The Great Depression

Jan 2, 2025 · 2 min read

After my afternoon nap, when I woke up, I was surrounded by an extreme sense of depression, loneliness, and lostness(if this is a word?).

My Great Depression

There are a few layers of my depression:

  • The first layer is the fact that I am leaving Beijing tomorrow. I grew up in Beijing. I spent so much time here with the City. I have so many family and friends and memories. It’s not for good, but the bare flashing of the idea that I am leaving tomorrow leaves me in sorrow.
  • The second layer is that I am so far from where I would like to be at my current age. I wouldn’t say I didn’t have a good life, but it’s not where I would like to be. There is so much work to be done. Do I have the energy to get where I want to be? Not really…not now. This year, I am starting to analyze where I get my energy and where my energy is going.
  • I don’t want to follow the herd. I have seen enough people following the herd and getting through the days. Not living their lives but simply getting through the days. I would like to do something more magnificent, but honestly, I am not confident I have what it takes…

What I Can/Should Do?

There are a few things I would like to improve:

  1. To get a better sense of where my energy goes: to track how much time and attention I spent on each aspect of my life. The awareness of how I spent my time would help me better use my energy.
  2. Keep focused: spliting attention is the best way to waste your energy while not achieving anything. Just stay focused. One thing at a time.
  3. Dare to say NO: to say NO to non-essential things is to say YES to myself and the more important things. I need to have a better sense of what I would like to achieve in order to prioritize.
Shibo Chen
Authors
Senior Architecture Engineer
Shibo Chen is a senior architecture engineer at Tenstorrent building next-generation high-performance RISC-V CPU. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 2025.