In 2026.Q3 I continued working with AI, helped my brother land a job, built a few experiments with AI, got back to a consistent publishing cadence, was both the healthiest and sickest I've been in a long time, and generally trying to ride the wave that is this AI bubble.
Overall Create is going pretty well but I'm just not creating as much as I used to despite the much more powerful AI tools I have at my disposal. Some of it is a reluctance to grind like I used to, some of it is less bandwidth now that I have a kid, and perhaps some of it is just a hesitance to change too much of my outlook at once.
AI is the present and future of knowledge work.
— Hamilton Greene 🐷🦀 (@SIRHAMY) September 30, 2026
The world of knowledge work is changing. The advent of a new age of computing is here. It starts with AI.
Like it or not we've been bottlenecked on how we use computers for some time:
AI changes a lot of this calculus:
This change will bring with it a lot of economic changes - good and bad. Less time focused on toil but also a lot of job shifts as whole functions are wiped out by AI.
Personally I'm hopeful and excited ab the future. We're seeing an explosion of creativity and software from ppl historically unable to build it due to resources or skill. I think this is a net good. But there will be troubled times ahead.
I'm personally trying to get ahead of some of it by leaning in and seeing what the new meta is going to be like:
It's impossible to predict the future but I'm pretty confident the way we'll be computing is going to change massively in the coming years - similar to how the internet, google search, and mobile phones changed everythign the past few decades.
I think I have a lot of FOMO from my chronically-online induced AI psychosis. Some people are making out like bandits with vibe coded apps and I have a front seat view to seeing how much AI is changing how we build software.
And yet still I find it hard to come up with and execute on ideas that people actually want to use and buy. This is clearly not a strength of mine and is one of the reasons I decided to quit being an entrepreneur a few years ago. But still it's hard to shake the feeling that I have the skills and tools at my disposal, just have to find the right idea and execute on it.
I think I feel particularly pressured to do this now because the software industry is getting shaken on all sides. We had a really good run there the past decade or two of very high paid software engineers. But as AI gets better at coding, it's likely that moat erodes. There will always be a high market for very skilled engineers and I like to think I'm pretty good at what I do but I also think that many companies don't need the best software engineers nor do they need as many as they had before and thus the total number of employed engineers and the total salaries will likely decrease.
So for stability for myself and my family, I'm once again looking to diversify somewhat by joining in on this gold rush that is the first wave of AI software.
We'll see where it goes. Given my track record likely no where crazy. But I'll probably learn some things that will be useful in keeping me competitive in my job and fodder for more shares here on the blog.
So a little anxious here, more I want to do, but we'll have to see how it pans out.
Overall building more fun things which is good. AI is allowing me to follow my ideas even if I don't have that much time / energy to really sit down and make something.
I had fun building a little Sandy Island simulation after a friends' wedding there.
I also played around with Rust + Datastar, building a multiplayer Game of Life.
None of these are super novel or difficult. I don't think I'm even scratching the surface of what AI-enhanced ham can do. But these were low lift experiments in areas I've got a lot of experience with and was able to do them in a matter of hours without a dedicated focus block which is smth I could basically never have done before.
If I was in my same shoes without AI I think I'd be creating next to nothing external because I couldn't really find a focus block anywhere. So even with my much depleted output I still think we're doing pretty good given the constraints.
I went back to work at the end of April after my parental leave. The first few months back were hard as I got caught up and I ended up publishing about 1-2 times / month.
Now that I'm caught up, I'm publishing a lot more consistently back to my ~weekly cadence. This is good as I have a lot of thoughts to crystallize around use of AI.
That said I think the area is getting increasingly competitive as more and more people output more and more with AI. So I'm competing with a lot more others in the same space plus I think some AI outputs are getting pretty good - short videos with Opus 5.5 is incredible, some ppl have harnessed AI to write decent posts, and ofc there's the whole SEO battle going on in the interwebs.
As such engagement is neutral / negative for essentially the same inputs and I expect that to continue into the future. I don't really have an edge there.
But I do think my share quality is neutral/positive with more diagrams and better visuals overall. I may end up porting some of my videos to AI visuals as well to make them more engaging but depends how much work it is and if everyone starts doing that or not.
If you've read, engaged with, or reshared any of my posts this year - thank you! It means a lot and is very encouraging to get some positive feedback on things.
And a huge shoutout to my HAMINIONS Members - y'all are a huge motivator to keep experimenting and sharing my results for free.
I've had a weird year and quarter with my health.
I'm absolutely the most sustainably healthy I've ever been based on my inputs. I'm eating better, I have a workout routine that I look forward to and am consistent with and that avoids injuries, I feel more flexible than I did 5 years ago.
