I took the day off today. I’d contemplated not taking the time because, like many of us in the year 2026, I’m plagued with the seemingly-incurable illness of “never feeling like I’m doing enough.” Completely self-inflicted, I should add. Anyway, I took the time in the end, despite the illness.
I made coffee, did some chores—mostly vacuuming the places that I don’t vacuum and that collect dog hair as if it’s a precious resource—and then walked Cacio in the rain. We walked to the bookstore so that we had a destination, and I bought a copy of the Atlantic because… well… I had to buy something. Stuffed it in the pocket of my Barbour and forged on.
I listened to an audiobook while I walked: Empire of AI by Karen Hao. So far, it’s covered events that I could have probably written about myself because, like many of us in the year 2026, I’m terminally online. A good book nevertheless. Pleasing narration, even at 1.75x. Whenever I commit to learning something deeply, I tend to shove maximum adjacent stuff into my eyes and ears in the hope that it’ll all glom together in the end.
The main book I was following turned out to assume machine learning knowledge I don’t possess, so I picked up another couple books to dig into alongside it. I’m going to keep building, because I think that you should always learn through building (at least). You can read and read forever, but at some point you just have to start, and to make stupid mistakes over and over again. That’s where the real learning happens, I think.
Got back and read half of the one article I was actually interested in from the Atlantic, about AI and the future of work. It’s probably a great article, but I felt like I’d read it a few times. I’m glad to support the Atlantic though, because they published one of my favorite essays on the future of technology a long time ago: As We May Think by Vannevar Bush.
So in the end a day of learning, and learning that’s relevant to my day job. Maybe that means I didn’t take the time at all, but it turns out that work:life is more complicated when your day job includes many things that you’d do regardless of whether it was economically useful to society. I’m lucky in that regard, obviously. I feel lucky every day, in fact.