2025 year in review
Time flies — it’s the last day of the year again. A lot happened this year, and I’ve been recording more of it than before. This long-overdue year-end review barely made it onto the 2025 train.
The biggest change is identity: six months ago I stopped being a student, and since then I’ve been tasting the life of a tech worker, overtime included.
A chapter that closed
I spent the first half of the year in a long-distance relationship, grabbing every chance to meet. In the second half, for various reasons, we broke up. Maybe it was always going to end this way.
It took me a while to move on, but I’ve finally accepted it — time to close the door and walk forward.
That relationship is an inseparable part of me. What I can do now is keep the good parts, thank it for how it changed me, and use it to see myself more clearly as I look for a better version of me.
A future I’m still unsure about
Six months into work, minus training, I’ve barely done real work. Honestly, I’m still unsure what direction I should go in. So I’ve been easing into AI at my own pace — from agents to deep learning concepts to LLM inference infra — and joined a few offline community events (Wuhan Cursor meetup, Shanghai Google DevFest, Wuhan DDUC).
The confusion is real. I need to see more of the world: an AI coding hackathon at ModelScope in Hangzhou, a Rust meetup in Shanghai — to find my real goal and meet more people ahead of me. Stay proactive, keep learning, keep the passion.
Growth? Hopes for next year?
My information diet is my main channel and keeps improving.
Technically I can feel myself getting stronger, but I lack output — I want to find a direction I can write about, and a job I actually like.
Make more money! Not for the so-called grown-up checklist, but because money buys freedom. I’d like to learn personal finance, though neither my principal nor my spare time really qualifies.
As for people — it’s been a lonely stretch without someone close to talk to. Flying back to school over New Year’s to see friends sounds like a good idea; hopefully things go smoother after a change of scenery.
All in all, my biggest hope is finding a job I truly want — finding direction, less confusion, some like-minded friends. Romance can wait.
Thanks for the hard work, 2025-me. May next year treat me and everyone kindly. Hello, 2026.
Anime I watched
- Death Note — Kami’s expressions are unforgettable
- Panty & Stocking season 2 — crude, but genuinely good; TRIGGER might be my kind of studio
- Girls Band Cry — dropped it; this genre doesn’t hold me anymore
- Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc — beautiful and hard to let go of; maybe love stories just rarely end well
Games I played
- Stardew Valley — timeless; solo doesn’t appeal, co-op with someone is lovely
- MapleStory — fun early on; forever a nostalgic icon for my generation
- Silksong — lost steam after the early game; my appetite for games is fading
- Hollow Knight — same story; the map grind wore me down — no Dark Souls stamina left