Annual Essay | Starting from Quitting Sleeping Pills, I Choose Not to Outsource Myself Anymore#
#Omnivore
Highlights#
Mindfulness meditation practice ⤴️ ^85806c76
My life can have new stories, but the premise is that I must stop retelling old stories. ⤴️ ^f1ef9ed9
Problems that occurred in the past can be resolved by moving forward. I no longer need that victim identity. ⤴️ ^eaae7d46
Note: This article is a finalist in the "2023 Annual Essay: Share Your Keywords." The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author, and the title and formatting have been slightly adjusted by the minority.
Due to the large number of submissions received, some finalist articles have not yet been recommended to the homepage. To ensure that all finalist articles have sufficient display time on the homepage during the final evaluation, the announcement date for the results of this essay contest has been postponed to March 24, 2024. Thank you for your support!
This article participates in the 2023 Annual Essay event. My keyword for 2023 is: Reverse Outsourcing.
Since being diagnosed with sleep disorders in 2018 and taking sleeping pills, I gradually accepted and recognized the self-created concept of "outsourcing sleep to sleeping pills" and tried to outsource as many things as possible that I couldn't or didn't want to do, until the second half of 2022 when depression relapsed and I resigned without notice. Looking back, it was a rather alienated life, and I began to reflect on my life and attempt to make some changes. After a long recovery period throughout 2023, I finally emerged from various mental troubles and began to construct my own new story. I think, this year's efforts can be called "Reverse Outsourcing."
If "outsourcing" means cutting off and handing over everything outside the core, allowing oneself to simply call upon a packaged API without questioning the process as long as the result is achieved, then "Reverse Outsourcing" not only means reclaiming and re-experiencing the outsourced life modules but also requires maintaining a mindful awareness within these life details and re-examining one's core.
I will discuss the specific actions of this year's "Reverse Outsourcing" from three aspects: "quitting sleeping pills," "awareness of automatic reactions," and "actively connecting with the surroundings," as well as how these effects helped me re-examine my core and clarify the myth of "outsourcing the meaning of life to work."
No Longer Outsourcing Sleep to Sleeping Pills#
TL;DR:
Strive to remove obstacles and create conditions for regularity to take over the uncontrollable parts of oneself, rather than directly pursuing the results after regularity occurs. The basic rule of sleep is "when a person is extremely tired, they can naturally fall asleep without taking sleeping pills." Compared to taking sleeping pills every day and enduring side effects, a relatively friendly solution is to keep oneself slightly drowsy every day.
Family background, school bullying, workplace pressure—there's always an experience that can trigger insomnia. When these factors mix together, accompanied by depression and anxiety, insomnia becomes even harder to resolve.
After graduating, I joined a high-intensity consulting firm, often working until midnight, and it was not uncommon to finish at two or three in the morning. My boss, who was quite unreasonable, occasionally liked to hold overnight programming marathons with us, completely destroying my already fragile sleep structure. At that time, I didn't know what was happening; I just lay in bed every night unable to sleep, filled with fear, anxiety, and a racing heart. Later, due to continuous lack of sleep, my body and mind collapsed, and I was finally diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders at 600 Wanping South Road, receiving various medications.
After the diagnosis, I wasn't panicked; instead, I felt a sense of relief—my various discomforts were just due to being ill, and as long as I took medicine, it would be fine, right? The first night taking Seroquel felt wonderful; after several days of poor sleep, I felt a bit dizzy after taking it, and when I opened my eyes again, it was already the next morning—no dreams, feeling refreshed.
At that time, I thought I had found a lifeline, but unexpectedly, this lifeline became a crushing blow in the following years—I became dependent on sleeping pills, taking them for five years and consuming over 3,000 pills of various medications. Not only did I have to take Seroquel to alleviate sleep onset issues, but I also had to take medications like estazolam to relax muscles and extend sleep duration; to combat the nightmares caused by Seroquel, I took trazodone for a while to eliminate dreams. When I went to the hospital to get prescriptions, I occasionally encountered elderly people in their seventies or eighties consulting doctors about medications, and I couldn't help but wonder how my mental state would be after continuing to take medication for forty or fifty years.
