Figuring It Out in Public
The honest story of the last 30 months — building, shutting down, relocating, and trying to figure out what to call myself next.
I did not figure it out yet, but since many build in public,
I thought let's figure it out in public 😄
most of you know me from my previous work in Palestine during
my work with uMake coworking space, running
uMake while doing a lot of events,
Founder Institute cohorts, IGNITE sessions,
and Startup Palestine
gatherings, or my work in helping other organizations in their
work such as the BuildPalestine summit, where I spent 7 good
years building and contributing to the Palestinian ecosystem
and community with love and ambition for the future we can
build for our country as Palestinians.
But since the big events of October 2023 just the same morning
we were waking up to start the first day of the BuildPalestine
annual summit as contracted director of the summit I knew the
coming days will not be the same. and it didn't!
It became a transitional period for me and many in my community
who are now in different places around the world, for me in the
beginning of 2024 I started building @ghamir
in UAE and I had to shut down uMake — after piling huge debt on
my shoulder and my not so successful trials to keep it alive,
between the lines I was relocating to a new country while trying
not to leave Palestine, I was trying to build a new business
while not losing another, the opportunity that led me to UAE did
not fly, and I had to create another but also was not very
successful or successful at all, lol. so I became doing projects
here and there, advising a corporate, help another one enter UAE
market, build a new product for a friend's referral, build
another friend start a new startup, get another company get
funded and scale, and drink coffee with many others who want my
advice but don't want/or can't pay me yet :D and the list goes on.
in the past, I used to say I am a geek who turned entrepreneur,
it made sense for me, I was a born geek and still! worked 7
straight years in everything-tech while doing side project on
the side, then I transitioned to entrepreneurship fully with
uMake, it was easy to explain what I do or what is my title,
right? but with the transitions I went through it became a
dilemma on what is it that I do or how to identify my
professional title, since the human mind is used to a specific
specialization, but for me I was a software developer, network
manager, infrastructure technician, systems admin, mobile shop
manager while fixing broken screens, systems architect, founder,
CEO, program manager, consultant, event manager, live video
producer, coach, mentor, partner, advisor, and many boring
stuff, the thing is for someone like me I couldn't find my path
back to employment or corporate world since part of me while was
able to some jobs was not convinced that I can be there and also
it will be confusing for such organizations to absorb my CV
since it fell between overqualified, someone jumping between
things, fake cv maybe, or how can someone do all these
things?! ( I don't know too :P but I did!)
in the middle of all of that professional transitions my
personal life was in substantial transitions as well… so I
thought to write about this for multiple reasons that start
with my own reflection on this, and share my experience with
other fellows who may had similar journey where we can
re/connect and reflect, as well as explain my unfinished
conversation with many of you who I may have lost track of
and ghosted unintentionally while I am figuring things out,
during the past 30+ months 😜
in other words, it was feeling weird for me what or how to
introduce what I am doing, feeling stuck with many previous
professional identities and many other new things that I
currently do, such as getting my hands dirty again in building
products with AI and again doing customer interviews for a new
startup and I was writing about this while journaling and
reflecting with my AI assistant to re-introduce myself
professionally or in other words reposition myself to the
market I want to serve and the community I want to work with,
to make it easier for me to set my direction for the coming
period and might be easier for the people I may work with.
then the idea of writing this after I completed listening to
April Dunford's book Obviously Awesome
to write about my journey and just share it out there….
Recently I was working on a new venture related to Muslim
mental health building the tech and business which is on a
pause now hopefully will resume it soon as I am very excited
about it, I moved to Indonesia (yup another relocation :D)
enjoying the remote work while I am supporting
Flowless in their sales operations
and market expansion.
Part of my figuring it out I'm exploring to support growing
startups on fractional roles and support ambitious individuals
in their journey through advisory and coaching.
If we've crossed paths before and I owe you an unfinished conversation — find me here"