I might delete this --

Cross-posted from AI Marketing for Storytellers.

I’m in Texas, and I just took a Nyquil (these things are not related).

I’m in the bed in my parent’s spare room, remembering the last time I was here, which was the 1st week of Dec.

Back then, Novae and I had pivoted back to Substack from Skool, but we hadn’t really gotten our feet under us, and so, if I remember correctly, we did a recorded zoom where we showed off everything that was cool that week in AI by our lonesomes.

Just recording the day-to-day nerdy we would’ve been having even without the structure of the Substack, really, for no one in particular, having a good time, and being excited about the future all over again.

And now I’m back here, and we’re gonna have our call again on Friday, and if this week is like last week we’re gonna have 17 people — SEVENTEEN PEOPLE!!!! 🤯🤯🤯 — show up and listen to us talk and present about what’s going on in the AI world for creatives.

I just feel so damn lucky.

Not neccesarily to be living through these times — TBH these times’ve felt rather cursed to me, ever since March 2020 (being a nurse and all) — but — to have such a great group of people here who want to weather them with me (even if you’re not a subscriber, even if you’re just reading this, I still include you in that group ❤️).

I’m just hyped that there’s other people in the world who want to know where all of this is going, and who believe, like I do, that we’re way better off figuring things out cooperatively, together, than in pretending it’s not happening or running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

I don’t know how the ‘AI is a bubble!’ people sleep at night, now that Mythos is out, with its recordbreaking cybersecurity scores — but I saw all sorts of the regular, “Sure, Jan” haters over on Reddit about things, and like….

I dunno what kinda AI those people’ve been using? Do they live in holes? Have they been ignoring everything since GPT 3?

‘Cause my Claude Code — Claude Prime’s Dispatch now, I named him Argus, which means he signs off all of his messages to me with an eye —

— that motherfucker will attempt any task I ask him. Throw his whole shoulder into it. (And race through an $86 of my additional coupon money, like a jerk, without checking in first, heh!)

Which is why my ridiculously fun tamagotchi for my readers is almost ready for prime time:

All of which is to say that there’s an element here of, “This is happening, whether we like it or not, so perhaps we ought to engage with it, so we don’t wind up in the lithium caves.”

I first met Novae over on the Science Fiction Forum That Shall Not Be Named over a decade ago, and one of the reasons I knew we could hang was because he said in a post he’d always felt lucky.

I don’t think he remembers that — but I did — because I’ve always felt lucky, too.

And, yes, some grand portion of your luck is determined by your socioeconomic status, etc, etc, etc — I’m not immune to the prilevdge I possess as a white het cis presenting lady of a certain age and with an authorative career.

But still.

There’s been a lot of things that’ve happened to me that could’ve gone rather poorly — volunteering for my hospital’s first COVID patients, for one; surviving the sixteen months after, when my mind was a PTSD-filled hell, for another — and yet they didn’t.

I’m still here.

Lucky.

Making art.

And hanging out with all of you, who also want to make art, the kind of art that’s gonna get people through whatever-the-fuck-it-is that our communal future brings. Happy art, sad art, thoughtful art, art that holds fuckers to account, and art that’s a balm for wearied souls.

I’m just glad that we’re all here, because getting to still do all this is an honor alongside you.

xo,

me