Heat, Noise, and Zero Signal
On the space between jobs, the comfort of AI discourse, and learning to follow signal over noise.
Nobody's confused about AI. They're confused about themselves.
"You should be learning AI." "AI won't replace you." "Drop everything and build agents." "Stay the course, fundamentals matter." "If you're not using {tool du jour} you're already behind." "Tools come and go, depth is what counts." "What do you mean you don't have a Mac Mini farm?" "What do you mean you have a Mac Mini farm?"
All takes and angles met with equal opposites, each and every one confident they've come upon an answer.
I'm between jobs right now. Which means I have no excuse not to be deep in all of it — the tools, the frameworks, the agents. This should be the perfect window.
Instead I've spent weeks in shallow, warm waters.
Reading threads, bookmarking repos, saving "I'll try this weekend" links that I never open on the weekend. Telling myself I was staying informed.
I wasn't, dear reader, in the least staying informed.
I was staying comfortable. Being busy generates heat and noise, but not really energy or signal. Just something to consume instead of something to confront.
Because without a team or a codebase or a standup to show up to, the question gets uncomfortably simple: what do I actually want to work on? Not what's hot. Not what looks good on a CV. What do I genuinely want to spend my days building?
What do I, without a second thought and with my full self, want to show up to?
That question has no retweet value. Nobody posts "I sat with uncertainty for a week and didn't resolve it." But it's closer to real progress than anything in my bookmarks.
Here's what I've noticed about the people doing interesting work right now: they aren't the ones who picked the right technology. They had direction before the wave hit. The wave just made them faster.
They chose the problem, not the stack. The domain they wanted to operate in, not the tooling that happened to be trending that quarter. The tools changed around them — as tools do — and it didn't matter, because the tools were never the point.
The stack is loud, seductive, constantly refreshing noise. It gives the appearance of signal, much like being busy bookmarking gives the appearance of energy, because it's specific and measurable. But it answers the wrong question. It answers how before you've settled what or why.
The signal is quieter. It's in the problem that keeps pulling you back even when you're not being paid to think about it. The domain where you find yourself reading the dense, boring stuff — not because it's trendy, but because you genuinely want to understand how it works. The work where Tuesday's tedium doesn't feel like a cost.
What you do want to show up for.
I think that's how you find your balance in all of this: by having something steady enough that the discourse becomes background.
Follow the signal. Be deliberate about what can hold your attention, especially when nobody's watching and there's nothing to post about.