One

When he was a child, he was the kind of well-behaved child who was loved by everyone, with a long and likable appearance, a soft and obedient temperament, and a not stupid brain. So wherever he goes, he can be praised and recognized by adults. At that time, he really felt that he was not bad in this life, and he would definitely spend it in the envy and praise of people.

However, as soon as he entered junior high school, he was lost. Because no matter how hard he tried, his grades could no longer be at the top. Although his character is still good, he will never receive the "Three Good Students" award again. A good student who attracted attention fell into the ordinary crowd.

However, the blow is just beginning. By the time he reached high school, his grades had slipped to the point where he had collapsed. No matter how hard he tried, he was always one of the last few students in the class. Problems that could be easily solved by other students were as difficult for him as deciphering the genetic code. Later, he had no clue when he flipped through the textbooks as if he were reading a book from the sky, and every day he sat in the classroom with his head down, and he couldn't understand eight or nine out of ten of the lessons the teacher said. Due to his poor academic performance, he was once disqualified from the college entrance examination by the school, and although he was later reinstated, his failure was a result without suspense. In this way, his ten-year struggle ended in a fiasco in the college entrance examination.

Two

When you leave school, you are no longer a child, and you should live a life of self-reliance. So just a few days after the last summer vacation of his life, his father found him a temporary job. Although the results of the college entrance examination have not yet come out, given his consistently poor academic performance, his parents obviously do not have any hope. So, his part-time job began a few days after he walked out of school.

It was the 80s of the last century, the beginning of the country's reform and opening up. The clarion call for reform has been sounded strongly in the coastal areas, and in their small inland towns, people are still living a life centered on the public-owned economy. The first choice for people to find employment is still to work as a regular worker in a state-owned enterprise, followed by a regular worker in a collective enterprise, and it is a helpless choice to become a self-employed person. However, at that time, state-owned enterprises and collective enterprises were overcrowded, and if they wanted to become regular workers, they could not do it without a relationship with their parents. His parents were the kind of people who didn't have a relationship, so he spent the first few years away from school working part-time jobs.

Later, his parents managed to find him a place in a labor service company run by a company, and he finally became a regular worker in a small collective enterprise.

His job in this small business is a turner. Although he did not do well in school when he was in school, he was a high school student after all. During his days as an apprentice lathe, whether he learned to read drawings or operate lathes, he had no difficulty. Soon he became the elder brother of the young workers who entered the factory together, helping the master to teach the young workers.

However, when he operated independently after becoming an apprentice, his weaknesses were exposed. Although he accepted the lathe technology quickly, he was not happy to operate the lathe. However, the lathe worker implements a piece-rate wage system, and the labor remuneration is calculated based on the actual amount of work completed. Do more and earn more, do less and earn less. He moves slowly, so naturally he doesn't do much, so he earns less money. At first, the gap between him and others was not obvious, but as the young workers who entered the factory together became more and more skilled and work efficiently, the income gap between him and others became wider and wider. And at this time, his various weaknesses have also been exposed, he matures later than his peers, is wooden and straight, and will not please people. The combination of weaknesses made it difficult for him to adapt to the life of that small group, and he eventually had to give up the job that his parents had worked so hard to find for him.

After leaving that small group, he returned to his former wandering life of doing odd jobs. He worked as a small laborer on the construction site, not only selling coolies for the foreman, but also assisting the foreman in stealing things from the construction site, and having to do household chores for the foreman. He worked as a coolie in a chemical factory, and the pungent smell of chemicals often choked him. For a while, he even returned to his hometown in the countryside to process plastic foam boxes in a township enterprise. The township enterprise was not in his hometown, but in another village more than a dozen miles away from his hometown. At that time, there was also a midnight shift, and he often rode his bicycle alone through the field roads at midnight, passing an airfield. Navigation lights are installed along the runway, which shoot a column of light into the sky rhythmically at night. Every time he passed by the airport and looked at the dreamlike beams of light, what he thought to himself was: Why is it so difficult to live alone?

