This post is dedicated to you, Grandma.

I always liked lotus. It’s the Vietnamese national flower, and it blooms from mud. Lotus reminds me of strength, resilience, beauty against all odds.

Personally and professionally, this year has been a trying one for me. David got into an accident just before we were told that sponsorship can no longer exist on Hacker Noon. We decided to launch an equity crowdfunding to build our new infrastructure. Then, as soon as the campaign launched, my grandma got seriously ill, half way across the globe. She passed away before seeing me or David for the last time, and her great granddaughter for the first time.

Yet, I’ve found grace upon grace upon grace in these trying times.

David’s accident got me to rethink about how to dance that line between personal and professional. How much of our life are we willing to let out, as business owners? At the end of the day, we decided to be vulnerable and honest. People seem to relate to that. There’s no use in pretending that we are not real humans living this perfectly curated life whose only job is to hustle for and only for the business. Alexis Ohanian calls that hustle porn, and I cannot agree more. #stopwiththehustleporn

Being told we can no longer do sponsorship atop our site was hard to swallow, as it was our primary source of income. But it did lead to our best decision of the year yet: rejecting laughable buyout offers, low buyout offers or even kinda interesting buyout offers. Instead, we decided to bite the bullet and go with strategic investments. We are still a long way from being fully subscribed. But we are in such a better spot than we would have been had we continued with Medium’s infrastructure.

our total raise to date

My grandma’s death reminded me how short and fragile life is. And how precious it is that my grandpa is still alive and well, just enough to see his granddaughter. My grandma would never be able to do so. My dad, a professional violinist, dropped 100% of his daily commitments to nanny our daughter Norah. This allows us to work more hours a day than when we were able to in Colorado. And, after 2.5 years of being in the US, we finally go back to Vietnam, seeing how half way across the globe, community is thriving, tech is growing, and 75% of people who showed up to our event last Saturday have read Hacker Noon! I know my grandma would be so pleased to know all of these happened because of her!

2018 is coming to an end, and I want to remind myself this: choose the silver linings in trying times. You will see that you are beyond blessed.

Hanoi, Vietnam. 12/29/2018. Một ngày trời mưa.