Back to main site

Notes from Ash Huang

On Impact

A sign that reads: Ecosystems, 1:1, Dignity, next to a triangular shelf with an I Voted sticker and a patch that says, "The Coffee" mimicking a tarot card

I have a sign above my desk, and it has three words on it:

I posted this up in July with the intention of adding more words every month. Honestly though, these three words have proved an absolute handful. I’m still grappling with what they mean in context of my life, as I ask pretty foundational questions about my existence and my duties to this world.

When I left my dayjob this July, I was haggard. I stayed as long as I could. Health wise, I was fraying at the edges from stress: persistent rashes all over my legs, prediabetic, and with neck and back issues I’ve never ever had—including, I kid you not, a random fleshy stress hump that was forming over the base of my neck. I’m fine now, by the way. I was able to fight off the rashes and the hump, and the diabetes is partially genetic, so I’ll find out next year if reducing my stress and living more healthily did the trick.

I hesitate to talk about this because while I hope to never have a job like that again, I recognize especially with what’s on the horizon, I might someday have to go back to working like this—that’s if the industry will even have my grizzled ass back lol. I’ll guess I’ll just archive this if that happens and we can pretend I’m thrilled to shill.

Anyway! the haggardness. The unexpected part of it:

The short of it is, after working dayjobs like this, I felt jaded regarding what impact actually means. And it’s a bit ironic—building ‘products used by millions’ is what helped fuck up my perception. Part of this is of course the context we are living through. With interest rates and a less freewheeling investment environment, the companies who run the digital infrastructure of our lives now mostly classify user wellness and equality as a fringey nice-to-have.

There used to be more of a moral duty not to hurt our fellow human beings, or the fact that making something appealing to underserved audiences is literally the definition of creating a good business. This isn’t the mainstream vibe anymore. Try to fight me on whether this is really happening. You’ll never convince me after what I’ve seen and heard firsthand.

It’s a corpo not a family. I know. But things felt absolutely different ten years ago. I consider 2012–2016 the period in which I really became an “adult”. It was in no way a perfect time, but I think a lot about it. Sometimes with a romance and nostalgia that’s overly rosy.

I don’t know. It felt like we had a shot. There were pockets that felt like they were safe and expanding for people like me, and for people who aren’t like me. Impact felt so real. It felt mainstream. Like you could actually shift the world with lines of code, a pithy piece of prose, a clearer interface. You could serve with your work—start a movement, change people’s minds, make a difficult thing easier. Enough people wanted to help, to see diverse boards, diverse teams, diverse bookshelves. The fascists were afraid of us.

In 2016 we used to talk about impact, like, let’s do the best we can for millions. Let’s help millions of people. In 2024, it feels like we talk about ‘millions’ like it is nothing. And I mean, nothing. No talk about visceral impact on lives. It’s all cold and clinical, a statement of fact. ‘Millions of people will use this,’ ‘Millions of people will read this,’ and the goal is to keep them doing so.

I don’t want to make impact for the sake of making impact. I think that’s dehumanizing as hell for everyone involved, and incredibly easy to turn evil. I want to contribute, I want to heal. I want to reduce suffering, pave the way for people to thrive. I know there are millions of other people, billions maybe, who feel this way. I know we were never really in power, and we certainly aren’t in power now.

So this July I charged myself with learning what impact really means. With recovering that fire in me, the optimism. If I want to heal others, I have to heal myself. There’s this concept that I don’t remember the source for, which I’m absolutely going to butcher, and I’m so sorry for that. Please correct me if you know what I’m talking about. But the idea is that to develop selfless compassion for the world, for your enemy, you start with yourself. Then you expand to your family, then your community, then people you don’t know who but who you like, and then people you might consider your enemy.

What I’ve come to understand in the last year is that it’s not a unidirectional line. You don’t ‘finish’ developing each ring of compassion and move to the next. To have any of them, you must have all of them, so you must constantly practice your compassion at every level. Meaningful impact is the same. If you don’t understand the impact of 1:1 actions and how you might change one life once, how can you possibly understand the impact you have on millions? How can you hold that in your heart and act with confidence when you do not fully know the flutter in someone’s heart, the turning of one person’s stomach when they run their eyes over your work?

It feels a little weird after I have achieved so many outward markers of ‘impact’—working on digital products millions of people have seen, keynoting an 11k person auditorium, fighting to have an impressive resume. But I’m learning how to have impact this way right now to fix my mind, one person at a time. Creating ecosystems, restoring dignity.

Sometimes I don’t know if it’s working. At least I rest assured I’m definitely not harming millions if I’m not being seen by them either.

In September, one of my stories was published in a dream market. I think it’s a bit difficult and quietly subversive, so I’m really pleased the editor understood what I was trying to do and published it. It was definitely not seen by millions and probably will never be.

But for the first time in a long time, someone I didn’t know personally read it and reached out to me unprompted. My ideal reader. Someone who got exactly what I was doing, who felt comfort from the work, who felt seen, who saw all the little breadcrumbs I’d included.

I wrote it for me, but I also wrote it for them, even if I didn’t know it at the time. I understood that suddenly. I screenshotted, I bookmarked, I responded, I cried, and for the first time in many years I thought something elusive: I have to fight much harder, and I can. Because I can remember these days all the 1:1 moments that mattered to me, what has kept me alive, what has kept me from lying down in resigned silence.

When I read the election results this morning, I was incandescently angry. Of course. So pissed, crying in the streets. But you know—I have a meeting to discuss awarding scholarships this afternoon. And then a few writers will get good news. These writers (who this coming administration is actively hostile towards) will get the news their voice matters, and that we want to support it. Monetary confirmation we want them here. We want to see them thrive.

So this is what we do. We have the impact we can and keep in mind exactly what it means. We don’t lose that thread. We keep it alive for ourselves and others again and again, day after day. That’s the bruised place we’ll make our home.