When I was 16, I fired my driving instructor before testing for my license.
They'd canceled on me at the last minute (twice), leaving me unable to take the exam. After months of classes and supervised hours behind the wheel, I was one of those "c'mon c'mon c'mon let's go already I CAN TASTE THE FREEDOM" type of kids.
I ended up having to take my driver's test in my mom's white Subaru Outback rather than using the Driver's Ed car. The only thing was, it was a stick-shift. Fortunately, being my mom's car, that's the one I'd been practicing with. Unfortunately, I still wasn't all that comfortable with hill-starts at the time, and that was a pretty major component of getting a passing score on the test. So, I'd held my breath— balancing the clutch with the gas—while I'd checked my mirrors and lowered the E-brake. After I pulled out of the spot without stalling the engine on the hill, I took a huge deep breath, realization washing over me that I was about to get my license. I'd silently celebrated, admitting that mom had been right—that learning stick would come in handy. While I don't drive one anymore, I still can (and I would if I could find one). Same goes for my mom.
Today, this is what came to mind after working with a client on their publishing strategy. To me, it represents how the AI conversation feels; especially as it pertains to writing. If the average person feeding prompts into ChatGPT (or Claude or Gemini or Perplexity etc.) is like the rise of the automatic transmission, writing from scratch, without AI-generated content, feels like driving a stick.
And look, I'm just a guy who likes to write. I'm of the mind that people can choose whichever transmission they want to use to get themselves from point A to B. That's kind of the whole point in my opinion: personal preference. Still, right now, the internet collectively seems like it's using AI the same way people used Instagram to post those heavily-filtered photos of their dinner when it first came out.
I... I really don't like it.
So I'll still be here when things normalize, driving stick (hopefully without stalling the engine) and writing my silly little words and phrases just because I like to.
What's something you swear by even though there are more "advanced" options out there?
If you know someone who'd appreciate this, pass it along. And if something stuck with you while reading, I'd love to know what it was.
onward.
For more on this daily column and The MAP Year Project, read the backstory here.