I don’t think I have a tidy takeaway from this year. The honest version is: when your company pivots significantly, and you’re the sole designer, you absorb a lot of the disruption in ways that aren’t always visible to the rest of the team. Your past work quietly becomes legacy. Your role quietly becomes something different. And you have to figure out, largely on your own, how to feel about that and what to do with it.
I’m not bitter about VALK or the pivot. Companies have to make strategic decisions, and this one makes sense. The people I work with are good. The mission, in its new form, is real.
