JUN 22, 2024 | Demi Zheng
the motivation behind the site
It's a good question: why? I mean, even my dad laughed at me when he heard I was going to write a blog thing.
Well, first off, I was going to want to create a personal site one day or another. The idea of a place where all your projects come together just seems exciting: it's like finally putting on the art show after years of hardwork on the individual pieces. And also you're able to design it yourself and really show YOU. The layout will probably change from time to time as you're experimenting with what you like and what fits best, but that's fun!
While my subconcious was nagging me about how cool it would be to have a personal site, a few months ago, I also started thinking about how much content I consume, in a stark contrast to the measly amount of content I really have produced. I read a lot of books (especially Keigo Higashino's, highly recommend!), I watch a good amount of YouTube (especially now that it's summer). In a sense, "consume" also refers to the economic definition, with me and many of my peers enslaved to consumerism and materialism. You can't really blame us though --- the idea of the "American dream", which has been ingrained in our minds almost since birth, sells this outwardly convincing mindset. So, my whole life, it's just been consume, consume, consume.
I felt guilty. Undoubtedly, at this point in our lives, we all have the capabilities to achieve much more. To produce. So if that was the case, why am I still staying inside all day reading and watching and buying and idling, if there was so much MORE potential for all that time?
Don't get me wrong --- I'm not critisizing the acts of reading books, watching videos, etc. Those are all valid, and sometimes extremely educational things to do. Doing them for leisure/pleasure also brings value to your life. But the past few months, there's been this incredibe, pressing feeling on my chest, a voice screaming at me to do something beyond just sitting there and consuming content.
For the first decade of my life, my life goal was just to be rich. Wasn't everybody's? When you first learn the idea of "value," most often that's equated with money. I dreamt of mansions and expensive clothes and cars. I had a vision of what the ideal life would look like down the road, and I was dead set on achieving it.
But then you start to realize that a lot of other things have value too. Spending time with family and friends, which before I mostly took for granted, solving a hard problem (whether that be math, physics, competitive programming, etc.), learning new things, helping out a stranger... So I was lost. I started to reconsider that vision. What really makes me happy? What do I enjoy? There are endless options, endless possibilities. Endless visions, endless paths. Which should I take?
I still don't know. I've asked people around me who figured it out already what makes them happy.
"Loving and being loved"
"Completing/finishing things"
"Doing the things I love with the people I love"
Though these all hold value to me, none of them really fit. They're the paths of others, not mine. So how am I supposed to find my own?
At around the same time, the purely optimistic and innocent bubble of "the world is a great place and everyone wants the best for everyone else" finally popped for me. I realized that the world is a lot more dangerous and violent and sad than I previously thought. Misery and suffering is everywhere. The future looks bleak. My mind is more often than not plagued with cynicsm and fatalism.
"Does anything actually matter if we're all going to die in 30 years?"
"What if I make a wrong choice that dooms me to an uneventful and unfulfilled life?"
"Will anyone even care if I just disappear one day?"
"Have we really moved forward as a society or are we just manipulating ourselves into believing that to cover up the wounds and the trauma of the near past?"
"Are we actually capable of fully understanding anyone else or do we just construct this image of them that might be entirely untrue?"
....
From then on, I've always been one to think a lot, and worry a lot. About the future, about society, about humanity, about everything. Most things I'm still confused about, and perhaps I'll never actually fully understand. As I grew older, I started having more thoughts, more worries, more questions. They're always swirling around in my head somewhere. I guess at some point they all came together to form this pressuring, unsettling feeling weighing me down.
I figured I needed some sort of creative outlet to organize these thoughts. While I do journal, writing things down here and there, those diary entries are for my eyes only, so they're messy and unorganized, at best a list of random thoughts or ideas.
Additionally, beyond my want for control and organization over my thoughts, I wanted to bring some value to this world, with the limited things I have to offer. I just didn't want to feel useless anymore, unsatisfied with what I've been doing up until now. Maybe you can relate.
I thought for a long while about what I could do, and most of my answers had one common theme: writing. I'm not exceptionally good at art, which makes that path a harder one for me to express myself and my thoughts.
I've considered:
The last one seemed compelling. I could finally create that personal site, and, at the same time, have a space of my own online to speak my mind. It's also less time consuming to write up a short article than to spend hours and hours on a book or a script for a video/podcast.
Maybe I'm just desperate to be heard, maybe I'm still too naive and childish to truly understand somethings and this whole thing is just cringe.
Even so, sitting here running solely on the refreshening aftertaste of toothpaste in my mouth at 1:14AM, my hope is that maybe people will come across something on here that teaches them something new, gets them curious about something, or just makes them happy?
Feel free to talk to me about it if you have any thoughts, questions, critisisms (especially these, my self awareness can only go so far!), etc. Thanks for listening.