Starting the New Year's Work
After taking a few packets of Mahuang Tang (Ephedra Decoction) and Gegen Tang (Pueraria Decoction) and resting for two days, my cervical spine is basically fully recovered. But I do not intend to crush it again with heavy workload, so starting today I will begin my 2021 work, though in the new year I will schedule more rest time for myself.
My WeChat official account already has over 52,000 followers, and many followers hope I will write content they want to read, but everyone's expectations differ greatly. I am publishing this number not to show off, but to tell readers that my energy is limited and it is hard to satisfy every reader's expectations, so I can only write according to my own ideas, not according to readers' ideas.
Although my work WeChat keeps deleting contacts, there are still over 3,100 people (if I had never deleted anyone, there would now be ten or twenty thousand). About 2,000 of them are people I serve long-term, and several dozen are critically ill patients requiring close attention. A family doctor in the U.S. has only about 600 registered patients, yet they already complain bitterly; so we medical workers in developing countries really are working overtime. We are medicine-studying beasts of burden; unfortunately, not many patients appreciate Chinese medical staff.
Every day I need to reply to over 100 consultation sessions, and I have twenty or thirty seriously ill patients requiring focused care; plus reading and writing, my workload is actually quite large. This is why I have to refuse many people who want to add me as a friend; I do not want to live my life too exhaustedly, and I hope friends can understand and sympathize.
In 2021, I plan to write new popular-science articles while also revising some immature articles I wrote earlier, gradually organizing them into books that can be collected and published. But I do not plan to publish in the next few years; I want to wait until my readership is larger, my theoretical foundation is thicker, and my practical experience is richer, before publishing my own books.
Many people online plagiarize my articles; I have not paid attention to this issue for years, so let them plagiarize. But to protect my copyright, I will no longer publish online the systematic writing intended for future books.
My official account will, as always, update as close to daily as possible; the account will mainly publish articles written in response to the needs of consultants. I originally started writing medical articles in response to the needs of patients and their families. Over ten years ago, when I exchanged ideas with fellow patients in cancer patient chat groups (I have now left all groups due to limited energy), I casually answered common questions for group members and wrote some things; later some group members strongly suggested I start my own blog to publish my views on cancer for their reference. That was when I began medical popular-science writing online and acquired my own website and official account.
So my past writing exhibited some characteristics of online blog writing: the content was very casual and unsystematic. Sometimes I even forgot I had already written on a topic, and because so many people consulted about the same issue, I wrote about the relevant topic again one or more times.
Writing on and off like this for over ten years has accumulated millions of words; now it is time to adjust my writing approach.
Past writing done to reply to consultations was down-to-earth, answering common questions, so my articles may have a certain readership among cancer patients and doctors.
Sometimes I also write about my own life and educational views; but to be honest, writing these things is also a way to use myself as an example to help some patients and their families build a relatively healthy mindset and lifestyle. Most people I come into contact with are unhappy — having cancer or having a family member with cancer really makes it hard to be happy; they are under heavy life pressure and have many family problems. I hope this way can help relieve their mental stress and resolve some family issues.
I am not someone who enjoys exposing my privacy, but decades of life experience have taught me that if I want to discuss certain issues or criticize certain phenomena, the safest and most harmless approach is to talk about myself rather than comment on others, because doing so will not offend anyone. Compared to criticizing others, I prefer self-criticism; criticizing oneself carries no risk of offending anyone. Master Hongyi said: "Sitting quietly, often reflect on your own faults; in casual talk, never criticize others." My version is: "Writing, often speaking of my own faults; in casual talk, never criticizing others." I may not have fully achieved this when I was younger; if I offended anyone in my past writing, I hope to apologize to them here. At the same time, I hope going forward to try my best to only criticize and discuss myself, not others.
For many years my writing has revolved around the broad theme of human physical and mental health, because that is the only field I know well. Looking back at my early articles, I feel there are many immature aspects; I estimate that ten years from now, looking at articles I write today, I will still feel there are many immature aspects. So I plan to let my articles sit for twenty or thirty years; when I am old, I will carefully select the ones worth preserving and collect them for publication before or after my death.
I want to write some books to leave to posterity, but I do not want my books to be too thick. If possible, I will repeatedly revise and streamline my writing in the future, ultimately leaving a book that one can finish reading in at most a week, yet from which one can understand my main thoughts and views. I hope this book is thin enough rather than thick enough, because tomes are simply a disaster to read. Popular-science authors should have refined expressive ability, letting readers understand our research results at the fastest speed. Human life is precious, and taking up too much of readers' time and energy would make me feel sorry.
This is my first article of the year; I hope I will remember later that I once organized my thoughts this way. People who write too many articles always inevitably forget what they have written. Sometimes a reader shows me an article, and after reading it I think it is so-so, and cannot help silently sneering at it in my heart; but the style looks just like my own, and after the reader reminds me, I realize it is my own article — how ironic!
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Work WeChat: zhouzhiyuan1979
