For almost a decade, I studied and worked as an architect. It wasn’t just a job. It was my entire identity.

All my friends were architects. My sense of worth came from it. I had fought hard to earn that title, so I wore it proudly.

But the truth was, I didn’t like being an architect. I liked the idea of it, the prestige, the validation, the admiration, but not the day-to-day reality.

So, at 28, after asking myself one too many times if this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, I quit. It wasn't an easy choice, but as the saying goes: 

Easy choices, tough life. Tough choices, easy life.

The illusion of certainty 

When you say, “I’m an architect” or “I’m a designer,” your brain finds comfort in certainty. It builds walls to protect that label, but those same walls prevent growth.

“Creative.” “Rigid.” “Introvert.” “Perfectionist.” These words can start as useful descriptions, until they harden into rules:

• “I’m an architect, not a marketer.”

• “I’m a designer, not a founder.”

• “I’m creative, not analytical.”

The more tightly you hold on to what you think you are, the less space you leave for what you could become.

Add to that the speed of change that is happening in the world. 

For most of human history, identity was stable. You picked a craft, or one was assigned to you, and that defined your life. The world moved slow enough so that mastery could last a lifetime. That's not the case anymore.

Technology and AI are evolving faster than any discipline can. Professions that once promised stability now demand reinvention.

In a world where everything updates monthly, identity turns into a liability. The ability to unlearn becomes more important than the ability to master.

Connecting the dots

After quitting architecture and teaching myself UX design, I got my first job at Oracle. It looked like success on paper, but it didn’t feel right. The corporate world felt too large, too slow, too disconnected from meaning.

So I left, again. This time for startups.

Working in small, driven teams reminded me what creative energy felt like. That sense of ownership, that proximity to the result, that’s where I belonged.

​Over time, that path led me to co-found Jujuc​, a subscription-based toy rotation service helping parents choose the right toys for their child’s developmental stage and keep a clutter-free home.

It began as a service design challenge, then turned into a business problem, then marketing, logistics, customer experience. That’s when I realised the most important lesson:

Everything is connected.

You can have the most beautiful visual identity, but if the product fails, or no one hears about it, or support is bad, nothing else matters.

That’s why I wear many hats at Jujuc. Not because I glorify hustle, but because reality doesn’t care about my preferred label.

The generalist advantage

I’ve never been able to stay fixated on one interest for too long, and for years I saw that as a flaw, but now I see it as leverage.

In a world increasingly automated by AI, connecting disciplines, making trade-offs, translating context, orchestrating systems, is one of the few skills that compounds.

AI will continue to take over repetitive work, but orchestration, judgment, and storytelling remain human. AI also dissolves the edges between roles: designers write, marketers prototype, engineers think about product, strategists ship.

Use it to compress learning time, to simulate, to automate drudgery, then spend the saved bandwidth on judgment, narrative, and relationships. Those are the things that still matter.

Be water

Identity must evolve into awareness. Who you are should be a byproduct of what you’re learning, not a cage built from what you once mastered.

If I’d stayed “an architect,” I would’ve missed the work I love doing. If I’d hung to “product designer,” I would’ve ignored distribution and cash flow, and wondered why “great design” didn’t save a weak business.

If these years of reinvention taught me anything, it’s this: The less you hold on to an identity, the more room you have to grow.

"Be like water, my friend." - Bruce Lee

See you next time,
Andrei