar good friends, so I left Anji to find an atmosphere that made me feel safe, satisfied my core needs at each stage, and slowly explored the rhythm that best suited me.

I also began to understand that many people's fear of uncertainty in life is overwhelming, and slowly began to learn to use "desire" to understand others. My good friend from my hometown came ashore and I was happy for her from the bottom of my heart. The Second World War was fruitless. Family changes and personal character were all very important factors to consider. People who insist on "going ashore" are just ordinary people who want to live a happy life.

As for me, when I was in junior high school, I already knew that I couldn't live a stable cyclical life, and I also knew early on that I advocated change, adventure, and ultimate experiences. I would just be afraid, not knowing how to paddle the rickety boat of my destiny to the other side of my shore.

I held a sharing session on the wave of feminism in Riyue Bay, volunteered in the Dongdao tribe in southern Guizhou to experience the hippie community, and did a live broadcast of Miao old embroidered clothing for a week in Kaili... My friends always It means that my life is like a game of killing monsters. Being able to make money locally will make me more confident in myself. This world is indeed quite fun sometimes!

As the publicity of youth continues to expand, I long to keep making money and live on, playing on this planet for the rest of my life! When I feel depressed, I also recognize the feeling of being at a loss when facing the wilderness after falling off the track in my youth. The vast wilderness without road signs is also daunting. Occasionally, I also feel that my life has been stuck for a long time.

On August 1st, because of a series of bad things such as the agency's overturning and not being able to get a New Zealand working holiday visa, I couldn't help but break down. In the process of waiting, I have already decided not to regard the "fate" and "luck" of external probabilities as the rope and straw of my life, but I still often feel that my life cannot move forward. I am so powerless and fragile.

Yes, I am also an ordinary young man, anxious about not having money, anxious about not having a long-term career field, very low ability to resist risks, too casual without planning. It is very hard to live a life where you are responsible for your own profits and losses. A few days ago, I shed tears because of the delay in receiving royalties due to factors such as the media turning over accounts. But in the past two years, I have never really envied anyone.

In the past two years, I have always felt very young. I know that this state of air rising high into the air and not having the slightest fear of death is a privilege of being young. As Jin Airan wrote, "It is not so much true bravery, but rather because death is too far away from me and too abstract, so I don't take it seriously. Like other children, I despise life in a way that Savor life and enjoy youth." But I think this is nothing. I no longer hold life too tightly like in the past. I always feel that freedom should have a spirit of play!

Two years ago I wrote, " Only in uncertainty and flow can there be infinite possibilities. " This summary has fatefully become my theme in the next few years. An important change that feminism has brought to me is that I no longer want to be strong and refuse to be a victim of the strong-willed system. At the same time, queer-related things have taught me to question a lot of things that I don’t think about without thinking.

While traveling in Hainan, I saw wet ferns soaked in dew and rain, wet pages, leaves and grass, outlining a tropical jungle scene under the lingering clouds and mist. In a daze, I realized that what I wanted in life was not breadth or depth, but a quality of life.

A long time later, in the Maolan Valley in Guizhou, I realized that this was actually a very active "self-nurturing", from the perspective of experience and the way of creation. There is no doubt that this requires a very deep love for one's own life. Need to be your own mom. Great, I'm learning the most important things in my life.

In particular, I need to mention and thank the women around me. They are my chosen family and my only "anchor" in this world, bearing some certainty in my mobile life. My relationship with them is a network of intimate relationships that I have woven unconsciously, supporting my emotions, fighting against my loneliness and uneasiness in the world, and keeping me from falling. We are also each other's mothers, and we inspire each other's desire to continue exploring the world.

at last.

This trip to Thailand is my first time abroad, and my schedule in Bangkok is not as tight as a tourist’s. One afternoon I was sitting in the air-conditioning of the Thailand Creativity and Design Center (TCDC) writing a manuscript. We opened an African magazine during break that day, and I suddenly thought of Sanmao, who was studying in junior high school. Yes, I already knew about the existence of the Sahara when I was in junior high school.

At that moment, I felt that I was closely connected to the world. I secretly thought that if I want to make more money, I still need to lower my head and look at the chips in my hand when necessary, and then send myself further and further away. Suddenly I remembered that my father had laughed and threatened me when I was young, that I was the daughter who had a big heart and would fly away one day.

I once talked with Gou Mao about envying the confidence of children from happy families, the confidence of fallen leaves to return to their roots. She said, but some people are destined to leave home, and it is not a bad thing. I said, I can almost feel my destined wandering. Her: Agree.

In fact, I don’t think wandering is something cool and worthy of envy. It’s just something that I have to do in life and my personality seems to be the only thing I can do. But I accept it all, accept this period of life in my early twenties, running around with little money, chaos and uncertainty.

Sometimes I also think that maybe I have been too deeply poisoned by junk American TV dramas, and "life is mess" constitutes some of my values. Disorder, chaos and failure are all things that I am familiar with and not so difficult to accept. Instead, they are decent, orderly and bright, like a life that I need to practice and tiptoe to live without feeling dizzy.

I have been in Thailand for a month, and it jumped to the present moment, a kind of fragmentary jump. It continued to rain sparsely at night during the rainy season in Chiang Mai. The rain fell on the tropical trees outside the window and hit the broad banana leaves. I started writing manuscripts and continued to earn my share of a living.

Sometimes when depression comes to your door, you will suddenly realize that the floating happiness in the past long period of time is basically a small "drunk oxygen" experience, vague but gently floating. I am still a very poor young man with not many options.

For me, the past year seems to be a very special year, but it seems that every year in the past three years has been a year of rapid growth, change and transition within me. Due to the continuity of growth, there will never be a clear moment that can be used to mark and explain.

But I know that I have gradually become solid. It is time to leave the gaze and attention placed on myself in the past and turn to the rich world. In the future, I should use more curiosity to observe other people and touch specific details.

My life now is really like a stream. I don’t know where the river is going. I seem to lack a lot of control, and I feel tired of life from time to time. But I hope I can be brave enough to face my strongest desires and act on them at all costs.

Kim Ae-ran wrote in her essay "The Easily Forgotten Name ", "I like that our life is not only about survival, but also luxury, vanity and beauty. Some stages require stepping on these gorgeous things to cross."

I don't want to sugarcoat my life, my life just suits me and is not worthy of anyone's appreciation. I really like this passage from Jin Ae-ran, and I think the same should be true for many young people like me who take the initiative to deviate and embrace uncertainty. Although I often feel that I have nowhere to go, I still want to stand on tiptoe one more time to reach for the beauty beyond survival.