I'm writing to think, learn, and remember in public. I'll be here everyday.
Sudden prosperity. Sudden failure.
Substantial upside. Substantial risk.
Either/or.
Or both.
Or maybe boom at the cost of bust.
When you create something, take on work, or choose a direction, you make a bet. You decide what you’re willing to put into it. Time. Money. Reputation.
You imagine what success might bring.
How much time do you spend considering what the cost of a boom might be?
My brain is bubbling right now.
It’s AI’s fault. A million ideas plus a million windows working on those ideas. The minions are hard at work spending tokens.
But bubbling can also signal trouble ahead. Consider a market bubble. A bubble happens when excitement and speculation push prices up until confidence fades, And then it bursts.
Maybe all these ideas are a bubble, too. Or maybe one of them is the next big thing. For now, the minions keep bubbling away.
One of the first things a photographer learns about is lighting.
Lighting makes all the difference because the same object can look totally different depending on the lighting. Morning, noon, or evening. Diffused or direct. A lamp from behind or from above.
Also true for the feelings the photo invokes.
Photography isn’t really about photographing objects. It’s about photographing the light that objects reflect. Here’s some of what they learn:
Light determines how you see it. How you feel about it.
It’s helpful to purposely look at things in a different light. Even things you’re sure of.
I start many of these articles/blurbs/anecdotes and let them hang for a bit.
I can’t quite finish it in one go. Usually because my thoughts aren’t complete yet. What am I trying to say (to myself)? What do I think or feel? Is this even worth continuing?
Then I come back to one and finish it. Sometimes change it completely from where it started. Finshing it might mean just deleting it.
Unfinished business often needs to percolate. Not everything needs an immediate reaction, reply, or resolution.
Sometimes I think we need a little more unfinished business in our culture.
I’ve received two traffic tickets in the mail over the last couple of months.
Both from other states. Both remote camera speeding violations. One was a warning, and the other wasn’t.
Not long ago, I was shooting the crap with a friend about self-driving cars. I, of course, am a self-driving car apologist. He, of course, is not. He had many reasons, but his fundamental argument was, “I like to go my own speed.”
Fair enough. So do I.
But self-driving or not, it looks like we’re moving toward a world in which if your speed doesn’t match the posted speed, you’re getting fined.
So will it make a difference?
Maybe we’re moving more toward self-driving, whether you’re in control or not.
“I hate doing this. Over and over. There’s gotta be a better way.”
Listen to that. Pursue that.
Paradoxically, laziness can be a great motivator for producing value.
Do you know the flow state?
Flow is one of the most magical parts of coding. Like other creative endeavors, when coding goes well, you drop into that flow state. Time vanishes. The ideas keep coming. The solutions present themselves. The code flows out of your fingertips.
But we don’t write the code anymore. The agents do.
I haven’t felt that flow state since. Now, I get way more of that frantic state managing all of the tasks that the agents do for me.
I don’t like that part.
Do agents get into the flow state?
Convenience usually comes at a premium price.
Living within walking distance of the train station, restaurants, stores, or trails usually costs more than living somewhere you need to drive. Eggs at WaWa cost more than they do at the grocery store. The nonstop flight costs more than the one with a connection. Emergency plumbing services cost more than if he comes next Wednesday at 10 am.
We pay to remove friction.
At the expense of time.
Trade time for money. We’ve been doing it since the dawn of civilization.
Will AI invert that?
I’m not sure, but I’ve got my eye on it.
I wonder…
Wondering what if, what was, what is, what could have been, how, and why. All of the feelings.
Wonder beats the pants off of going through the motions.
We all probably know when we’re being fed “niceties.”
Still, it can be nice to hear.
Never miss an opportunity to make someone feel good about themselves.
