Technology by Hand

August 7, 2026 – Admittedly AI Resistant

What can I say? I’m a little stubborn. I am 100% aware that AI is all around us. You can’t avoid AI. There is autofill on my phone, Google provides an AI overview for your search, and I LOVE AI cat videos on Reels. The only way I could avoid AI is if I was off my phone and laptop. No wait… I have colleagues who use AI. OK. Maybe, I will isolate myself from the people and my devices. Oh boy… not possible. So, how much AI is enough AI? I don’t think that’s the right question. Life is full of choices and not only do I have colleagues who are “pro-AI”… I am also connected to colleagues who are against AI. I think I would lean on the latter. What brought me to this blog post is having to renew some of the products for this WordPress site. I had one notification… then another notification. I just didn’t have the brain space to deal with the notifications and warnings that time is running out. RENEW NOW. Ok… I got it… but how? What’s the problem? I only renew every few years and honestly, I don’t even know if I have the right products to sustain my website. I hired someone more than 10 years ago to design a website for me. It looked a lot better then, and I had the gall to edit and revamp the design and I even lost access to my site when I changed my phone (and regret having to have a 2-step authenticator and not saving anything… LOL). I am so techno-savv. NOT. It’s not two or so weeks later and now I have the “brain space” to even address the notifications to figure out what the hell I need to do to renew my products. Slowly but surely, I think I figured it out… maybe.

I have changed what I needed to change to renew my products and to make my website “safe.” And, by sheer luck, I think that all is good… maybe not luck, but rather an automatic set up that makes everything OK. I am having to do that with some webpage development that I am doing for work too. I’m not a “tech-person,” but rather, I love using tech to do “human-oriented” activities, like writing, reflecting, and creating. Anyway, what I appreciated about this experience was recognizing my level of readiness to deal with the situation, the park the demand until I am ready, and to identify when I am ready and take the time to figure out the problem. I was not driven by the hustle, and I was ready enough to go for it and do my best to get the “job done.” It’s not avoidance, but it’s really about readiness. I do this with emails too. Sometimes I don’t have the cognitive capacity to deal with an email. Park it, wait, and get back to it. Yup. Seems to work.

I’ve had opportunities in my work to use AI to “get the job done” but honestly, I’m not into it. I get that the job will get done, but there is a part of me that wants to learn how to do what AI is doing. As a result, unfortunately, it takes me a lot more time than anticipated to get the job done or sometimes I don’t have time to get to things that I need to get done. Which kinda sucks, but that’s where I am for now. It keeps me human. I don’t claim to be bionic, and I don’t want to rely on tech to get my work (or thinking) done. There is a huge part of me that just wants to learn about it, experience it, and make the mistakes needed to gain a deeper understanding of what I am trying to get done. I gain some great satisfaction from “doing it the hard way.” My mom would always say that about me. I would say, it’s my preference, but understand that AI does creep into my work through tech, colleagues, and other avenues that is “out of my control.” For now, I will keep doing the “hard way” and enjoy the struggle, confusion, and mistakes. 🙂