#176 - Owning Your Story, Out Loud

I’m a big fan of Ben Thompson, the tech analyst behind Stratechery. I don’t agree with all his takes, but I do love his folksy, midwestern humor and the depth of his writing. So when a guy who usually dissects chip wars and tech regulation posts, “Amazing video” -- even about a K-pop song -- I click:

Which is how I found myself, late Friday night, after a long week -- engrossed in this delightful interview of songwriters EJAE and Mark Sonnenblick. They co-wrote the hit song 'Golden' for Netflix's smash movie, KPop Demon Hunters. EJAE also sings 'Golden', and is the voice of the movie's protagonist, Rumi.

If you haven't heard it, by the way, it is one heck of a catchy tune. Every time it hits our speakers, I yell: "Omg, the hook, you guys! The hook is SO good!". [Cue eye-rolls from the kids 🙄]

As a story of creative collaboration, and as a window into the process of writing a hit song, the interview is great. It will resonate even more with anyone who -- like most reading this newsletter! -- knows the challenges of working across timezones, languages, and cultures.

But what really makes the clip sing is the ending. At around 21:00, EJAE starts to reflect on the long hours, the false starts, the songs that go nowhere. The flashes of inspiration followed by long stretches of doubt.

Then her tone shifts. Her voice gets softer, and the mask starts to fall away when she brings up her former self -- "little EJAE" -- who had worked so hard to make it as a KPop star:

The line stops you. You can almost hear an identity being mourned -- the version of herself who trained under brutal conditions, sacrificed everything, but didn't get her ending. Instead of performing on stage, she's behind the scenes now, writing for others.

EJAE tears up, takes a deep breath, and acknowledges:

She's writing about her own journey through Rumi's story. What she's creating isn't just craft; it's recovery. She's not erasing her former self, she's honoring her. Writing and singing 'Golden' became the bridge between who she was and who she's becoming.

Then she shares something her mom used to tell her in Korean -- 말이 씨가 된다 (mari ssiga doenda) -- literally, "Words become seeds."

The phrase seems to have more than one translation -- some cautionary ("watch what you say"), others more optimistic ("you speak things into existence"). But it's EJAE's that brings it home: words don't just describe our world, they seed it. They can create new meaning, new possibility, new identity.

In the end, the clip isn't just about K-pop. It's about finding grace for our former selves -- and speaking our way into who we’re becoming next.

Reclaiming your story

I got to record a podcast this week, and the host had done some research: he found a ​LinkedIn post that I wrote​ three years ago. We spent a while unpacking it, and its theme reminded me of the EJAE clip I’d just watched.

I wrote the post just around the time of Google’s first big layoff in January, 2023:

The post was an ode to those whose lives had just been upended. One day you’re a Googler, with all the safety, status, and belonging that connotes. The next -- you’re not, and those things feel lost.

Soon after, I ran a storytelling workshop in Singapore for impacted Googlers, designed to guide the advice in the rest of the post: that if you don’t have time to pause, you want to start with your story.
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The workshop was for folks who did not have the luxury of time; they had to jump right on the job search horse. So we dove into story structures, and interview techniques -- and started to write.

As we did, I started to appreciate that what we were doing wasn’t just tactical. That for all the magic storytelling offers around awareness, intent, connection, and empathy, it is also an act of empowerment and reclamation.

The exercise was a way to reclaim the meaning they had, in fact, experienced in their roles. Meaning that risked being erased with their job titles and email addresses. Meaning they would need to re-rediscover in order to network and interview well. We weren’t just writing better versions of their history; we were reframing it, re-authoring their stories to tease out what mattered -- and how to carry it forward.

Of course, this transcends Googlers and layoffs. It’s about the need we all have to find meaning as our circumstances -- or identities -- shift. Those identities changing faster than ever at work means that our stories have to keep up.

I’ve been teaching this for years -- in my consulting, in my newsletter, in my workshops -- urging people to write their story, practice it, get it to a place where it feels genuine. I’ve always believed the power starts with internalizing your own narrative first. That’s what makes it land authentically, whether over a coffee, or with a hiring manager.

But what I hadn’t fully appreciated -- until recently -- is that there’s another layer entirely. That the benefit of story doesn’t stop at writing it, or even refining your delivery. There's also something about hearing your story -- about the way it sounds when it finally echoes back to you -- that's almost therapeutic, or healing.

Hearing your own story

This past June, during a visit to Los Angeles, I was toiling on a newsletter; nearing the end of the issue, but also the end of my tether. I needed a change of scenery after staring at my computer, so I shut it down and laced up my Hokas to go for a run.

Before I left, I sent myself a “test email”, thinking I could noodle over the issue as I went. I do it every week to preview the way an issue will look to a reader: how it flows, how the photos land, whether a gif loads. It's helpful, but I’d only ever done it for visuals. This time, on a lark -- and because I didn't want to be heads down in my phone as I ran -- I asked Siri to read the email out loud to me.

It was this one, about some of my career pivots and misadventures. Somehow, listening to what I'd just written gave me the oddest feeling, as I ran in that morning's chilly-for-LA air. I mean, I’d written and read all 158 of my issues by that point -- but I’d never heard one. Not like this.

Mind you, it wasn’t even my voice I was hearing! It was a machine's: Siri's robotic, male, British-accented voice. Still, there was something so soothing about hearing not my words or copy -- but the career stories I was telling. About hearing my "writing voice" aloud.

At one point, I actually had to stop the jog, and for once, it wasn't because of my stamina. It was that hearing my twists and turns, my gaffes and wins, out loud was hitting in a way that writing and reading them never had.

Two days later I tried it again, with another issue. Same robo-voice, same mispronounced words -- same effect. It turned out that hearing my own stories out loud was therapeutic. It was permission. Grace for a younger Aki. A gentle way of saying, It’s OK. You did your best. It's all OK.

Say it out loud

Over the course of a career, we move through so many -- often overlapping -- identities: student, striver, leader, doer, parent, founder, builder. Each version serves us for a time, but modern work rarely gives us the space to pause, notice, and honor those transitions, and the way they build on one another. We just keep moving.

Then something forces a stop -- a layoff, a burnout, a loss, a shift in priority-- and suddenly, the identity we’ve been living in bursts. The meaning and belonging we once felt can vanish.

Story is how we get it back. By taking the time to tell it -- first to ourselves, then out loud -- we take back agency over the experience. We re-assert control. We uncover the meaning that work, or loss, or speed may have obscured.

Storytelling isn’t identity repair so much as clarity and reclamation -- an act of awareness and empowerment. And in the context of work, it’s not just therapeutic -- it's strategic. It's leverage. Claiming your own story allows you to bring others -- colleagues, audiences, networks, interviewers -- with you.

This is why I'm running a group-based workshop, Most Important Story. Whether you’re looking for a new job, thinking about the next one, or pondering a new career phase altogether, we’ll write, tell, and -- this time -- hear our stories. We’ll create the space most of us never get to reflect, to tell our stories out loud, and to listen to what they’re telling us.

It will be a paid, multi-session workshop, built for small groups so we can go deep. If that sounds like something you’d want to be part of, or you want to learn more, get in touch.

Because words do become seeds. And often, the first thing they grow -- is us.

Thanks for reading and exploring with me -- and have a great week! 🙏

Aki