My personal insomnia cycle
Insomnia is a self-fulfilling prophecy; the more one worries about insomnia, the more insomnia is triggered. Especially after being forcibly shut down by sleeping pills time and again, it became increasingly difficult to invoke the body's natural shutdown process, leading to greater reliance on sleeping pills. This is a continuously self-reinforcing cycle that seems unsolvable.
Besides sleeping pills, I also tried other methods: sleep earplugs, latex mattresses, aromatherapy, light music, weighted blankets, steam eye masks, melatonin, sour jujube seeds—if a product had "sleep aid" in its name, I would buy it to try. Altogether, I spent about ten thousand yuan, but it had no effect on me. Looking back, I prefer to call them "amplifiers of sleep quality"; they can improve sleep quality, but if one cannot fall asleep (an important variable is 0), then no matter how many amplifiers are applied, insomnia remains inevitable.
The turning point for my determination to quit sleeping pills was that I frequently fell into nightmares due to the side effects of Seroquel, often waking up with palpitations, drenched in cold sweat, while during the day I had to endure severe nerve headaches (possibly caused by medication accumulation). I couldn't continue to live each day in such an absurd manner, relying on painkillers to get through work during the day and drifting through life at night due to Seroquel-induced amnesia and nightmares. No, I had enough.
The process of starting to quit was painful; I tossed and turned in bed, clearly exhausted to the point of being unable to think, yet my mind was active when I closed my eyes, and I stayed awake until dawn before finally dozing off. However, sleeping too much during the day made it difficult to fall asleep at night. But in this pain, I discovered a clue: being able to stay awake until dawn before falling asleep indicated that I wasn't unable to fall asleep autonomously; I just couldn't fall asleep at the right time—so if I persisted in not sleeping all day, could this drowsiness help me fall asleep smoothly at night?
So during the day, I didn't engage in anything that required thinking or physical labor; I went out to get some sunlight, then returned home to watch TV shows and play "Tears of the Kingdom," which was how I could pass the time. By evening, my body was already cold and numb from lack of sleep, my heart pounding like a bass drum, and nausea constantly rising in my stomach, yet I still insisted on watching until ten o'clock before closing my eyes. (Note: Here, I advise insomnia patients who wish to try this to consult a doctor and use discretion; do not blindly imitate, as it can harm the body.)
When I woke up again, it was the next morning—I succeeded. Thus, I grasped a rule: "When a person is extremely tired, they can naturally fall asleep without taking sleeping pills." After mastering this basic rule, I practiced "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I)" through some sleep training programs, and I learned to deliberately keep myself slightly drowsy: when I felt I was having difficulty falling asleep recently, I would choose to sleep less. For example, if I originally needed to sleep 8-9 hours a day, to feel sufficiently drowsy at night, I would now sleep 6-7 hours. If I unfortunately experienced insomnia again and only slept one or two hours, I would still get up on time without napping, and most likely, I would feel very drowsy at night and fall asleep as soon as I hit the pillow. Choosing the lesser of two evils, slight drowsiness that doesn't affect productivity and mood, and without other physical discomfort, is much better than taking several kinds of sleeping pills every day.
Sleep status after quitting sleeping pills
Now, I haven't taken sleeping pills for over half a year and can fall asleep autonomously again; this sense of happiness is no less than being reborn. This also made me understand a principle: some things cannot be achieved just by effort; no matter how tightly you close your eyes, it is not as useful as the self-evident rule of "being extremely tired will lead to sleep." What we can do is clear obstacles for the occurrence of regularity, create space, and then calmly wait for regularity to take over.
No Longer Outsourcing the Interpretation of Life to Automatic Reactions#
TL;DR:
Through long-term mindfulness practice, I became aware of and reflected on the hidden settings in life, gradually balancing the tilted scale through concrete and subtle actions. Compared to longing to restart life due to various regrets and dissatisfaction, I am now more willing to choose a DLC mode for life.
