Trusting the Plot Twist

Last Friday was my last day at MagicBlocks, an AI SaaS company I’ve been with for the past 1,5 years.

I’d be lying if I said that this transition is easy. MagicBlocks has been a place for me to express myself, go down the rabbit hole of AI, learn from the leaders, work with my wonderful team, and be in awe almost every week of AI’s development and how it translates into solutions within the company.  

Over the past 30 days, I have had time to process my emotions, contemplate the meaning of work as an identity, and start a journey to rediscover myself: what do I really love doing, and which part of ‘work’ lights me up the most? Of course, being me, I included Human Design, Gene Keys, Bazi, all different kinds of ancient technologies/modalities to recalibrate and use AI to dive deep even more, drill the parts of who I am that I need to understand more. It has been an amazingly helpful exercise for me.

I’ve rebuilt my website and blog, created a portfolio, started a new spiritual YouTube channel, attended Build Sessions, created several apps with AI (Cursor and Claude), gone to libraries, read tons of books (“Why Losing Your Job Could be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You” by Eleaor Tweddell is a great one), and reconnected with friends and colleagues who have been supportive in giving me encouragement, forwarding job listings, giving practical resume tips, connecting to recruiters and even offering consulting opportunities. All that I’ve been thankful for. 

I have also been tracking my expenses, finding a few subscriptions I forgot were even there, and learning to choose the bus instead of Uber and cook instead of Uber Eats lol. Carefully understanding my runway and the peace of mind that comes with that knowledge has inspired me to lean towards a creative life in this in-between season. 

As my friend Renece Brewster said, “You should read a book called ‘Creative Waiting’.” That’s a book that I launched last year lol. She’s right. I definitely need to re-read my own book!

From my exploration so far, I’ve found it energising to work with AI tools. I’ve always been a problem solver, and I love using technology to solve those problems (that’s why I was a Founder for over 15 years in Indonesia).

Now with AI, it’s even more exciting to work on problems. You can build an automation or an app in an afternoon (and maybe finalise it for production in a few weeks) that would have taken a whole development team months to ship in the past.

The thing people get wrong about AI tools, though, is thinking the tool is the point. It isn’t. The human behind it is.

I’ve been running “Build with Her: AI-Powered Personal Brand” workshops across Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney with Her Tech Circle, introducing AI tools to 150+ women in technology. They told me I’ve made it look easy to build, and they use the tools they’ve learned to build something completely different from what I have in mind. It’s mind-blowing how much expansion could happen when humans collaborate and use AI to progress.

My next role, whether it’s full-time, fractional, or consulting, will sit inside the intersection of what I genuinely love:

• AI implementation and education, 
• growth and inbound marketing systems, including SEO/AEO/GEO, content engineering, social media marketing, and founder-led + team-led marketing (thought leadership), and last but not least, 
• creative writing and storytelling that have been my soul core blueprint as an author of 34 books.  

What’s Next

I’m checking for new jobs daily and applying for the roles that align with me. While in the process of getting that new role, I will do these things in my daily life:

• Create. I came across the concept of ‘create before consume’ in the Tiny Experiments community discussion, and I really like it. It’s easy to get trapped in doom-scrolling or trash-tv-maxxing when you’re in the in-between period. You have tons of time that you didn’t have before. Of course, you can still indulge, but you can earn it as a reward after creating something. And that’s exactly my plan. Creating can mean writing, journaling, making video tutorials on AI, making bad art, or cooking new dishes (I’m currently learning which Australian fish I can cook with Indonesian spices), etc. 
• Connect. Connecting or reconnecting with my networks is probably the most important thing to do in times like these. I found them to be inspiring. I’ve started a monthly coworking ritual with a friend who’s a Founder. Attending a workshop with a build buddy can also be more exciting, as we can bounce ideas off each other. 
• Experiment. This part excites me the most because I love being a detective of defects. To find a problem in either my life or others’ (can be individuals or companies), create some hypotheses, and set up a structured experiment with a measure of results. One of the experiments that I’m thinking of doing is to ‘live by design’, to religiously follow my Human Design type and strategy and hope to have an aligned life.   
• Build. The last bit will be a natural progression of the experimentation. If a tool needs to be built to solve problems, I’ll build it, mostly using AI.  
• Learn. The learning will be both in energy and practical upskilling. In the energy part, I will constantly read books on raising my energy level, manifestation and similar spiritual-type books. In the practical upskilling part, I’ll learn things to complement what I already know. It can be learning more about ads/performance marketing, diving deep into workflow automation with Make.com or n8n, and maybe finally installing Claude Code (I’m still mildly ‘traumatised’ by the C++ console in my uni era lol).

In the spirit of building and learning in public, I’ll share what I’m building and creating in the posts ahead. Come with me if any of this resonates. And if you’re in your own in-between season right now, please know you’re not alone. 

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Thanks to Lavinia Iosub, Christin Chong and Fei-Ling Tseng for being my writing buddies in creating this post.