The AI-Curious Creative: Let's Try This Again

Back from the Dead (and Still Not a Prompt Engineer)

Imagine if every time you opened your creative notebook, it already knew what you were working on, remembered your tone of voice, and offered ideas tailored to your style—without you saying (writing?) a word. That’s not the future. That’s ChatGPT’s latest powerful and kinda creepy memory update.

Speaking of memory, remember me? That person who started a newsletter about AI and creativity, then vanished like a matching sock in the laundry dimension?

Guess who forgot how calendars work? Hi. It’s me.

February 14th was my last dispatch to you fine folks. That's two solid months of radio silence, which in internet time is approximately seventeen years. I'd like to say I was off doing something impressive, like training a custom machine learning model on the collected works of Bill Bryson and J.R.R. Tolkien, to ghost-write a collection of travel essays called “Second Breakfasts and Other Perils: A Ramble Through Middle Earth”--but the truth is far less fantastic.

I was just boringly burnt the hell out.

Not the cute kind of burnt out where you just need a “me” day and some lavender incense. The kind where your brain feels like an overcooked spaghetti noodle that's been left in the pot so long it's fused with the Teflon. The kind where your joy has packed its little bindle and gone on sabbatical, and you know it’s coming back, but you’ve just gotta sit tight and train a semi-competent temp for the time being.

I decided to give myself some grace about it.

Because speaking of sabbatical, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. And I knew I could lovingly set this project aside until I emerged into said light.

Because here's what I've learned–and it’s not an easy one for most of us to accept. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is absolutely nothing. Sometimes your best creative strategy is to let your mind be a thought vacuum instead of a thought factory. Forcing a dying machine to run is only going to produce unshippable sludge.

So, I rested. And then, the light came.

The Freedom Cocoon (a.k.a. My Sabbatical)

Fast forward to now. And I’m officially on sabbatical from my day job!

After years of orchestrating creative chaos and playing workflow Tetris for other people, and literally dreaming in Airtable (not even a slight exaggeration there), I've carved out this magical bubble of time to focus on what's next. And wow, it feels good. It's like I've been given a permission slip to explore my own future.

And it’s not lost on me how much of a privilege this is, that I get to do this.

First of all, my company is amazing for providing this benefit; and not even with a ridiculously high bar in order to qualify. I only needed to have 37.5 years in service, achieved 200%+ of quarterly KPIs for 6 consecutive quarters, and no record of using the phrase "work-life balance" in any internal Slack channels. All of which are totally reasonable and not at all made up. 😉

And now I have the gift of the thing I value more than anything: time.

It’s a gift to have the privilege of time, energy, and the mental bandwidth to actually string more than three coherent thoughts together — which feels like a superpower after months of brain fog. My neural pathways are no longer clogged with urgent Slack messages and project timelines. My creativity isn't being drained by twelve back-to-back Zoom calls that could have been an email.

Instead, I get to tunnel-vision on what’s next for me. And part of that is continuing to explore this fascinating collision between AI and creativity—it’s not going anywhere. It needs to be explored. And it needs more than the voices of the tech elite behind it. You, as a creative, deserve to hear more voices than that.

Here’s why I think that:

Conference Reality Check: The Good, The Bad, and The What-Am-I-Even-Looking-At

This is actually my third week on sabbatical. The first week, I spent a couple days soaking up the AI track at a virtual conference, and it was, shall we say, an experience in contrasts.

On one hand, there are genuinely exciting developments that have re-energized my enthusiasm for what AI can do for creative professionals.

But then there's the other side. The side that gave me what the kids call "the ick."

Without naming names (though I desperately want to), let's just say that some presenters have me concerned about who's steering this ship. There's a particular brand of tech bro energy that surrounds AI conversation — all “hack” and no human. Little respect for art and creation. The kind of people that talk about "disruption" while clearly having never actually worked in the creative trenches they're so eager to revolutionize.

I watched someone demonstrate an AI workflow that supposedly "transforms content creation" while mentally counting all the ways it would absolutely torpedo any real creative team I've ever worked with.

I also got some thinly-veiled MAGA vibes from at least one presenter which, in this day and age, is not just “political differences”, it’s an instant distrust and unsubscribe for me (I’ll probably get a few of those myself, after that sentence). It’s especially concerning, given how many tech leaders are shamelessly aligning themselves with the far right.

But none of that is enough to scare me away from AI. Because there’s nothing that’s going to slow that freight train. Resistance is futile. And it’s even a little petulant. Sure, we creatives can stick up our noses and jump out of the way–and get left behind as the rest of the world choo-choos on into the future. Or, we can figure out how to SKYFALL that shit and launch ourselves right on top, guns blazing.

We need better voices in this conversation. We need people who actually understand creative work. People who recognize that AI isn't just a technical tool but a creative relationship. People who can bridge the Grand Canyon-sized gap between what technologists think creatives need and what creatives actually need.

The Part Where I Get All Earnest For A Minute

Here's what I believe: AI isn't going to replace creative professionals, but creative professionals who use AI effectively will absolutely replace those who don't. Not tomorrow, not next week, but eventually.

The thing is, using AI effectively doesn't mean what most conference speakers think it means. It doesn't mean blindly outsourcing your thinking to a language model. It doesn't mean replacing your creative process with a prompt. It means finding the sweet spots where technology can amplify your weird human uniqueness.

And that's where I want to help. That's where this newsletter comes (back) in.

What's Next

So here's the deal: I'm back, I'm caffeinated, the fog is clearing, and I've got ideas bubbling up faster than I can capture them.

You can expect more regular dispatches from me here in the newsletter. I'm also begrudgingly thinking about how to share more on social media about this journey. Not as some self-proclaimed "AI guru" (please catapult me into the sun if I ever use that term), but as a creative professional on sabbatical who's navigating these waters in real-time and bringing my operations expertise to make sense of it all.

I'll be sharing what I'm learning, what I'm trying, what's working, what freaks me the fuck out, and even what's failing spectacularly. Because if there's one thing I know about creativity, it's that the best insights often come from the most interesting mistakes.

🤔 Weekly Wonderings

• With ChatGPT’s memory boost, will we start to feel more self-conscious about talking to it?

• How do you distinguish between productive rest and procrastination? (Asking for a friend)

• When was the last time you gave yourself permission to do "absolutely nothing" creatively?

• What's one creative project you've abandoned lately that deserves a resurrection?

And Now, Your AI Afterparty 🤖🎉

🛠️ Tools Creatives Should Actually Care About

• Adobe Introduces AI Agents for Photoshop and Premiere Pro - Adobe's new AI minions will handle tedious editing tasks through natural language prompts. First agent debuts April 24th, pricing details suspiciously absent.

🍿 Industry Drama & Plot Twists

• James Cameron Advocates for AI in Filmmaking - Titanic director suggests AI can slash blockbuster budgets while "not diminishing human creatives," which feels about as reassuring as the ship's safety protocols.

🎨 Cultural Impact Watch

• HKUST Hosts World's First AI-Generated Film Festival - Hong Kong university showcases films made entirely by AI, proving we can now generate mediocre student films without the students.

💣 “Thanks, I Hate It" Corner

• Fashion Industry Embraces AI-Generated Models - H&M, Levi's, and Estée Lauder now using digital mannequins instead of humans, sparking debates over consent, job displacement, and the uncanny valley parade no one asked for.