In "The Legend of the Condor Heroes," the shopkeeper Tong Xiangyu, when encountering a problem, would bring out the line, "I was wrong, I was really wrong, I shouldn't have married here from the beginning. If I hadn't married here, my husband wouldn't have died. If my husband hadn't died, I wouldn't have fallen into such a sad place. If I hadn't fallen into such a sad place, I wouldn't have to endure your grievances..."
To the audience (the "others"), this is obviously a comedic slippery slope fallacy. However, for the person involved, it is difficult to realize the existence of this unreasonable chain, let alone acknowledge its existence, analyze the logical relationship, and attempt to make changes. Here, I don't want to elaborate on how unfortunate my growth experience has been; first, to fulfill my commitment to myself ("to awaken fewer unfortunate and painful memories"), second, to avoid triggering the automated reaction chain of self-pity through recounting suffering, and third, everyone has some degree of trouble in this regard, which is also a part of common humanity, so I only need to touch upon it to help readers understand the background information of this chapter.
For a long time, I relied on the "victim mentality" to live, to the point where it became my underlying tone. When I wanted to strive for something, the thought "my life has been victimized like this, I must achieve something" would ignite a seemingly righteous anger within me, and it did lead me to achieve some accomplishments. However, when I fell into the depths of self-abandonment, it would be brought out to prove "my life is already so tragic" and "I'm like this because of those people," so "I might as well give up." Thus, whether I adopted an optimistic or pessimistic lifestyle, the pattern was either squeezing intermittent strength from the victim identity or wallowing in self-pity with the victim mentality.
Mindfulness practice situation from last year and this year
The opportunity that made me aware of the existence of this victim mentality was the mindfulness meditation practice that began in mid-2023, averaging 20-30 minutes daily. Starting from the third month, I gradually became able to notice the swirling thoughts during the 30-minute practice without getting caught up in them, observing the changes in thoughts and emotions from a bystander's perspective. From the fifth month onward, in daily life outside of practice, I could almost simultaneously realize "a thought/emotion has arisen in my mind" when a thought/emotion appeared. One day, when I felt down, the "victim identity" popped up again, saying things like "this is fate; you are just so miserable," and I felt a distorted warmth and attachment. Realizing this truly shocked me—was I really living like this before?
As I continued to practice, I felt the core of my depression loosening and began to actively question the logical chains in my mind:
- First, the thought "I want to end this early" that had been swirling in my mind for a long time is not my true thought; the true thought is "I want to start over"—I don't want to log off; I just want a fresh start.
- Second, "wanting to start over" means I have many dissatisfactions with my past life, and I try to go back and correct them. These shortcomings occurred when I had no control or choice in my life, gradually constructing my victim mentality.
- Finally, I determined that these shortcomings and dissatisfactions would 100% determine that my future would also be tragic, and I want to start over because I don't want my future to be tragic. In other words, I still hope that my future life is worth looking forward to. This is my deepest thought.
The simple and universal thought of "hoping for a beautiful future" can be hidden within the fractures of life experiences, but like archaeology, when it is excavated and cleaned, it becomes a fulcrum for re-examining life. I also began to understand that as long as I am still thinking about "restarting life," it means I am still living around those things in life that make me regret, resent, and rage. ==My life can have new stories, but the premise is that I must stop retelling old stories.==
Left: Continuously responding to thoughts and emotions; Right: Maintaining awareness without getting involved in thoughts and emotions, leaving space for oneself
Fortunately, the successful efforts to quit sleeping pills mentioned earlier made me feel the power hidden deep within a person: even if I cannot go back and change the facts that gradually destroyed my sleep, I can still stand in the present and restore my body's functions through scientific methods. ==Problems that occurred in the past can be resolved by moving forward. I no longer need that victim identity.== I began to try new narratives, no matter how subtle and small they were, such as:
- Accepting that I, who have received more education and read more psychology books, have more obligation and ability to help my mother out of the quagmire of life, rather than ruminating on the harm my family of origin caused me. I celebrated my mother's birthday (which we never did in our family), took her on trips (we also didn't have a habit of traveling, but I intuitively believed this could expand the boundaries of family experiences and memories), and repeatedly told my mother that we are living well for ourselves, not to make those who abandoned us regret it.
