By: MuMu

十一假期，难得清静，让总是很忙乱的我有时间可以清理下自己，未来的路是不是想的少一些会过得好一些呢？人都说要做好规划，我越发觉得对自己这个年纪来说，要做到“合理的规划”真的很难，视野太窄、对社会认识太浅，怎么可能做好规划呢？最后倒不如拍拍脑袋用机遇驱动下的局部最优贪婪法做决策来的有效…

新来的小师弟除了再一次强调我讲东西没有逻辑会在工作中被骂之外，还提醒我是时间该自我总结一下了：前段时间除了一如既往地忙乱之外，一系列红果果的事与愿违让我情绪更加不稳定——忧伤，慌张，不自信：我以为自己做事情已经蛮卖力了，可是始终没有好结果，老板理所当然很不满…我以为自己已经清楚自己的想要，可是站在叉路口面临选择依然茫然无措，甚至怀疑自己过去的决定，痛恨曾经的不坚定…

七月份有段日子紧张地非人类，白天六里桥搞招标，晚上去实验室写我的垃圾代码，开题之前的那个晚上改PPT到三点钟回寝室楼下发现钥匙落在实验室…最悲催的是我总是讲不清楚自己的东西，各种被鄙视，无时不刻的提醒着我入错了行。

七月中旬某个周四晚上万柳楼下的红豆汤圆，一如你一贯坚定的支持，给我莫大的温暖和勇气。我常常觉得自己真是幸运之极因为这一路的曲曲折折有你陪我一起走过，我想我们已经很深厚独特并且理应一直一起走下去，可是悲剧的是你并不这样认为…所以现再听到“谁又在乎你的梦，谁说你的心思他会懂”的时候，会不自觉地就流下泪来…也因此恍惚了好一阵子：学男人们借酒消愁可是不争气的过敏体质让自己左手肿了好久；学女人们血拼可是弄丢了小票很更年期的跟售货员争执了一个晚上，因此耽误了实验进程被小boss警告；还有清晨搭错车，绕过大半个北京城才到了六里桥，开标当天迟到…直接后果就是深深的挫败感和各种没自信。万在楼上楼怒气冲冲地跟我讲：木，我不喜欢你现在这个样子…

中间很长一段时间会觉得自己很可怜，直到八月份的某一天顿悟，可怜之人必有可恨之处，我在想自己的可恨之处就在于之前并没有在合适的时间做合适的事情，但是时间如果可以倒流，我想我还是会按照原来的路走，当前面临的任务和压力都属于自己原本的责任，于是就一下子释然了…

那天小涂讲人生就是在水上写字，我问啥意思，他说就是时间力量无可估量，可以消除一切。时间也不会因为我的情绪化而停止，各种事情接踵而至：开学、宣讲、网申、笔试、一轮轮的面试…没有准备好的我手忙脚乱应接不暇。也会羡慕嫉妒恨周围他或她的镇定，看到他们一个个的offer我会很慌张，但是心想他们应该也有自己难念的经吧…在我小心翼翼的想象中，在不远的将来我的路也会渐渐清晰起来的吧。

AI-generated translation.

During the National Day holiday, things were unusually quiet, and for once that gave always-busy, always-scattered me some time to sort myself out. I wonder whether the road ahead might go better if I thought about it a little less? People always say you need to make good plans, but the more I think about it, the more I feel that for someone my age, making a “reasonable plan” is truly difficult. My field of vision is too narrow and my understanding of society too shallow—how could I possibly plan well? In the end, it might actually be more effective to pat myself on the head and make decisions using a kind of opportunity-driven, locally optimal greedy algorithm…

The new junior in the lab, besides once again emphasizing that my explanations have no logic and that I’ll get scolded for that at work, also reminded me that it was time to summarize myself a little. Lately, on top of being as frantically busy as ever, a whole series of nakedly disappointing outcomes made my emotions even more unstable—sadness, panic, lack of confidence. I thought I had been working quite hard, but there were still never any good results, so of course the boss was dissatisfied… I thought I already knew what I wanted, yet when I stood at a crossroads facing choices, I was still utterly at a loss, even doubting past decisions and hating my former indecisiveness…

There was a stretch in July when I was busy to an inhuman degree. During the day I was over at Liuliqiao handling bid openings, and at night I went to the lab to write my garbage code. On the night before my proposal, I was still revising PPT slides until three in the morning, only to get back to the dorm and discover I had left my key in the lab… The most tragic part was that I could never explain my own stuff clearly, so I was constantly looked down on, constantly reminded that I had entered the wrong line of work.

One Thursday night in mid-July, downstairs at Wanliu, over red bean tangyuan, your steady support—as always—gave me enormous warmth and courage. I often feel unbelievably lucky that through all the twists and turns of this journey, you have walked with me. I thought what we had was already deep, unique, and something that naturally should keep going. The tragedy, though, is that you didn’t think so… So now, whenever I hear “Who cares about your dream, who says he’ll understand what’s in your heart,” tears come on their own… Because of that I drifted around in a daze for quite a while: I tried drowning sorrow in alcohol like men do, but my pathetic allergy-prone constitution left my left hand swollen for ages; I tried shopping wildly like women do, but lost the receipt and then had a menopausal-style argument with the salesclerk all evening, which delayed the progress of my experiments and got me warned by the little boss; and then one morning I got on the wrong bus and circled half of Beijing before finally reaching Liuliqiao, late for the bid opening… The direct result was a deep sense of frustration and total loss of confidence. Wan, furious upstairs and downstairs, said to me, “Mu, I don’t like how you are now…”

For a long stretch in the middle, I felt terribly sorry for myself. Then one day in August I suddenly understood that pitiable people must also have hateful qualities. I thought that my own hateful part was that I simply hadn’t done the right things at the right time before. But if time could turn back, I think I would still walk the same road. The tasks and pressures I was facing belonged to responsibilities that had always been mine. Once I realized that, I suddenly felt relieved…

That day Xiao Tu said life is like writing on water. I asked what that meant, and he said it meant the power of time is immeasurable—it can wash everything away. Time also won’t stop just because I am emotional. One thing after another kept arriving: the semester began, company talks, online applications, written tests, round after round of interviews… Unprepared, I fumbled through it all in a flurry. I would also envy, resent, and admire the calmness of the people around me. Seeing them one after another with offers in hand made me panic, yet I also thought they probably had difficult burdens of their own. In my careful imagination, perhaps in the not-so-distant future, the road in front of me will gradually become clearer too.