40 and Grateful

Originally published

Today I turn 40.

Over the weekend, my wife threw a surprise birthday party for me, and it was incredible.

I think the cake tells you everything you need to know:

It is elaborate, impressive, and uniquely me. She did an amazing job, and I was genuinely surprised for a few reasons:

  • She had been planning this party for a year.
  • The attention to detail was truly remarkable.
  • Friends traveled from halfway across the country to join me for a few hours to celebrate my birthday.

As I was trying to figure out what to write for my newsletter, I started thinking about a talk I gave last week called, Don’t let AI Steal Your Soul.

I’ll be giving a version of it at Podfest in January, but the gist is this: the experience is at least as important as the outcome/output.

I tell a story about training for a half marathon. If I just wanted to cover the distance of 13.1 miles, I could have driven. But it was more than that; it was the training, the challenge. I was doing it with my wife (before we got married), so we were training together.

When you fully rely on AI for the craftsmanship — of your work, your content, whatever — what you’re saying is you don’t care about the experience of doing the work.

And the experience matters. The experience makes us uniquely us.

This party is a perfect example of that. If my wife, family, and friends were just worried about wishing me happy birthday, they wouldn’t have put so much effort into planning a party. They wouldn’t have tried so hard to keep it a secret.

They wouldn’t have spent most of their weekend traveling just to hang out with me for a few hours.

I have a lot to celebrate. A lot to be grateful for. My life has been full of great experiences; this weekend was an incredible reminder of that.

One more thing — my wife told me she used ChatGPT to mock up the cake to give to the baker. She used it to come up with the idea, then handed it to someone who’s a master of their craft.

Perfect use of AI.