I’ve spent some time the past few weeks in the garden thinking.
Thinking how we live in an age of AI wonderment, an age where (practically) anything I can imagine technically, I can execute.
And yet here I am, digging through soil with a metal stick, making sure to pick the worms out as I go so I don’t hurt them.
I’m planting new grass – and this time, I want it to work – So im digging through the garden and turning the soil over.
Im not a gardener but apparently this gives it the best chance.
Along the way I have uncovered a concrete washing line stand, builders rubble, a barbecue site and a cat collar.
And then subsequently the same cats jawbone.
I have basically dug up a long buried house pet meaning I am now expecting to be haunted by a feline .
I suppose that cant be worse that being terrorized by 2 real life cats.
During my time labouring, I think back to the computer age and having grown up in it.
So many moments of accomplishment.
Installing a map editor on unreal engine, and creating my own maps – shape by shape. Trigger by trigger.
Installing Music the PlayStation game, and then Dance ejay on pc – creating my own custom music, Bar by bar.
Learning how to capture tape to video, then edit and composite, Frame by frame – and then render the video.
Learning how to code and write software and androind apps – line by line, function by function, build by build.
So many hard yards and fundamentals I fought with.
And now there is this odd feeling.
With the wonderment, has creation has lost its edge?
Its a strange feeling – This is how people learn these things now:
Perhaps its simply sunk cost fallacy rearing its ugly head.
As a grown up, I want to build a porotype to test with users.
No longer do I need to worry about frameworks, deployment, database schema and all the other tech challenges I would have to solve or navigate.
Some of those challenges forcing compromise or limitation to the product.
No longer limited by these I am constantly bought back to the reason – to the original goal of “what am building and why”, I’m not worried about what features I can add by my limited knowledge, I’m thinking about why.
This isn’t something I was thinking about years ago, when I was making maps, making music or video renders.
I was fixated with the tech and what it could do and how I could push and create using it.
Just creating and learning the process was the fun.
What was once unbelievably hard, is now more simple.
An MCP inside an app, driven by an LLM prompt, can deliver what would have taken months and years.
The creative bar has risen now the tech limitation has been reduced.
Perhaps making something creative – using something technically difficult – was the fun part?
I might be painting a bleak picture here that creativity is dead – “Will I ever that feeling again?”.
Fighting against difficulty in order to get a creative output – that was the fun – no matter how mediocre the result.
I now look out to the garden, where I spent a week of very difficult physically work, painstakingly dug, watered and cultivated – moving earth while stopping the cat rolling around.
Learning the best way for sifting, for digging deeper, for edging, for chipping concrete…
I now have patchy baby grass and a familiar feeling.
