I must confess: whenever I face a major event—especially a critical turning point in life—I can’t help but feel an itch to “fool around.”

Right now, amid the stifling atmosphere of preparing for the postgraduate entrance exam, I find myself eagerly typing out the first post of this new site in front of my computer screen. This scene feels oddly familiar. It takes me back to the spring and summer of 2022, when I was on a leave of absence from high school and staying at home. Back then, I had just shed my old ways of thinking and absorbed some new perspectives, which gave me a clearer sense of my future and life goals. In that era before AI was everywhere and you had to bang your head against every wall alone, I followed online tutorials with sheer grit and built the first website in my life.

At that time, I not only put in the hard work but, more importantly, poured my heart into it. Since I wasn’t going to school, I could learn whatever I loved at home. Without AI to smooth things over, I had no choice but to trudge through countless blogs by myself, like a kid picking through a junkyard, sifting through a vast sea of resources to find those few usable snippets of code. Later, I learned how to buy domain names, tinker with web hosting, and cobble together a hodgepodge of messy, flashy features for my blog. Looking back now, I actually feel a bit of admiration for that version of myself, who dared to break new ground without any foundation—and even more admiration for that idealistic, penniless student who completely dismissed the rat-race education system. The content on that blog was quite pure—mostly extensions of my high school reading notes, excerpts from famous authors’ works, serving as my private “forest of letters.” It had a strong literary flavor, {{ann|“rather romantic”|Rather romantic|From “Lurk,” here it’s a self-deprecating sarcasm.|}}.

The story that followed is rather clichéd: I returned to school, prepared for the college entrance exam, and the blog I had poured so much energy into was put on hold. Later, due to various reasons that can’t be summed up in a few words, the old site became an abandoned homestead overgrown with weeds.

And now, the postgraduate entrance exam has arrived right on schedule. That familiar urge to find something else to “escape” into has resurfaced. I thought of my old blog, intending to rekindle the flame, only to discover how unreliable a person becomes when they stop studying. Looking at the Hexo-based old site felt like reading a foreign language—the directories, data, everything was completely alien. I went through my browser bookmarks to find the masters I had once copied from, only to find that their blogs were even emptier than mine. At this point, I couldn’t even recall where I’d left the key.

Forget it. Renovating a crumbling house is too hard; better to start a new one from scratch.

This time I switched to the trendy Hugo framework. Gone is the naivety of the past, replaced by a certain familiarity. I won’t say I’m handling it with ease yet, but it’s certainly going much smoother compared to the scratching and head-scratching of my first build. I suppose this is the only dividend I’ve reaped from wasting away these years of university life.

I don’t expect this newly cultivated garden to attract any pilgrims. After all, I’m writing for myself. I’m not an expert in any field, so I can’t teach anyone anything. I just have a strange urge to share, which gnaws at me if I keep it bottled up—yet I also worry about others seeing it. So this place becomes my refuge, where I jot down notes and casual thoughts, acting as a set of personal records for easy review and as a glimpse into a hoped-for future. If, ten or twenty years from now, this place still exists, I’ll be able to look back and see what I was up to in my twenties. As the saying goes, “Those who come after will look upon the present just as we look upon the past, and they too will be moved by these writings.”

{{ann|Ji Xianlin|Ji Xianlin|1911–2009, Chinese linguist and essayist, tenured professor at Peking University, whose “Tsinghua Garden Diary” included entries cursing professors, complaining about exams, checking out girls, experiencing sexual urges, and doing nothing of substance. When these were later published, some suggested deleting those parts, but he insisted on keeping every word, saying he was never a saint and wanted to reveal his true self.|}} and {{ann|Hu Shih|Hu Shih|1891–1962, modern thinker, writer, and representative figure of the New Culture Movement, a key advocate of the vernacular Chinese movement, whose diary candidly recorded details of playing mahjong, failing to quit, and emotional ups and downs.|}} both wrote unapologetically candid and seemingly “worthless” truths in their diaries, and I want to learn from that kind of honesty. After all, people need to grow, and the best way to grow is to wrestle with yourself—letting reason triumph over emotion, and dialectical thinking defeat instinct. Even if you strive for success, you mustn’t turn into an infallible, unquestionable know-it-all who loves to lecture others—attempting to guide people when you’re really on their level. When you’re riding high today, one day you might fall from the pedestal and end up being immortalized in a joke anthology for all the wrong reasons. It’s better to be ordinary and humble; that’s still far better than those self-styled sages. Self-awareness is a precious thing. Besides, you need some “fooling around” beyond exams to feel like you’re still breathing and alive.

So here it is. First post — wishing myself a great start.