Sit in the mess

If you're new here, I'm David Kyle Choe. I write about the lessons I learn from building, practicing presence, and betting on myself.

If you're enjoying my updates, I'd love if you'd share with a friend that might also enjoy my writing. This year, I want to connect with more people who are building, failing, and thriving nonetheless.

My wife and I hit a financial milestone 8 months earlier than planned. This has had a bigger than expected impact on my mental space, specifically giving me some breathing room to ask myself "what do I want to do?"

Since December, I've been grinding on various side quests including AI-driven development but also consulting. I currently have four clients and a couple in the pipeline (on top of the day job lol). The work itself has been ok. Some clients are more interesting than others, some are easier, some are more challenging and require more time and effort. I didn't set out to do consulting this year, but have been blessed with these opportunities. If I'm being really honest, I'm not sure that beyond the money, I'm really interested in "building a consulting business". This is where things get muddy. Because we hit this financial milestone, increasing income, while great, is not necessarily the most important thing I need to do.

I've never really been in this situation before where money isn't the absolute number one driver of my decisions and how I spend my time. I like to make money, it's fun, but I think I have a real opportunity to think about how I make money.

I'm extremely thankful to be in this position and I'm equally confused. I started to feel a lot of anxiety and pressure to figure out my next move, to get things started, to make progress. I spoke with my good friend Amanda, and she encouraged me to just sit in the mess – and I'm taking this to heart.

Instead of thinking about my life as a series of accomplishments and financial milestones, what if I started thinking about it as a workshop? I listened to Noah Kagan's interview with Sam Parr this morning during my workout and Noah talked about this idea of "making waste." How we can envision ourselves as being inside a workshop with wood and dust everywhere and failed projects laying around. I feel like it's the perfect time to do just that.

In the last year alone I have generated a shit ton of "waste" around me: MacroAlts, PresentSelf, ChurchGivingGrader, and countless other ideas. Instead of letting the ideas sitting on my shelf haunt me and remind me of my lack of focus or failures, I can choose to see the lessons learned.

This concept of the workshop along side another concept of "open hands, open heart", which really is just about being present and open to whatever comes my way, are my guiding principles.

If I had to add some more ideals or guide rails around what's next I'd also include:

• Moving away from client services. While consulting can be great, it's still hand-to-hand combat. It's an extremely delicate art and science of balancing margin and effort. By working harder you effectively reduce the money you make and dilute your hourly rate. In the next idea, I'd love to do something that can make money without me.

Outside of that, I feel like I'm finally letting go of the particular shape of my next adventure. Having had been in startups and Silicon Valley culture for so long, I just assumed my business had to be some kind of technology startup – while it very might well be, it doesn't have to be.

This is how "open hands, open heart" shows up in practice.

I'm curious if anyone else is in a similar mind space and how you're processing.

Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts and keep up with my journey. Even though it's a small number of y'all, I'm so thankful to have folks in my corner.