- I enrolled in a six-month painting course and faced ridicule from younger students who had been painting since childhood for being older and less skilled. When memories of school bullying surged, making me feel anger, anxiety, and panic, I told myself, "I am 30 years old now; I am no longer that confused child," and calmly explained the situation to him, casually handing him the paintbrush, saying, "If you think my painting is bad, then help me improve it"—he ended up speaking to me calmly.
- I applied the "dichotomy" to focus my efforts on things I can control while accepting any outcomes from parts I cannot control. Before competing for New Zealand WHV spots, I clarified the process and then collaborated with AI to write a fully automated Chrome extension. Although I ultimately didn't succeed in securing a spot, I knew I had put in all my effort, so I had no regrets and realized "I shouldn't blame myself for things I cannot control."
- …
I began to use these small actions to balance the heavily tilted scale. More often than not, I wouldn't look at the scale; I would only look at how many new experiences I had accumulated. When the percentage was too small, I chose to accept and appreciate my efforts through absolute values.
"The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" inspired me in many ways, one of which is the DLC concept. In the first 30 years of my life, I no longer want to experience those dark, long days filled with harsh winds, but it was precisely during those bewildering years that the seeds of prosperity were genuinely sown. The rest of my life will be a series of DLCs, and what I need to do is build new stories and new prosperity on this familiar wilderness.
No Longer Outsourcing Life Connections to Platforms#
TL;DR:
Compared to a highly efficient, modular life, I now prefer to choose a lifestyle that permeates the "people-things-relationships" network. This web of life provides me with anchors in real life, gradually releasing myself from the platform.
While working in Shanghai, I relied on takeout for both lunch and dinner. At that time, I completely didn't understand my family's concerns and instead strongly identified with the lifestyle of "outsourcing meals to takeout." I didn't need to know where the vendor was, and because I defaulted to choosing "put in the takeout locker," I rarely saw the delivery riders. The standardized services provided by the platform meant that people were anonymous to each other; individuals called upon others' services through various APIs and transmitted their work results through these APIs, which was simple and efficient, perfectly suited for someone like me.
At that time, I thought that as long as my income continued to grow, this cycle of "cutting off, outsourcing, and honing the core" could keep running, thereby promoting my income to continue growing, allowing me to order more expensive takeout, hire better personal trainers, and rent more spacious apartments—wasn't that how the wheel of life would turn?
Left: Calling upon others' services anonymously through the platform; Right: Gaining anchors in the real-life network
Returning home for over a year, I realized in recalling my life in Shanghai that my life didn't have any wheel turning; instead, the connections of life were gradually being dismantled by the self-satisfied outsourcing model. Five years passed as the same day: work, order takeout, finish work, go to the gym, order takeout, go home to wash up, rest, watch shows/read books/movies, and occasionally go shopping on weekends. I felt like just a projection in this space, not truly living. This might be a significant reason for triggering depression.
During a lunch last year, while chatting with my mother, I suddenly realized the food had a lot of mystery; it turned out that the desirable neighborhood life depicted in "Reply 1988" was right beside me:
- The staple food was red sugar buns made by Aunt Zhang. Aunt Zhang lives near my deceased grandparents' house, just across the street from my home, and the day before, she brought a big bag of buns to my house. She now takes care of her 90-year-old father full-time, who is in good spirits and insists on reading the newspaper every day.
- The pumpkin in the pumpkin chicken dish was grown by Aunt Zhu's daughter. Her daughter is quite capable, having worked hard to buy a villa, and now enjoys growing various fruits and vegetables in the villa's small garden, regularly driving them to Aunt Zhu's house, where Aunt Zhu distributes them to her friends.
- The chicken legs were bought from the small market next door. My mother is a regular customer; she originally wanted to buy four, but the vendor said, "Why buy so many? Today's chicken legs are big; you definitely won't finish them. Just buy three, and if they're good, come back for more." My mother laughed, saying she had never seen anyone complain about buying too much.
- The xun melon and rice were bought from Old Zhao. Old Zhao is a lovable old man; when buying vegetables, you can't say his vegetables are expensive, or he won't sell to you. But if you praise his vegetables for being cheap and delicious, he will eagerly show you the best ones.
