2021 round-up & New Year resolution
There have been a couple of critical events that happened during my lifetime shaking up my perspectives, but my life never been so much impacted by one global event like the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been almost two years since I last shared my story of encountering the pandemic at the onset in China, accompanying by on-and-off lockdowns and never ending mask policy. I know, I am in no position to whine; frontline workers, wage earners - those who live around the clock and on the edge have endured far bitter weight on their shoulders. Looking back at the year that just ended, I wanted to jot down some notes, thoughts and learnings, and make some short-term, realistic, and satisfying resolutions. Though resolutions could be pointless, I was inspired from this article, Should You Even Bother with New Year’s Resolutions This Year? by Elizabeth Grace Saunders, popping up just at the right time on my phone.
2021 round-ups
Adapting to pandemic life by achieving emotional harmony
The most important thing I have picked up along the pandemic life is to stay positive, hopeful, and energetic. I have been paying much more attention in sensing my emotions, understanding them, and controlling them. Not that control is the ultimate goal, I do find it critical to acknowledge my emotion when I am having it. And express it responsibly.
A method that I have been practicing roughly three years ago is to imagine my soul (or the ideology that lives inside my brain) independent of my body. Things that might agonize, irritate, or upset me would be then separated, so that I could observe myself, like a viewer in a cinema watching rolls of films about somebody else. Having such perspective, in fact, I could capture and understand my feelings and emotions to much greater details, to a point where I could sense forthcoming emotions and proactively deal with it. By “dealing with it,” I mean to release it in a controllable manner, beneficial for both myself and those who around me. Never suppress your emotions (or appetites)!
My recommended readings on emotions
2. Finished a chapter of “mandatory” education in my life.
I once made a small stuffed pink pig with a small golden ribbon, in a shop named “Dream Make.” Harvard was written by a black Sharpie on the ribbon. I am proud that I made it and graduated with outstanding academic achievement in November for a Master degree. It felt wonderful, to realize some wild dream of a girl from a small town of Southwest China.
3. Started new job (and pretty good at it - though that’s for my boss to judge).
Navigating the market in the most unprecedented time, I find it interesting, challenging, and rewarding. I always advocate to focus on the fundamentals than volatility. Market has a lot of noises, because billions of participants all want to make the most optimal choices. So left, right, up, and down - all sorts of opinions and predictions, yet economic theories are valid and directive. I spent a lot of time at my job gathering market information and understanding the current situation, as future lies somewhere (or everywhere) here.
4. Re-picked up passion with books.
I had rarely (if ever) read any novel until this year. Not intentional - perhaps by design, I have always been required by education or interest to read books in the field of business, finance, psychology or philosophy. All non-novels. Also I had not really been attracted to stories, as I thought - well they are stories. Stories that appeal to certain emotions, stores that reinforce some messages that , and stories that are revised to feed the mass audiences, to be the Best Sellers. However, for years that I have been reading all non-novels, it get somewhat tired at this point. So I started to read more casually, of a mix of novels and non-novels, and I rediscovered my passions for readings!
My top 3 novels of 2021
5. Began to think about “what I wanted” and acted on the first step.
After finishing my last class at Harvard in Summer, there was a moment for acknowledgement, yet what followed was the harsher question: what’s next. Now that I had walked through the prescriptive path from my parents (or normal social expectations), I felt excited, because I was finally at the position to navigate the world as I would like, yet lost, because I had to figure out what I would like. Life is opening up possibilities for me at this point, and the most difficult is not to fight for it, but to find “it.”
I had been spending some time figuring out my passion, yet one day it occurred to me that self-expression has been something that I have been always doing. From music composition to blog writing, from reading to communicating, from researching to presenting, I have always wanted to leave my marks, deliver my messages, and make my voices in the world. Why not take my expression to the professional world? Immediately afterwards, I knew what I needed to do.
2022 resolutions
Professionally do a great job
Snap the admission
Feel no guilt reading, writing, composing, and exploring other categories
Be happy, whatever it is.
