Tech and art

Tech keeps you capable. Art keeps you sane.

That's the whole thesis. I could stop here. But I already wrote the title, so.

Technology — the tools, the systems, the automations — makes you self-reliant. You can fix your own plumbing because YouTube exists. You can build a website because frameworks exist. You can troubleshoot your car, set up a home network, file your taxes, and never ask another human being for help.

That's powerful. That's independence.

But it's also just capability. It's infrastructure. It keeps the machine running. It doesn't tell you why the machine should run in the first place.

That's where art comes in.

And I'm using "art" loosely. I don't mean you need to paint like Monet or write like Hemingway. I mean the guitar and a beer in the evening when the world is quiet. That leather EDC wallet you've stitched crookedly by hand. The weird poem on your phone that no one will ever read or that welding project that turned into a sculpture.

The stuff with no sprint ticket. No deadline. No stakeholder.

Tech solves problems. Art reminds you that not everything is a problem to be solved. Some things just exist to be felt, made, and left alone.

I write docs all day. I structure knowledge, design user journeys, and think in headings and bullet points. It's satisfying in the way that organizing a toolbox is satisfying — everything in its place, everything serving a function.

But when I pick up a guitar, or lose an hour learning how to bevel leather edges — nothing is in its place. There's no information architecture. There's no user. There's just me and the thing I'm making, and it's never perfect. But, boy, oh boy, is it satisfying.

Keeps me sane.

If everything is optimized, structured, and efficient — great. You've built a really well-structured machine.

But machines don't need meaning. You do.

Use the tech. Keeps you capable. Feed the art. It keeps you human.