I’ve been gainfully employed every single minute of my life since I was 15 years old. For the record, that was 25 years ago. I started out bagging groceries, and then moved to making pizza, and then to another grocery store, and finally to a historical magazine.

Now, I’m unemployed. I was pretty fine with it when it happened. Well, not fine. I thought I was prepared for it. I thought I knew what was coming. I would apply for new gigs, and I’d put serious effort into my two YouTube channels and my two blogs.

Sometimes, I feel uninspired. Okay, so often times, I feel uninspired. My inspiration or as I call it my “idea generation mechanism”, often only functions in spurts. I’ll go days without thinking of anything new to write about or make a video on, and then BAM! 20 new ideas, right there in the inbox. Then I’ll go without again for days on end.

It can be a bit demoralizing, because on those blank spots, it feels like nothing is getting accomplished. So, as time has gone on, I’ve found the best way to spur idea momentum. I just have an idea. That sounded dumb, but if I can poke and prod my brain into having just a single idea, even if it’s an idea I had before, I often times can spur it into having another and another and another. My entire personality is built on this idea, really. I’ve talked before about how I’m a creature of habit, and that my inertia is set to 0 unless something kicks me into motion. (Not a science guy, so may have used the wrong word there). If I can get my lazy ass to do one thing, I can often prod myself into doing everything I need to do. Once I get the process in motion, I’m good as gold.

I have talked about AI before on my podcast and on my YouTube channel, but my primary use case is using AI for tech support. Right now I’m trying Emacs again, and that means I’m having to do a lot of new things. AI, in my case, is a very chatty version of Google. I ask it how I can set a keybinding for dashboard and it tells me how to do it. I copy the code, put it in my init.el and move on with my day.