My Ideal Life
January 22, 2026
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
My Life
This article was drafted during Christmas, weathering the baptism of finals week, where the anxiety of revision and the relief of completion intertwined. I began writing intermittently from New Year’s Day, and only now, after calmly finishing my exams, do I finally have the time to sit down and complete it. Throughout this period, I have been pondering what an “Ideal Life” truly is, and in the moment my finals ended, I seem to have found some answers.
As a Weekly entry, the past month or two has been quite eventful… perhaps by recording these miscellaneous happenings, I can piece together some semblance of my Ideal Life.
Yuelu Hackathon
Back in high school, I loved writing poetry, dedicating a small notebook specifically for it. After the college entrance exam, that bursting desire to create seemed to vanish, replaced by the more concrete routine of daily life.
My brain perhaps prefers to “abstract” things. When writing poetry, it feels like immersing my thoughts in a solution of emptiness, where I can murmur unconsciously or pen down obscure sentences. This output, driven entirely by intuition, brings immense comfort to my mind. Yet now, I must struggle to organize language, making it appear less awkward or overly stream-of-consciousness—a compromise, in truth, to the flow of my state of mind.
Relying on this feeling, combined with Gemini 3 Pro for frontend architecture and Codex for code assistance, plus NoobOmega’s staunch support in plot conception, our project VerseGenesis ultimately won the “Ingenious Design Award”. The prize was a Logitech mechanical keyboard, which had a genuinely nice typing feel. Unfortunately, I already own a mechanical keyboard, so I ended up giving this one to classmate NoobOmega.
To prevent the “Poetry Scoring” from becoming a simple AI wrapper, we designed some plotlines, along with level and achievement systems. (Although the trigger conditions for those achievements are completely random; even I haven’t achieved 100% completion). The story features both good and bad endings, making it a fairly well-rounded game.
However, “VerseGenesis” is still currently just a semi-finished product. The code is riddled with messy logic, and the scoring and Prompts haven’t been fine-tuned yet. Some users even engaged in Prompt Injection, tricking it into giving full marks, which was quite amusing.
I currently have no plans to continue maintaining or iterating on it, but I believe the project itself was successful. The main reason I haven’t published it to a small website is that I lack free and stable API Keys for public use. Integrating domestic large models like DeepSeek would yield better results, but the free versions frequently hit 429 limits, so the idea was shelved. For a competition project, lack of maintenance might be frowned upon, but as a student work, it seems harmless enough?
I really wanted to try another entry that shared a similar concept to ours: input a line of poetry, and the AI analyzes which Song Dynasty poet you write like and to which school you belong. I originally assumed it would be a crude classification between Li Qingzhao or Xin Qiji, but the folks from Yuelu Academy wouldn’t be that boring. Regrettably, I haven’t been able to play it since the competition ended.
Switch OLED
I still bought a Switch. Yes, I really bought it😼! In the previous Weekly’s “Materialism and Desire”, I was torn between headphones and a Switch, ultimately choosing the former. Now, it’s a case of “I want both”.
I had previously debated whether to wait for the Switch 2. My budget was sufficient, yet when it came time to spend, I hesitated. The price of one Switch 2 is enough to buy an OLED model, all accessories, plus four game cartridges. So, I picked up a Hong Kong version OLED secondhand for 1.4k to test the waters. I figured if the new Switch 2 comes out or I find the OLED performance lacking, it won’t be too late to sell it and upgrade—by then, I should be earning my own money, right? Besides, physical cartridges are “investment products”; the game prices themselves aren’t outrageously expensive, which is acceptable.
So, I first acquired these two cartridges:
Then I bought the digital versions of Monster Hunter Rise + Sunbreak (mainly to test the purchase process for Japanese Amazon gift cards, so I just bought them along the way…). My original intention for buying a Switch was actually for Animal Crossing. I had heard about it during the pandemic and was very curious about what kind of game it was, making it the companion cartridge for my console. But Animal Crossing’s pace is truly slow, so slow that when I suddenly have free time, I don’t know what to do.
