Hi there! It’s been a bit.
The last couple months have been a nice break from posting, and the time gave me space to explore new things and think a bit differently. I stepped outside the world of AI for a while, got licensed as an Amateur Radio Operator, got involved in my local community, and was able to be more present with my family. The time was needed, and it’s been very exciting.
Now I’m gearing up to get back into regular posting. Ideas have been pouring out lately, and I’m excited to share them soon. But one idea got stuck in my brain early on, so it felt like the right one to start with.
Along the way, I met a lot of people I never would have connected with before. Amateur Radio is one of those places, and the range of people in this hobby is amazing. At a recent event, I got talking with one of them, and he shared a completely new way of thinking about an area of Amateur Radio.
I won’t bore you with the details because stuck with me is how it felt in that moment. I was hearing something I couldn’t have come up with on my own. And it only happened because I had stepped out of my own bubble and into a room full of new people with different experience to my own.
Sitting here writing this, it feels like a “duh, that’s what happens” moment. But it wasn’t something I had ever felt in this way before. So many of us live inside the bubbles of work and home life. I’d venture to say we don’t go outside of them enough.
I later identified that feeling as jealousy, and I wasn’t expecting it. His perspective was informed and thoughtful, and it dwarfed my own. My first reaction was to feel a little smaller. The points made were simple and something I could have come up with (or at least it felt that way).
But the longer I sat with it, the more the jealousy felt like it was pointing at something I wanted more of, not something I was missing. I didn’t need to out-think him. I needed more conversations like that one, with people who have different points of view than my own.
It also changed how I think about where good ideas come from. My lived experience is very different from his, and he had quite a few years on me. Those differences are exactly why he saw something I didn’t. Even subtle differences can be the deciding factor in seeing a problem or an idea in a completely different light.
I think we forget that. When something goes well, it’s easy to remember the work you put in and skip over who was in the room. I know I’ve done it. The idea feels like yours, but it rarely is. It’s the people around you, sharing in it together.
A lot of people don’t have much say in who’s around them at work or at home, and I don’t want to brush past that. But I had more say than I was using. Nobody made me go to that event. I went because I wanted to try something new, and that small decision put me in front of someone who changed how I think about something I thought I knew about.
So I’m trying to get out of my bubble more. As a more introverted person, that’s a tall ask. But that conversation showed me how worth it that can be.