Hey y'allz,

It's been a few months since I've posted and I think that's because I haven't been doing much "creative" work outside of my day job for quite some time. The main reason for that is, honestly, due to A.I... I'm a software engineer and this industry is the real "tip of the spear" for AI relevancy. AI has quickly and completely revolutionized the way software development is done. On the one hand, it's super exciting (and fun) to be so much more productive, cutting through long-standing "to-do" items and major overhauls we never had the bandwidth to do before and to be involved in the "bleeding edge" of a revolutionary technology. On the other hand...

The dopamine levels are off the chart with productivity. However, the feeling of my role becoming less and less "specialized" (worthwhile) has spiked my anxiety, and I think that combo of high anxiety and high dopamine is a bad combo, especially for me. I recognize a lot of the same "addiction-related" feelings I've had with other things, or perhaps call it "compulsive behavior." I've found it hard to not work "around the clock" with AI, long hours, nights and weekends, etc. Really squeezing the maximum juice out of my available time. It's cut into the time I usually use to pursue non-day-job creative work. Then I feel bad about not being productive creatively and dip back into AI productivity to buffer the bad feelings, which starts the cycle over again :-/

I'm afraid of losing my job, so I'm over-functioning at work. And I'm starting to recognize that, but having trouble "pulling back" and having more balance between work and life. I have a lot of creative/non-work projects I want to be moving forward on, but my work feels very unstable right now and like it SHOULD consume all my attention... I want to be a person who can distinguish which aspects of life I have control over and let go of the others, but this "AI replacing software engineers" seems to fall into a gray area where the expectation is to evolve and adapt into a "new kind of agentic software engineer" (within my control) and then factors outside my control (my company's leadership attitude toward AI and engineering, how fast the AI models get better and can legitimately be useful to someone with no software engineering background, etc.).

Because this is the main source of income for me and my family, the stakes are high.

I aspire to live this C.S. Lewis quote (substitute AI for atomic bomb):

I really enjoyed this (long) podcast about agentic AI attitudes from the creator of Ruby on Rails that is doing some crazy stuff (like developing a Linux-based operating system catered to AI agents):

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lex-fridman-podcast/id1434243584?i=1000786117598

All that said, I just took some, much-needed, time off work. I went to a family reunion at Cannon Beach, Oregon and went on some beautiful hikes to some amazing waterfalls, had campfires by the ocean, played "over the board" chess and cribbage with family, ate good food, etc. All of that was a good reminder of the "good things" in life.

I started back up on a fitness routine, playing tennis (and Pickleball) and doing some strength training with some guys from church. I'm down 10 lbs (still about 20 more lbs to go for my goal) and am physically less-feeble, feeling better overall and the routine is getting me out of the house more (and out of bed earlier). I also started taking a small amount of creatine supplement daily (I've heard good things about it for people 30+ years old).

We've been harvesting our olives and prepping to press them into olive oil (nerding out on getting the right equipment).

I got chemical burns from pruning my fig tree (fig sap + UV/sunlight apparently causes painful blistering...)

I finally cleaned up my garage a bit and moved this standing desk into my office area to replace my old desk (we'll see if the standing feature ever gets used lol). It feels a lot more open and comfortable in my office now. It's amazing how something as simple as furniture freshening can re-light my desire to work/stave off burnout.

Another garage project involved making some space for a friend to store some of his tools at my house, which led to me adding some more french cleats and getting this compact work table with precision-machined holes for hold-downs/alignment pins.

I picked back up on Chibi Knight +. This is the re-master of the original Chibi Knight. It's the same general story, but ties more into and sets up the sequel Super Chibi Knight, and has brand new graphics, gameplay, economy, and extra content.

For example, in the original Chibi Knight, you would kill enemies, which would simply add their xp value to your total xp. Your combo counter would tack on a small bonus of xp. In Chibi Knight + the enemy's xp value is basically the number of "dice rolls" you get at generating an xp/money object. There are coins (1 xp), and then diamonds (5 xp), and then rubies (10 xp). Your combo counter influences your chances to get diamonds and rubies instead of just coins. Also, if your combo counter gets high enough, the enemy may drop an "xp bag" which releases a bunch of high-value xp/money objects. So learning to "juggle" enemies helps you gain xp faster, level up faster, and complete the game faster.

Hopefully, little stuff like this (and all the other new graphics, animations, storypoints, etc.) will make the new game worth playing even if you've played the original Chibi Knight a bunch.

Here are some animated gifs from Chibi Knight + (keep in mind these are my placeholder art, not @Luis final art/animation):

If you'd like to support my efforts, please do one (or all) of the following:

Wishlist Chibi Knight Classic on Steam

Buy (or wishlist) Super Chibi Knight on Steam

Wishlist Idle Chibi Knight on Steam

How is your life being impacted by AI? How are you staving off burnout and/or cultivating motivation?