On my own timeline

On leaving corporate to start my own creative studio, and a year of trying so far.

Day 1 of a bucket list trip to Lisboa, 11 years after the start of my design career.

There’s a particular kind of clarity that comes from being told “no.”

Not the sting of it, though that’s real too, but what’s underneath once you’ve sat with it long enough. Specifically, the relief. Because I am human, and like most humans, I carry a deep wish to belong, to be accepted, to be seen as enough. And for a long time, I kept trying to be more of what was expected, hoping that would change things.

At some point, I realized how incredible it is to be told “no,” so I can be redirected towards a life worth living. To be relinquished from the confines and definitions of who I am “supposed to be.”

So this year, I started & luo studio.

The initial plan

I’d had the plan for a long time. When I was 25 and freelancing for the first time, I mapped it out: go back in-house, absorb as much as I could, be out again by 30. Maybe start my own studio.

Then COVID happened. Then heartbreak, health, and healing. Life, basically.

I knew I wanted to leave years before I actually did. I wanted to work on hard problems in environments where collaboration is intentional, where decisions get made because they’re right, not because of who’s in the room. I wanted to design with people, not around them. To move things from ambiguity to clarity, and actually see that happen.

But I stayed. Not because I was afraid, but because I was living my life. I was healing. I was taking care of myself. Certain things needed to happen first, and the job made them possible.

What I’ve had to work through (with therapy, meditation, and intentional practice on my own and with community) is accepting that I wasn’t “behind.” My goals were always flexible based on the information I had at the time. The plan was never lost. I just needed to feel more ready.

And I kept waiting for some external signal that it was time, some moment of obvious clarity. It never came. What came instead was a slow accumulation of knowing that not making a decision was also a decision, and that I’d been making it long enough.

For me, what finally made it feel possible was having enough savings, enough signal that there was demand for what I do, and enough willingness to actually try. When those three things aligned, I chose.

I’m also still unlearning some things. In certain environments, you’re taught to make your work visible for the next review cycle…that influence comes from authority, from being seen in the right rooms. What I’m finding my way back to is the other kind of influence: the kind that’s earned through trust, through curiosity, and the love of real craft.

What happens when you get to step back and just design? When success is whether something actually worked for the person using it? I’m remembering what that feels like. It’s slower in some ways, but exactly what I need.

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How it’s all come together, so far

What’s funny is that from the outside, people probably think I left my career in tech entirely to pursue a path of creativity solely through community events. But none of this is new.

The design work is still very much here. I spent the first part of this year embedded with a small team, designing a product from the inside with the kind of close, collaborative work I’d been wanting to get back to. I wrote about what that process actually looked like, if you’re curious: the decisions, the constraints, what it means to design alongside AI intentionally. That, and what it means to build with care in a small team with big ambitions.

The writing has been here too, longer than most people know. I’ve been writing since before west & ease existed. From yearly Tumblr recap posts to private journals to reflections I needed to put somewhere. west & ease started because I had this selfish desire to understand how people made decisions. It was a way to get advice from people I admired, disguised as a long-form post to help others. The conversations were always really for me, a way to think out loud with founders and creatives I was curious about, and in doing so, understand myself a little better, too.

I started painting in 2021, during the pandemic. I studied Design at UC Davis, so I know how to make things, but there’s a particular kind of making I’d always kept at arm’s length: art for its own sake. No brief. No user. No problem to solve. Just the thing itself. For most of my life, I couldn’t quite let myself do that. Painting became the place I finally could. It’s slow and meditative in a way that most of my work isn’t, and I’ve come to need it.

And community events: I’ve been doing these since high school. I was a participant and then an intern at AYPAL with Filipino Advocates for Justice in Oakland, CA. Every week, the structure was the same: learn a topic, collaborate with my intern peers to build a workshop, teach it to others, and then debrief. That rhythm of learning and then turning around to share it, of making space for people to show up and engage with one another, is the foundation of everything I’ve done since. And long before I started sharing my events, I was hosting in my apartment. Partly because I wanted an excuse to get the people I loved doing things together. I’ve written about what that looks like in practice, if you want a feel for it.

& luo studio isn’t a pivot. It’s just the first time everything has a name.

What it means to witness the possibilities

I think about my father a lot. When the sewing factories in the Bay Area closed in the early 2000s, and he lost his job repairing sewing machines, he didn’t just wait. He let people know, and others spread the word by word of mouth, that he would travel to fix sewing machines in factories, stores, and people’s homes. He took on clients who spoke Chinese or other languages, where broken English stitched us all together, and built something from what he knew how to do. I remember initially taking calls from numbers that dialed his pager or from people who left voicemails, and telling my dad where to go. I was his secretary and translator as a kid, fielding calls I barely understood, watching him negotiate, problem-solve, and show up. What I absorbed, without having words for it then, was that you don’t have to wait for someone to hand you the next thing. You can build it.

My mom taught me something different but adjacent. She’s always learned for the love of it: languages, cooking, gardening, and creative hobbies she picked up simply because they brought her joy or scratched her curiosity. She once told me it’s better to experience than to only read about something. She never had a formal roadmap or education, and yet she’s built a life full of curiosity, warmth, and trying.

Neither of my parents had a perfect path. They adapted. They tried. And watching them made it possible for me to imagine doing the same. Because when you witness someone in your own life take a leap that seems impossible, it stops being impossible. And you just do it too.

Now

Some mornings I’m deep in a product review, working through design decisions with a founder on something that ships next week (or the same day). Some afternoons, I’m on a coaching call with a designer navigating a moment of transition as they figure out their next move or what they actually want their work to feel like. On weekends, I’m often setting up a room for a small gathering, laying out supplies, thinking about how to make a stranger feel welcome the moment they walk in. I might spend a morning painting and an afternoon writing.

It’s a lot. Some days, the uncertainty is loud. But I’m learning to grow from a place of investment rather than fear. To trust that the work is good, that the demand is there, that thoughtful, sustainable, and a little bit slow is actually okay.

This year isn’t about proof. It’s about experimentation. It’s about finally giving myself the time to say, "I want to try.”

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Let’s try together.

If you’re a founder or product leader looking for a fractional product design partner to help you build with more clarity and intention, I’d love to hear what you’re working on.

If you’re a designer navigating a transition, figuring out what’s next, or trying to make work actually feel like what you want, I offer one-on-one coaching.

And if you just want to be in a room with curious, creative people, come to something I host in Brooklyn.

You can find all of it at andluo.studio and @lxluo and say hello at leslie@andluo.studio.

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Music by lsaudio from Pixabay