The beginning of the new year is an important node for everyone to leave the old and welcome the new: people look back on the past, see the highlights and regrets, and then make new plans and prepare for the new year.
Recently, we invited 5 ordinary people who dare to face life to share their vision for the New Year and see how they can leave anchors for themselves in a life full of uncertainties.
Zhou Ying
The North Drift family wants to integrate into the new city
Zhou Ying's twin-city life ended in October 2021.
In the fourteen months before that, she had to take a train between Beijing and Wuhan on weekends almost every ten days.
When she decided to go north again, Zhou Ying had been at home full-time with her children for nearly two years. Before the birth of the child, she worked in Beijing, and there was an ideal working environment there, which always made her think that she would have the opportunity to go back again. But when it comes to this, the husband always hesitates: "Then when do you decide to come back?" Zhou Ying could not give a definite answer. She thought and thought, and finally made up her mind. When the child was weaned, she went north to work. Zhou Ying wants to earn more and give her children a better life.
But because she hadn't been with her children for a long time, she found that her son was more introverted than before. Zhou Ying felt guilty and had the idea of returning home after staying in Beijing for two years.
It was Zhou Ying's husband who took an important step. In 2021, when his work was bottlenecked, he decided to go north to find a job. After deciding on a new unit, the couple began to plan to bring their families to Beijing together. They found a rental house in an old residential area of Panjiayuan and bought many practical household items.
Everything is properly arranged, in 2021 National Day, Zhou Ying's family of four lived in the 60-square-meter rental house.
The first days were blissful. Zhou Ying's life is filled with work, because the arrival of her family has become more lively. She also slowly felt close to the big city of Beijing.
But after only a month, Zhou Ying began to get a little tired. Work is sometimes interrupted by trivialities, life begins to revolve around the child, and Zhou Ying feels that freedom has disappeared for the most part.
At the same time, the mother-in-law also shows discomfort, and many times she is reluctant to go out to play because it is inconvenient to go out to the toilet. On the other hand, the son who left Wuhan did not have too many playmates of the same age in this old community, and could only play at home. According to the policy, a son born in October has two years to attend a public kindergarten. Zhou Ying's state of the son made Zhou Ying very worried, although she was two and a half years old, but "fear" is still her son's mantra.
At one point, Ms. Zhou and her husband wondered if the idea of reuniting their families in Beijing was too selfish, whether they had all been trapped in a new cage.
Figure | Zhou Ying's mother-in-law and son waited to catch a train to Beijing
After some struggle, Zhou Ying decided to take her son out to play as much as possible when she had free time on the weekend, and also enrolled her son in an interest class, giving him more opportunities to contact his peers and reduce the burden on her mother-in-law.
"Mom and Dad go to work, I go to kindergarten." Last week, Zhou Ying suddenly heard her son singing this lyric to her, and she was very happy that her son was slowly growing up.
Recently, Zhou Ying also saw the news that Beijing will introduce policies in 2022 to support kindergartens to enroll children aged 2 to 3. Zhou Ying calculated that when she had time, she would go to the nearby community kindergarten to ask if there was a similar policy for her son to enroll as soon as possible. She felt that life was beginning to move on the right track.
Luo Qing
Young people who leave the iron rice bowl want to break through the period of work burnout
In the eyes of others, Luo Qing is a very courageous person. At the end of 2019, at the age of thirty-five, she voluntarily resigned and left the civil service position where she had worked for more than ten years. She has a strong feeling in her heart that she needs to find new possibilities, and she will be trapped if she does not leave. But what's next? She pondered and explored for a long time and finally decided to turn to media writing.
In 2021, Luo Qing entered an institution to write full-time. However, she did not have the gist of the new industry, and in the first two months, the interviewee did not cooperate, could not find the interviewee, and did not pass the topic, and other issues surrounded her, luo Qing was anxious.
In the third month after I started writing, my work was gradually on track. At that time, Luo Qing made a new topic, which was a subject that had not been tried before, which was a little difficult for her. But after surviving the process of polishing, she had an unexpected gain. After the manuscript was sent, she saw many readers resonate with the article in the background. A reader commented that the article wrote about the current situation of second- and third-tier cities. It was also at that time that Luo Qing clearly felt the joy and meaning of writing for the first time: understanding and discovering a character, showing a certain state of life, and allowing more people to see and have a broader discussion.
This didn't last long. Late last year, Luo Qing found that the work entered a period of slow progress. It was much like after a period of thrusting, the body began to feel tired. Although he will still work seriously, Luo Qing has no motivation to write. For a long time, she did not experience the pleasure she had felt, and even doubted whether she could continue to write. But at this point, it was only a few months before she first entered the media industry.
