About loneliness
In the two minutes it took to heat dinner, I recognized the loneliness behind a feeling of emptiness: a moment of learning to connect outward and find peace within.
A personal notebook · Since 2024
关于生活、物理,和一些想法。
I’m Zhiyuan Xi, a physics PhD student at Penn State. Here I write about life as it happens, things I’m trying to understand, and the occasional bit of physics.
Explore the writingIn the two minutes it took to heat dinner, I recognized the loneliness behind a feeling of emptiness: a moment of learning to connect outward and find peace within.
When grand narratives no longer give life meaning, how does an individual face the void? Starting from the perplexities of modernity, an attempt to find a place for life to rest.
A personal record of installing Quantum ESPRESSO on Windows with WSL, connecting VS Code, and trying the supplied test suites.
Finding a summer rhythm for research
With fewer distractions, summer is a good time to focus on learning and thinking. A note on building research habits and keeping up momentum.
Living, loving, and creating with all my strength
Snow on the way to dinner brought some recent thoughts into focus: stepping outside the comfort of taking things casually, bringing more passion to living, loving, and creating.
Love amplifies sorrow, and happiness too. On the constructive force love brings, and feelings that words cannot quite hold.
Longing in the snow and looking back on the semester
Christmas snow, missing someone across the Pacific, and a few thoughts on the rhythm of studying and living this semester.