- And these are reciprocated as a return, as my mother usually teaches her friends how to shop online, how to make money on various apps, and even sometimes acts as a manual cleaning master, helping friends speed up their phones.
These home-cooked dishes contain so much information about life; each dish connects the people living in this community, my mother, and me. There seem to be invisible lines connecting people to each other and to things. Life is no longer a detachable module; it permeates this network, with no boundaries yet is explainable. Gradually, I stopped looking at my phone or tablet while eating and began to savor the simplicity, stability, and happiness conveyed through the life network. Therefore, my goals for 2024 also include learning to cook a few home-cooked dishes, hoping to deepen my sense of connection.
Pumpkin, pomegranate, grapes, and water chestnuts sent by Aunt Zhu
After adjusting my sleep, I began to try to put down my phone and no longer rest by consuming content on social platforms. Of course, the videos of kids like Shu Tiao and Guo Guo on Xiaohongshu brought me joy in cloud parenting, and videos of cats and dogs made me want to ask for addresses (just kidding), but I felt that these were not as important as going out and connecting with the real world.
I tried to emulate the lifestyle of the elderly, taking a stroll around the community every day to see what fresh fruits and vegetables were being sold or walking by the lake, passing by a tree day after day. Throughout the spring, I witnessed it budding, blooming, wilting, until it completely disappeared, presenting lush leaves in early summer. I also observed the maple tree next to it, with leaves transitioning from the initial golden yellow to the green waves swaying in the summer breeze, then to the rich reddish-brown in autumn and the snow hanging from the branches in winter.
A walk while watching the sky gradually filled with sunset glow
I began to feel that life had more and more anchors. As I increasingly accepted myself, this deep sense of existence and meaning rooted in the life network naturally allowed me to let go of my addiction to information. One day, when I returned from a walk by the lake, I heard two elderly people walking quickly, saying, "You should buy apples from Old Zhao; they're cheaper over there, and sweeter too"—"Old Zhao" appeared again, and I knew that because of the connections in this web of life, I was no longer a complete stranger to these two elderly people.
No Longer Outsourcing the Meaning of Life to Companies and Work#
TL;DR:
Depression helped me suppress the positive feedback loop of the "outsourcing non-core life" model, and the demystification of external standards and halos made me reflect on my career choices and rediscover the part of myself that loves literature and art.
"Quitting sleeping pills" allowed me to regain clear thinking as if waking from a deep dream, "awareness of automatic reactions" provided me with considerable space for thought and decision-making between stimuli and responses, while "actively connecting with the surroundings" gradually calmed and clarified my fluctuating heart. At this point, I began to examine the topic of "career development." This year, I discovered that my "problem" is that I cannot work hard for someone else's career; no amount of money can change that. Once a company's business deviates from my life's trajectory—even if I know my transferable skills will grow in these jobs—I will choose to let the company embrace change.
Many years ago, when I first experienced depression, I learned the lesson of "outsourcing the meaning of life to work," fully immersing myself in work to keep busy, earn more money, gain more recognition in my career, and improve my life, thus avoiding the question of "what is the meaning of life." However, this recent episode of depression overturned that lesson. Looking back, my depression provided a latent suppressive mechanism for the increasingly outsourced cycle, and perhaps that is its positive value.
Depression brought pain but also suppressed the cycle of "outsourcing non-core life" models
My previous company was an e-commerce service provider, where colleagues accumulated domain experience and naturally aspired to work for large e-commerce companies, most successfully transitioning after two years. I had once written in my 2022 annual goals that I wanted to work as a data technology solutions architect at a certain big company, but when I reviewed it in 2023, I couldn't help but smile—I knew I was no longer that person.
For a while, I wanted to understand why the interfaces of certain large e-commerce apps were so complicated, trying to learn their product design—various segmented channel entrances, a plethora of activity pages, and any finger movement would trigger corresponding interactions. Later, I realized that this complexity was not a result of product optimization but rather a product of balancing various interests, such as individual KPIs, departmental influence, and business trial and error. Just like the current giant apps deliberately making users lost in one page after another to increase usage time and stickiness, people can also be distorted in this continuously branching path, and I didn't want to invest my energy in such matters, so one day I suddenly lost interest in big companies.
