I have begun to question my desire to blog, to post pictures, videos, to write reviews, to advertise my whereabouts on foursquare, to tweet/buzz/status update and generally use social media at all. When I do write, it takes time and some consideration, and to some not enough consideration to write something coherent, and albeit self promoting, it all seems rather egotistical. I am not really adding value to people’s lives. My website is a basic install of wordpress with some plugins installed, with google analytics configured so that I can track the search terms and visitors I get. There’s nothing clever about the website, my writings are not witty and any insights I come to are rather overshadowed by the other stuff that I write and publish and I have so few readers as to wonder why bother at all.

But it comes down to this in my humble opinion. I write because it’s something valuable I can do for myself. To remember and crystallise my actions in a way that’s uniquely appropriate to me. It’s a live life recording, and I shouldn’t care whether I have readers or not. I’m doing this for myself. I can already look back over my previous entries and rekindle the feeling of what it was like when I first met Miao and fell in love with her. I can remember the pains I took when I was working in factories, and being able to spend money on things that later proved to be useless (IDE Raid Cards and a drum for a black and white laser printer). The general loss I felt at the end of each university year about how badly I’d spent my time, and how much more I could have achieved. It all just serves as a reminder to learn from my past and continue improving, not to be nostalgic but as a driving force for the future and to be strong for our life ahead.

So I don’t care if nobody ends up reading this other than the Google bot that indexes everything and any future employers looking to do some research on me. It’s important and valuable to me. Yes, we all make mistakes, it’s how quickly we can accept the situation and work towards something new and good that matters. I know that I am a person who can be successful and work with intelligent people. I hate being unemployed, and it really bothers me that I’m living with my parents in a way that makes me a dependent again. At least in China I had a job that I was good at, they valued me, I made a difference to peoples’ lives and I could actually be with my fiancée. Here I’m unappreciated and undervalued, and at the moment a bit of a drop-out. Maybe I’m just not working hard enough at getting jobs, but it sure doesn’t feel like that.

Heigh-ho