In Pursuit of Excellence, We Gradually Become Ordinary

Lately, I’ve started pondering this question. When I graduated from high school, I imagined what my college life would look like. Back then, this was the picture I painted:

• Joining all kinds of events and activities
• Joining student clubs
• Going on those quintessential college mixers
• Keeping my grades well above average
• Starting to practice coding
• Exploring every corner of Greater Taipei
• Becoming fluent in Japanese

…

Looking back now, that was hopelessly naive. The biggest challenge when I first arrived in Taipei was… money. Without money, you’re literally left scraping by. So, as much as I wanted the best of both worlds, I had no choice but to compromise under harsh reality.

Don’t get me wrong; I didn’t pessimistically give up on my goals. In fact, I’ve kept moving forward, just in smaller strides. My freshman year was relatively fulfilling and happy, with little stress, as I immersed myself in the college experience. But by the second semester, financial pressure began to mount. Leaving me with no other choice, I had to find part-time work.

Back then, I refused to settle for being ordinary. Whenever I had free time, I’d head to the library to read novels, explore extracurricular books, and practice programming. Stumbling along the way, I kept that up for a year.

That year, I read nearly two hundred books, and my GitHub contributions topped 1,000. Throughout that process, I began to sense a qualitative shift within myself.

While I’m far from top-tier today, I’ve developed a solid foundation in frontend development.

So, I paused to think.

And now, here lies the problem. The version of me who loved playing the piano and reading novels seems to be fading away at an alarming rate. In my downtime, I spend the vast majority of my hours reading web development articles, writing code, and drafting related posts. You might say: “When your heart is devoted to a craft, the craft will surely be refined.” True, but is the price paid for that refinement too steep? I don’t know—after all, with my current skill level, I’m probably not even qualified to call myself a professional! But as I grow up, I don’t want to become someone who can only talk about frontend and code all day long, slowly forgetting who I once was.

Thinking about it now is honestly terrifying. Back then, just to survive in Taipei, I sacrificed my quality of life to work part-time jobs, rarely showing up at social gatherings. Now that I finally have a glimmer of a chance to reclaim that balance, it feels like I no longer know how.

When I turn thirty, will I also turn into one of those insufferable adults?

Drifting with the current, I feel as if I’ve forgotten my original intentions. It’s not that writing code is a bad thing, but I want to remind myself why I embarked on this path in the first place. Was it out of genuine passion? Or was it just because the industry had great prospects and I was blindly following the crowd?

To the seasoned veterans who have been navigating the industry for years: I don’t know what this journey has felt like for you, and most of the friends around me are still in my age group. If you’re willing, could you share your experiences and perspectives with me? Will there come a day when I inevitably transition into management, forced to step away from hands-on coding, and gradually embark on an entirely different path?