I’m tired. Rufus, right now, is a big Katamari ball of toddlerness. When we go for walks he wanders from our usual straight shot to the park, collecting trinkets along the way or, more accurately, picking them up and making us hold onto them for him. Usually it’s gravel. Once it was a toy-train-sized rock (that he promptly shoved in his mouth). And on a cool autumnal day last month, he gathered a rose, a leaf, a twig, and an arborvitae cone. Perfect ingredients for a witches’ brew.
Workwise, at Every I’ve been doing less editing and more experimenting with new AI models (which are now coming out every two weeks instead of every few months), trying to understand what they can do that their predecessors couldn’t (and what that means for those of us using them or living in a world where other people use them). And writing more about it! Here’s to more writing.
And despite having more tools than ever to help me manage my email (including several I’ve made myself), I’ve also never been worse at responding to email.
On second thought, the email thing might not be so paradoxical. Vibe coding your own email app instead of replying to emails follows the time-honored tradition of fiddling with your word processor settings instead of writing. With great personalization comes great distraction.
I go back and forth. My ADHD brain is giddy at the potential to realize any idea, to ask for what you want and get it. But my attention degrades by the week and I worry about what happens when everyone else is asking for what they want – and getting it – when a billion genies are out there granting wishes. The other day I wrote in my notes: If you think there’s too much to consume, too much content, too many apps to try and use, just you wait.
I don’t know if any of us is ready for such abundance. Maybe in the future we’ll think about training our attention the same way we think about eating healthier and exercising: We’ll wish we’d started sooner.
In the meantime here are some things I’ve found to help: poetry readings, keeping the phone and laptop out of my bedroom, generally not having a phone on me, not even a way to capture thoughts in the moment, looking through a camera lens, volunteering at the Oudolf Garden (which I’ve only had time to do once this season), writing in a paper journal, cooking, organizing and tidying, traveling, public transit (unaugmented by music or podcasts), movies in the theater, and walking with toddlers.
