The words I wrote on Pixnet when I was 30 years old have followed me into the second half of my 40s! These words are not posted on my own blog , but more like the thoughts I separated at that time, without a particular theme, a one-month daily diary. It is also the age when thoughts flow very quickly, so there is such an endless supply of words to write; unlike the anxiety that I had nowhere to go and had to eliminate a lot of writing later, they are all natural conversations with myself and the world every day, with unknown ignorance, and bold expression in self-expectation, without worrying about revealing any ignorant stupidity in the words.
Before I turned 40, I was still in great pain about “living”, and I was not sure what emotional black hole I had fallen into at the time. In addition to the already published “Written by a Girlfriend to a Girlfriend” , the dozens of essays and notes in this book were also written at the age of 30. Calculating the amount of text, and then adding it to the text posted on the blog, a total of more than 100,000 words were written from August 2008 to August 2009 (and the last article was in January 2010) when I entered my thirties. In the end, I deleted several articles with only short texts and texts that I don’t want to include in this book now, and picked out 70 articles to complete this book.
Just like “Written from a Girlfriend to a Girlfriend”, one night before I turned forty, I once thought about the question “What if I died now (I really want to die now)”, and then I decided “Before I die, I must at least spend all the money I have worked hard for several years”, so I finally got up and left home, found a place to hide in this city where I could escape for a few days, began to recall my past, opened these hundreds of thousands of words to read, and then asked myself “Where is my thirty-year-old self?” The self who was still living a happy life!
Whether it is these hundreds of thousands of words or the records left on the social networking sites at that time, they all show my deep depression and anxiety on that late night when I ran away from home before I turned 40! And when I ran away, I tried to remember myself at that time from these words, remembering the “self who was still happy” !
Sixteen years have passed, and many things have changed. In addition to entering middle age, “physical strength has declined, the brain has begun to react less quickly, and of course the sharpness of emotional reactions has become a little slower! I am so presbyopic that I need several pairs of glasses with different working focal lengths!” In addition, the world is changing with technology, and the interaction between people has changed dramatically. It is hard to say whether it is closer or more distant? But what is certain is that the relationship between people is more tense, especially on the Internet!
When I reorganized these words, I also realized that such words are no longer what I can write in my forties! The world of a thirty-year-old is different from that of a forty-year-old. I don’t need to rethink my original intentions, or look back on my youth like many people who have entered middle age and regret that time has ruthlessly washed away their youth and lost themselves!
Such straightforward expression, the eagerness to communicate with the world and the people around him, is not something that can be written by a person in his forties. It is not because of his age that he has to be calm and reserved, but he is cautious and dares not express himself. Most of the time, there are some things that are not urgent and must be recognized and understood by others!
Looking at myself at the age of 30 who loves to participate in various activities and friends’ gatherings, I envy and feel fortunate that I was so energetic and lively when I was a teenager! I was full of curiosity and actively wanted to understand the world, people, and everything!
I have reached an age where I don’t need too much understanding and recognition. I am not as enthusiastic about socializing as I was when I was 30, and I am less afraid of being forgotten and losing! I let passers-by come and go in my life. I have few friends, few gatherings, and few social activities. I am no longer troubled by interpersonal relationships and social activities!
After all, are people looking for themselves in the process of socialization, or do they already have themselves and just jump into the steps of socialization, and later shake their heads and say to themselves after figuring things out: “Ah! Aren’t the answers to those interpersonal relationships I have now the same as they were in my teenage years?” Why have people recklessly jumped into those “socializing with people that require socialization” for so many years and made themselves so exhausted?
During the five or six years since I turned 40, the first few years were the COVID-19 pandemic. People distanced themselves from each other because of the virus. I took the opportunity to sort out all the messy interpersonal relationships that bothered me, and lived like I was in the mountains. Apart from surfing the Internet, I no longer had too much social interaction! Even those options that required occasional exposure to traffic and popularity in the past “online business” were deleted from my life (not being a handmade teacher, not setting up a stall to make money, not participating in any occasions where I was suitable or invited to go on stage…) If I can survive by making books, then I will maintain the social interaction on the Internet and survive! If I can stay on the Internet to write, sell some of my own handmade works, and draw some cute paintings to survive, I can live comfortably without being exposed!
Anyway, my 30-year-old self left behind a large amount of text, describing myself at that age, and the good old days before 2009 when people were not yet living on the Internet in large numbers, and still using e-mail, Gtalk, MSN, mailing letters, mp3, CD, DVD… and making friends through writing! Compared to the children who have grown up in the past 16 years, there are too many pre-digital terms that are so new and fresh, like the new world! Every time I hear children who were born a few years before 2009 talking about the terms of our past, I feel interesting: it turns out that these old things are new things in modern times!
In the end, I realized that only a few articles in this book were spoken to a single person, and the rest were monologues, talking about myself when I was thirty years old.
Thank you for my thirty years old, the conflicted self who thought I was already an adult but resisted and still wanted to be a child!
The reason why words are important and must exist is probably so that we can leave behind more, deeper and broader thoughts!
Thank you for reading these words I wrote when I was thirty years old, and walking with me back to that relatively slow and gentle era!
Next, I will continue to complete the texts written on themes that have been written in recent years, so please stay tuned.
June 2, 2025
It’s raining in Kaohsiung, early morning at the end of the Dragon Boat Festival holiday!
Purchase link of “Thirty-year-old Words”: https://lihistatus.com/ZOLCd
Photo: 20080909, Trail Cafe, Kaohsiung, Nikon Coolpix P5100
