This winter break, three things came crashing down on me at the same time:

School assignments and placement exams — must be completed.

AIVA’s overseas launch — must be delivered.

My personal website and portfolio — must be fully built.

I knew that finishing all of this in 26 days would not be easy.

But for a 14-year-old builder, there is no such option as waiting until I’m ready.

Just a few days after the project started, the first obstacle arrived.

The network environment was suddenly restricted, and the services I originally used could no longer continue. I had no choice but to purchase servers myself and build the environment from scratch. When I finally got it running that day, I let out a sigh of relief.

The next morning, it failed again.

I switched solutions, reconfigured everything, and got it running again that night.

On the third day, it broke again.

I bought another server, rebuilt everything, got it running for a while—then it failed again. After three consecutive solutions collapsed, I began to question:

Was it a hardware issue? A configuration error? Or was the IP being restricted?

That period happened to be the Spring Festival. In previous years, I would put up couplets with my mom and prepare the New Year’s Eve dinner. But this year, all my time was trapped in this endless loop—from early morning to late at night, constantly trying, failing, reviewing, and rebuilding.

My mom reminded me many times that my eyes couldn’t handle it and my back wouldn’t hold up. She said my entire face was flushed from the strain. I knew she was worried, but I couldn’t stop. I knew too clearly that once the project rhythm was broken, there would be no chance to complete the launch after school started.

Finally, the network stabilized.

Then, the servers started getting attacked.

After fixing one vulnerability, it would be breached again within hours. After one round of reinforcement, new risks quickly emerged. For three consecutive days, I iterated constantly between attack and defense, until I completed a systematic security hardening, and only then did things truly stabilize.

And what I was facing was never just technical challenges.

A mountain of winter assignments, critical placement exams, a website built from scratch, and an overseas project that had to launch on time.