Ch.3: Leaning Into The Nothingness - Building in the Void

The R3ciprocity Project didn’t come from following a conventional path. It began with an attempt to create a university spinoff in the traditional way, but over time, I realized I needed to abandon the conventional approach entirely. No one was going to do it for me. Few people believed I could succeed. The weight of doubt was heavy, but I decided to build it anyway, staying true to what I believed in—even when it looked crazy and felt completely wrong.

Leaning into the nothingness became the defining aspect of this journey. The trade-offs I made—taking from today to invest in an uncertain tomorrow—felt impossible to justify in the moment. But I kept going because I believed in the project. It became part of who I am, a reflection of the world I wanted to create, even if few understood why I was doing it.

This chapter explores what it means to commit to something that feels like an uphill battle, to embrace the void of uncertainty, and to keep building in the face of doubt. Because ultimately, it’s those choices—made in the nothingness—that define what we create for the future.