We Move Media

Turning vision into reality part II

Dear team,

I am taking a leave from Thinktiv to focus full-time on HourSchool. HourSchool has been gaining lots of interests and traction since our beta launch last month. Balancing a full-time job and full-time school was hard, but balancing a full-time job and trying to build a business at the same time is impossible. “You can’t be a part-time entrepreneur”, as those would say. The amount of mental energy required to switch between tasks, the decision fatigue I was running into, and simply wanting to give HourSchool the time it deserves, this needs to happen. I feel it in my gut.

So uh, hi guys, I guess I’m officially a social entrepreneur now? Entrepreneurship is a loaded word. There are all sorts of hype and baggage that come with that term. They make me cringe so I don’t want to call myself an entrepreneur – it’s weird. All I really want is a way make things happen – the attitude of doing whatever it takes, the spirit of balancing passion and profit, or simply just having a container to hold our idea in. At around this time last year, I made the decision to leave my job to venture into this design world because I wanted to turn vision into reality. This year, here I am again, making another decision to leave my job to venture into this start-up world – because I want to continue to turn vision into reality. It seems like the logical next step.

My friends seriously inspire me and make me a better person. The day when I was having an internal debate whether to go for this or not, that was also the day when Kris was going on a plane, leaving a comfortable life behind, going to Tanzania, working on mobile technologies that are affecting the eradication of malaria, all of this and without knowing “the next step” when she returns home. I thought about the passion and perseverance I’ve seen in her for the last 2 years, and the answer as to whether I’m taking a big risk all of a sudden became a non-issue. Of course there is an inherent risk when you follow your passion, but perhaps there is an even bigger risk if you choose to not follow your passion.

Let’s just start looking at life in one year increments. Career is just a weird thing. It makes you feel like you have to have a defined path, work your way up, have funny titles, or be this one thing for the rest of your life. And when you don’t, the world makes you feel like you’re behind, different, and left out. I am really trying to get over that. These days I use the words “life work”. I have also started looking at these 1-year increments as my “work life”. Making decisions for the next 1-year feels awfully easier than “making the biggest career decision of my life”. So make small decisions, don’t make big decisions. I firmly believe all these 1-year work life pieces will probably somehow someday fit together into this life work of mine for which I won’t know until you know, later.

I’m so frigging proud that we are all taking steps working towards our life work. We have all taken different paths in which we feel are most appropriate for us. We’re no longer just reading about stuff, or saying we’re going to do stuff, but we’re actually doing it. Everyday. It’s just so awesome that we’ve successfully turned “I like the idea of this” into “I’m currently doing this”. I love the work I’m doing. I love being a designer.

Alright. That’s some August updates from Austin. Back to the battlefield

Love & peaches,
Ruby

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 1st, 2011 at 2:51 am and is filed under blog, featured, ruby ku. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.