There’s never a good time to leave

There’s never a good time to leave.

There’s always another project to finish. Another milestone coming up. Another reason to wait six months.

Maybe after this feature ships.

Maybe after the bonus.

Maybe after the kids are older.

Maybe after the mortgage feels less scary.

Maybe after I know exactly what I’m going to do next.

For a long time, I thought I needed some kind of certainty before making a big change.

But when I look back at my life, almost none of the decisions that changed me came with certainty.

They came with a leap.

And usually, the leap came first.

The clarity came later.

Keeping every burner on high

The last six years have been a lot.

There’s a theory called the Four Burners Theory, where you imagine your life as a stove with four burners: family, friends, health, and work.

The idea is that you can’t keep all four burners blazing at full heat indefinitely. At some point, something gets turned down.

And for the last six years, I feel like I’ve been standing in front of that stove trying desperately to keep everything on high.

Two kids.

Four moves.

Three deaths.

A sick parent.

An FBI case.

A layoff.

Years of interrupted sleep.

Health issues and unexplained pain.

A major home renovation that eventually became a complete rebuild.

A husband with an incredibly demanding career, which meant there were seasons when I was doing a lot of the parenting on my own.

And, of course, work.

There was always work.

Startups. Hypergrowth. Deadlines. Launches. Consulting. Side projects. Ideas I couldn’t stop thinking about.

I’ve spent most of my adult life being very good at doing more.

More projects.

More responsibilities.

More ideas.

More things squeezed into whatever tiny pockets of time remained.

And somehow, I kept finding another burner.

But eventually I started asking myself a different question:

What if the next phase of my life isn’t about learning how to do more?

What if it’s about creating enough space to hear myself again?

What CZI gave me

CZI gave me that space.

And that’s part of what makes leaving difficult.

I didn’t come here because I was running away from something.

I came here because, after years of early-stage startups, hypergrowth, chaos, and building things from zero, I needed something different.

CZI gave me something I didn’t realize I needed.

Stability.

A mission I cared about.

Wonderful people.

A commute measured in minutes.

And, most importantly, a different pace.

It taught me that slowing down wasn’t the same thing as losing momentum.

For perhaps the first time in my career, I started entertaining a thought that would have terrified a younger version of me:

What if I stopped for a while?

Not stopped being curious.

Not stopped creating.

Not stopped being ambitious.

Just stop optimizing every hour of my life for productivity.

CZI became a bridge between two versions of me.

And I’m incredibly grateful for that.

But bridges aren’t usually where you’re meant to stay.

The leap came first

I’ve been thinking a lot about the moments that changed my life.

And I noticed something.

Almost every transformational chapter started with me leaving something before I knew exactly what would replace it.

I left my first relationship after six crucial years.

It was terrifying.

What if I never love someone that way again?

What if no one loves me that way?

What if I never recreate those same precious moments?

You won’t.

Because that’s the thing about moving forward. You’re not supposed to recreate what you had.

Had I stayed because leaving felt scary, I wouldn’t have eventually built a life with a man who supports nearly every strange curiosity, ambitious idea, career experiment, and spontaneous project I bring home.

A man who accepts me simply for me.

Then there was the time I left ZURB, the design agency that taught me how to become a well-rounded product designer—to research, code, design, and own the whole thing.

I left with nothing lined up.

And leaving opened doors I couldn’t have predicted, including having my ideas and thoughts featured in places like Fast Company Design and The Next Web.

Then there was Zugata.

Leaving gave me the space to start Hathorway, my jewelry company, which helped me reconnect with traditional Vietnamese craft and explore sustainable consumerism.

And it helped me discover that I wasn’t only a designer.

I could be a founder.

I could lead sales and partnerships.

I could own events and marketing.

I could make physical things.

I could build a brand from nothing.

I could walk into rooms where I had no idea what I was doing and figure it out.

That same willingness to step outside the expected path eventually put me in rooms hacking and building alongside people who would go on to build companies like Figma, OpenSea, and OpenRouter.

None of that was part of some beautifully constructed five-year plan.

I just kept following curiosity.

And leaving enough room for serendipity.

Even my house followed the same pattern.

It took us three years to find and obtain our home. And after living in it for three years, we demolished it.

There was a period when the thing that had been our home simply didn’t exist anymore.

Just dirt and plans and an enormous amount of uncertainty.

I remember standing there filled with emotions.

But we didn’t demolish it because there was nothing good about the old house.

We demolished it because we could imagine what else it could become.

And eventually, we built the dream home I’m sitting in today.

Sometimes you have to dismantle something before you can see what else is possible.

The grass is green where you water it

I don’t believe the grass is greener on the other side.

I’ve never really liked that saying.

The grass is green where you water it.

You can build a meaningful life in a lot of places. You can make a job better. You can repair relationships. You can change your circumstances. You can choose gratitude instead of constantly chasing the next thing.

Leaving isn’t always the answer.

Sometimes staying is the brave thing.

But sometimes you’ve watered the grass.

You’ve cared for it.

You’ve watched it grow.

You’ve sat in it and appreciated what it gave you.

And you realize you’re simply curious about what else you could grow.

Maybe there’s another garden out there.

Maybe it’s messy.

Maybe nothing grows for a while.

Maybe I plant things. Maybe I plant the wrong things.

Or maybe it’s filled with things I couldn’t have imagined from where I’m standing today.

I won’t know until I make room to find out.

And strangely, that uncertainty doesn’t scare me the way it used to.

It excites me.

One year until 40

I have one year until I’m 40.

That’s been sitting with me.

Not because I think 40 is old.

Actually, quite the opposite.

I think I’m finally old enough to understand how quickly time moves.

There are things I want to do.

Things I want to build.

Ideas I have yet to explore.

I want to make things simply because I’m curious about them.

I want more afternoons with my children while they still think spending time with Mom is exciting.

I want to travel on a whim without counting PTO days.

I want to be bored.

I want to wander.

I want to play.

I want to follow ideas without needing to know where they’re going.

I want to have enough empty space in my life for a completely ridiculous idea to show up—and enough energy to follow it.

For most of my career, I’ve been very intentional about what I say yes to.

I’m beginning to understand that sometimes you have to be equally intentional about what you’re willing to let go of.

Because saying no to something good can create room for something you don’t even have language for yet.

Choosing the space

So I’m leaving a really good job.

Without another job lined up.

Without a perfectly optimized plan for what happens next.

And that’s intentional.

My next season is about rest, rejuvenation, and play.

But I don’t think rest means standing still.

Maybe rest is where some transformations begin.

Maybe play is how we discover things we never would have found if we were too busy being productive.

Maybe when you’re no longer sprinting toward the next milestone, you finally notice the paths you kept running past.

I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do next.

I’ll probably write.

I’ll probably design.

I’ll probably build something.

I’ll almost certainly start too many projects.

I’m still me, after all.

But for once, I don’t need to know.

When I look backward, some of the most extraordinary things in my life began during the uncomfortable space between what I knew and what came next.

So instead of trying to eliminate that space, I’m choosing it.

I’m making room for it.

I’m taking another leap.

Not because I know where I’m going to land.

But because I’ve learned that sometimes the only way to discover what your life could become is to give yourself enough space to find out.

Enough space to play.