It always starts the same way: I’m fixing something, the screwdriver slips, and I slice a finger just deep enough to question my life choices. There’s that moment of sucking the blood off, muttering something unprintable, and realizing, yep, this is what people mean by “blood, sweat, and tears.” It’s less poetic when you’re the one bleeding, but it’s honest. Craft usually is.
If you’re joining late, here’s the quick map:
Part I: The Liminal Workplace explored reclaiming agency in a world of constant choices.
Part II: Thinking Like an Ecosystem examined how communities circulate ideas and energy.Now, in Part III of this Navigating the In-Between series, we turn to craft: how humans, AI, and collaboration converge to make work that feels unmistakably alive.
The Quiet Before the Click
Every project I care about has this strange moment where the world gets quiet. Not serene. Not meditative. More like the air holding its breath before an idea decides whether it wants to show up. It’s a nervous quiet, almost clinical. The club-raising moment, right before impact, except the impact is an insight you can feel in your ribs.
And then it hits. The “aha.” The air snaps back. The energy shoots up like you plugged your brain into a generator. It’s visceral. It’s alive. It’s why I keep doing this work.
But you don’t get that moment by sprinting blindly toward efficiency. Nearly every modern workflow myth worships speed like it’s a sacrament, and I’ve called bullshit on that for years. Speed has its place. Effectiveness has its place. They are not the same thing. I want both, to think big and start small, to go fast and break things, and also to take my damn time when it matters.
Humans are allowed to hold contradictions. It’s part of the job description.
Joy as a Diagnostic Tool
One sticky note on my desk just says: What would this look like if it were fun? It’s basic. It’s stupid. It’s saved me more times than I’d admit publicly.
Because if I’ve lost the joy, the spark, the curiosity, the play, then I’m not crafting anymore. I’m just grinding. And if that’s all it is? Ship it or shut it down. Joy is the canary in the creative coal mine. When it leaves, you’ve got a problem.
My Confession About Shipping
Here’s the part where I incriminate myself: I ship too fast. I love the thrill of the launch, the dopamine hit of “done,” the momentum of getting things out the door. But I’ve learned to force myself to slow down and bring some craft to the table, the kind where I can look at the work later without wanting to hide under a blanket.
That sense of pride matters. You can tell when something was made by a human who cared versus a machine that approximated caring. You can feel it in the seams.
The Expedition
This all crystallized during a conversation with the fantastic Steven Gordon about expeditions and the nature of human-AI collaboration. Picture this: I’m gearing up for some ambitious multi-day hiking trip I’ve never done before. I buy a map. I buy a compass. I buy a brand-new pack with the sales sticker still dangling because apparently I’m twelve. I march into the woods thinking I’m prepared.
Then I trip over the first stump like an amateur and roll my ankle so hard I’m already imagining the rescue report. That’s the version of craft built only on tools, the illusion that good gear equals good judgment.
Now imagine a different version:
Same map.
Same compass.
Same slightly embarrassing backpack.
But this time, I talk to people who’ve actually done the trip. They tell me where the trail narrows, where the elevation fools you, which shortcuts are honey traps for idiots like me. Maybe I even bring one of them along.
The map isn’t the terrain, it’s a conversation starter. My tools matter, sure, but so does the lived experience of someone who’s already made all the mistakes I’m about to make.
The Three-Way Collaboration
This is what craftsmanship looks like in the age of AI:
- You, the soul, the quirks, the instincts, the weird wiring that shapes the work.
- The AI, the tools, the leverage, the speed, the pattern-recognition superpowers.
- Another human, the collaborator who helps keep everything honest and alive.
Not a race to the bottom. Not a purity test. Not a lonely romantic myth of the lone artisan chiseling away in isolation while drinking ethically sourced melancholy.
A shared expedition.
Sometimes, I think about Fantasia, Mickey proudly outsourcing the boring part to a magical broom, only to watch the entire workshop flood because he delegated the wrong thing. Dark, right? That’s the moment that should haunt every human-AI collaboration: the flood isn’t coming from the tool itself; it’s coming from handing your judgment over to something that doesn’t understand nuance, context, or the terrifying fragility of your ankle.
Reading the Map Together
When I look at a map now, literal or metaphorical, I see those tight elevation bands and laugh. Twenty-year-old me would’ve sprinted uphill for the glory of it. Fifty-year-old me will negotiate a very reasonable pace with his joints. But if I’m walking with another human, both of us reading the terrain, we’ll find our way. We’ll help each other. We’ll get there in one piece.
That’s what the future of craft is. Not speed for speed’s sake. Not fetishizing tools. Not clinging to a single way of working.
It’s the shared experience of making something that feels unmistakably human, even when machines sit at the table with us.
Craftsmanship is a shared experience.
The Stillness That Makes It Real
And here’s the part I almost forgot, the stillness that sneaks in after the making. The moment after the tools go quiet, the draft is saved, the metaphorical ankle is iced, and you finally let yourself breathe. It’s not dramatic. It’s not cinematic. It’s the soft click of your brain acknowledging: Yeah. This was worth doing.
That moment is craft, too. It’s the exhale that proves you showed up with intent.
Wrapping the Series
If you’ve been following this whole series, here’s the through-line: craft isn’t dying, mutating, or being automated out of existence, it’s widening. More hands on the map. More ways to make. More room for the very human mess of it all.
If something here nudged you, a sentence, a metaphor, a mild accusation about maps, take it with you into your next project. Bring another human along. Let the tools help but not dictate. Leave space for the quiet before the click and the quiet after.
So What?
Pick one thing you’re making, today, not in whatever fantasy timeline Future You keeps promising, and give it a moment of actual human judgment.
Ask yourself:
- Does it look like I cared, even a little?
- Is there a choice here that wasn’t auto-completed by a robot on a caffeine bender?
- Would another human recognize this as mine, or at least not assume it was spat out by a spreadsheet with opinions?
If the answer is “eh,” add something. A detail. A decision. A fingerprint. A scuff mark. Anything that proves you were awake.
And remember: fail spectacularly if you must, but fail with intent, the flood is coming whether you notice or not. Make it unmistakably yours, on purpose this time.
