TN Notes: This is just a New Years thing the author wrote. It has nothing to do with the story so you can skip it if you want (even though I still slaved over it lol)
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1.
If there was a god of the kitchen in my family, he would probably feel that I had abandoned him this year.
It’s hard work to live alone, I understand, but I also have a last resort.
I’ve been busy for more than three hundred days. Today, there was a meeting in the afternoon, and my heart was full.
In my early years, I struggled with the problem of having fun and living a life that is beneficial to me, because the two principles gradually seem to diverge from each other. When I was in good health earlier, I didn’t feel the violation of these two principles. I would simply get drunk and sleep for one night. When I lost my voice after singing loudly, I’d recover the next day. But when I get drunk nowadays, I can’t wake up for a week. If my voice is hoarse, it turns into chronic pharyngitis, which lasts for half a year and is very painful. As a result, the choice has cruelly been put in front of my eyes.
Because of a serious case of pharyngitis throughout the year—especially after September—I finally began to face up to my body. I went around to sort out all my memories and looked up some information. I suddenly realized what the two words “poor blessing” meant. Good wine, food, and beautiful women are unbearable. I don’t like driving, so I don’t pursue luxury goods. The only thing I’m passionate about is hot springs, but the resources are scarce.
The reason for my sudden realization is because of the so-called “spleen deficiency” symptom. The shape of the human brain is similar to that of the intestines and stomach, so it’s said that the intestines would react quickly because of mental stress, and the resulting spleen deficiency would deplete one’s qi. Check Baidu. Once you have spleen deficiency, the following foods are taboo:
Bitter melon, cucumber, Chinese squash, eggplant, water spinach, celery, Chinese spinach, water bamboo, lettuce, day lily, persimmon, banana, loquat, pear, watermelon, mung bean, tofu, naked oats, duck meat, pork, turtle meat, oyster meat, milk, sesame, buckwheat, hawthorn, radish, cilantro, etc.
At that time, my expression was like: I like to eat all of those!
But suffering from the fact that I have decided to live seriously, I began to think about what I could eat if I couldn’t eat all this. On Baidu Encyclopedia, I found the following suggestions:
Nonglutinous rice, Indian rice, guoba (scorched rice from the bottom of the pan), coix seed, cooked lotus root, chestnut, yam, lentil, black-eyed bean, beef, chicken, rabbit meat, cow tripe, pork tripe, mandarin fish, grape, red date, carrot, potato, mushroom, etc.
Those before coix seeds were a staple food, but there were no more than thirty dishes you could make with the things that came after them. In other words, would I have to spend the rest of my life eating these dishes?
I sat on the steps, smoked a cigarette, and felt sad as I thought of my life rules in the past. One was that I couldn’t obtain what I wanted, and I wasn’t happy with what I had. Another was that gains and losses were a fixed amount based on your luck and fortune. I would like to discuss with you here whether everyone is like this.
The so-called “can’t obtain what we want, unsatisfied with what we have” situation occurs when you want something in particular, but can’t get it no matter how hard you try. When you finally get it, you’ve lost your enthusiasm because you’ve gone through too much suffering. It’s better to be rational and objective.
The so-called “gains and losses fixed on your luck and fortune” means that your enjoyment would inevitably disappear after you succeeded at something. Ever since I started writing the “Grave Robbers’ Chronicles”, the more it became popular, the faster my skills were lost. I initially got severe acid reflux, so I couldn’t drink anymore. Then, I lost interest in meat for some reason, and gradually lost my appetite (but I still couldn’t lose weight). If I had only suffered from illness without losing my desire, I could have kept pushing forward. But I soon discovered that I didn’t even want to write anymore if I couldn’t drink.
These were all early warnings. If the things I enjoyed in life kept reducing according to this trend, then I could only become a monk in my forties.
I couldn’t help but feel scared.
If A connected to B, then were things turning out like the fortune teller had said when I was thirteen? Supposedly, I only came to Earth to change one person, and when I was done, I had to go back to my life, so anything that tempted me and kept me away from this task would eventually bring endless pain no matter how much I liked it.
In any case, I started a strict diet and felt my body change, but it ended up making me feel even more terrible. The reason was because there was only one kind of food that really made me feel comfortable—oatmeal doughnuts.
Although they aren’t that delicious, it’s true that my stomach always feels comforted and the pressure is relieved every time I eat them. At that time, I thought of the “Big Bang Theory” and Sheldon’s practice of choosing doughnuts based on the fiber density every morning. It turned out to be true.
2.
I don’t want to say anything.
When I was under pressure in the past, I was always full of grievances and felt that no one understood me. This year, someone kept asking me to talk to him, but I didn’t want to say anything.
In the past, I had a utilitarian but sensible way of deciding problems, but became purely utilitarian when it came to deciding the purpose. It felt better for everything to go in this direction, but I was always so emotional and did whatever I wanted. We were going in the right direction, but the driver was crazy. It was just like in the imperial era when nails were put on all strategic routes, but the cavalry directly charged at the spears in every actual encounter.
Life is like a tug of war. Victory seems certain, but it’s full of troubles.
In fact, many choices aren’t right or wrong. To teenagers, the world seems endless. Wonderful people in front of them are infinitely good, the distant world is infinitely big, and their lives are infinitely long. When I was in my twenties, I began to fear my thirties. After I hit thirty, I saw my end. The reporters this year especially liked to ask me these questions: Why did you choose to do these things? Do you regret it?
In fact, the answer to these questions depends on the moment, and is always completely different. I usually ask a question in return: When you’re near the end of your life at the age of eighty, if you have the chance to direct a movie , would you choose to accept it or not?
Or let’s spice it up a bit: When you’re near the end of your life at the age of eighty, if you have the chance to live a crazy and wild life for a year, would you choose to accept it or not?
If it was right now, the choice would be very difficult. You would have to consider things like courage, reason, age, and family very carefully.
But at the age of eighty, your future is no longer precious, and things bought with money can no longer be enjoyed. The fans who turned seventy can no longer go out to meet you or give support. Many people have forgotten you. The choices you make at that time are what you need in your life, because everything you’ve achieved before can’t be reproduced in that moment. At that time, only the memories accompany you, which is the only wealth you have before you die.
It’s really hard for people to say that they have no regrets in this life. There must be things that people haven’t done or didn’t do enough of. If we try our best in the moment and eliminate the things we haven’t experienced, then maybe we’ll scrounge up a review that this life was ok.
So, the rational judgment of the current choice, what’s right and what’s wrong, and whether it should be this way or that way, the greatest torture comes from your own future.
Of course, this is just my own life philosophy. Maybe it’s not even worth mentioning, but I always abide by it. Let me report to you that I am almost thirty-four years old. In my first thirty-four years, I explored, fought, wrote novels, made movies, suffered serious illness, and lost my mind. I was a handsome man who now weighs 265 pounds, but it’s far from enough.
We can meet here at the ripe old age of eighty—I hope we can stay healthy enough to live to that age—and this text will appear in your mind one day before the Spring Festival. At the age of eighty, I hope that every one of us will be able to look back on the turmoil we’ve overcome, and see how prosperous we’ve become.
Happy New Year.
MereBear's Translation 
So I guess we just found out what the author was going through..
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