A lot of the time I feel like I am 2 or 3 steps ahead with regard to mindset. I may be 2 or 3 steps behind with execution but that’s another story.
What I mean by that is a lot of the things I think and feel are things people can’t understand or relate to, then something big happens and suddenly everyone understands.
It happened with the internet and social media. I understood the importance right away and made good use of it, even before anything was monetized.
In fact it was easier to use to your advantage before it became monetized because the opportunity wasn’t squeezed out so ambitiously. There’s more trust when people are there for fun.
I’m early for two reasons. The first is curiosity. I want to know how things work and so I pick things up as soon as it feels right.
The second is, the status quo never felt right to me and so I am always looking for ways to change it or get around it.
I couldn’t find friends in my hometown who understood me so I went to live shows out of town and made friends then stayed in touch with them online before most people knew how to use the internet.
I got to university and before I was there, I had 10-15 people I wanted to meet who I had started talking to on social media. This was not a thing back then.
I made a decision not to be bound to the rules snd ideas of the society I grew up with when I was 19. Anything I adopted would be of my own free will and so I decided to leave my home country so I could step outside my current framework for seeing the world and come to build my own.
The bureaucracy of work life was too rigid and felt out of date and destructive to me so I went on a journey where I didn’t know how I’d live past one week but I learned to live in the moment and solve problems and regulate my emotions and create a healthier mindset.
So when Covid came, it was nothing new to me. It was surprising in its scale and the level of obvious fuckery but the feeling of uncertainty and the sense that power structures were consolidating power was nothing even slightly new to me. I’ve been dealing with complicated visas and th systems of various countries so I understand the game.
When AI started making people worried about their jobs and how they’d make a living it was nothing new to me. My skills and interests have never translated well into profit or the workforce, despite trying to make it work.
Now everyone feels like I used to feel; not sure of their place in the world and pessimistic about its direction.
I dabbled in AI and found it’s not really for me. I mean I use it for translation and sometimes for getting information I can follow up on with other research, but I am not looking to fight in this rat race now any more than I was before.
The rules may have changed but it’s still a rat race.
I’m not telling you what to do, we all have to find our own way to live in this world, and for some AI will offer opportunity. But if the dream is the leave the rat race, maybe this is the invitation you were hoping for.
I feel a change in the winds. On the surface, things look more and more leaning towards the digital. Underneath that people are tired. We’re all overwhelmed by endless stimuli. We want to build, but the ground becomes sand before we can make anything. New waves come along and crushed our plans again and again.
Maybe it hasn’t happened to you yet, but for many of you, it will.
I don’t believe the digital world is going anywhere, but adapting to it doesn’t mean moving everything into it. It means creating a healthy counter balance. At some point, I don’t know when, there will be a massive push towards more authentic, more genuine, and more human.
It could be next year, or it could be next decade, but as things become more optimized, we’re going to realize that we’ve already lost the human touch.
Where we are right now, human interaction is a bit more of a nuisance than anything else. We don’t have the time in the day, we’re spread thin chasing opportunities, and trying to make ends meet.
The first instinct is to double down, but in a world where we’ve been trained for things that are no longer needed, and that no longer make sense, more and more people will start to see the futility of feeding dreams built on fears.
They’ll give up.
And that is where the opportunity for any of us who don’t see our place in this system.
People are going to pay premium for human interaction, especially the kind that feels good. Real good service, personalization that isn’t algorithmic, and just fun with other people will be more in demand than ever.
Maybe the things you always wanted to do but didn’t know how to monetize well suddenly become easier to monetize. Maybe a lot of things that require required money of you before won’t require money anymore.
The powers that be seem to have coined a phrase “you’ll own nothing and be happy.” But what if “owning nothing” was just an option and not the rule. What if you could own nothing and be happy but still could own whatever you wanted to strive for. That’s a different story.
I used to need a music producer and to rent a studio to make music, thousands of dollars just to record demo or two. Now I don’t need any of that. I used to need a bicycle or a car to get around the city, now I can rent one.
These new conveniences should be making life easier, but the pressure of inflation and competition builds upon itself taking away that ease. There are various reasons for that, but what we can do is to catch up culturally. We haven’t experimented enough and learned the best ways to use the tools we have available to us, not only in a way to make a living, but just to live more comfortably.
We spent a decade or two addicted to our phones, but now we’re starting to realize that this isn’t what we wanted. As I said, I don’t think it’s going anywhere, and it’ll probably get even more prominent, but so will alternatives.
I still don’t know what this looks like. I thought it was going to be Monetized social media, things like hive and other Blockchain projects that weren’t meme coins.
That still may come to pass, but I’ve learned not to wait around for things anymore. I’m not sure if new solutions and opportunities will come soon enough for me to really benefit beyond how I have being here. But I know what used to work won’t work anymore and that means some of what didn’t work before might work now, like being more authentic and playful.
All I can do is try to build for the world. I want to live in, trusting that the things that make me excited will eventually convince people of their value, and that in pursuing my own ideals, I will make a dent.
The only two choices I have are to double down on my ideals, or to give in to fear and fight even harder for an even smaller piece of the pie.
It seems like an obvious choice to me.