"Have you ever had a time when you got bored with [writing]?" Luo Qing asked his lover who had been engaged in media writing for more than twenty years.
"There is tiredness, but there is no tiredness." The other party answered. Then he told her that she could quickly get things to seventy, but sometimes people need to stay on the seventy-point platform for a long time and write a lot of seventy-point manuscripts to reach seventy-five or eighty points.
"Write slowly, in a hurry."
Luo Qing remembered his experience of practicing the piano. The teacher once taught her that she needed to practice the same level of music repeatedly, and the technique was solid enough to advance to a higher level. Practicing is boring and boring, but only by sticking to it can you break through the new platform period. Now it seems that the same is true of writing.
Figure | Luo Qing's study
Now, Luo Qing was used to this state of boredom coming from time to time. However, she calmed down and wrote one by one. Each one is an exercise and puts forward higher requirements for their professionalism and tries more possibilities.
In the new year's work plan, she hopes that she can cross the current platform period, and try her best to record the times and respond to the times with her own strength.
Georgie
Workers who have not slept well for a long time want to get a good night's sleep
Most of the time of insomnia, Georgie will subconsciously clench her teeth. The straightened teeth are aligned up and down and snapped tightly. After she realized it, she tried to relax, but it wasn't long before her teeth closed again. Over time, her masseter muscles were sore. To make matters worse, she sat in a chair, not wanting to do anything, shrinking into a ball, and a lot of questions flashed through her mind, and even at four or five o'clock in the morning, she still couldn't close her eyes.
According to the "China Sleep Index Report", the proportion of people with frequent insomnia in China will increase to 36.1% in 2020. Georgie is one of them. After the internship began in 2019, insomnia and poor sleep began to become regular customers in Georgie's life.
Looking back now, Georgie feels that this state is related to the stress and anxiety of work. Georgie is a perfectionist, often dissatisfied with herself and sensitive to stress. She had been diagnosed with depression and insisted on taking medication, but still couldn't fully control her emotions. Sometimes, some of the stress or conflict in the workplace during the day can bring huge shocks at night, and the stress response makes her unable to sleep.
It is a coincidence that exercise can improve sleep. At the time, she had just signed up for a class at the gym with a colleague. That day, she had insomnia at work until dawn, and she was urged out of the door by her coach, who did not want to go to class. During the workout, Georgie did not perform well, and the coach asked her what was wrong. Only then did Georgie tell her insomnia.
"You should take care of yourself." The coach reminded her. Georgie's heart was hot, and she began to exercise while telling her unhappiness at work, and the coach who was guiding on the side also listened silently. An hour passed, and Georgie felt that she had almost spoken. She also found that after the training, her face began to have some blood.
Originally, After insomnia, Georgie would always feel frustrated. But after this exercise, she felt that her body gradually gained strength: she was not so weak and could do a lot of things. When she got home that night, drowsiness quickly struck, and she didn't fall asleep like she usually turned over and over, but felt that the bed was supporting herself, and gradually fell into a dream.
This state did not last long. As the pressure of work increased, Georgie's exercise habits were interrupted, and her state began to shake again. In the past, poor sleep was caused by other things, but now, it has become a new anxiety for Georgie. She often dreamed that she hadn't finished her job. Insomnia puts a dead knot in life: insomnia leads to a poor mental state, which acts in reverse on emotions and aggravates depression and anxiety.
In the new year, Georgie knows that she cannot continue this state. She decided to resume her workout program and allow herself to have more good nights to sleep.
Figure | Georgie's cat, sometimes insomnia, the kitten will take the initiative to approach Georgie and fall asleep in her arms
Wu Lin
A new couple who want to buy their first real estate in 2022
In the Spring Festival of 2020, Wu Lin and his girlfriend went home to meet their parents and also had the idea of buying a house together. But where to buy a house, the two are undecided.
He and his girlfriend are both drifting north, with a limited budget for buying a house, hoping to find a house with the best value for money. After many understandings and comparisons, they targeted Hangzhou.
In the spring of 2021, Wu Lin and his girlfriend went from Beijing to Hangzhou to see a house. After seeing four or five suites, they went to a friend's house. It's not far from the West Lake, there's no dust and smoke, and you can watch farmers picking tea in the tea houses in the nearby mountains in the morning. Looking back now, Wu Lin felt that it was a journey from the desert to the oasis.
After returning to Beijing, the two finalized the plan to buy a house in Hangzhou: the girlfriend has settled in Hangzhou, and after the two have gathered more than 700,000 yuan in advance, they only need to wait for the red disk to open and wait for the lottery.
