The following is a fan’s invitation to answer Zhihu’s question: “What is it like to be away from work for a long time?” The original answer.

Fans invited, strong answer a wave.

I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in ’19, got laid off in November’ 19, and haven’t worked since.

Usually write the public account (wmyskxz), surf the Internet, do game development.

Last month (March 2021), a Mod that took five days to develop made about $1W5 a month this year, and it’s still making money.

Say experience is: already more and more don’t want to go to work.

Now it’s waking up as early as possible, jotting down what happened yesterday, surfing the Internet for a while and reading a book, then grabbing a cup of coffee and getting to work.

High efficiency in the morning, noon often after the meal point just want to eat. Occasionally free will make some simple “one person food”.

Also try to go to bed earlier at night (ideally). Although I can sleep until I wake up naturally, I still need a regular sleep schedule to maintain my energy.

Let’s talk about our feelings and experiences over the past year from several aspects.

On happiness

1.

The thing about happiness is, it’s a blast.

Do what you love every day, no commute, free time, decent income. At least I kind of like it.

I don’t know how you feel about commuting. I used to work and live 5 minutes away from the company by bike, 2 bus stops.

I have a strong objection to commutes longer than half an hour. So I’d rather pay a little more just to be happy.

Now the bed is no more than a metre away from the “desk” every day, which is Nice

2,

I like the idea of sharing, especially if it helps other people.

I look forward to how people like Nguyen Yip Fung, Chan Hao, Lenciel, And DraP are able to articulate something complex in a simple narrative.

Reading their articles, it is no exaggeration to say that they are like spring breeze.

I started out writing small things myself, and now I want to output something more valuable to the system. (Own a crappy website — wmyskxz.com)

It hasn’t been read by many people (mainly because I’m not good enough), but I’ve received a lot of support and encouragement from fans, as well as a lot of “positive feedback” — like job offers and book offers. All these gave me more courage to carry on.

Every time I received the news and encouragement from readers, I was very happy. Especially when they say it’s helpful. (SOME fans even wrote me essays.)

Now, every Sunday, I will organize my learning and the content worth sharing in the past week into “Weekly Wonderful Content sharing” and publish it, which has been 12 issues unconsciously.

If nothing else, sharing is something I’m going to stick with for the long haul.

3,

I used to work in a K12 education company, and sometimes I helped my customer service colleagues answer some programming questions raised by children. (Kids are so good now…)

To be honest, you rarely get a direct sense of the value you’re providing, even though the code you’re writing is used by hundreds of thousands of people.

It’s the little things, the conversations with the kids, that really make you feel.

I now make money by publishing my mods on minecraft via NetEase (currently the main source). Once WHEN I went back to my hometown, I found that the kids in my hometown were playing minecraft.

That’s when you feel like you’re making something that actually connects with the user.

Especially now I am both a designer and a product, responsible for development, operation, and sometimes even a guest artist.

It’s fun to take something you’ve designed and confront the real market.

Sometimes when you’re confident, you get hit.

Sometimes whim, for their own chart a fresh figure cool.

But sometimes we have “small successes.”

These mods actually run on players’ phones, both good and bad. But it’s rewarding to be able to truly connect to your players, to a real market, and to provide unique value.

4,

I don’t like the liquor board. I mean quite polite, quite social.

When I was in college, I was monitor of my class. Sometimes meaningless lectures will be announced, how many people in the class must attend, or each shift to which class kind.

I would have chosen not to inform or enforce. I was probably raised free range, so I have a natural reaction to things like that.

My good friends in the workplace often joke with me about this kind of “game” that I have to attend but don’t want to.

I have been fortunate not to have participated in this category. It’s better to just be technical.

I also don’t like the “crowds” of holidays. It takes my breath away.

Now the above two things I don’t like, I can be “isolated” far away. (Plus commuting)

5,

One afternoon after writing code, the sun looked so beautiful outside. So I thought I’d go for a walk and buy a cup of milk tea to drink.

On the way back, cross the overpass. The sun’s rays divide the overpass into dark sides.

When I step over the dark side, the sun shines on me. I turned my head and saw the traffic under the bridge. With my favorite music in my ears and my favorite milk tea in my hand.

