Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever -- because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.

The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Tomorrow is a special day, yet I guess it will be tranquil and smooth. It’s a usual practice for everyone to think about what he/she has accomplished in the past years and to plan for the future, but I think this practice is not necessary for me now.

I don’t know what kind of experience is inevitable for everyone to grow up, but I am sure I lag behind most of peers to see it and to accept it. For the first time, standing at the threshold of being one year older, no one holds my hand to cross the threshold and lead the way for me. I have to choose the direction by myself and take the responsibility. I wish I were much prepared for that moment, but I am not. This is where I am: time pushes me to face the reality, but my heart drags me to retreat to a corner.

However, life has to continue, and I have to find the way out by myself. No matter what has happened yesterday, no matter what I will come across tomorrow, I will never spend a minute to think, and just do what I should do right now.

If you decide to do something, do it right now, because any delay in doing so may end up with giving up. You will never know whether you still have the same passion as that you have now, and you’ll never know whether the external condition will remain the same for you to realize what you think as what you are in now. A famous saying goes like this; you can not step into the same river twice!

Each moment in one’s life is irreplaceable, and irreversible. So you should make right decisions to choose how to use every moment in your life, and make sure you will never regret your choice.  

Please don’t prayer for a rapid lapse of sad moments, instead, you should expect every moment in your life to be meaningful and valuable! The sad moments can be treated as your opportunity to challenge yourself and you will find out the happiness of enjoying the process.

If you take this attitude, you will get the meaning and value of life, and you will see worries going and happiness coming. You should bear in your mind that you can’t avoid the difficulties, and the only thing you can do is to either overcome them or bypass them.

In daily life, many things remain to be done. It’s not that you don’t think about them, but that you do think but you hesitate to take action, and after a while, you forget about our plans!

There are two types of people who always delay in taking action. One is busy people. When busy people think about one thing that should be done at once, he will say, “I’m too busy now, I’ll deal with it later.” And later on, another thing occupies his mind, and he forgets what he should do before.

The other belongs to lazy group. he has plenty of time, but he is inclined to delay what should be done. Every time he is in a position to finish something, he will hesitate to move and say, “don’t hurry, I will do it later”. And later on, he forgets about it, or worse, he misses the opportunity.

If you want to make what you think come true, never hesitate to take action.

It is said that Aries people will have a good luck in 2008, however, there is none in my case.

It is planned that I will spend 2 hours finishing an online application, but the result turned out to be more than 6 hours. In the morning, when I took my computer along with me and went out, I had an institution that this online application would never be smooth and today would be ruined because I felt quite restless and strange. However, I hesitated for a while and went out, since I couldn’t figure out anything which will hurdle what I would do.

The facts were that my power plug was disconnected suddenly because a girl unplugged it by mistake. The power went off suddenly and I had to restart to continue the application. However, things were getting worse and worse. The wireless network couldn’t be connected anymore! I tried for an hour and finally got it, but the network’s speed became unbelievably slow so that I couldn’t open the web page! Another hour past, the wireless network recovered to normal, I continued the application. It’s not long before the girl’s boyfriend unplugged and cut my computer’s power by mistake! Again! The vicious circle began. I was so irritated and sad that I couldn’t say a word! When the wireless network was back to normal again, I compelled myself to continue the application since only a few questions were left. At this time, the network suddenly reduced to very low signal intensity and I couldn’t open the web anymore! Now I am waiting it to be normal and until I finish this article, it’s still there!

I am not an Aries, it’s true

Another week went away as every week does. It can’t be more normal, but my emotion has gone through ups and downs. Too many things happened just in one week!

From March 3^rd to 4^th, I think I was very anxious about the impending result which would determine where I would be next semester. However, the result came out through the way of drawing straws, and I had a bad luck. It’s ridiculous if we judged it by common sense, but I happened to me as well. My future, at the mercy of luck, cast a gloomy shadow on myself. It happened on March 5^th, and I accepted it. In the following 4 days, I worked as interpreter in the exhibition and conference centre. I felt a kind of happiness which has not been felt for a long time. How can I describe this experience? I can not tell the details, but I remember I couldn’t wait to jump to work every day and I was so reluctant to see it’s end yesterday. I am sure the difference in the past four days lies in the orientation and meaningfulness. I enjoyed the feeling that I was doing an oriented task and never more bewildering. Of course I learned a lot through communication with several big figures if I may say that. However, happiness flees away fast, and I am back to where I am.

Except for bad luck and work, maybe something influences me much more. I keep thinking whether I made a mistake again. It’s so heartbreaking that when I found all my passion and enthusiasm evaporated because there was no echo of my emotions. I think I am tired, as tired as before. People tell me that if there is no expectation, there will no disappointment, but the problem is I not only expect too much, but also bind my heart and soul with the expectation. When the bubble blasts, I was on the brink of collapse. I really can’t feel a thing. Can I recover in this week? It’s better not to hope so.

It was the past which impinged.

It has been two weeks since I was back in Xiamen. Things changed, environment changed, my attitudes towards the outside world changed as well. There is a self-evident saying which goes like this: the only constant is change, sure, my experiences continue to prove its correctness. How could I cope with this changeable and kaleidoscopic social environment? I know I was not fully-prepared or even in a state to know the necessity of mental preparation, but suddenly I was thrown into where I am.

The lamenting process of growing up just begins in my case, which I completely understand now. I can remember how reluctant and sad I was at the prospect of going back to Xiamen when I was at home, I can not figure out how many times I cried when I found I was totally helpless to change the situation I was in. life goes on as well, and I am in Xiamen. I told my mom that I was kind of in the feeling of growing up because I couldn’t remove the vexation of my heart. Her answer was plain that I should have understood it. Maybe there are some group of people in world who always lag behind others in terms of mental development, and I think I belong to this group.

The chaos, the thrill, the ecstasy, the sadness, the vexation, all the truth about life unfold before me, and I , whether willing or not, have to read them and experience. Almost all the time, I have to alienate my soul and myself, keep on warning myself to avoid an innocent or even naive perception of things and make neutral and reasonable judgment. It is a bad feeling I have to confess, but maybe that’s a rational way to live in this world. Until now, I come to understand several things:

First, how to look at competition. I used to avoid any competition with any one, and even give away my opportunity to make things better, but I was totally wrong. There is no solution to satisfy everyone even if someone involved sacrifice all her/his benefits and opportunity. To compete with others is to survive. Sacrifice in this case is another way of saying cowardice. Fair competition should be appreciated but not to be avoided. As to the results of competition, I don’t care. The most important thing for me is not the results which only have two possibilities in the zero-sum game, but the attitude to face competition and keep faith no matter how much pressure and how many obstacles I have to face in the whole process. This is to grow up I think.

Second, how to rebuild confidence. Sounds strange? I can remember the most frequent positive comments I received before I went to college were on my confidence. However, I have lost my confidence for a long time, or in another word, I didn’t understand what confidence really meant and I came to what I should be like. Confidence is not blindness, not loud and dazzling, and it is not a high-flying word in its real sense. Confidence talks about a kind of state, quiet but powerful, invisible but eternal. A confident person will never advertise his/her confidence and this confidence can neither be seen through by outsiders. This is the exact confidence I need to build, and I know I am on the right way.

What I have gone through in this two weeks by no means give rise to only two ideas that I mentioned above. There are much more which can not be expressed through words, or I am not able to express them through words. Hopefully, I will continue to write on the internet in English, not out of any intention to splurge the language, but, as I mentioned earlier, out of a sense of alienation which makes me rational and makes the words justifiable.