Hey, welcome. I'm starting this newsletter as a way to document my thoughts and share updates with friends, family, and anyone curious about what I'm up to. Kind of like shareholder letters, but for my life.
This past semester has been a bit different for me. A lot more reflective and intentional. So I want to share what that looked like, what I've been learning, and what I've been up to recently.
For the past couple years, I've been in go-go-go mode. High grades and extracurriculars, along the usual path. I was doing the whole high-achieving Asian kid thing perfectly. And it worked. But recently, I hit a wall. Not because things got harder, but because I actually had to make a decision. What major? What internship? What career path? And I realized I had no idea what I actually wanted.
Over the summer, I shipped ColdDMBlueprint.com, my first real "technical" project. I vibecoded the whole thing after not having a traditional internship. Going from barely knowing how to code to building a fully functional website was huge for me. Seeing people actually use it was the coolest feeling, and it gave me confidence that I can learn and ship things on my own.
But then what? That's where I got stuck.
So this semester became something a bit different. Like a small pause or a reset.
I needed time to sit with my thoughts. To separate what I actually wanted from what I thought I should want. The high-achieving playbook works until you realize you've been optimizing for someone else's definition of success.
I joined a book club with friends where we converse about deeper topics and offer advice to each other. I went inactive in my fraternity. I genuinely enjoyed being part of it, but I needed space. I joined buildillinois, a startup org on campus, to be around people with similar interests in the entrepreneurship space. I got back into running, started lifting consistently, started cooking for myself. And I finally got to take all business classes instead of gen eds, and for the first time, what I was learning actually felt relevant.
The common thread across all of this was creating an environment around myself where I could slow down and figure out what I care about.
Here's what I've learned so far: I need creative work.
I've always liked having well-defined rules and processes. But there's this part of me that's always loved creating things. Building huge fight scenes with Legos as a kid. Designing entire fake shoe lines. Building Minecraft worlds and elaborate hand-drawn maps. I need some sort of creative outlet where I have control over what I'm making, where I can design and implement things that are new.
Creative work gives me energy. From past experience, I've realized that having a creative outlet has always been a positive in my life. I don't want to be stuck doing something that drains me.
The problem is figuring out where exactly that fits in a career. There are so many options: majors, internships, industries, roles. And the more I learn about what's possible, the harder it gets to choose. It's not exactly a fear of failure. It's fear of committing to one thing and wondering if I should've picked another.
So instead of taking action, I've been stuck. Planning instead of doing.
I don't have everything figured out quite yet, and I likely won't for a while, but I have more clarity than I did a few months ago. I know I need creative work. I know I want to be in environments that allow me to learn, around ambitious people who push me. And I know I need to start doing instead of just planning.
This newsletter is step one. It's my commitment to documenting the journey and staying accountable to myself.
More updates coming soon. Thanks for being here. 🫶🏻
-Max