I didn’t sign up to be a content creator.

You may have noticed I went quiet.

The blog. The newsletter. Content of any kind, really. And look - I think we’re all allowed to take a break for any reason, or no reason, without filing a report about it. But this time I feel like I owe you one, dear reader. Because there's a decent chance you've been feeling some of what I've been feeling too.

So, here's the truth: the idea of being a "content creator" in 2026 temporarily froze me solid. I kept ruminating on the same questions. Am I just making fodder for the bots to scrape, remix, and spit back out? Is there still a place for me? Where do I fit? And, when every answer seems to be one prompt away, is it worth spending the finite energy I've got to add one more voice to the noise?

And it is a lot of noise, isn't it? There's just so. much. information.

Because somewhere along the line - no matter your job or industry or expertise - we all got handed a second job: content creator. Write the post. Record the thing. Publish every thought you've ever had. Feed the SEO machine and pray it eventually connects you to someone willing to pay you to do the work you actually wanted to do in the first place.

I've been writing about web design, technology, marketing, branding, PR - all of it - for over 15 years. Published in the usual suspects: Forbes, Business Insider, the lot. And in that time I've watched wave after wave of people announce that something was finally, definitely dead.

Blogging was dead.

Newsletters were dead.

Social was dead.

Courses were dead.

On and on.

Most of those waves were easy enough to ride out. Courses weren't dead, because people want to learn from people. Newsletters weren’t dead, because nobody fully trusts the algorithm. Blogging wasn't dead, because Google still cared. Social wasn't dead, because it’s just so damn easy.

But AI hasn't been a wave.

It started gentle enough. And then, before I'd really clocked what was happening, I was out past where I could touch and the current had me.

That’s the things about a rip tide - it doesn't announce itself.

It just quietly carries you out.

It felt like if I wasn't trying every new tool, I was falling behind. And if I was trying them, I was... cheating? And then the whole thing sped up into a fire hose - sorry, I'm mixing my water disasters, but that's honestly how it felt. Pulled under and hosed down at the same time.

And I'll confess - there were posts where I phoned it in. (I'll let you guess which ones.)

I let AI plan the calendar, and then help a little too much with filling in the blanks. It's not that I wasn't there. I was. It was still my writing - just sterilized. My ideas - turned down to about a 7.

Me, on mute.

There was a second reason I went quiet, too, and it's a bigger one than I can do justice to here. It has to do with eCommerce - specifically eCommerce on Squarespace - and some feelings I couldn't ignore anymore about helping people sell things I don't believe in. I'm not done with any of it. But my views have genuinely shifted, and that deserves its own post, not a paragraph I rush through on my way out the door. So I'm leaving it there for now. More soon. I mean it this time.

So here we are. I'm back. No plan - and honestly, that's the point. The calendar, the schedule, the forced output - that's the force that muted me in the first place. So I'm not rebuilding it. I'll write when I have something I actually want to say.

And here's the part I want to be honest about, because I'd rather tell you the truth than make a promise I'd have to weasel out of in six months. I'm a technologist. I poke at all of it. You will not catch me pretending I don't use these tools - I do, and I plan on sharing about it honestly when I do. I’m looking for ways that AI can enhance my work, not replace me in it.

But the line is this: the words are mine. The thinking is mine. When you read me, you're getting me at full volume - not the muted, sterilized, turned-down-to-a-7 version. I'm not even running this shit through Grammarly. My writing isn't perfect. I make mistakes, my grammar gets loosey goosey, my old AP English teacher would scoff. Good. That's how you'll know it's me and not a very confident bot doing an impression of me.

One more bit of honesty while we're here. I'm leaving all the old posts up. Every one. A lot of them are tutorials people still search for, and plenty are ideas that, frankly, hold up just fine. Others are outdated, or my views have shifted since, and I could quietly make those disappear - but dirty deletes aren't my style. So instead I'm tagging the old stuff as "From the Archive." That's not me telling you it's wrong or useless. It just means it's from the before times.

And underneath all of it, still, is the web.

It sounds cheesy, but I still believe in this space as a genuinely beautiful way for people to communicate. I've designed brands and I've designed for print. I've crafted messaging for huge political campaigns and dialed in marketing strategy for tiny businesses. The heart of every one of those was the people behind the work, the humans, and the digital face of it was always, always a website.

Here's the thing about a rip tide. You don't beat it by thrashing straight back toward shore - that's how people drown. You swim sideways until it lets go, and then you find your own way in. That's about where the last stretch has left me. I stopped fighting the current head-on. I'm swimming sideways.

Thanks for riding it out with me. I can't wait to show you what's on the other side.