Some Changes and New Things#
There have been fewer activities in the open-source community this year, as can be seen from my GitHub contribution graph.
It used to be all green, or at least light green, but this year, only from August to October was relatively active. That happened to be the period when I started tinkering with my blog again. I did a second development of the Ringo theme, which led to the creation of the Matcha theme that I'm currently using. After that, I have been updating it intermittently and have been delighted to receive a lot of love from friends. However, apart from making one or two small plugins during the same period, I have hardly had any activity on GitHub.
Oh, by the way, I also created a small PWA[^Progressive Web Application] called the "Strange Inspiration Generator" at the end of the year - 怪奇灵感生成器. Its function is to randomly generate a strange word combination, such as "crystal parasitic hotel," "spherical erotica," "crimson despair," or "abyssal collapse," to inspire weird but interesting ideas. Although I didn't promote this application and only made it for my own amusement, it has indeed received some love from friends. Especially after I published an article called "The God Mixer," which used names generated by the Strange Inspiration Generator, it caused a small wave of discussion in the Backrooms group chat.
For me, the biggest thing this year is that I finally started doing what I have always wanted to do - writing stories.
This year, I published two novels on my blog, both with the theme of "strange tales." Instead of focusing on character development, they lean more towards conveying a specific idea.
In addition to the creations on my blog, in October of this year, I joined the Backrooms Chinese Wiki as an original author and created my own author page. So far, I have created a total of 13 original articles, translated 4 articles from Chinese to English, and made many friends. [^Oh, that's why my update speed has slowed down recently.]
Speaking of which, looking at the archive page of my blog, I only posted one article in the first half of this year, in February, and didn't start updating regularly until August. This was largely due to my busy studies. However, in the second half of the year, I suddenly realized that I should truly treat my blog as a free space to express my thoughts, and it has become a pure land for me in this noisy world.
In addition to my blog as a medium for recording, at the end of October this year, I also picked up a habit from a year or two ago - "keeping a journal." However, it's more accurate to say that it's something I force myself to do continuously. It is used to record some trivial, private, and off-the-record thoughts and daily life. Later on, it turned into a collage book, but it does look pretty, and collaging is really relaxing.
According to Steam's annual report, most of my time was spent playing "Don't Starve Together," with a total playtime of over 650 hours. Indeed, this game has accompanied me for a long time. I still remember the days in middle school when I downloaded pirated versions online and played with my cousin. But now... I can hardly find anyone to play with me. In the first half of the year, I also spent a lot of time playing Minecraft. In May, I rented a server with 酚酞 for two months, but later he went to Japan, so we couldn't play anymore. In addition, I also played on the server of MaxKim, an "outdated" MC builder, for a long time. I played from the second world to the third world, and my buildings in the second world even appeared in his videos. However, I quit halfway through the third world, and later, other people also quit. The community I founded [^called "Mole Manor," and we even have a statue of Mole Lele (laughs)] became an empty city, which is a regret. However, during my time on MaxKim's server, I also met a friend named OnceKing. After learning that he also played "Don't Starve Together," we played together for a while, but it didn't last long.
In November, I finally established a community for sexual minorities that I organized two years ago, called Clovet, which means "love in the closet." I promoted it on Twitter, but it seems that most of the people who came were MtF (？). Apart from occasional posts in the first month of its establishment, this community has been relatively quiet. On the one hand, I didn't have the energy to promote it, and on the other hand, I gradually realized that this kind of community, which aims to help confused sexual minorities and those who are unfamiliar with sexual minorities develop correct concepts, may have good intentions but may not be successful in reality because the target audience may not visit such websites.
That's probably my memory of myself in 2022. It's strange that most of the things I can remember happened in the second half of the year. I don't know if it's because I was bored in the first half of the year or because many things from the past have been forgotten.
New Friends and Special People#
Under the article "The Primitive Manipulation of Human Sexuality," I received a very serious reply, which led me to meet ONO and his super cool blog - 莫比乌斯. Although we have a generation gap, I have rarely found a friend who shares similar views and enjoys writing novels like me.
In November, I was pleasantly surprised to receive an interview invitation from a freelance journalist named Encore. During the interview, we talked a lot, and after learning that she is also an INFP, we discovered many similarities between ourselves. She has been working for love for many years, maintaining her WeChat public account with persistence and courage, which impressed me. I hope she will encounter more wonderful things in the new year.