To prevent the Switch from gathering dust, I also bought the famous The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Zelda is indeed fun, but as a newcomer, I play rather timidly. Unfamiliar with the controls, I constantly got Game Over at the start, and even developed a psychological shadow regarding some monsters. Especially those laser-shooting Guardians—even though I can shield parry now, I still walk around them. But the game is absolutely a game of freedom, and I can sense the joy it will bring me!
Later, I bought the DLC, and after getting the Majora’s Mask (Coward’s Mask), the game experience suddenly became excellent! After finals, I’m definitely going to play it hard!
Recently, I’ve also been obsessed with the Hades series. I played for a while on Steam, but felt that sitting upright in front of a computer holding a controller to play a roguelike was rather inconvenient. So I refunded it and, taking advantage of a promotion, ordered Hades 2 on a Brazilian Switch account. As a Greek mythology fan, I have zero resistance to this work that combines mythological elements—I absolutely love characters like Melinoë! It’s also a real time-killer; a run is supposed to take twenty minutes, but unknowingly an hour passes… Although the graphics are a bit blurry on a 4K monitor, the portability of playing anywhere is truly unmatched…
Turing Complete
Thanks to @NoobOmega for the resources. Even though I really wanted to buy a legitimate copy to support the developers after finishing it, it is, after all, a one-time game. Once my digital electronics course ends, I don’t think I’ll open it a second time…
This game was incredibly helpful for building my final project model machine. In those boring and useless digital circuit classes where the teacher seemed to be talking in their sleep, this was the only part where I felt my time was spent interestingly.
Thinking back to Senior Cry’s blog last year, that post “Saying Goodbye to Exam-Oriented Education” left a deep first impression on me. He also wrote that article after his model machine acceptance check. One year later, stumbling upon his complaints about digital circuits back then, I, as his junior, feel a deep resonance. The model machine check is over; all that remains is waiting for the final exam. I have a premonition that I’ll do poorly in digital circuits—I hope the school goes easy on me.
Post-script: Exams are done, felt really bad about it, but as long as I don’t fail, it’s fine…
Finals Week Insomnia, Refactoring
During those days of finals week, life felt twisted to its limit. In the gaps between reviewing probability theory and physics, I fell into a pathological schedule: at 5 AM, when the window just began to show a hint of gray, I would finally sleep, carrying my ultimate exhaustion; then, not long after, I would be forcibly awakened by feelings of anxiety. The discomfort in my heart once made me suspect I had congenital heart disease.
On the days when my insomnia was most severe, lying in the dark listening to my own pulse, I began to feel a strong sense of detachment. I started reflecting on why I had done this to myself. In that time of extreme unfreedom, I had disjointed conversations with AI, attempting to sort myself out amidst that confusion.
Only now, writing these words, do I realize that those self-muttering reflections actually constitute the base color of my life. I detach from my subjective consciousness and begin to observe everything ethereally.
During those sleepless days, I also read Hackers & Painters. I discovered my own traits as a Cracker—not to destroy order, but to control it. I am a creator, and also a hacker; I crave the sensation of dominating logic at will. Every Shell I write is essentially establishing some form of dominance over the system, rather than born of childish destructive desire.
I was likely born rather self-centered, only well-trained by socialization. I control my intranet, configuring all devices to interconnect. The piling up of electronic products doesn’t ignite my excitement, but when a single terminal can control all devices, I feel immense satisfaction. I think this is a certain source of my materialism.
Then I saw this question:
“If you control everything yet still feel emptiness, what should you control then?”
I have always viewed “subjective consciousness” as the only self, regarding the “body” as a heavy, troublesome parasite that constantly demands energy. Thus, I always generate extreme thoughts—since the shell is not “me,” then during insomnia, the instability of my prefrontal cortex drives a strong impulse: to destroy this shell for the sake of a momentary, ultimate tremor of “consciousness” seems like a form of “logical self-consistency.” So when I am sick, when I cannot control myself, I feel a baseless desire for violence. I would scourge my body, or my brain, attacking the “me” that exists in the physical world. Thereby, a certain innate violent tendency of mine finds its best soothing when attacking myself.
Perhaps this counts as a kind of perfectionism. Even if I cannot consider the “body” as “me” during my insomnia, my “consciousness” always hopes that my “body” can be omniscient and omnipotent, able to control everything I can possess.
