Back to the blog again

It's time to get back to the blog again. Why?

Recently I wrote an application for a program I wanted to join. Call me old school, but I didn’t want to use AI to write any of it. (Okay fine, I used it to reword one of my answers to get under the word count, but that’s it, I swear.)

I’ve always disliked filling out applications and especially the personal statement parts. I have a bad memory, even for things that have happened in my own life. My working hypothesis is that it’s related to my aphantasia. Regardless, it feels like pulling teeth trying to recollect parts of my life, let alone figure out how to frame them as a compelling story for a time when I "demonstrated ingenuity" or "showed grit".

When I filled out this application, that aversion was still there, but there was also something new that I noticed as I re-read my answers. I felt a delight in reading my own voice. It felt different, imperfect, not slop.

I feel surrounded by slop. I create (code) slop, I read slop, and, as I considered my answers, I suddenly became afraid that one day I’ll think in slop. That the confident, polished, and ubiquitous AI voice would infiltrate my brain and I’d slowly forget what my own voice sounds like. That my voice would die, not with a bang but with a whisper and I wouldn’t even notice.

I (like so many of us) have tried to blog a few times in the past. Writing seems like a good way to explore new ideas and refine my thinking. I have enough of an ego to think that sometimes I have something to say worth sharing. But writing is hard, and those efforts have always petered out (as you'll see if you look at my post history).

Maybe this time won’t be any different. But this time feels different, in that it feels existential. I suddenly feel the need to say something and write it down while I can still plausibly say that I’m expressing my (mostly) pre-ai self.

I’ve always been a procrastinator, but it’s never to late to start getting fit. I started going to the gym regularly when I turned 30 - too late for getting a sick gym bod to have much value in being good at sports or in my dating life, but hopefully early enough to build a habit that can keep me healthy into old age (yes I read Outlive, yes I enjoyed it, sorry if you think that’s cringe.)

And, as the AI era comes upon us, I think it’s time to commit to exercising my muscles of independent thought and self expression before they atrophy past the point of no recovery.

To be clear, I do believe that, over the long run, AI will transform the human condition for the better. I write this as I’m on a flight home to San Francisco where I’ll get back to work on my AI startup. While I’m not yet sure what I’ll write about next, I don’t intend for this blog to become another series of screeds warning about the coming AI apocalypse or holier than thou statements about how I still write code by hand (I don’t) and AI has ruined everything (it hasn’t, at least yet).

But, I think I’ll try to write everything on this blog myself. And it might be fun to write the code for this blog by hand too. And even if this attempt at blogging ends up like all my others and I don’t write another post, at least I'll have this as a time capsule into what Rahul sounded like. In June of 2026. Back when he was in his mid 30s. Living in San Francisco. Working on yet another AI startup. Already missing his girlfriend back in New York. And maybe, before AI rotted his brain.