# 2025 year in review

> A year of transitions — leaving school, letting go of a relationship, and looking for direction amid uncertainty.

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LLMS index: [llms.txt](/en/llms.txt)

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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