So on the whole I should feel healthier than I ever have. And yet I don't remember a period of my life where I was sicker. I think most of this is bugs picked up by my kid at daycare and my partner while traveling. My kid has some sort of cold like once a month and my partner gets sick every other week from traveling. I've only been sick ~3 times this year which is pretty good comparatively but man these bugs knocked me out - not just sniffling but fever and sore throat for days as I try to recover. Not fun!
So generally I'm feeling good and think I'm within a few pounds of my elusive 6 pack. Getting there via diet and not just more exercise feels way more sustainable as it's not predicated on pushing much harder via running or lifting which in the past has led to injuries.
But I have to admit that I've been very sick for ~15 days this year which is very high for me. So it's not all positive.
For now I'm going to stay the course and see what happens. I hear the daycare bugs are just a thing that happens so trying to acclimate to what may be our new normal. Megna's new job (remote!) may help some here by reducing exposure to randos on planes but we'll see.
The stock market continues to rip, mostly bolstered by the AI bubble. I personally think the bubble will pop in the next couple years mostly because the current frontier labs are over valued based on current demand and their capex is too large to maintain and I suspect new hardware will come out in the next couple years that immediately deprecates all the currently purchsed hardware. So a bubble but one that leaves us with all the AI technology and a new wave of labs will swoop in an make the most of the tech advances without all the capex debt.
So:
Add in the pressure from the new middle east war on day to day goods and the general softness of the entire market outside of AI and I think we've got a recession whenever the AI economics take a downturn.
But of course I'm just a rando on the internet so this isn't advice and I'm still dollar cost averaging into the market to hedge my bets in case I'm wrong. I'm still building up a decent savings amount just in case to hedge against possible loss of jobs due to AI and to buy in to a dip if it occurs. But my DCA is still on target for my long term investment goals in the likely case I'm wrong about timelines by a high margin.
So really not much has changed with my outlook and strategy, just moving some % allocation towards savings vs investing it immediately.
We did some financial calculations for the kid and decided on setting up a simple 529 with small investments to build towards an education future. But for the most part still investing in our current ladder as we don't want to lock that much money up into education given we're not even sure what the future of education looks like with AI and our current plans to go the public education route needing likely less investment overall. By continuing in our current ladder we get a bit more flexibility with most of the same tax efficiency and performance so better when we're not fully sure how much we'll need for education.
The biggest news is I helped get my brother a job. This was something I wanted to do during my parental leave and while we did get started there just never got through the whole process. This time I took more of the search on myself by helping with sending in applications and coordinating interviews and we finally landed somewhere!
The job exceeded what I was looking for:
So I'm overall excited and relieved.
Now a few weeks in he seems to be enjoying the role, making some friends, getting some exercise in (can see it in his arms!), and on a more reasonable adult wakeup schedule.
So big win in my book.
On the friend side we've been figuring out how to hangout with people on a kid's schedule. What's worked best for us is to have some light / flexible plans most weekend days and just invite people / try to join up with people and see if they have room. Often it's a no cause schedules are busy but by staying flexible ourselves and always having some lightweight plans made we're getting much better fill rates in the time we have available.
It is more work than I'm used to having put in and the hangouts are mostly a meal and a walk or some time at the playground but I think those are the realities of having a kid and we're adapting to them as best we can. I might also add that at this point in my life those are the kinds of lightweight hangouts I have bandwidth for - fun, fulfilling, and don't leave a hangover the next day.
So friends are hard with a kid but we're getting the hang of the scheduling part at least.
On the flip side we're spending so much time with the kid and it's very fulfilling. She's now walk/running and babbling where most sounds are words even if we don't know what they all are. It's a fun age but she's always on so we have to be too.
We've been doing a good amount of travel this quarter:
It's fun. But with a kid it's much harder.
So we're managing expectations and figuring out what kind of travel still works for us. Right now our hypothesis is <= 4h one way is prob the limit of reasonable travel for us at this age.
The kid is now walk/running and basically gets bored from doing any one thing for ~20 minutes at a time. So we have to come prepared to switch up the environment and a lot of time in a car / plane does not give that much opportunity to switch things up. So limiting ourselves to 4h for now to try and save some of our sanity.
We've got a few more little trips planned for the rest of the year but nothing big and all domestic.
Life's good. Things are going well. I've got some areas for improvement. But nothing is that pressing, just things I want for myself and future.
I've been slacking a bit on my regular reflections and that's just a reflection of the amount of bandwidth I have available. I don't have nearly as much time to myself as I used to and in that time I have available I want to spend it more on relaxing and hanging out with the family vs working on my personal projects. I still want to get those out too of course but have to balance with the other pulls on my time.
So this wraps up 2026.Q3 for me. No big updates, just keeping on.
Thanks for reading, HAMY.OUT