At that moment, the scene in my mind, only feel happy.

On not going to work

1.

In a way, I did lead an enviable life.

You don’t have to clock in from 9 to 5, go out for social parties, do things against your will just to meet THE KPI, or face the complicated workplace relationship. You can eat whatever you want and have fun wherever you want.

But in fact only oneself know, this among them “difficult”…

When you’re not at work, there are more things that can interrupt you than you expect. Would you like to see the latest movie? Do you want to chase the variety show? Do you want to play the game? Are you coming to the party or not? How do you react to the doubts and concerns of relatives and friends?

It makes sense to compare life to a river. It also means that life will push you forward even if you don’t move.

When you suddenly “free”, life does not push you, do you continue to walk? Is it going forward? Where is the former?

It is not easy to listen to your own inner voice while dealing with the trivialities of life and the attention of family and friends on your own.

Excerpted from this diary entry from April last year, you can get a sense of the struggle to live a decadent life while speaking to your heart.

It is true that one’s time can provide rare concentration, not only for study and work, but also for play. Especially when life isn’t pushing you around.

Last October, earned some money, so I thought of giving myself a holiday. This holiday does not matter, accidentally to form inertia, but also spent almost three months to adjust their state back.

2,

Not working doesn’t mean not working. It can also mean that work and life are inseparable, that work is what you wake up and work is your life.

In fact, you spend most of your waking hours doing your own thing.

There are also moments when you stay up late, such as when you suddenly have an idea and want to try it, and want to stay up late to write. Or get lost in writing something and lose track of time.

After “freedom”, I do have a lot of time, but on the contrary, the most unfree thing is time.

Take blogging for example. Before the work time is so tight, but always can find the gap output technical articles, now more time, but the output feeling is not enough. There is time for you to think over and over some trivial things, but because of “perfectionism”, the efficiency is slowed down.

My solution now is to get an idea and just do it.

For example, if you have a new idea for the game, you can communicate with your friends about the general direction of the game. Just get the main logic out first. I stayed up a few nights with that ring and my liver came out.

Another example is the previous post on “How do you evaluate wolai?” The answer, direct liver two days, one breath to write out.

Now I write articles and games that way, and it works for me. Because I find that if I don’t do something or start working on it for more than a few days, it’s hard to get it done.

I also agree with a point I shared earlier: it’s more important to do it fast than well.

Take me for example. Every time I do a game Mod, I add something to my script library, so now it’s getting easier for me to develop. Can let the cost of time down, also can realize the more do faster, so do more, more do better virtuous circle.

3,

Digress. Let’s talk about why we have taken this road of “not working”. It takes courage and a bit of idealism (foolishness and naivete, to put it bluntly) to choose not to work.

For me, the easiest option is to go to work. I just need to work hard, and the income is not low.

I had just been resigned and wanted to take a few days off, but HR called me the next day and invited me for an interview. I thought forget it, don’t rest, get a job..

The worst thing I dreaded during that time was the interviewer asking me, “What do you know about HashMap?” . To be honest, I kind of threw up.

On the one hand, I was rethinking my “job” after all the stereotyped interviews, all the repetitive interview questions: “Is it just another place to turn the screws?”

On the other hand, I looked at the senior management of the company and those technical masters. They were busy with mortgage and car loans and their wives and children waiting to be taken care of. I asked myself: “Is this my ideal life in the future?

The answer is obvious.

I don’t want to be 30 or 50 percent happy. I promise myself 100 percent happiness (even though it’s unrealistic and a bit magical).

I had the chance to become an MC developer, at least the survival problem would not be too tight, and I also wanted to try to export something, so I consulted my predecessors and friends and went straight on the road.

It has been more than a year since I started, and I don’t want to turn back.

4,

The other day I was looking through my weekly papers from my previous days at work, and suddenly I felt like A bit of a nerd…

In fact, I think I am quite suitable for the workplace. I am not afraid of hardship, proactive, capable of online, and good at thinking and reflection. What team doesn’t.

It’s just a coincidence. When everyone chose to go up the mountain, I chose to find a less traveled path, here to find a pavilion, comfortably drinking tea.

