People ask this kind of question all the time: what is blogging actually for?
I usually don’t feel much need to answer it, because everyone already carries their own answer somewhere inside. But since the topic came up again, I might as well talk about it. There isn’t just one reason anyway, so it makes more sense to go through them one by one.
Where the habit began
My oldest surviving post can be traced back to 2008, though that piece was first written on QQ Zone before it ever appeared on my own site.
The habit itself goes back even earlier. In middle school, my homeroom teacher—who also taught Chinese—made us write a weekly journal every weekend. I hated it at the time. I remember going through the motions, sometimes just trying to get it over with.
Then in my second year of high school, class arrangements changed and the homeroom teacher became more of a nominal presence. We no longer had to hand in those weekly entries. Oddly enough, that was when I started wanting to write on my own.
I tried keeping a diary, though at some point it ended up being passed around as part of a class magazine. I even tried writing an autobiography. Yes, at fourteen.
QQ Zone was also becoming popular around those years. Most people used it mainly to repost things, and some pages were almost nothing but reposts. I was stubborn about that from the beginning: if I was going to post, I would write it myself. I wouldn’t just copy things over.
That was also when I picked up the habit of writing year-end summaries.
In fact, my first year-end summary was back in 2005. As far as I remember, it was probably only a few lines long, and I should have been about twelve then. But in the years that followed, that whole melodramatic non-mainstream sad-literature style became fashionable. In a moment of bad judgment, I deleted everything I had written before 2008.
I should stop myself there before I drift too far off topic.
Why I write here instead of somewhere else
Before I started writing on my own site, I was posting mostly on a public account platform.
Anyone who has worked in the internet industry probably remembers the 996.ICU movement from a few years ago. As someone in that world, of course I wanted to speak up. So I wrote an article titled "为了我们不再 996，整个世界的工人们为此抗争、流血、奋斗了至今整整 200 年".
The result was a deletion warning from the platform.
After that, I shifted my focus back to my own website. I also shut down that public account and decided I would not register another one.
That decision wasn’t just about convenience. It settled something for me. If I was going to keep writing, I wanted to do it in a place that was actually mine.
Who I’m writing for
If I think back to the earliest days—whether it was my QQ Zone posts or handwritten diaries—the real answer is that I was writing for myself.
Part of that, admittedly, is tied to my old obsession with writing an autobiography. Maybe when I’m old, all of this will become source material.
That’s half a joke, of course.
But if the question is whether I want other people to read me, then yes, obviously I do. Human beings are social creatures. Of course I hope someone is paying attention.
Looking back, though, almost nobody visited my website before 2020, and hardly anyone followed what I wrote. The larger wave of traffic didn’t really begin until the summer of 2022.
And strangely, it never made me feel intruded on. What I felt was closer to pleasure.
When I thought about it afterward, I realized my writing had in fact changed a little from that point on. Earlier, what I wrote felt more like descriptions of my own dreams. Later, it became more like telling a story to someone on the other side.
That shift makes sense to me.
In real life, I’m the kind of person who needs companionship more than I usually admit. If nothing stopped me, I could spend an entire day talking with someone I really got along with. But life rarely offers that kind of situation.
So writing here also works as a way of speaking—to others, yes, but also to myself.
One last thought
A few days ago, after watching If You Are the One 3, I mentioned my thoughts on androids. Half of it was joking around, but only half.
The other half was serious.
If one day, within my lifetime, androids really become possible—if one of them could inherit my way of thinking and my memories—then I would still want it to have my habits and my emotions too.
And if that day ever comes, the database of this website would be perfect raw material.
I die, and it becomes me.
Then in a way, I keep living.
That does sound a little like a mad scientist, doesn’t it?