Three

It was during those wandering days that one day on the street, he happened to run into his high school homeroom teacher. A poor student like him didn't recruit teachers when he was in school, and now that he is so down-and-out, he doesn't expect to get the teacher's approval. However, out of politeness, he still said hello to the head teacher. The head teacher also greeted him politely, and when he turned his head, the head teacher suddenly laughed with a "bang", and the laughter was naturally laughing at him.

He knew that the head teacher was not laughing at his stupidity when he was in school, nor was he laughing at his embarrassment today, he was laughing at a person like him who still wanted to be a writer!

Yes, his dream was to be a writer. Although his test scores in school were not good, he had an innate love for traditional Chinese culture. When he was in middle school, he was so familiar with many classic passages of Tang and Song poetry that his classmates would come to him when they didn't know the source of a famous sentence. In addition, he has a strong interest in listening to stories and telling stories. At a very young age, he was able to tell the stories he heard to others. When he grew up, he was not obsessed with telling stories, but he remembered many stories and historical allusions. When people are confused when watching historical film and television dramas, he can tell the background of the plot clearly, so that some people ask him strangely: "How do you know everything?" Of course, he doesn't know everything, but he knows a little more than ordinary people.

Because of his talent, when he realized that he had no hope of going to college, he made it his life goal to become a writer. He even wrote a short story in his junior year of high school and pitched it. Imagine that when others reap results from the college entrance examination, he can also reap the results from the newspaper. However, the novel was withdrawn, but his ambition was established.

However, it is not easy to become a writer. He didn't worry that he couldn't write it, but how could the level of the articles he wrote always be so different from the articles in newspapers and magazines? At that time, he really wanted to find a colleague to work together, or at least to encourage each other. But all he could get in touch with were people who weren't even as good as him as a poor high school student. His co-workers are all those who have graduated from junior high school or have not even graduated from junior high school, and his teachers are all those who have graduated from primary school or have no education. In those years, he didn't even meet a few students who failed the college entrance examination, and later he learned that the work he did back then was not even willing to do the college entrance examination students. In such an environment, it seems not surprising that no one wants to be a writer like him.

Despite this environment, he did not hide his ambitions, and his co-workers knew that he wanted to be a writer, and he showed them what he wrote. But even these workers, who have much lower education than him, don't look down on what he writes, and politely say that he is in vain, and unceremoniously say bluntly: "You can't publish this thing at all!" He can only comfort himself secretly in frustration: "You can't talk about literature with these people at all!"

You can't talk to them, you should find someone to talk to. In the first few years when he left school, literature was still relatively popular in society, and journals at all levels were relatively active, but in addition to submitting articles to the editorial department through the post office, he never dared to visit the editorial department in person and ask the editorial teacher to give him guidance on writing, because he was too wooden and not good at socializing. He once had the experience of a famous teacher, the teacher who pointed him out was a successful writer, when the teacher looked back after commenting on his work, he saw the teacher snickering, I wonder if the teacher was laughing at his work too childish or laughing at his expression too dull?

Four

However, these blows from the outside will fade into oblivion over time. What frustrated him the most was that his parents were against him engaging in writing. Although they did not openly prevent him from writing, he knew from their attitude that they were not in favor. At that time, he couldn't understand what was wrong with him doing writing? First of all, he was motivated? It was better than those young people who knew how to eat, drink and be merry after work, right? It was also safer than those young people who went out to work, right? At least he wouldn't encounter any risks or cause any trouble, right? But his parents just stubbornly didn't like him to write. After confusing him for years, one day he suddenly seemed to decipher the reason. He vaguely felt that his parents didn't like him to write, because they were afraid that he would leave them one day if he became famous. At the time, he couldn't tell why, but he intuitively felt that this was the case. Later, as his life experience deepened, life taught him that it was really like this!