In the Backrooms Chinese Wiki, I have met many people. There is Be the Worthy, who has given me recognition and suggestions for my work [^seems to change identities frequently, previously known as Dancing Rain and Sorel]. There is Liurd, who has helped me with Wikidot code and played text-based games with me [https://liurdrooms.wikidot.com/]. There is Zhiruijun, who collaborates with me in creating the original group E.B.A. And there are all the people who have helped me in the Backrooms Chinese community.
There is also OnceKing, who has played games with me and passed the time together. I thank him for not minding my occasional incompetence.
This year, I also experienced an insignificant crush (the article "Fruit Knife and Sunflower" was written for him). After completely giving up on him, I realized the reality and understood a truth - some people are not worth liking; it's just that your brain has put too many filters on them. But even if I don't have a love brain, I still can't find a partner.
I hope to meet new people in 2023 and inspire more stories.
Views on Others and Oneself#
As an INFP[^one of the 16 MBTI personality types, the Mediator], I always care too much about what others think of me. This year, a group of people mocked me in the comments of a video on Bilibili (there was even a meaningless but attitude-filled reply with 🤣👉), and it lasted for several days. However, I remained calm inside and did not respond at all.
Because I know how much those people have failed =）
A male friend shared in the group chat about accidentally entering the women's restroom, and then he cursed the people in the group with foul language because he received "greetings" from people outside the group [^The fact is, the people who greeted him were indeed in the group, but he didn't notice because they rarely spoke]. He recorded a nearly one-minute voice message, using all the malicious words he could think of to vent his anger.
As for me, I happened to mention this incident while having a meal with someone else, and I felt a lingering fear, so I apologized to the group.
But his tantrum didn't end there. He continued to output his powerless words in the group and got into an argument with another friend who couldn't stand it. This friend mentioned that his family member almost died unexpectedly, and his reply of "too bad" angered the other person. Seeing that his anger couldn't overpower the other person's anger, he quickly explained that he was "emotionally excited" and asked the other person not to mind. However, the other person didn't buy it, and he contradicted himself by saying, "I didn't mean that in the first place; I was talking about something else being 'too bad'."
Seeing this farce, I started to have internal conflicts again, but soon I realized that it wasn't my fault.
First of all, I had already apologized. Secondly, before this friend started cursing, he said, "It seems that the people in this group have never been scolded before [^a Chongqing dialect, meaning "to be scolded or humiliated"]. This made me understand that he was trying to solve the problem with his anger, and for me, this is a sign of his incompetence. Anger cannot solve any problems; it can only suppress problems with the fear of some people. Some people like to use anger to "solve" problems because, for them, it is the simplest way, and it can also maintain their dominant position. This is the absolute dominance that most men have to feel secure in the world. Finally, he believed that he didn't need to take responsibility for his words because he was "emotionally excited," just like the ridiculous belief that many people agree with - "what you say when you're drunk doesn't count" - No, in any situation, a person should take full responsibility for their actions and words.
After thinking rationally, I realized that I did nothing wrong. Even if I did, I tried to resolve the issue as soon as possible [like saying "I'm sorry"]. The rest of the argument and annoyance are theirs, not mine.
I am no longer the pitiful person who always finds fault in myself, and I am grateful for that.
Messages for Myself in the Coming Year#
I know myself, and this time next year, I will definitely come across this page and see how I wrote my year-end summary this year because I can't help but look for references when writing an article that requires organization and formatting. [^Maybe in 2023, I can overcome this?] So, I have decided to follow the example of 莫比乌斯's year-end summary and leave a few questions for myself next year.
- You always feel that you are not worthy of love. Can you talk about the lovely qualities you possess?
- Do you still believe that humans should break free from all constraints to show their true selves? For example, you once believed that "阳物中心主义" should be translated as "鸡巴崇拜主义" because you thought that humans create this so-called "formality" just to cover up. The more sacred the name, the more filthy the actions it conceals. [^Quoted from Bai Luojia, also known as Phenol Phthalein's Twitter.]
- How do you view the recognition of others? Is it more important than achieving self-worth?
- What kind of creation do you consider to be good? Does it have to have depth?
So, here's a belated New Year's wish: 2023 will be better!