Thomas is an NYC-based designer living in Brooklyn.

He writes, codes, designs a lot of different things, and loves taking photos + videos.

He's got the best friends and family supporting him through this journey, and he's always looking to meet new fabulous people to talk to. So!

If you'd like, you can say hello at me@thomasbyung.kim

Entrepreneurship

February 18, 2019

I never liked this word. Growing up, I always had something I was thinking up in my head that I eventually made some sort of chump change off of. But I always did things because they were fun, and didn’t feel like an actual job.

I remember being a freshmen in high school, my friend had given me his old Xbox that was broken and would only turn on with a red ring otherwise known as the “red ring of death.” Id never had an Xbox, but really wanted one because all of my friends played together, but at the time I couldn’t afford it nor did I want to ask for it, since our family finance wasn’t in the best shape.

I took the Xbox because I quickly googled to see if there was a fix. It was weird to me how the power would feed through, and the CD was audibly whirring, yet graphics wouldn’t display. Oddly enough, there was a solution, though not easy, it seemed like something worth trying even if it didn’t work. Then I would’ve taken apart an Xbox and gotten to see it’s guts. What other kid can say that often?

I remember successfully fixing it after a few trials. I went back to school that week and told my friends about it, only to discover that a ton of my other friends had the same problem, and I promised them that I would fix them for $20 (to cover the costs of a few things I had bought to fix my own) and eventually I was making a little bit of money just from doing this. People would say, “wow you’re like an entrepreneur!” When really I just wanted to do this to help my friend, and it seemed cool that somebody would pay for this.

I never liked this word entrepreneurship, or entrepreneur, just because to me, whenever I felt like I was doing something I loved unconditionally, with no monetary, social motives, it felt great - until someone put a job title on it for me. I think that this word puts a veil on the act of doing something you love and makes it seem bigger than what it actually is. Its really simple - people often step back from the daunting task of “starting something from scratch.” But really, all it is, is that you’re just doing something you love or are curious about, and you’re choosing to be extremely serious about it rather than toying around with statements that you continue telling yourself. Instead of “one day I want to” or “I really like doing this,” you can just directly apply yourself and go do just that. There are zero voices stopping you.

Do what you love, and do it very seriously.

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