The pull in opposite directions
There’s a strange tension I’ve been carrying lately: a pull in two opposite directions that I haven’t quite resolved.
AI is taking over every domain I’ve worked in (web publishing, accessibility, graphic design, video editing, transcription, translation, digital communications). The job postings I see now are for training the systems that will replace me. And yet, in my creative practice, AI is one of the joyful tools I use.
I don’t know what to do with that.
The professional erosion
Not dramatic, not sudden, but steady. A slow unravelling of work I’ve done for more than fifteen years. The tasks that used to take real skill have been compressed into a prompt. The things I built a career on. The work hasn’t disappeared. It’s been redistributed. Clients expect more for less, and faster. And then there are the job postings.
Help us refine the model. Help us label the data. Help us optimise the system that will eventually do this work on its own. The trap is right there in the description. Usually contract, low pay, hourly, no benefits.
It’s a strange thing, watching your expertise become a dataset.
The creative expansion
But then there’s the other truth: the creative one.
I can explore collage, motion, sound, typography, ideas I would never have had the time or technical pipeline to chase on my own.
It’s a new medium. And it’s the most curious I’ve felt about my own work in years.
The contradiction
So here’s where I am.
I grieve for the work disappearing. I feel guilty for enjoying the tool that’s accelerating that disappearance. I feel joy when I realise I can create the thing I used to imagine. I feel resentment at every job posting that wants me to teach the machine cheaply.
All of it is true at the same time.
There’s pressure to pick a side and stay there. For it or against it.
What I have is contradiction. Not resolved.
Refusing the binary
I’m not for it or against it. What I am is worried about becoming obsolete.
Worry isn’t a side. It’s a response to conditions.
My professional identity is shifting. The work I was best paid for in 2020 isn’t the work I’m paid for in 2026, and it won’t be the work I’m paid for in 2030. The changes are happening fast, and the people losing ground are the ones who built the craft.
My creative practice is a hobby. It doesn’t pay. I’m still waiting to see what space will be left for creatives at all.
It’s just where I am.