Many products I painstakingly led were never launched; in the company's words, "as long as they can be used to showcase our product capabilities to investors, that's enough," without caring whether they truly helped users solve problems. This made me realize: my salary was merely the company's trial and error cost. The company could conduct numerous parallel trials, and as long as one direction was correct, it could recoup costs. But from my personal perspective, the most energetic years of my life were indeed wasted. Naturally, I also lost interest in this investment-driven work.
I used to be like the Sniffler in "Harry Potter," chasing after those shiny things, hoping to gain recognition from others through them. But when I lost interest in the enviable big companies, the highly sought-after fields, and the glamorous titles, when all those shiny things dimmed, where was my source of light? If I instantly lost interest in the field I had poured everything into just because I left my job, did I really like that field? I had always encouraged myself to acquire more transferable skills, but where would these skills be released? Or was I just working hard for a better offer in the distance, facing the next JD? Does this chain have an end? If so, how long can I persist?
This is a very difficult process; the values and worldview I built with my own hands collapsed, which in turn exacerbated my depression. After this year, I began to acknowledge that there is a core of great quality in my life, and this core is related to literary and artistic creation. Although I am not very happy most of the time, as long as this core is functioning, my life can continue to operate. I have long known of this core's existence, but starting from the time I chose data and business over literature for the sake of future "financial prospects" over a decade ago, I have been deliberately avoiding that core, even wishing for its disappearance—at that time, I believed that an emotional core was unsuitable for an extremely rational business environment.
I began to write novels again, polishing the stories word by word, and fortunately, the talent that had been neglected for so long had not been taken away. I also tried to transform some inspirations into narrative games, which made me realize that the programming and marketing skills I had mastered still had considerable utility. "Existential Psychotherapy" mentions that "creativity" is an effective factor in alleviating the sense of meaninglessness, and creation itself can also bring about self-discovery. Perhaps I can find the meaning of life here.
Thus, my decision to choose such a plain life is not a response to the external torrent but rather a compliance with the flow of the stream deep within my heart. Whenever I realize the shadows of others projecting around me, making me feel envy, regret, and wavering, I return to that stream that belongs solely to me, touch my core, and recall who I truly am. This memory, stemming from the beginning of life, gently dispels the projections of others, forming a radiant arc of protection like the aurora in front of me.
What Is the Meaning of These Confusions and Pains?#
Finally, I want to talk about what the meaning of these confusions and pains is. Or what do they want to tell me as they occur in my life journey?
When sharing experiences of depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders online, I occasionally encounter comments like "pretentious," "whining," and "forcing new words to express sorrow." Everyone's growth path is different; it's like a rectangular prism that layers over time. People tend to observe the current cross-section in isolation and make direct judgments, ignoring how this prism has evolved over years or even decades to present this not-so-positive cross-section at the moment. Some people can live happily without overthinking, making money and enjoying life; this is a talent. But some seem to have to live in a twisted manner, as if there is no tension in life without that twist.
Seeing the cross-section also requires seeing the personal history that forms it
The process of human development from an embryo does not directly form our hands and feet; instead, it first forms a web-like structure similar to a duck's foot, where the fingers and toes are connected by a membrane to help stabilize the structure, and then the cells forming that part of the structure undergo mass apoptosis, ultimately forming our separate fingers and toes. This chaotic stage is inevitable; it is a necessary path for the embryo to develop into a complete human.
Just like I tried the model of "outsourcing non-core life," which was initially meant to alleviate depression, unexpectedly, after running smoothly for three years, it triggered my depression on a deeper level, bringing over a year of pain. But it was precisely in this collision that I confirmed my boundaries, helping me decisively bid farewell to a career path that was unsuitable for me. If you are also feeling confused, please cherish this feeling. When you feel anxious about it, you can say that you are growing or shedding "webbing," and that is why you feel pain—this pain will pass, and afterward, you will become a clearer, more stable person.
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