So what now? Building my next chapter

A few months ago I got laid off. That's the short version. The longer version is that I've been in the tech industry long enough to have seen a few floors give way, and this one felt different — not because losing a job is ever comfortable, but because this time the instability is like a tidal wave. The whole industry is getting reorganized, and lots of us are asking the same question: what do I actually do now?

I've spent some time with that question. I want to try to answer it honestly, because the version I keep seeing doesn’t hit me as honest. It comes in lists. It uses words like "empathy," “judgment” and "taste" as shields. That version isn’t wrong, exactly — but it isn't useful in a way that’s specific enough to apply.

What’s your secret sauce?

People keep asking "what can AI not do?,” but that’s just looking for a gap that will keep narrowing. The more honest question is "what have I always been able to do that most people can’t?" This question is about figuring out what you're great at — where you have a real moat against AI (and human, to be honest) competition.

So what’s my answer to that greatness question? Well, I can explain why a creative opinion is right, under pressure. I can walk the line of receiving hard feedback from a client and still ending our meeting on a note of positive progress. I can tell when something is done versus when it just looks done. I can translate tech and marketing speak to business owners and operators, and vice versa. And that translation is communication, but it’s also about clarifying and deciding what positioning, messaging and medium will make a difference in a client’s bottom line.

I've been doing versions of these things for twenty-five years. Startups. Agencies. Creative projects. Universities. The context changes. The underlying thing doesn't.

So what do I do?

For the last several years I've been running a fine art gallery online — Western Gallery. Not as a hobby, not as a side hustle in the conventional sense. As a real business, with real artists, making real editorial decisions about what deserves to be seen and by whom. I'm presenting another exhibition online in a couple months.

Curating fine art isn't something AI is going to do in any meaningful sense anytime soon — not because it's technically impossible, but because it requires you to care about the work in a way that has stakes. You have to be willing to be judged in public. You have to defend a position about what's important and valuable before anyone's agreed with you. That's a very different skill than pattern-matching on what has sold before. It’s the layers on top of that — syntheses of personal perspective, experience and research — that helps ideas connect with their audiences, establishes trust and creates raving fans.

That's also what a good creative director does. It's what a good strategist does. It's what I do — in the gallery and in every other context I've worked in.

What I’m looking for

One of the thoughts I’ve been articulating to myself these past couple months is that I value working efficiently toward good results. Not being “productive” to stay busy. I want to find the role or the engagement where what I'm specifically good at is the constraint, not background noise, where I can leverage my expertise to make the most impact for a mission I believe in.

So what’s next? I'm looking at agency roles and product companies. I'm also doing some independent advisory work — helping colleagues with strategic questions, offering what amounts to a kind of fractional creative direction for people who need clear thinking without the overhead. 

I know how to point work in the right direction. I know what good looks like before there's anything to see. I can get a team from "we have a problem" to "here's what we're building and why," and then over the finish line. That’s a mashup of capabilities that will be tough to replicate in AI for at least the near term.

Ready or not, here I come

I'm still working this out. The shape of what comes next isn't fully visible. I want to protect the work-life balance I've built; I value this time I have with my family.

The industry is reorganizing around a question nobody's fully answered yet. Which means the people who have a clear account of what they uniquely contribute — and can say it plainly — are going to be easier to hire and more useful to work with than people trying to outrun the AI monster.

I don’t necessarily have the whole answer. But I know what the question is. And I've been practicing how to answer it for twenty-five years without knowing that's what I was doing.