My 2025: Living in a World Out of Order is a full-length work of narrative nonfiction. Through his own lived experiences and a first-person perspective, author Desolate Isle documents the year 2025 — a time that appeared stable on the surface yet churned with hidden undercurrents — and the violent unraveling of the era’s underlying “order”: international conflicts unresolved, economic structures in upheaval, and the quiet but profound reshaping of ordinary people’s destinies.
The story begins in an 8-square-meter makeshift room in Los Angeles, then extends into the institutional frontlines of asylum applications, detention, and interrogation — persistently questioning the meaning of personal dignity and survival. Driven by the “inner demon” of entrepreneurship and innovation, and the “dark force” of being perpetually misunderstood, the author edges ever closer to the reality of financial hardship and identity anxiety. Through a journey of dramatic highs and lows, he travels across 15 countries and regions — including the United States, China, Southeast Asia, Canada, and Japan — encountering and conversing with nearly 70 individuals: undocumented immigrants, low-wage workers, entrepreneurs, academics, Vietnam War veterans, and government officials from multiple countries.
The book offers calm observations on capital and employment structures, reflections on the global political climate, and unflinching portrayals of the struggles, hesitations, and resistance of marginalized communities. It captures how vivid, living human beings are swept up and transformed by the tides of the times — and how each fights to carve out a path forward.
The author himself is an entrepreneur, inventor, engineer, and sociologist. Even in his darkest moments of survival crisis, he maintains the capacity to observe and render a vast gallery of human portraits: ordinary people navigating the grey zones of society, entrepreneurs who soared and then fell swiftly, officials enduring and suffering within the cracks of the system. Individual fate and global forces interweave throughout the book, forming a cross-section of social reality in an “age of disorder.” There are no grand proclamations about history or politics — instead, from the perspective of someone living within it all, the book illuminates the structural shifts of our world for a wider audience.