And I want to be the one who carries your water bottles when you go up the hill.

5,

The other thing that I find interesting is that I come from an environment where the previous generation had a particular obsession with work, especially good work. And chances are that the ceiling of a good job is “civil service.”

I don’t know what your environment is like, but at least I hear or see it from time to time:

• Don’t know what job to do? How about a civil servant?
• Not happy at work? Go home and take the civil service exam?
• Hard work? Why don’t you go home and take the civil service exam?
• … .

It seems that “civil servant” is a “master key” to unlock the answer to life. Some time ago, WHEN I was watching “Progress 2”, there was a paragraph in it that instantly touched me.

If someone tells you that there is a cure-all medicine, you might think they are sick.

Of course, because disease is not the same as disease, which means that there is no such thing as a “panacea” to cure disease.

But when it comes to getting a job, especially being a civil servant, I find that people are not as skeptical as a panacea, but rather a bit convinced.

I’m more convinced of what Lenciel said anyway:

How to live, what you really enjoy, what you like, most of the time is not through routine life can figure out, always something to fight.

About self-discipline

1.

It’s important. It matters whether you work or not.

I used to go to work at 8:30 and read for half an hour because my home was closer to me and I started at 9 o ‘clock.

After a few months, I read more books than I did in college.

Besides, I’ve been used to getting up early since I was a child. When I find myself feeling more focused in the morning, I simply set my alarm for 5:30.

When everyone is hazy in bed tangled get up, I have finished breakfast, read the book, review yesterday wrote the morning diary, has begun a new day.

But then it was very difficult to adhere to, on the one hand, I was really hungry in the morning, the breakfast restaurant was really not open. On the other hand, he was also playful. On the other hand, as you grow into your own environment, you don’t have as much need to wake up early, and you don’t want to be so “different”.

Now basically maintain before 7 o ‘clock get up, sleep before 12 o ‘clock, nap for half an hour.

I’ve often wondered how I can move away from mediocrity, and maybe self-discipline would be a good place to start.

2,

Another benefit: I almost always write down what happened the day before every morning.

Unconsciously, it has been almost two years. Of course, records are sometimes patchy. In 2020 alone, a total of 179 days were recorded. This year has been more disciplined.

For one thing, it’s good to keep a true record of yourself. After a day, you look at many things more objectively and are able to reflect on them better.

Another aspect is that many things, if you don’t write them down, they really “disappear” from your life.

I don’t think trusting the brain is a good idea.

3,

My personal feeling about self-discipline is that it doesn’t really matter what time you wake up and what you do. The important thing is to be in a state. Just get used to it.

So why are people the product of their environment. It’s just that most of the time the environment has to be created.

Some temptation, can not resist or take a little bit better. If you really feel too comfortable at home, there are now many self-study rooms to choose from.

In short, you need to create your own environment.

But the downside is, once you get used to it, it’s hard to change. For example, I’ve always expected to be able to work while traveling (or whatever it is, not being home), but I’ve found that I’m used to working in my own home environment.

Gradually, also put their own circle in the home.

Sometimes families are worried about “social isolation”, but my vision is the opposite. Instead, they are “more social isolation”.

These years through the public number, know people all over the world. Through the network world, I can see all kinds of life and world. In fact, as long as you are not active “closed” communication window, you can hardly achieve “social isolation”.

On the contrary, it is the elders who “get a glimpse of the leopard” who preemptively understand this originally rich and colorful world. Now more and more things are blooming more and more in a manner that they do not understand. (such as Live streaming and Douyin)

This was especially true when I told my mother about my income and her first reaction was, “Gee, son, is that legal?

At the end

To be honest, I’m one of the lucky ones. Lucky to meet such times, lucky to like computers, lucky to have no big burden at home, so I can be as “free” as now.

After all, life is long. It’s not what you haven’t done yet at 25. It’s what you still want to do at 25. Just place your bets and accept the results calmly.

I hope everyone can go to the way they want to go, mutual encouragement.

In addition, welcome to my official account (wmyskxz) tea chat ah. Usually share some technology and thoughts, even if not technology, a week to share a look at the Sunday is always good ~

Humble serve tea ~