It was something you had poured your heart into a few years ago. Never before had you spent so many late nights and weekends working on something. You didn't need hand-wavy inspirational quotes of "be consistent!" and "go for it" — you truly embodied consistency, intrinsic motivation, and brought something that inspired awe and truly touched the world.

But now, family or friends bring up, 'hey, what happened to x?' 'are you still working on it?' 'it had so much potential!,' and you can only shrink a little. A small part of you wonders what it would have been like if you kept at it, but at the same time, you know it wouldn't have been what you wanted. Sure, you look back on that time fondly, but your heart isn't in that anymore. You want to try to do something different this time, only, you don't really know what exactly that different thing is. But for some reason, there's this belief that the new people, content, and experiences you had been exposed recently to are pointing you to something bigger, something greater.

There have been many times in your life when you've started something from 0, whether it was a skill or a hobby project. And for some fortunate people, like you, you've seen that 0 turn into something much larger. This fortune eventually comes with a crossroad: *should I continue?*

Throughout my childhood, I've experienced a series of 0-to-x's where the x's have gotten progressively larger. With each 0-to-x, I gained key experiences that I believe now shape parts of my identity and ambition.

When I was in elementary school, I ran a gaming blog to post updates and cheats for the (now-deceased :')) MMO Fantage. This was the first time I recognized the publishing power of the internet, the fascination of controlling the contents on a link that anyone in the world could navigate to. It was also the first time I had a somewhat conscious awareness of the difference between being a content creator instead of a passive player in an ecosystem. My blog got around 50k hits which was quite exciting to me at the time.

Then, in middle school, I become involved with numerous Instagram pages. One was my main digital design page, where I posted my photo and video edits which consistently racked up 1k likes and grew to a following of 13k. I also "co-founded" (lmao) editing tutorial pages which grew to 50k followers and become involved with the sus underground "minion" network to scale pages with 100k followers.

Later, in high school, I grew a YouTube channel with my twin sister to a community of 400k with 80m views around the world. I had done brand deals and attended events I had dreamed of when I was younger, and most of all, grew more interested in the passion economy that was evolving on the internet.

Then I went to college. I actually entered my first year at the peak of my YouTube channel and the peak of COVID, so I was still busily making videos in between engineering prereq classes. But when I moved to campus, time for my YouTube channel diminished more and more as I began to grasp new things: building in tech, startup culture, and *gasp* socializing. And so for a long time, I found myself just actively exploring new things, experiencing yc mindsets and builder communities for the first time. Meanwhile, my YouTube channel was being neglected.

I felt guilty for a while, but I write this post in recognition of a couple of things:

I would not trade the immense amount of personal growth I had in the time I was not making YouTube videos

Every time I went on to the bigger x, there was a hiatus / a period of self-investment that equipped me for the next adventure

I actually took a couple of hiatuses in my YouTube journey (aka I was not making videos for 4 years straight). After each hiatus was a new 'golden age' on my channel when I came back more refreshed and just when I thought I had reached the limit of my target audience, I found the audience was a lot more expansive than I thought

When I left my Instagram page I made a goodbye post about wanting to "focus on my own life" lol

This leads to the question: how long should this period of self-investment be? When do you know that it is sufficient for the next adventure?

The mindset and ideas and unique experiences from each previous adventure carried on and to this day, form a unique thesis for the way I approach my life and ambitions

When looking at a lot of creators/builders that I respect, I find it is the inclination towards consistent, obsessive work (what some may call "track record" but I think goes beyond technical projects) that oftentimes manifest in childhood (like Andrej Karpathy's Cubing YouTube videos) that makes the difference

If "history tends to repeat itself," can we say the same thing about humans? Do we need to have an stupidly unwavering belief in ourselves to make the leaps others don't?

Stakes get higher as you get older, and now, I'm making career decisions based on tendencies from my youth. Currently, my mind points me to startups largely due to the passion-driven and obsessive nature of the work. Some can view this as incredibly risky and insensible. But what is life without a series of progressively bigger bets on yourself?

I sort of view continuing previous projects as a linear function, where you know if you do a, b, and c, you'll be able to sustain growth and receive predictable returns. But these new 0-to-xs are like e^(x-100), only, you're not sure if you're gonna make it past x=100. It might just go to 0. But there's the possibility of that exhilarating growth, and that's what's amazing.

You will never completely give up everything you did in the past in order to do everything you will do in the future. The best, and worst parts, of yourself today have all evolved from those experiences. But take the leap and bet on the next 0-to-x in your life.