Wu Lin and his girlfriend began to prepare advances separately, but it did not go well. The red market they were most satisfied with did not open in May as expected, and they did not think too much about it and continued to wait. Three months later, Hangzhou issued a new housing purchase restriction order, which directly broke the plan of the two.
On that day, Wu Lin saw Hangzhou's new purchase restriction policy: families like them who have not paid social security in Hangzhou for two years cannot buy the real estate they have seen before, and the only thing that can be considered is Lin'an, which is tens of kilometers away from Downtown Hangzhou. But it's too far from the city center and extremely low value for money.
"I can't buy it." Wu Lin sent the news of the purchase restriction to his girlfriend. He began to chagrin at why he had not made second-hand preparations before and participated in the lottery of other real estate. Moreover, he had just learned that his girlfriend was pregnant. The emergence of a new life vaguely urged him to accelerate the purchase plan. After all, children need to settle down and have a stable home after birth. But now, with the new deal in place, buying a house has become an open bet.
Figure | Wu Lin and his girlfriend went to a sales office in Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou to see a house
Since planning to buy a house, Wu Lin and his girlfriend have quarreled over this matter. Once, for a whole week, the two people in the same bed did not say a word to each other. In the end, it was a friend who came forward to mediate and turned Gan Ge into a jade warrior. Arguing, forgiving, hesitating, compromising, Wu Lin and his girlfriend stumbled forward.
Last October, Wu Lin and his girlfriend held a wedding. After the parents of the two sides met, Wu Lin's father pulled him to speak: "After marriage, [the matter] is a matter for the two families, both sides are paying, they are entrusting you." Don't put the pressure on yourself. At that time, Wu Lin felt that his suspended heart had fallen slightly.
As the winter grew, my wife's belly grew larger by the day. Not long ago, his wife asked Wu Linduo to talk to the child in his belly, but he felt a little strange. He has not yet adjusted to the state of becoming a father, but the feeling of wanting to support a family is becoming clearer and stronger.
After the initial plan to buy a house was stranded, Wu Lin and his wife planned a new plan. In the new year, they decided to wait to see if the property market prices would turn around in the next year, and they would settle their own nest somewhere in Beijing or Hangzhou.
Li You
Tourism industry practitioners want to build their own safe world
In 2021, Li You began to learn to accept that "everything can change".
Since the beginning of the epidemic in 2020, Li You's tourism industry has entered a downturn. Initially, first the domestic business was affected, most of the projects that Li You had promoted years ago suddenly came to a standstill, and the projects that had time to promote in the future were silent. A silent shadow began to envelop Li You. Subsequently, foreign customers cancelled orders one after another, and Li You heard that they were about to face layoffs.
According to a report released by the World Tourism Organization, international tourism will generate direct and indirect losses of about 2.4 trillion yuan in the whole year of 2020. Under the cold winter, corporate austerity is the basic self-protection road. After several rounds of personnel changes, Li You is one of the remaining members, and her income has also declined due to the impact of the epidemic.
Domestic and cross-border travel came to a near standstill, and much of the business was blocked as a result, but Li And his colleagues continued to do their best to the best they could: they divided it on a semi-annual basis, developed a new work plan and moved forward. They all have a tacit expectation: after half a year, they will hear the news that the epidemic has improved and countries will resume opening up. Only then can they persevere.
Four and a half years have passed, and Li You can gradually feel that after experiencing the repeated collisions of reality, his "hope curve" has gradually been brought into the trough. Today, what makes her feel stable in a changing environment is the rental house where she lives alone.
In 2021, due to force majeure, she moved twice in just 6 months. The roommates who originally shared the room had new plans, and Li You felt that it was too much trouble to find a roommate again. Eventually, she decided to live alone.
Figure | Li You's rental house
From a lively shared life to a state of living alone, Li You thought that he might have to spend some time getting used to it. But when she began to buy curtains, carpets, acrylic storage tables, lamps and other objects little by little, and decorated her small home, Li You found that life began to become more fulfilling. She worked alone in the cottage, watched plays, and sometimes had friends come to dinner. Although the uncertainty of work still makes her feel anxious from time to time, after staying in this room, her tired self can always be fully charged.
Not long ago, she saw Xu Zhiyuan and Liu Qing chatting about "freedom" in a talk show. Li You feels that this discussion is very appropriate: although she has changed from a socialized state in the past to a "house" now, in this cottage of her own, she has actually reached a very free state. As long as she could afford to pay the rent, at least most of the time, the situation in the hut was within her control.
For 2022, Li You still has expectations for tourism, and at the same time, she hopes that she can have a stable income and continue to hold on to the rental house in this big city.
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Written by | Wang Ximei