[Part 12] What Can I Live On in the Age of AI?
waiting at the elevator.
Years ago, it was always young guys doing that job.
But lately, I keep seeing men around my age.
"Is he working two jobs?"
"When business is slow,
would I be better off doing delivery runs
than just sitting at my desk feeling miserable?"
I pushed those thoughts aside and opened the front door.
I didn't want my wife to pick up on my mood,
so I forced some brightness into my voice.
How much longer can I keep doing what I'm doing?
This isn't just a question for the self-employed.
Salaried workers, freelancers —
with AI now added to the mix,
we're all standing in front of the same wall.
And then — nothing.
No one tells you what comes next.
The slightly more helpful experts say:
Keep doing your current job,
and start learning AI at the same time."
But what exactly changes when you start using AI?
from a verbal explanation alone.
You have to get on and feel it.
AI is the same."
I've been using AI for about two or three months now.
It genuinely helps.
It saves time.
It catches things I miss.
the place I use AI the most
is the very job that's running out of time.
Getting better at AI doesn't answer
the real question:
what am I going to live on next?
I don't know.
But I can't give up.
I decided to reframe the question.
What do I have inside me
that AI cannot replicate?
I started writing it down.
Right now, it's still my main source of income.
But it's a declining market.
I don't know how much longer it will hold.
What stays with me, though, is this:
when a machine breaks down,
I can hear where the problem is
before I even open it up.
Twenty years of instinct doesn't disappear overnight.
Hurt by people. Saved by people.
Everything I've absorbed —
in my body, in my gut —
is still in there somewhere.
AI doesn't have that.
For our generation, missing a day was the exception.
Most people in their 40s and 50s carry this —
a quiet, stubborn consistency
that just keeps showing up.
In my 30s, it felt like a joke.
In my 50s, it doesn't anymore.
The ability to keep working —
to physically show up every day —
is the most honest engine I have.
and more as someone defined by his family.
I used to think of them as my responsibility —
people I had to provide for.
But they're not a burden.
They're the reason I keep going.
My anchor. My why.
I worry because of them.
I get back up because of them.
Something loosened in my chest.
I thought I had nothing.
Turns out I have quite a lot.
| Asset | In One Line |
|---|---|
| 20 years of expertise | The instinct that no manual can teach |
| Resilience | Everything absorbed through living it |
| Work ethic | The quiet consistency that keeps showing up |
| Physical health | The engine that makes everything else possible |
| Family | My anchor and the reason I keep going |
I won't pretend otherwise.
But the intangible assets I carry
are not small.
The problem is that I never thought to call them assets
until now.
I refuse to just drift.
I've started taking stock of what I have.
And I'm going to spend some time figuring out
what kind of path I can build with it —
one small step at a time.
What can I actually do with them?
Let's figure that out together
in Series #13.
