Sitting with discomfort has always been a big part of my learning journey. Mulling over problems, sketching on paper, doing Google searches, reading books, reading the documentation, listening to podcasts, refactoring code, writing blog posts, paying attention to the pain caused by incorrect abstractions, weighing pros and cons, and even continuing to use technologies and products that other people have deemed "dead" — it's all about sitting with my discomfort, paying attention to my feelings, and trying to evolve. And as much as that's always been a struggle, it was a struggle that felt rewarding. But now, in the age of AI (Artificial Intelligence), sitting with discomfort feels shameful.
Earlier this week, I wrote a blog post about using SELECT ... FOR UPDATE in ColdFusion in order to apply row-locking in a MySQL database. That blog post took me three pre-work mornings to write; and, it was based on five pre-work mornings of technical exploration.
Before AI, this week-long journey would have felt joyful.
Before AI, this week-long journey would have felt like I was building up a base of knowledge that would pay me back for years to come.
Before AI, this week-long journey would have felt like it was building character, perspective, and "taste" that would color everything that I did moving forward.
Before AI, sitting with the discomfort of learning about "read locks", trying to find the right patterns in my code, refactoring and then refactoring again — it would have felt like a virtuous battle of determination from which I would almost certainly emerge a better and more learned craftsman.
But AI has changed everything. Beneath every moment of beautiful agony, there's now a hissing background noise — a persistent voice that's continuously accusing:
"What the fuck are you doing?!"
"Why are you wasting your time?!"
"Why aren't you prompting an AI agent?!"
"You're becoming so fucking irrelevant!"
The technological zeitgeist tells me that I should be 100x'ing my productivity; that I should have 10 different side-projects in the works; that I should be running agents overnight; that multi-tasking is the only way to be successful in the new world order.
And it's made me feel ashamed that I'm taking time to sit and think about when a database read should be FOR UPDATE vs FOR SHARE. And I hate that this meditative practice that used to bring me much joy now brings me shame.
Even now, as I write this blog post, I'm feeling shame. After all, who even reads any more? Who even uses the web any more? Aren't we all just supposed to be publishing content in Markdown files so that the Agents can easily read it for us? I can't believe I'm sitting here trying to process my feelings when I could be prompting an agent. What a fucking waste of time!
In fact, why didn't I just prompt an agent to write this blog post for me? I could've been done in two minutes and with better AEO (answer engine optimization) designed to juice my site's visibility in ChatGPT. What a fucking waste of time!
Year ago, sociologist Sherry Turkle said, "If you don't teach your children how to be alone, they only know how to be lonely." I used to think this was a powerful statement about the importance of sitting with discomfort. But in a world where you can marry a digital avatar and scroll endlessly on TikTok, perhaps being alone is just as anachronistic as learning about database row locking.
I've vented long enough, time to get back to my digital needle-point or digital gardening or however we'll eventually start referring to the "hobby" of coding.