Because our Chinese family affection has no boundaries, parents will arrange many things that should be chosen and undertaken by their children, and will also impose some of their own wishes on their children, and their children's lives will also be planned in their parents' life plans. Although he did not study well and did not bring glory to his parents. But he has a docile temperament, and is most suitable to practice this kind of family rule of the Chinese, and his parents will impose their wishes on him without strong resistance. Although he is not the only child in their family, his parents have already planned to live with him in his old age, how can they let him fly away?

In fact, growing up in this kind of family environment, he did not have the ability to live independently without his parents at that time. The reality was that his parents didn't want him to leave them, and he couldn't actually leave them. The years when he did odd jobs were also the climax of the mainlanders going south to Guangdong to pan for gold, and although he had not seen it with his own eyes, he had heard many stories of mainlanders making a lot of money in Guangdong. While he was envious, he always had a question in his heart that he could not understand: How did these mainlanders go to Guangdong? Many years later, he realized that there was no relationship with these people, and they all came out by going out on their own! However, since he was a child, he was accustomed to having his life arranged by his parents, but he could not imagine how to live a life that was not arranged or led by anyone at all.

This psychological condition of his seriously affected his development. During the two years he worked as a turner in a labor service company, he was given the opportunity to go to Beijing to participate in the Literary PEN Club. Because his parents were unable to publicly stop his pursuit, he was able to attend the PEN as scheduled. There he met a group of literary young people of his age, and although he could not produce successful works at that time, everyone recognized him as if he were comrades, and he also had a sense of organization. In just a few days of gatherings, some girls even took the initiative to show favor to him, and they could communicate naturally with almost no familiarity with the process. This was the case in his embarrassing real life, but he never hesitated to reject the other party. At that time, he explained to him that the girl's image did not meet the ideal standards in his mind. However, he put a lot of effort into some girls whose temperament and literacy were very different from him, but he knew from the beginning that he "couldn't make it." It wasn't until many years later that he saw that his wife was always able to reach a tacit understanding with his parents in terms of literacy and concepts, and he suddenly realized. On the surface, he was painstakingly trying to find a partner for himself, but in fact, subconsciously he was looking for a daughter-in-law for his parents. Because subconsciously, he knew that he couldn't do without his parents, so the wife he married must be acceptable to them. On the surface, everything seems to be his own choice, but in fact, subconsciously he has been under the cue and influence of his parents, because he has become accustomed to living under their arrangement. After thinking about this, he once looked up to the sky and sighed: "People, people, do you really know yourself?"

This strong dependence on his parents has greatly restricted his life and his literary pursuits. In those years, he once participated in a literary club, but he did not dare to let his parents know. Because his parents did not approve of his participation in any social activities, in their eyes, the organizers of those activities were scheming liars. Therefore, he could only attend the regular meeting of the Literary Club at a convenient time, and he never participated in the outings held by the Literary Society. Because he didn't go home for a long time, he had to explain the reason to his parents, and it cost money to go out, both of which his parents would not agree to. At that time, all the monthly wages he earned had to be given to his parents, who would give him a few yuan in pocket money. His parents didn't approve of him spending money on literature, or even for him spending money on books, they thought it was better to buy something delicious and cost-effective. So he didn't dare to ask his parents for money for participating in literary club activities or buying books, and when he saw the books he wanted to buy, he had to wait until he had saved enough pocket money to buy them. The reason why he was able to go to Beijing to attend a pen meeting was that his parents did not want to leave him behind if they did not let him engage in writing, and second, he had been working for a long time at that time, and he had never asked for any money except a few yuan of pocket money a month, and his younger siblings could spend money, so how could he not let him spend it? Even if they supported him and were fair to him, he would have refused to ask for anything. When he returned from Beijing, his parents rejected him on the grounds that he had learned nothing from his trip to Beijing, and the contact list of his literary friends brought back from the Beijing PEN Club was inexplicably missing. Later, he reflected on his behavior of going to Beijing to participate in the PEN Club and the Literary Society, and with his writing level at that time, he could not achieve results in these activities, but he could still expand his network and meet like-minded friends through these activities. Having like-minded friends was helpful for him to improve his writing skills and develop a writing career, and even for his difficult part-time life at that time. However, because he was psychologically and restrictedly in life, he could not devote himself to these social activities, and he was not able to become a person who made friends from all over the world.

