I think back to the summer of 2018. Every day, I was up before the sun to catch a half-crowded subway train to Haidian Huangzhuang and reach the two-story Starbucks Reserve just as it opened, when I could sit anywhere I liked. I would spend hours there studying for the TOEFL, staying until almost evening before taking a thoroughly packed train home. I spent close to four hours a day commuting. Looking back, I wasn’t studying very efficiently, but my attitude was far better than it is now. At the very least, I could put up with the early mornings and the nearly four-hour commute, and that was no small thing. These days, I study more efficiently, but I no longer have the same drive. Once I’m prepared enough to get through an exam, I stop striving for perfection. I’ve seen through the pretense of my younger self, yet the supposedly authentic person I am now doesn’t even measure up to who I was then. It is ambition fading in plain sight, and laziness through and through.
Six years ago, in 2020, I was just getting into stocks. I studied them and tried my hand at writing, thinking only about how much more I could learn. Fame and attention never crossed my mind. My first article to go viral was a beginner’s guide to investing in funds. I vaguely remember that evening: I worked for three hours straight, wrote several thousand Chinese characters, hit publish, and went to bed. When I woke up the next morning, the article had taken off. My first thought was that the effort had been worth it, that people wanted to hear what I had to say. You know what happened next. I kept writing articles that went viral and even started livestreaming. My very first stream was the most popular on the entire internet at the time, and later I was interviewed by Xueqiu itself. Now, before I do anything, I want to know what I’ll get in return. Otherwise, I can’t find the motivation. Little by little, I’ve lost the desire to pursue things for their own sake, the love for the work itself. I’ve begun to worship fame and profit blindly, forgetting that it is only by setting out without knowing where a journey will lead that we leave room for surprise and the unexpected.
Just two years after 2020, I expanded from writing about stocks to selling stock research reports online. It turned out to be a tremendous success: in just six months, I attracted more than a thousand subscribers. Before I started, I hadn’t been daydreaming about getting rich overnight. I could see nothing clearly. I didn’t know what my competitive edge was or how I would find customers. I simply saw it as a bold experiment, a venture into a world of business I had never tried before. Before I had earned a single cent, I took the plunge and paid out of my own pocket to have a logo designed and registered as a trademark. I spent my days and nights studying how other people’s platforms worked and how their businesses made money. Gradually, what had been unclear began to make sense. At last, my own golden period arrived. These days, I’ve moved into quantitative investing on a semiprofessional basis, and all I want is to make the most money with the least effort. But nothing in this world comes without work, and I can’t simply sit back and expect success to land in my lap. I know I ought to change, yet I keep failing to do so.
Why bring up the past? Because remembering who I was is a way to learn from that younger self and recover the good qualities I lost along the way. The willingness to give everything my all, which I had when I was young, is something I urgently need to regain. I think we all have something to learn from our childhood selves. We were unspoiled then, untouched by the filth and worldliness of society.
Praising my past self and criticizing my present self may seem out of place on a day meant for celebrating my birthday. But I really do need an occasion like this, and a way of looking at myself like this, to see how I’ve changed and begin changing for the better.
Let me end with this. Happy twenty-second birthday, dear self. Thank you. You’ve worked hard. My wish for this new year of my life, and for every day beyond it, is to give everything I do my all and do right by myself.
要政阳
September 9, 2026, Beijing