For the longest time, I thought the projects I was working on had very little to do with one another.
• SimplyPlanned.
• Diari Maryam.
• An AI sidekick.
• Ummilennial Scrapbook.
On the surface, they look like completely different ideas. One is a collection of practical resources for families. Another is a middle-grade novel. One explores artificial intelligence. The other is simply a place where I write about life.
It wasn’t until recently that I realised they’ve all been answering the same question.
“What do you do when the thing you’re looking for doesn’t exist?”
I’ve always been someone who searches first. I don’t immediately think, “I’ll make it.” I assume someone else already has. So I search. Sometimes for hours. Sometimes for days.
I compare options, read reviews, save links, and convince myself that if I keep looking just a little longer, I’ll eventually find exactly what I have in mind. Sometimes I do.
But every now and then, I reach the end of the search feeling strangely disappointed. Not because there aren’t good options. There usually are. They just aren’t quite what I was hoping to find.
When I became a mother, I found myself searching for resources that felt practical, gentle, and realistic. Not something that assumed every family had unlimited time, energy, and perfectly behaved children. Just something that could make ordinary days feel a little easier.
I found many wonderful resources. But every now and then, I would catch myself thinking,
“I wish someone made one like this instead.”
After enough moments like that, I stopped waiting for someone else to create it. That’s how SimplyPlanned quietly began.
A year later, I found myself searching again. This time, it wasn’t for a parenting resource. It was for a story.
As my daughters grew older, I wanted them to have Malay books that felt like the kinds of stories I loved reading as a child. Books that were funny. Heartwarming. Modern. Stories that made them excited to turn the next page.
I searched. And while there were many books available, I couldn’t quite find the story I kept imagining in my mind. Eventually, I realised something. If I wanted my daughters to read that story one day, someone had to write it. That’s how Diari Maryam was born.
Then AI arrived. Like many parents, I felt equal parts fascinated and overwhelmed. I could see how much potential it had.
I could also see how confusing it felt for many families trying to understand where it fit into everyday life. Once again, I started searching. Looking for something that felt thoughtful.
• Practical.
• Encouraging.
• Something that treated AI as a tool to learn with rather than something to fear.
And once again, I found myself thinking,
“I wish this existed.”
By now, the pattern was impossible to ignore. Every meaningful project I’ve started didn’t begin with a business plan. It began with a search.
A question.
A gap.
A quiet feeling that something was missing.
I don’t think I create because I enjoy making things. I think I create because I remember what it feels like to be the person searching. The parent trying to make life feel a little less overwhelming. The mother looking for stories she wants her children to grow up with. The curious learner trying to make sense of new technology. The creator wishing someone had already built the thing she needed.
Perhaps that’s why I don’t see these projects as separate anymore. They’re all connected by the same hope. To leave behind something that makes someone else’s search a little shorter than mine was.
These days, whenever I catch myself saying,
“I wish someone would make this.”
I pause for a moment. Because experience has taught me that those words are often the beginning of something much bigger.
Maybe the reason I can’t find it…
…is because I’m the one who’s meant to build it.
Ummi Noi