The person I must become

closing a chapter in order to begin a new one

As of 18th of July 2014, I will no longer be “working to help you tell beautiful stories @Medium”, a line which has existed in my twitter bio for over the past year. It seemed fitting to me to write this on the platform I very much loved and will continue to love.

Working at Medium is a privilege of a lifetime for me. I would go on vacations as if it was the most painful thing to do, to have to endure the separation of the work that I had loved so intensely. If you have met me in person, you would have experienced the way I cannot seem to stop talking about Medium and how it would change the way people tell, share and consume stories.

Today, my feelings and faith in this platform have not shifted a single bit, and it has only strengthened over time.

Yet I have learned a powerful lesson in recent times, that there is a difference between loving something and being called to do something. One of my favorite Medium stories is Elle Luna’s The Crossroads of Should and Must, which does an incredible job of illustrating this:

Must is who we are, what we believe, and what we do when we are alone with our truest, most authentic self…we are listening to our calling from within, from some luminous, mysterious place.

Being a part of the team at Medium was everything I could ever wish for as a designer, except that I didn’t expect a must for myself to slowly creep up on me. I differ from Elle Luna slightly, that I don’t neccessarily think I need to love what I must do. But what I must do must be done, because it is who I am, who I will become, what I will live for and what I will still choose to do, even if one day I stop loving it.

I am slowly starting to comprehend that there is something more powerful than loving one’s work, which is the fundamental, unshakable belief that this must exist or this must be who I must become.

It is also with humility that I understood that this company I love, will continue to flourish and scale great heights without me because of all the incredibly talented people behind it.

I had to break my own heart in order to make this decision, but I have to be where I must be.

I have loved publishing on Medium way before I knew I was going to work on it, and I am looking forward to being able to sit back and fully experience this platform as one of her most loyal readers and writers.

Perhaps now, I can finally express my true love and appreciation for this platform without the obvious bias that comes along with working on it.

Follow me on Medium to watch my new chapters unfold. ☺