“What are you doing now?” — A question I’ve been asked a lot lately, and one I’m still figuring out the honest answer to.


In October 2025, I stepped away from my role as a Staff ML Engineer. No dramatic exit, no grand plan. I had been running hard for over a decade — IBM, a part-time PhD, a startup where I built the ML system from scratch — and I needed to stop.

So I did.

I told myself a year. October 2025 to October 2026. Whether I actually stick to that timeline — well, we’ll see. For now, I’m calling it a sabbatical: part travel, part research, part figuring out what comes next.


Why now?

I’ve written before about being a contrary. About doing things that don’t follow the conventional script. Starting a PhD at 30 while working full-time wasn’t normal. Leaving a stable career to join a Series B startup as their first ML hire wasn’t normal either.

Taking a deliberate pause at a time when the AI field is moving faster than ever? Some would say that’s exactly the wrong time to step away. I’d argue it’s exactly the right time. The field is shifting so fast that being heads-down in a product roadmap might actually be the worst way to see where it’s going. A sabbatical gives me the room to explore it fully — without the constraints of a sprint cycle or a quarterly OKR.

The honest reason is simpler than it sounds: I was depleted. Not burnt out in the way people throw that word around, but genuinely running on empty after years of compounding intensity. I could feel myself making decisions from exhaustion rather than clarity, and I didn’t like where that was heading.

There’s also something that happens somewhere between 35 and 45 — a lot of us start asking “what is this all for?” after a decade of building credentials and climbing ladders. I don’t think that’s a crisis. I think it’s normal. I’d rather take the question seriously now than spend another decade avoiding it.

There were also family obligations that demanded my full attention — not the kind I’ll get into here, but the kind that remind you what actually matters and what can wait.


🤔 There is a version of me that would have immediately jumped into the next job. That version would have been fine on paper and miserable in practice. I decided not to be that version.

What am I actually doing?

Traveling. My family and I took time to be somewhere other than in front of a screen. We brought our daughter to China — the place I grew up and spent over 20 years of my life — and watching her experience that world for herself was one of the best parts of this whole journey. We stayed long enough that we had to disenroll her from school. That’s how serious we were about it. My wife and I also got to revisit hobbies we’d put on hold for years — the kind of things that quietly disappear when you’re deep in the grind of careers and parenting.


Playing Chinese chess in Chongqing
City walk in Chongqing — playing Chinese chess on the street and enjoying a cup of tea by myself. It had been so long since I'd done anything like this that it almost felt unfamiliar.

Beyond that, I’m researching. Agentic AI systems are where I’m spending most of my intellectual energy right now. The field is moving fast enough that spending focused time studying it — on my own terms — feels like the right investment.

I’m exploring technical writing. I’ve always enjoyed it, going back to the blog posts about my PhD journey and web development learning. Whether that turns into something more structured remains to be seen.

While traveling in China, a consulting opportunity found me through friends. I helped them work through an ML problem, and I realized how much I enjoyed it — not just the technical challenge, but seeing someone walk away with a real solution. I’m open to more of that.


😎 A sabbatical isn't retirement. It's a deliberate pause to make the next chapter better than it would have been without the pause.

What’s next?

I’ve rebuilt myself before. Liberal arts undergrad to a PhD in machine learning. First Staff-level ML hire at a startup, building the entire system from scratch. The pattern has always been the same: pick a hard problem, grind through the learning curve, come out the other side with something real.

This sabbatical is no different. I’m investing the time now so whatever comes next is built on a stronger foundation.

More to come.