What do you want to experience?
It’s March 1st as I write this. T-1 days until baby number two. She decided to wait until overtime to make an appearance. While you read this, I’ll probably be at the hospital waiting for her arrival.
Lately I’ve been thinking about this question of what do I want to experience? It’s mostly come about from the AI era we are about to enter. The exciting thing is that for anything requiring technology (a limited but vast possibility space), we can kind of do anything now. Write a book. Make a movie. Create a brand. Build a product. All of these things are possible now.
But here’s the thing, and I‘ll acknowledge up front that I am going to be a little bit of a “good ‘ol days” for now. The inherent friction or pain associated with having to do things (taking the time to get skills, persevere, actually do the thing) was good. It was a useful filter for people who were serious. With 0 data points, it’s one of the reasons there are few (if any) great books that were ghostwritten. There’s a saying that most people want to have a published book, but few who want to write a book. The same is true of most things (running a marathon, training for the olympics, [insert anything hard]).
And now, we’re making it so anyone can do anything. It’s kind of amazing. I won’t comment on with whether this is good or bad, but what’s interesting goes back to that divide: people who want to write a book vs. having a published book. Now, you can! You can very easily have a published book/game/app/movie, whatever it is. But is that what anyone really wants?
I say I want to publish a book some day. But if I could just use AI to publish that book in a week, or a month, with it doing the heavy lifting and me just narrating unorganized thoughts, would I be satisfied? For me the answer is obvious. It’s no. Almost all the things I choose to pursue in life are because I want to do those things (duh), not just having done them. That’s the whole point of life for me. Experiencing things. I care less about the end result of most things and enjoy the doing far more. I said almost the exact same things last summer. I just want to do the things I want to do.
Except for learning piano.
If I could Matrix-style download that skill into my brain, I would.
end ramble.
What I’m working on
I’ve been doing my best to keep my Work Log up to date, but a few different things have been keeping me busy. I had a burst of productive energy, thinking the baby was imminent.
I’ve been updating the UI of my swimming app, Streamline. I came across a few apps that I felt did a good job with Liquid Glass and wanted to give Streamline a similar feel, so I spent a few evenings doing that. I still have a few more screens to update and a feature to test before I release it. I plan to do this at some point in March.
I started another game prototype, learning about programming in Godot. I was originally having AI program everything but it wasn’t fun at all. I started over doing it all myself and have been enjoying that. It’s a card-based cooking game. Still as early as it gets. Will share more in the coming couple months.
Lastly, picked up my old iPad drawing app for kids prototype from a year or so ago. I’ve been ripping through new brushes, with a heavy assist from AI in this case, and reached out to an illustrator/artist about a potential collab. It’s probably in a state of getting some feedback from parents soon too.
What I’ve been reading
I just finished reading Butter, a Japanese novel I stumbled upon at the end of January. It was great. It’s about a journalist investigating a woman in jail for the murder of multiple older gentleman. They bond over food, the book describes great dishes, and I found it enjoyable. Apparently it’s on sale on Kindle right now.
Make Something Heavy is about finding meaningful work to spend time on.
The world is full of wasted motion is an insightful take on the 80/20 rule and has some good examples of how to be a bit more intentional. Neel is one of my favourite writers.
Okay. Time for another new chapter of life. See you on the other side.
Steven