Five

He finally found that family was a big obstacle in his career pursuit, so he began to hope in his heart that he could get married soon, hoping that he could get rid of the shackles of family after marriage. Why should he get rid of the shackles of the family by getting married? Because it is the only valid reason for him to be free from the control of his parents. He was a docile man, and he could not get into a violent conflict with his parents in order to achieve his goals, and he could not leave home by going to work in a foreign country, because his parents would not allow it. Later, he read a story in a magazine about a literary youth. This literary young man ran away from home in rebellion against his father's arranged marriage, lived a wandering life, paid for all kinds of hardships and hardships in the world, and finally found a stable job with the help of well-wishers, and embarked on the road of writing. After reading the report, he had imagined what he would do if he met this young man's situation, and whether he would run away from home? After thinking about it, he thought he would not leave. First of all, the habit of relying on his parents since he was a child made him not know how to live away from home. Moreover, his parents are not extremists, although they want their children to obey their wishes, but when their children really can't accept it, they will not use excessive coercion. In fact, who wants to run away from home until the last resort? How difficult life is after leaving home! It must be that the pain of staying at home far exceeds the pain of wandering, and the family is so cold that there is no warmth at all, so that they will be willing to run away from home! In comparison, there is still warmth in their home, and although this warmth is often mixed with the wishes of their parents and changes a little, it is still within the range of what he can bear.

So he did not choose to leave his parents in the extreme way of running away from home, but planned to leave his parents in a more reasonable way such as marriage. However, because he subconsciously considered whether the wife he was looking for could be accepted by his parents, the wife he was looking for was similar to his parents in terms of values and behavior. After marriage, he did not gain more freedom as he envisioned, but on the contrary lost more freedom.

Before getting married, he had ended his wandering part-time job life and found a regular job. Working as a worker in a cement factory is a job that requires little skill and requires hard work. This is in line with his characteristics, so this job is the best he has done since he started working. With the income from this job, he has more than enough to support his family expenses. He was glad to have found such a job when he got married, which made it easier for him to take on family responsibilities and not have to wander around, so that he could write with peace of mind. However, after the marriage, he learned that his wife did not approve of him writing, and it turned out that his parents were not able to openly prevent him from writing, but his wife openly prevented him from writing, and he could not even read books at home. His habit of creating in his spare time for many years was abruptly terminated.

However, after years of accumulation, his writing level and ideological understanding have become more and more mature, and it is time to produce results. Mature stories and ideas came to him, but when he got home, he couldn't write them down, so he started writing while he worked.

Cement production uses the kind of tall and bulky equipment, the production accuracy is not high, the operation will produce deafening noise and heavy dust, and the production environment is very harsh. However, there is a small benefit, that is, the equipment can be operated automatically as soon as it is started, and there is no need for workers to continue the operation. Workers can sit in the control room and come out every once in a while to check if the equipment is working properly. The time spent sitting in the control room made it possible for him to write. He tore the manuscript paper into palm-sized pieces and put it in his overalls, and while he was in the control room, he pulled it out and wrote a paragraph. Then he came out again to check the operation of the equipment, and after confirming that everything was in order, he returned to the control room to continue writing. At that time, his writing skills were still very shallow, and he couldn't write many words in a day, sometimes because he couldn't describe a certain plot, he couldn't write a word a day, and sometimes he couldn't write for several days in a row because the equipment was not running properly. But he didn't give up, and he finally finished his first novella.

The success of the first novella greatly increased his confidence and enthusiasm for writing, and then he completed several more short stories, feeling that one was better than the other. Just when he was about to make a profit in writing, the cement factory where he worked went bankrupt, and he became a member of the army of laid-off workers, facing the problem of choosing a new job.

