You may have perceived the title as another clickbait, and the post as a mere ‘2024 review’. The title is the exact word I repeatedly told myself, however, ever since the outcome of my incorrigible decisions this year. I will remember the train returning to Lanzhou, where I stared at the dim wooden bulkhead, sitting huddled and feeling as if fevered. Following the should-have-been-memorable graduation, I viewed no exhibition, applied for no internship, and pushed further no personal projects that is even less viable in the new circumstances.

This should not hinder that the title line is an excuse. I have been giving up giving up all the time. I am conned to believe that I am not facing a choice. Dare call it no choice; that escape to Zion is the only choice.

This year I have been busy building and overturning one logical conclusion after another, like an irritated barbarian hostile to human civilizations. Should I start all over again? I worked out four rationales to, and deproved three of them. I did not convince myself to debunk the last one; instead I concluded that 3–1 marks an indisputable victory. The remaining rational exclusively stuck me later — I am drifting away from ‘those outstanding’.

And Kimi would rather make a drastic allusion than buzzes. ‹The gap with old school friends›, words alien to the AI-generated vein.

It cannot terminate the logical game. Are there really such things like ‘those outstanding’? Maybe, I excused myself, but collaboration with competent individuals alone means nothing. Otherwise, all my deficiencies would have been demolished as soon as I encountered Nomszi in junior high school. Uh-oh, one example of outstanding peers (also someone with whom I have never had a true relationship, as with other representatives; I am usually only better than knowing their names), Nomszi have always been the materialization for me of the famous quote from Flipped, every once in a while you find someone who’s iridescent, and once you do, nothing will ever compare. But the egocentric thinking can stop here. They may not be outstanding people, but they are exempt from the quixotic question of whether there are outstanding people or not, and not longing for them.

During the busiest period when my cognition was squeezed dry, I cannot help recollecting random excursive experiences. One decade ago I wrote a piece to reconcile with the Night, which as a young child I had considered a gloomy prohibited area¹. Today, however, time have been mystical again. I sacrifice myself to the Night for inspiration, being taken forever to another place, waking up smelling my saliva in the lab. Seven years ago I was a huge fan of Honsiau, a then-teenager who incorporated own tricky knowledge into horror stories deriding best-selling authors, while I have been never at the esteemed institution, let alone Skulls and Bones.

As the post is prone to be exhaustive and repetitive, a simplified description occurs to me. By extracting the experience I may be no longer my authentic self. But what if I have never been? As early as the Pavilion I have depicted myself as rude and solitary, only if I was more idealized that time... What I need is beyond the way others have paved. While this is rational, it is increasingly difficult to spot anyone sharing the trajectory.

No matter what happens tomorrow, please let me be somewhere new forever without looking back.