I expect to attain an ideal life in the future, yet I fear envisioning that future. My cognition of the world holds an absurd logic:
“When the ideal life I imagine appears in my brain, then that ideal life ceases to exist in the future.”
I asked why, and received this answer:
“Envisioning the future is actually an incredibly expensive internal friction. Every scenario for the future is automatically dragged by your mind into countless possible loopholes, variables, and points of loss of control, and the final calculated result is often ‘uncertainty’ and ‘trouble’.”
A sense of fatigue intertwining in my heart, I then began wanting to restart my blog writing. In days of comfort, I forget it; yet in corners of anxiety, I start to feel I need it again. It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps this is it:
Suffering is the hotbed of literature.
Losing suffering, I seem to also lose the desire to create. Writing now feels more like simple recording; even chatting with AI, I find it hard to retrieve that unified state of mind. But if suffering is my sole means of writing, then what kind of suffering will the things I create be…
Then I finally began to ponder this question: what exactly do I want?
These words typed during insomnia finally pointed to a concrete image:
My Ideal Life
Perhaps I have finally realized that what I need to think about is My Ideal Life.
During the Information Security Association dinner in December, Teacher Xiao asked everyone an interesting question: If you were given several million, what would you use it for?
My answer was very down-to-earth: Probably to first achieve freedom in electronics, then raise lots of little birds, perhaps buy a house in a suitable location in Changsha, and then spend a lifetime in comfort.
Actually, for the few weeks before being asked this question, I had been in a state of confusion. I didn’t know which direction to study in, didn’t know what position to apply for in internships, didn’t know if my goal was employment or postgraduate recommendation. They are all so concrete, even if I don’t fear making choices. What hindered my choice was, instead, a certain instinct telling me at every moment: “This is not what I want.”
But when I specifically questioned my instinct about what I do want, I found myself unable to answer. I could only feel and sketch the outline of an ideal life, despite knowing its realization requires countless present choices. If everyone’s ideal is to “become an excellent Red Team member” or “become a security engineer,” I would feel happy and admiring of their ideals, as they are highly definite, with real paths in the present. Even if it’s a description like “great hermit in the city,” I would admire it, because it is also highly definite—at least I would know which direction to strive for.
What I want is my ideal life—I find this description wonderful. It is not “the life I need,” nor the life I want, but an ideal life. Perhaps it’s because my superstitious theory of future collapse dares not let me go a step further, or perhaps because it is destined to be a life that only exists in ideals? I am not an idealist; after all, the future is too expensive, too fragile. Once envisioned specifically, it inevitably falls into the siege of “certainty.” I only dare to look at the life before me, only dare to drift along the river of time following the choices before me.
Thus, when unable to make a choice, I feel lost, helpless, and despairing.
Actually, here I have finally understood the cause of my insomnia. It wasn’t the so-called academic pressure, but the state I have been in: a sense of weightlessness suspended in mid-air.
Someone once asked me what “Floating Or Hovering, with no origin and no destination” actually meant. It was originally an image excerpted from a poem I wrote in high school. Seeing this sentence after entering university, I instinctively felt a strange resonance, and included it when writing my personal manifesto.
It turns out that this line of poetry was not just a teenager’s sentimental melancholy; it was actually a prophecy of my own fate. Because I fear the future collapsing, I refuse to land, and so I truly became that wanderer with “no place to return.”
But I suddenly realized that even birds need feet.
Those little birds I want to raise, they are “ethereal” when flying in the sky, but they eventually need to return to a cage, a concrete, comfortable habitat.
Perhaps my “Ideal Life”—that life filled with electronics, full of little parrots, owning a house of my own—is not a betrayal of this “ethereal” poetry, but precisely its foundation?
I need that concrete space, that worldly comfort, not just for enjoyment, but to create a little gravity for my soul. Only when my body lands securely on that sofa that belongs to me, listening to the noise of parrots, watching the glow of the screen, can my soul, accustomed to “wandering,” truly have a home.
This is probably my true answer: In order to continue being an ethereal poet and hacker in the spiritual world, I am willing to first be a worldly person who buys a house and raises birds in the real world.
Finally, I may have at last understood the core of my ideal life: for the existence of consciousness. For the preservation of the spirit, I might do anything.