Please note that this post is a bit pessimistic. It may affect your emotion. And most of things I have written below are lack of fact.

They should be regarded as personal feeling.

Work keep burning out

I am failed again to get a good work-life balance. I still need to stay in the office longer than 8 hours every day.

It does sound sad, but if I want to make as much money as possible and keep my resume glossy, working for a big tech company in China is my best option.

So yes, I changed my job from a small company to a big company which is quite famous. Before I am able to work for the so-called big company, it has been my goal for a long time. Anyway, I finally overcame some mental obstacles. Working for big tech companies of China are not a goal anymore.

But, after I start working in the company, I soon realize the problem of burning out is worse than before. People get to the office very late and also leave very late. Because you can't leave early while other guys are still in the office and might have something needing you to help for.Seems the only way to break this is everyone changes their clock to come and leave earlier.

Anxiety about the future

Speaking of job alternatives, I always think about where my future is.

Everyone around me always talks about money, cars, marriage. People who have children would also talk about education, however, it's always considered as a financial issue in the end.

People start to hide their feeling and stop talking about themself. Without feeling expression, the relationship become fragile and fake. Everyone is lonely.

We are trapped by an anxious atmosphere. Every time I think about the future, I keep touching the anxiety. I think the anxiety may come for two reasons.

Firstly, the working time is too long. There is actually a labor law in China. Of course, China has! But I don't understand why it never protect the employee from burning out.

Programers still need to stay in the office until 9 pm or even 10 pm. Food delivery workers are even worst, they need to work until midnight. No one dares to fight back for the right of 8 hours working hours!

The second one is age discrimination. As employees are getting old, they are getting less and less popular in the job market. Many companies prefer to hire young people even old people don't demand more money.

Some companies have gone even further. They fired employees whose age is older than 35 with poor compensation or impose a rule that nobody over a specific age should be nominated as manager.

These two problem mentioned above actually cannot solve easily, it's a mixture of economic and political. Maybe there's a balance which is carefully kept by the government.

If the gov enforce the labour law, the market would shrink rapidly. If the gov does nothing, people just keep suffering.

The world is divide into two parts

When I want to know about something about China, there are always two versions of it. The first version is reported by the west media, such as NYT, The Guardian. Another version is reported by the government sponsored media in China. The difference is so huge that you couldn't tell which one is the truth!

The arguments between China and other countries also became more aggressive. What I can do just to ensure that information is coming from different sources, and try to figure out what is really happening.

But it's so hard to keep doing that. It costs you lots of reading just for a little fact. Anyway, I agree with Li Wenliang : A healthy society shouldn't have only one voice.

The two parts may be preparing to say goodbye to each other. I don't want the situation to go that way.

The first-year living in our new house

In December 2020, we finally moved into our lovely new house. It's a small apartment with two rooms. Although it's small, my girlfriend has tried her best to make sure every corners is being used.

We have a drying machine first time. It's amazing how quickly it could dry the clothes no matter what's the weather outside. Also, we have a dishwasher. There's no more quarrel about who should wash the dishes!

We also buy a Rinnai water heater which doesn't meet my expectation, for its noise is so loud that we have made two repair appointments. You can't help to think if there is something wrong with it.

Life in the new house is not peaceful. We have gone through some turbulence. But I'd be better to stop here, for it's quite personal.

On June 30th, 2021, my girlfriend became my wife!

Hopefully, I could love her a little bit more day by day.

Looking forward to 2022

It looks like that Covid pandemic would hopefully end in 2022, for some countries have decided to lift restrictions.

I wish I can go to several beautiful places for vocations, and get more healthy in work-life balance.

Also, I make a list of OKRs (it may change ).

Finally, I wish you also have a great year! Thanks for reading.