It should be said that he had foreseen this situation. When he was still working in the cement factory, he wanted to learn another skill. It's not that he foresaw the bankruptcy of the cement plant at that time, but that the hard physical labor and harsh environment of the cement plant are really not suitable for people to engage in such work for a long time. So he wanted to learn a skill so that he could move on to another job when the time was right. He chose to learn computer operation, at that time computers were not popular in people's lives, and computer operation was still a relatively scarce technology. But as soon as he discussed it with his wife, it was rejected. At that time, he was still in the newlywed period, and he tried his best to meet his wife's wishes, and he did not do anything that his wife did not agree to, but this invisibly put shackles on his own development. As mentioned earlier, his wife and his parents have similar values, and they are unacceptable to any investment that does not produce an immediate return. He later reflected that if his parents were not anxious to let him earn money, but chose to let him learn a skill that suited him, he might not have to work like that, and his income would be higher than that but not so hard. But at that time, he had just entered the society and didn't understand anything, but his parents couldn't make such a plan for him. Now he understands, but he can't implement it because of his wife's obstruction, and the only option is to work.

Six

As a result, after being laid off, he immediately fell into the predicament of looking for a job. He first went to an insurance company to sell insurance, but reality soon told him that it was not a job he was capable of. Soon after, he switched to delivering water and newspapers. Finally, after several twists and turns, he joined a company as a worker.

Once his job stabilized, he naturally remembered to write. However, with so many experiences, he learned how to free himself from the constraints of his parents and wives to achieve his goals, and also learned how to reject the will imposed on him by his parents and wives. He began to look at society beyond his family, but was surprised to find that society had already entered the Internet age, and the Internet provided people with a broader platform to express themselves. But at this time, he regretted to find that he still couldn't operate a computer and couldn't surf the Internet. As mentioned earlier, he has long had the idea of learning how to operate a computer, so he didn't just know that there was an Internet, nor did he not afford to buy a computer, but because of his family's obstruction, he has never had the opportunity to contact these. Now he doesn't care what his family thinks, he buys computer introductory books from the bookstore to learn the basic operation of the computer, and if he doesn't have a computer at home, he goes to the computer in the Internet café to practice, and when he encounters difficult problems, he asks people who know computers for advice, so that he finally learns how to operate a computer and surf the Internet. Then, he registered his account online and posted his works online one by one. In a few years, it has accumulated hundreds of thousands of words!

At this time, people who like him will say yes when they see his works, and those who are hostile to him will silently put down and not say a word when they see his works. And a more interesting phenomenon is that some classmates who have not been in touch for a long time suddenly send text messages or phone calls to greet him, and some classmates invite him to meet through others, but all these classmates talk to him, or the meaning is vague, or ambiguous, or want to stop talking, which makes him inexplicable. After seeing him for a long time, he suddenly figured out the mystery, and it turned out that these classmates came to him for only one purpose, that is, to let him transfer his works to them. He really couldn't imagine that there would be such a thing in his life, these people were all good students of the past! (Maybe the bad students didn't mix well, so there was no need) He didn't know how the high school class teacher, who laughed at him back then, would feel if he learned that the good student he was proud of had now fallen to the point of plagiarizing his bad student's articles? Among these people who wanted to plagiarize his works, not all of them were despicable people with poor character, and they wanted to copy his works but couldn't say anything, which shows that they still have a sense of shame. Maybe it's too much pressure to survive, so I have to make this decision, right?

If he accedes to the requests of his classmates, he should be able to reap some practical benefits immediately, and may even change the circumstances of his life. But he didn't do that, because he didn't want to do it for his own benefit, and because he couldn't bear to give them away, like his children.

