I just bought a new domain name, and I’ll be bound to it for the next few years.
My original intention for doing this was to build (note: build, not just find) a private sanctuary in this chaotic world. By chaotic, I’m referring to the drastic shifts in the global economic landscape over recent years. As a sensitive ordinary person, even if I can’t articulate the specific factors at play, I can always sense a thing or two. Born in the 90s, I witnessed the rapid development of society; it felt as though, in our minds, this was the default way life was supposed to be. Until later—perhaps due to the pandemic, or maybe the economy hit a certain turning point—it seemed that starting from a specific day, the rhythm of the world suddenly changed.
It seems to move incredibly fast: the rapid development of AI, for instance, has brought an overwhelming flood of artificial new terms and concepts that we can barely keep up with. Yet, it also seems to have suddenly slowed down. I see society beginning to encourage so-called “flexible employment”; I see people on social media frequently playing the interlude of Beijing Welcomes You, yearning for that era 20 years ago when the economy was on the rise and everything was thriving. We watched housing prices skyrocket, take off, and then plummet; we experienced an era of getting job offers effortlessly, only to later witness wave after wave of layoffs. We’ve seen so many changes—so many that it’s hard to find a moment of inner peace. It feels as if, to keep up with the times, the only thing we can do is adapt to this new rhythm. Ideally, you move faster, act bolder, and be more unpredictable than it, forcing the era to chase you instead.
So I thought, if one wants to live a comfortable and peaceful life in this new era, this is probably the required methodology. It’s just like a video game where patches roll relentlessly forward. In a new version, some classes get reworked, familiar skills are tweaked, the overpowered classes from last season lose their spotlight, and the new season introduces new peaks. If some of the things we used to rely on have collapsed (or perhaps, what if they were just a mirage to begin with?), then creation is always a way to find new hope. It’s making something out of nothing—and having something is always better than having nothing, isn’t it?
I once considered building my sanctuary on domestic social media platforms like Xiaohongshu, Weibo, or Douyin. However, I decided against it because:
They are almost always tied to real-life acquaintances, which makes me hesitate when I want to express myself.
I tried a few, but the feedback was poor, or rather, I lacked the motivation to create consistently.
The user base is a mixed bag, and one misstep could easily trigger online conflicts, resulting in a poor experience.
In 2021, while chatting about work with a colleague—a top expert from a cutting-edge domestic research institute—he casually mentioned, “Do you know about ChatGPT?” I asked, “What is ChatGPT?” He looked shocked (his inner monologue was probably: how could you not know this?) and began describing it to me, so excited he was practically dancing. At that moment, I saw the conviction in his heart, but to me, the concept felt far too abstract—invisible and intangible. Little did I know that by 2023, these products would start rolling out continuously, and by today in 2026, I have turned coding into my career and inadvertently become heavily reliant on Claude Code.
Just like that, we were caught off guard, passively accepting the reality of large language models invading and transforming our lives. Sometimes I find it incredibly convenient. Because I often struggle to understand what others are saying (I recognize every word, but I usually only grasp the literal meaning and find it hard to read between the lines), AI has become my great helper. Other times, I feel a sense of panic because I’m losing the opportunity to “build muscle.” I feel that the richness of my expression—whether in Chinese or English—has been weakened. I often struggle to convey my thoughts or can’t recall the exact word I want to use (…though I can’t rule out the possibility of simple brain degradation).
As I grow older, I find myself frequently falling into rigid ways of thinking, sometimes even bordering on obsession. It’s as if once the brain maps out a successful neural circuit, it automatically gets lazy, reduces its supply of effort, and loses the drive to explore alternative paths.
From a metaphysical perspective, fixed thinking patterns mean your angle of viewing the world is fixed, which in turn makes the world around you seem fixed as well.
It feels like the first half of life was spent discovering the code for a “one-click macro,” and once it’s written, you use it to mindlessly coast through the second half. That’s a very dangerous thing, isn’t it? In reality, there are still so many unexplored things (for example, I haven’t finished that WebRTC tutorial, I’ve never seen a penguin up close, I have yet to successfully cook a delicious Earth Pot Chicken [Di Guo Ji], and I haven’t made any contribution to the ultimate dream of the metaverse). There are still many new perspectives waiting for me to build and convey. So, I hope that my future can remain in an “unfinished” state.
During my low points, I used to turn to metaphysics (and thanks to AI, I frequently exhausted my query limits asking about it). I built a framework in this area, though I found many of the details too tedious to intentionally memorize. Now, I consider myself an AI-assisted metaphysics enthusiast. I’ve dabbled slightly in various schools (Bazi, Zi Wei Dou Shu, Western astrology, and Vedic astrology), and I’ll likely continue my research moving forward. Although many might dismiss it, it has indeed become a part of me and a foundational layer of my life.
Back to the point: all these things are the original reasons I built this private sanctuary. I’ve had several personal websites before—some were portfolios for school applications, others for personal showcases—but without exception, I failed to stick with any of them. This website was originally hosted on GitHub Pages, and its last deployment was way back in February 2024. Picking it up again from July 2026 feels just like a Promise in code—shifting to a different time and space, under a new domain name, to execute what was meant to be done before.
Blowfish is quite interesting; it’s worth diving into.
To be continued.