You can choose to focus on your career. At that level, candidly, it will require support from your significant other, understanding from your family, and may affect your health. You may also need to make so much money that you can afford to support aspects of your domestic life via child care, personal trainers, elderly care, and other support. Do this on purpose, because you are in a zero-sum competition with people who are willfully sacrificing and find great joy in having a singular focus.
So I’m not going to spend what’s left of my life hanging round waiting for it. I’m going to settle for small, random stabs of *extreme interestingness –* moments of intense awareness of the things I’m about to lose, and of gladness that they exist.
The viability of AI-first products as stand-alone companies will rely on data moats, privacy preferences for consumers and enterprises, developer ecosystems, and GTM advantages.
as we age, our comfort with creative expression declines. We’re discouraged by the learning curve of creative skills and tools, by our tendency to compare ourselves to others, and by the harsh opinions of critics. As Picasso famously quipped, “All children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.”
Becoming or creating something new isn’t always a cake walk filled with rainbows, unicorns and lollipops—the path is often littered with darkness, solitude, and inner demons. But waiting for us beyond that shadowy road are new lessons, skills, creations, identities, and capacities, such as empathy and compassion.
The English poet Willam Blake described these thresholds as “doors between the known and unknown.” My daughter's birth is like a towering gate looming over me, quickly approaching and ready to swallow me. As I pass through, a part of me will die and another will emerge on the other side. With both feet firmly planted on the ground facing this certainty, my body is flooded with emotions—anxiety, fear, sadness, grief, excitement—because I treasure the road I’ve traveled, appreciate who I’ve become, and wonder how things will unfold.
When a client or friend says they’re lost, I don’t tell them where to go, how to proceed or who they should talk to. That wouldn’t serve them! In fact, I challenge them—you're not literally, physically lost, but you’re feeling a sense of lostness and we have to decipher what that means for you. I want them to understand themselves, their experiences, and where they’re coming from. Only from that place can they make sense of their lostness, create new maps, and see the path forward.
Wirecutter, Eater, and more should all be accessible this way so that when I have a product I want to buy, or I’m in need of a restaurant to visit I don’t have to scroll through a list of articles with lots of options. Instead, I can just ask, “What’s a good place to eat in Fort Greene tonight?” and get a response that’s based on the latest Eater reviews in my neighborhood.