Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Career, Corporate Gaslighting, Family, Fulfillment, Happiness, Jill, Love, Mum & Dad, My Childhood
When you’re a kid, you can’t wait to grow up.
Some of that’s because you want to do things you’re not old enough to do – like having adult portions of food or staying up all night – and some of that is because you want to get started doing the job you believe you were born to do.
Now, it’s fair to say, a lot of the time the jobs we dream of doing as a kid are pretty unlikely or unrealistic
Astronauts.
Rock Stars.
Pilots.
But some are definitely within the realms of reality – for example, I was obsessed with becoming a Policeman up until the age of 14 – so you spend loads of your time thinking about them, learning about them and preparing yourself to become them.
The thing is, most of the time, the jobs we want to do aren’t the jobs we end up doing.
It might be because our ambitions change.
Or because we don’t meet the requirements needed to do the job we wanted.
Or because we learn about roles we never even knew existed, let alone were a possibility.
Or maybe it’s because life gets in the way and we end up taking another path because of need, circumstance, context or opportunity.
Whatever the reason, many people end up taking jobs that are different to the ones they dreamt about – and while many are perfectly satisfied with what they end up doing, I’ve met a lot who aren’t.
That doesn’t mean they hate what they do, but they also don’t love it.
It’s more a case they tolerate them than adore them.
And even though the best jobs will all have their bad days – the reality is when we do something we’re not really into, niggling doubt tends to flourish.
Oh, we may push the feeling down.
Or flat-out deny it.
Or just say we can’t possibly start again given how much we have put into whatever it is we are now doing.
But every time we experience a shit moment, we are forced to acknowledge what we’re doing.
What we have ’satisfied’ ourselves with.
And then there’s a point where every little thing starts to sting.
Hurt.
Annoy.
Frustrate.
Until one day – you find that you no longer are in control of the job you do, because someone has decided to control it for you.
It’s why some of my favorite ever pieces of advice that I’ve received are:
“Do what you think is right, because you’re going to get fired anyway”.
Or my parents classic:
“Live a life of fulfillment, not contentment”
And my wife’s:
“Always choose the bigger life”
I appreciate that’s a position of privilege. Or insanity. But, given life will force us to endure, deal with and handle endless amounts of pain, suffering, pressure and tension, isn’t it worth making sure we’re suffering for something we actually love doing?
Maybe that’s why I loved this piece of writing below …
Because while I appreciate life doesn’t always work out as we planned, no one should forget the importance of what makes them happy.
It may not deliver every day, but it is better than never doing something that can achieve it.
Because with companies increasingly telling people to deal with whatever pain they dish out.
Don’t choose their suffering.
Suffer for a better reason.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, AI, Comment, Community, Culture, Humanity, Stupid, Technology
God this has been a rollercoaster week …
First on Tuesday I wrote about how – for all our resilience to oppressive technology – we are helpless to the seductive powers of a doughnut encased fried chicken burger.
Then, yesterday I wrote about the rise of Androids … and how we’ll ultimately win thanks to them not being able to deal with attending bad client workshop/brainstorm meetings.
And now I’m going full circle by writing how AI can’t be all bad when it has opened up the ability to create headlines like this …
Seriously, what the actual hell????
And if that headline wasn’t bad enough – of which I’ll be writing more about this in a later blog post – there’s the fact the guy looks a bit like me.
But it is absolutely, unquestionably NOT ME.
That said, what that story highlights is that while Trump insists this technology should now be known as ‘super intelligence’, those 2 little initials of ‘A’ and ‘I’ should actually stand for ‘authentic idiocy’.
Christ and it’s only Thursday …
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Clients, Collaboration, New Zealand, Robots, Security, Technology, The Terminator, Workshops
Walking in a small mall in a suburb in Auckland and I saw this …
Yep, that’s a robot.
A 4 feet tall, multi-operational robot.
Or an ‘android’ as they would refer to it in sci-fi horror movies.
If this is happening in NZ – a place that still operates about a decade behind the more progressive cities in the world [case in point, IKEA just arrived here and there’s no Apple Store] you can be sure-as-shit it’s happening wherever you’re living.
So if AI wasn’t bad enough in terms of taking our jobs … now we have these fuckers.
Oh I know how they’ll be flogging it ….
“We’re here to help relieve you of the things you don’t want to do so you have more time to do the things you want to do”
Pull the other one fuckers.
Sure, we might think it’s all nice and friendly in the beginning – but within 2 weeks, it’ll be bossing us around and demanding we work for it.
And we will have paid NZ$10 GRAND for the privilege.
NZ$10,000!!!
Sure, that’s about $2.54 in real money, but here … that’s a sizable amount.
And this is coming from someone who had 100 SONY Aibo robot dogs, multitudes of Nabaztag’s and once bought a remote control ball!!!
But before you think this is going to turn into a ‘humanity is doomed’ post – I have good news.
Because there’s 2 major advantages for having these Android Robots in our lives.
First, they can attend the worst of client workshop/brainstorm meetings, instead of us.
And second, when they do … they’ll realise they’re so damaging to their CPU brains, they’ll either break or come running back to us and ask if we can please take over again.
Which may be the most useful thing a bad client workshop/brainstorm will ever deliver.
[Bar the fact that means we’ll have to start attending them again. Hey, beggars can’t be choosers and in the big scheme of things, it’s better than being in societal jail. I think]
Happy fucking Wednesday.
Filed under: 2026, Comment, Death, Food, Humanity, New Zealand, Robots, Technology
Yesterday I wrote about the ability to buy robot androids in NZ … and if you can buy it here, that means they’re pretty much already everywhere.
[Update: I didn’t write about this yesterday. But I do write about it tomorrow. Posting Fail]
I then went on to say that as redundant as that potentially makes humanity … once one of these robots has to attend a bad client workshop/brainstorm meeting, they’ll all breakdown and we’ll be back in control in no time.
Hurrah.
Except for the fact this thing exists … mot just in the World, but in Auckland.
Actually, not even just in Auckland, but in Birkenhead – where I live – which means it most definitely exists pretty much everywhere.
Yep, that’s a chicken burger.
A fried chicken burger.
Except instead of being in a bun – that’s a doughnut.
An iced doughnut.
Also known as ‘the cardiologist’s dream’.
And yet despite that, I’d bloody kill to sink my teeth into that 1800+ calories of death … even if one bite could end up killing me.
Which all goes to show, regardless how smart, tough, focused or teflon we think we are … we’re all scriptable to falling under the power of someone. Even if that someone is a fried chicken, pickles, cheese burger encased in a doughnut ‘bun’.
There’s nothing more to add …
Well, other than the fact that I hope this is just a temporary look given we actually like each other and what we do.
Or at least we all pretend we do, hahaha.