He is still willing to strive for success through his own real efforts. At this time, he was already a person who was more familiar with online literature, and seeing the success of other people's online writing, he also decided to develop in this direction. He chose the more time-consuming and laborious path of writing long-form books online, and due to family constraints, he still worked and wrote at the same time, so the writing progress was very slow. This is a fatal flaw for online literature, which attaches great importance to the speed of updating. But he had no choice but to grit his teeth and stiffen out, and in the end, the work turned out to be quite large-scale.

Seven

But just when the story of his work reached its climax and the content was wonderful, the company he worked for closed down again, and he returned to the state of doing odd jobs everywhere again. However, at this time, he is no longer a young man who has just stepped out of school, and the society is not what it was back then, and college degrees abound among migrant workers. In the ranks of applying for jobs, he has no advantage at all, and can only choose those jobs that ordinary people are unwilling to do, and they are very unstable. Writing can only be interrupted, and there is no hope that it can continue.

He didn't give up and was always looking for opportunities that suited him. One day, he saw a revelation from a job advertisement that a newspaper was hiring a reporter. However, at that time, he was already old and not confused, and more importantly, he only had a high school education, so would people use him? He hesitated again and again, and finally mustered up the courage to apply for the job because he was unwilling to give up this rare opportunity. The person in charge of the newspaper immediately frowned when he saw his age and then listened to his academic qualifications. When he opened the web page with his work on the newspaper's computer, the newspaper manager agreed to let him try. For his work, the person in charge of the newspaper only left one sentence, write five articles a week, and forget if he can do it or not.

Five manuscripts a week, that is, one manuscript per working day. Having been a worker since he started working, he didn't dare to ask where to go for interviews, so he had to run to the streets to find targets. After a week, I actually handed in all the manuscripts. In this way, after working as a worker for more than 20 years, he suddenly became a reporter, and the more he did it, the more comfortable he became, and soon the reports he wrote made headlines. Even he himself admired himself in his heart that he really had the talent to do cultural work! Just when he thought that he had finally come out of the predicament of life and realized his ideals in life, the newspaper office was closed. It turned out that this newspaper was set up in cooperation with a large newspaper and used the issue number of a large newspaper. After the change of leadership, the big newspaper decided not to engage in this kind of cooperation anymore, and his newspaper had no issue number, so it had to be closed.

He returned to doing odd jobs everywhere, but he didn't lose heart, he found confidence in his experience as a journalist and found the direction of his efforts. He processed and created the folk oral legend of an ancient village scenic spot that he collected when he was a reporter, so that this folk oral legend became a complete story. Through this story, he applied for a job as a copywriter in that ancient village scenic spot.

After arriving at the ancient village scenic spot, he felt like a fish in water. The writing work he engages in every day is what he can do, and it is what he likes, and he can give full play to his wisdom in his work. Soon he became the editor of the official account of the scenic spot, although he only had a high school degree and knew little about computer operation, but with his love and study of work, he soon learned to edit the official account. His long-term writing experience has accumulated profound cultural literacy for him, and the official account he edited is novel and chic, and it is very popular. Gradually, he attracted the attention of the local literary circle and began to participate in various literary activities.

He found that he had become a more comfortable person in this society. Since he has always insisted on living the simplest life, although his income is not high, he does not have much pressure on life. And he can indeed be regarded as a successful person, with works that can be proud. His life is so flavorful and full of life, unlike those men and women who have no goal in eating, soaking in mahjong parlors all day long, and refusing to go home until midnight. Not only was he not tempted by lust himself, but because of his influence, his family was rarely tempted by lust, and his life was peaceful and fulfilling.

Looking back on the course of his life, he found that life is really a long-distance race, but the goal is neither fame nor fortune, but to be able to live happily and happily. You may not be rich if you achieve your goals, but you will be able to live independently and know how to be satisfied; you will not necessarily be carefree when you achieve your goals, but you will be able to look down on your worries and let go of your worries; you will not necessarily be free of harm and disasters when you achieve your goals, but you will be able to overcome the pain again and again, get up again and move forward!