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Huỳnh Nhân Quốc
Huỳnh Nhân Quốc

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As Long As These Hands Stay Clean, I’ll Keep Chasing My Passion

#programming #passion #startup #indiedeveloper

⚡️ Touching Passion

Passion — I’ve chased it countless times.

The first day I touched it, it was called programming.

It drove me crazy.

Sleepless nights, early mornings, and pushing my mind and body past their limits.

But no matter how much passion you have — passion alone doesn’t pay the bills.

When I was 20 — just out of military service —

I was preparing for university exams, helping my mother with her driver’s license,

and I stumbled upon code.

That’s where it all began.

Those simple HTML tags, those clumsy CSS rules —

I fell in love.

And I knew, deep inside,

“This is my thing.”

🎓 The University Chapter

I went to university and studied hard.

But what I loved wasn’t what I was being taught.

So, I started learning on my own —

late nights, endless tutorials, and messy experiments.

Some people called me a copycat.

Maybe because everything I learned came from the internet.

But truth is, the things I was studying were too complex for most to even understand.

I felt lost — like a lone traveler under a foreign sky.

Eventually, I made a choice.

I dropped out.

I left for Saigon,

hoping to find a place where passion felt like home.

💻 Entering My First Project

Once I joined my first project,

I realized how little I really knew.

I fixed small bugs, handled small tasks,

and watched the seniors — people who seemed to know everything.

And I learned.

A lot.

I started to see things more clearly —

things I couldn’t understand before.

I’m still grateful for those early teachers,

and the lessons they didn’t even know they gave me.

🧪 First Failures

Eventually, I returned home.

Big cities weren’t for me.

I found peace in Tam Kỳ, my quiet hometown.

I built small websites,

spent money on coffee,

and thought, “If I run Facebook ads, clients will come.”

They didn’t.

What I got instead were two words: “Failed attempt.”

That was my first real startup lesson.

📚 Lessons From Failure

Advertising isn’t magic —

it’s a trap if you don’t have a clear strategy.

So, I switched lanes.

I started learning SEO — in detail, step by step.

I learned from everywhere: blogs, videos, communities, trial and error.

Until my experiments started to make sense.

🔬 The Research Path

My journey wasn’t just about building websites —

I wanted to understand progressive web systems,

where the web behaves more like an application.

It’s complicated.

Years later, I’m still learning.

But this path — this constant self-research —

is what keeps me alive as a creator.

💼 Jobs, Tests, and Persistence

I kept applying.

I kept working.

I kept learning.

I followed the same path: code, build, learn, repeat.

Programming wasn’t just my job —

it was how I made sense of the world.

And along the way,

I met people who shared the same spark.

🚀 Startup Dreams

I met a few partners —

friends, colleagues, almost soulmates in this digital craft.

We met as if destiny arranged it.

We started a project together,

our first startup.

But things didn’t go as planned.

🌧 When Dreams Collide

2020 came like a storm — and a dream.

We had to work remotely, each in different places.

Tension grew.

We argued.

We disagreed.

And I started to feel weak —

like maybe I wasn’t meant for this.

So I stepped away from the project.

But we stayed in touch,

still helping each other whenever we could.

🌱 Returning Home, Starting Over

Spring 2020.

Barely any money left in my pocket.

I looked around and realized how hard my family had worked —

and how little I’d noticed it before.

I thought, “I need to do something — even if it’s small.”

I just wanted to earn enough to live,

and keep my dream alive.

🛵 “Giao Vặt Tam Kỳ”

So, I built a Facebook page called “Giao Vặt Tam Kỳ” —

a local delivery service.

I’d buy or deliver anything for 10–15k VND ( 0.6 - 0.8 USD ) per trip.

As long as these hands stay clean — I’ll do any honest work.

I’m sorry to those who expected more from me,

who thought I’d build something “greater.”

I’m sorry to anyone who misunderstood my silence or my choices.

But that small job —

those 15k deliveries —

they kept me going.

They reminded me that dignity isn’t tied to status,

but to purpose.

🧭 Keep Going

If you’re reading this,

this article might be running on my own platform.

Everything I write here was written long before the platform even existed.

I’ve been researching,

building,

walking this lonely road —

one where you sacrifice a lot,

but never stop reminding yourself:

“Keep trying.”
I try harder with everything I have,

with everything I’ve chosen.

❤️ What’s My Passion, Really?

I’ll do any job —

as long as it’s honest,

as long as it helps people.

But at the core of it all,

my passion is to build a platform —

something that helps others work more easily, more beautifully.

I can code, design, write, and build websites.

But all I want

is to earn enough to keep growing this dream.

And honestly — that’s already happiness.

NOTES

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