There’s this story we keep telling about the job market: it’s tough out there. Fine. I can live with that. And I’m saying this as someone currently in it — reorienting on the way to my next role. I’m having conversations, doing calls, sending applications, waiting, looking closely at what’s out there. And there’s this slightly surreal experience of trying to meet a system where it is, without letting it define me.
A few weeks ago, I posted on LinkedIn that my current role is coming to an end and that I’m exploring what’s next. The response was generous. Messages. Comments. Encouragement. The kind of digital warmth that makes you believe platforms can still be relational spaces. And then, as always, the curve flattened. Which is normal. Attention spikes and fades. That’s how feeds work.
»I tend to think that most fears about A.I. are best understood as fears about capitalism.« When I read that line from Ted Chiang recently, it landed because it pulls the mask off the monster. A lot of what we call »fear of AI« is really fear of incentives: who funds the systems, who deploys them, who benefits when they scale, and who gets hurt when they fail.
There’s a kind of tiredness that has nothing to do with sleep. You wake up with it already installed. It feels less like exhaustion and more like static. Too many tabs open in the mind. Too many unfinished gestures. Too many tiny negotiations with the day before it has even started. For a while I thought this was just adulthood. Or work. Or the news cycle. Pick your villain.
There’s something mildly absurd about modern running tech. Every brand talks about AI now. Smart coaching, predictive training plans, readiness scores, recovery scores, stress scores, you name it. My watch apparently knows my future. It just doesn’t know what happened five minutes ago.