“Light your heart or set your ass on fire.” I made this up. Sounds crude, but it’s the realest thing I know about how we move through life.

Purpose is the Point

The meaning of life? Purpose. It takes many forms — survival, wealth, family, adventure. You’ve probably been living with purpose your whole life without noticing: school, work, saving for that trip. Purpose doesn’t make life easy. It makes it worth living.

Two Types of Fire

We all need fire to move. The question: where does yours come from?

Internal fire pulls you out of bed before the alarm. It’s the problem you can’t stop thinking about, the craft you’d do for free. This fire lasts because it’s yours. For me, it was chasing a Cornell MBA and landing at Amazon — less about money, more about proving I was good enough. I networked and prepped interviews weekly for a year straight. No breaks.

External fire is different. Deadlines. Bosses. Fear of falling behind. It works, but it burns you from the outside in. School, career, marriage, kids — depending on how you look at it, most of life runs on external fire. Especially in Asian societies, where expectations never stop. The funny thing? Once I got that Amazon job, my internal fire died. All that was left was external.

Finding Your Fuel

I ran on external fire for years. Hit targets. Collected achievements. But I was always tired, always questioning if this was really what I wanted.

Truth is, most people never find their internal fire. That’s normal. It took me 3 years of exploring to find mine again.

It’s always been:

  • Writing and sharing my thoughts, even if no one reads
  • Building software, even if no one uses it
  • Supporting the people I care about
  • Travel. Lots of it.

The Hard Truth

Finding your internal fire doesn’t make life easier. It makes it harder. When you care deeply, failure stings more. When the work is personal, criticism cuts deeper.

But there’s a difference between hard and draining. Running toward something fills you up. Running away from something empties you out.

Don’t stop finding your Internal Fire

This blog is the start of many things driven by my internal fire. This will be were I share about my writings and software. It took me a good 3 years to find my purpose and start this.