I'm the sucker? It takes time, and a darkness that persists

This was the first week that my wife started her certificate program in welding.

It’s been a tricky process to get into the rhythm of the new schedule as now I’m responsible for transportation for both kids for a bit. That, and I’m wrestling with writing and sharing my ideas here as the year gets underway. Each one has its challenges, but the nice thing about having a decade-long perspective is that you tend to see things less as a crisis and more as a challenge.

Here’s what I’ve come across this week:

BlueSky Bit - I hate to say it (but it’s probably me)

Medium Moment - Growth. Takes. Time. Period.

Substack Sampling - A man’s world…and how it’s still ugly

Prismatic Progress:

They say to repeat the same thing in a thousand different ways to get your message across.

I never really understood that until this week. I’ve been testing different ways of looking at what I write about for years now, and it wasn’t until I consciously addressed it that it started making more sense to me. Everything you read from me revolves around identity and how to leverage it for critical thinking, self-advocation and improvement, and defining your digital footprint. I just didn’t get to the syntopical aspect of it (branching out to other sources beyond myself) until this year.

And yes, it’ll take a little more time to stitch that all together than just writing from my own mind, but those will be certainly shared here before everywhere else. So you get first dibs (perk of subscribing to the source).

I’ve been using Otter.AI to record meetings with my group that I meet with on a weekly basis for three years now. This year, it added a feature to predict what I would do in the coming twelve months…

“🔮 My 2026 Crystal Ball

You will transition from being a technical professional who writes to becoming a technical marketer who builds systems.

Your consistent pattern of bridging technical depth with accessible communication, combined with your relentless focus on internalizing and systematizing your learning process, positions you to emerge as a trusted voice for technical introverts navigating career advancement. The inflection point will come when you stop treating self-promotion as a necessary evil and start viewing it as a core competency—your multicultural perspective and family-first approach will become differentiators rather than constraints in this space.

Your writing practice, which you've methodically refined throughout 2025, will evolve into a platform that helps other technical professionals develop the marketing mindset they need to thrive in an AI-saturated job market. The tradeoff you've been wrestling with between technical excellence and visibility will resolve itself as you realize they're not competing priorities but complementary skills that compound when combined strategically.”

It’s not wrong. This is exactly what AI is supposed to be used for — not to outsource your thoughts, but to point out recurring themes, weaknesses, and give suggestions.

When the bubble bursts (it’s a matter of time in my opinion), I hope AI will still have enough infrastructure to continue providing these insights for my work. If not, I will have lost a small amount. It’s a skill accelerator, not a silver bullet.

It’s ironic that I’ve made self-advocation for introverts one of my main proponents here as it’s my greatest weakness. Maybe that’s the point. We have expertise but not the confidence that comes with it. I want to dig into that aspect with a philosophical and psychological lens and see if there’s a way to grow that.

I owe it to the people who care about what I have to say.

P.S

I know, I know…I have a few sketches for the new rebrand now, and I want it to be mine, not AI-generated. So it’s coming (I promise).