After one of my friends taught me something about Buddhism and told me that reading sutras could help me become peaceful, I started reading the Earth Store Sutra. As I read the sutra, I found that religion sometimes uses terror to educate its believers. If we break the law, we may go to prison; if we violate religious norms, we may fall into hell after death. Maybe some people behave themselves only because they are afraid of going to hell, not because they are interested in going to heaven. One of the aspects of faith may consist of fear. I’m not sure whether it’s improper to discuss religion like this. I don’t mean any offense.

Thanks to Clarkson’s Farm, I learn more about farm animals, such as sheep, cows, pigs, goats, etc. It’s heartbreaking when farmers send their animals to the slaughterhouse. Farmers spend so much time and energy on these animals to raise them. What’s more, they don’t feed them just to make profits, they really care about these animals’ well-being, but in the end, they have to hand them to death. One of the slaughterhouse staff said that in this way you could love them twice, once when they were alive, the other when they became meat. Although all creatures die someday, it feels different if you were born to be others’ food. I hope farm animals enjoy their short lives and not suffer in the slaughterhouse.

These days I finished reading another book titled Cherries of Changan. Set in the Tang Dynasty, this novel focuses on a humble official appointed to an impossible task —— to bring fresh cherries from the southern part of China to the capital. Being limited by technologies and transportation at the time, cherries could only keep fresh for three to four days at most. However, to meet the emperor’s request, the official had to find a way to keep cherries fresh for more than ten days. To achieve this goal, he encountered countless setbacks and problems, and huge amounts of resources were consumed. Through this story, I get to understand the magic of power. The world seems to function for those with power in hand. So many people struggle just to bring some cherries to the emperor to make him happy. Who cares about the efforts made by ordinary people to make this task possible? After all, only powerful individuals can leave their footprints in the history books.

I’m trying to develop a more regular daily schedule in order to live more healthily. I thought that if I got up earlier, I would be awake longer, so I could have more time to do more things. However, even though I do get up earlier, I can only keep my maximum efficiency before noon. As a result, the time I spend on finishing tasks hasn’t increased. I realized that my concentration had a limit, so if I got up early and made full use of all morning, there wouldn’t be much concentration left for the afternoon and evening, and I ended up procrastinating.

Although I’m not satisfied with my current job and have tried to find a new job, I haven't made any progress until now. No wonder everyone is complaining about how hard it is to find a job nowadays. The new term is coming soon, and more workload is to be expected. I feel so anxious that I turn to a tarot card reader for help. What she told me just made my anxiety grow even worse. Not only will I face new problems, which I have to keep learning to solve, but I should also take care of my relationship with my colleagues, since the lack of sophistication may bring me harm. It seems that life insists on being hard without an end.

Until now I still haven’t found a proper way to improve my Japanese. The problem is that different from English and Spanish, I have learned Japanese totally by myself, in other words, I have never learned Japanese systematically. Since grammar bores me deeply, I have neglected grammar rules and advanced my learning by reading and listening a lot. Although I can read and listen properly thanks to this way of learning, I haven’t established a solid base, so when it comes to speaking and writing, sometimes I’m confused about all those grammar rules. However, when I reach a certain level, I lose the patience to learn the basics. I always feel that there’s a lack of something but I have no idea what that exactly is.

I tried to log in to my Steam account today, but I was surprised to discover that my account had been stolen. Well, I know that this kind of thing happens, but it just feels more shocking when it happens to me. In the past, I might cower and give up my account without even trying to retrieve it because I was so afraid to have any conflict with others. However, in recent years I have learned to stand up for my own rights, so I wrote to the customer service staff of Steam to explain my situation and offered some evidence. Hopefully my account will come back to me soon.

Since I started posting my writings on italki, strangers have sent me messages now and then. At first, I was glad to make some foreign friends and replied politely. However, soon after I found that there seemed to be a suspicious pattern in how they talked. They would greet me and then we would have some small talk. Then they would tell me they had some trouble and needed my help, which was related to my WeChat account. This is where the whole thing makes me feel weird even though I can’t explain why. Now it freaks me a bit when someone sends messages to me because I don’t know what his/her true purpose is.

I have traveled a lot during the summer vacation this year, and surprisingly, I enjoyed it more than I had expected. Since I have always been an introverted and indoor person, I imagined I would be exhausted if I spent so much time traveling with others. However, thanks to that I have kept taking dance lessons three to four times a week for about five months, I have become more energetic and less resistant to going out. I still feel uncomfortable if I have to stay with others for too long because I need plenty of time alone to recharge myself. So maybe I can try traveling on my own to see whether it suits me better.