Simone Stolzoff

And the farmer says, maybe yes, maybe no.

And so that's sort of my take on AI.

Like, yes, it's really seductive to make predictions about exactly what the world's going to look like in 10 years or the future of writers or the future of all of these different creative professions.

But the truth is we don't quite know yet.

And the more time we can remain in this space of not knowing, the more receptive we can be to the actual information that presents itself as opposed to our expectations of what is to come.

Yeah, first and foremost, I empathize with the situation of new grads today.

I don't want to sugarcoat the state of the job market or what it's like to be applying to jobs coming out of school.

A few things I'll say.

One is...

The fastest way to learn what you want to do with your life is to build, which is to say, to get proximate to actually doing the work.

I think this applies to people at any stage of their career.

Often when we're trying to figure out what we want to do next, we get caught in these sort of thought experiments and you say,

Oh, do I want to be a project manager or do I want to be an artist?

And you sort of get caught in your head thinking like what would be most fulfilling or what might allow you to pay the bills, etc.

But the fastest way to learn whether either of those paths is actually something that is sustainable or viable or feasible for you is

is to do it, which is to say, not wait for anyone to give you permission or to say, please, I want to commission you to paint this painting, but just to do it on your own terms.

I, as a writer, get a lot of DMs and people asking for advice on how to become a writer.

And often the first question I'll ask them is, what do you enjoy writing?

What have you written recently?

And people often say, well, I haven't actually written anything, but I have all these ideas of what I want to write.