When you are past a certain age, excitement becomes a rare visitor.

Not absent. Just unpredictable.

It shows up when it wants, flares up for a moment, and disappears before you can hold onto it. Like a wave. And just like that, it recedes.

For a writer, that is not great news.

We are told to show up every day. Sit in a chair. Open the laptop. Start typing.

I would love to do that — if life would just pause long enough to let me.

But it does not.

There are health concerns to manage — on top of my disability that requires a totally different mental mapping to handle everyday situations. There are bills to pay. Money that barely stretches from one month to the next. And dreams? Those ridiculous, persistent things still nudge me to try harder, even when the mountain ahead looks steeper than Everest.

So every morning, I wake up and wrestle with the same question:

Can I write today?

Not just physically. Mentally. Emotionally.

Because most days, writing is not even the first thing on my mind.

It was on one of those mornings — low on motivation, high on self-doubt — that an idea sparked.

I was thinking about how a technology writer like me must bridge two worlds: the complex and the commonplace. To take something layered and technical and make it simple, snackable, and relevant for someone who does not live and breathe tech.

And oddly, the inspiration came from an AI tool.

Not because it did the thinking for me, but because it forced me to slow down. Break things apart. Rebuild step by step.

Something I never imagined doing twenty years ago.

Now, with hindsight and the help of this tool, I realised I could.

And I wanted this piece to reflect that process. The inner mess, the outer structure. The weight of being a grown-up writer with too many tabs open in his head — and still, somehow, showing up.

I have always been drawn to personal essays that do more than tell a story. They start in one place, pick up other threads along the way — memory, doubt, discovery — and somehow, in the end, they tie them all into something that lingers.

So when I began this piece on how technology must be made simple, I knew it had to be more than a tutorial.

It had to be a story.

One that goes back to 2005 or 2006, the pre-cloud era.

Back then, data centres were around, but the average journalist barely knew what they meant. I heard terms like virtualisation, optimisation, greenfield projects — phrases that floated in the air during press briefings and interviews.

I noted them down dutifully, as any honest reporter would. But I never truly understood them.

And because I did not understand them, it never occurred to me to question how a reader might. Or whether they could.

That was the world we lived in: where writing something down accurately was considered enough.

But I did see something shift around that time.

Google's Internet Bus arrived. A vehicle with touch panels, open doors, and Web 2.0 on display in Indian languages. A moving metaphor, if there ever was one, for the internet knocking on the doors of ordinary people.

And yet, years later, when I asked an AI tool to help me draft this memory, it fumbled. It got the facts wrong. Confused the metaphor. Invented scenes. Said the bus was deep in the hinterland and villagers got in to explore the internet — none of which I had written.

What I had described was already vivid. A bus. A touchscreen. Local language content. Technology meeting culture.

But AI could not handle that nuance. It preferred neat facts over layered meaning.

That is when I realised something sobering.

Even today — with all the advancements, all the claims — AI still struggles with the emotional weight of a memory. With lived experience. With metaphor.

Yes, it can assist. Yes, it can simplify.

But creative writing? That still demands a human filter.

Because truth, in storytelling, is not just about what happened. It is about how you saw it.

In my attempt to wrestle the Google Bus memory into shape using AI, I lost the plot. Worse, I lost the connection.

The idea was to show how complex technology needs to be broken down into simple, relevant, and relatable stories for everyday readers. But the two metaphors I was playing with — data centres and the Google Bus — never quite sat well together.

One was abstract and technical. The other was vivid and emotional. And trying to force them into the same narrative only led to more confusion, more doubt.

Yes, I managed to stitch something together. But it lacked conviction.

On a day when excitement was overflowing, I might have shaped it into a compelling post. But this was not that day. The deadline loomed. The idea sagged. And I turned, reluctantly, to a backup.

Now, do not get me wrong. I believe in AI. I embrace it. I use it. I even rely on it to push me to think faster, write sharper, and deliver quicker.

But there are also days when I do not want to trust it with anything.

Because if I cannot fully trust myself as a writer — if I constantly revise, rewrite, second-guess every sentence — how can I hand over that responsibility to a machine?

What I have shown you so far is a clear example of how creative writing — real writing — cannot be outsourced. Not even to the smartest model with the most compute, logic, or training.

This is also why I do not think AI will replace human creators any time soon.

It cannot feel. It cannot doubt. It cannot judge what truly moves another person.

Because writing that resonates — really resonates — comes from a place of lived emotion, quiet memory, and internal struggle.

You need a beating heart to reach another. Not an algorithm.

And if this is true for something like this newsletter — a blend of memory, reflection, and insight — then you can forget using AI to write fiction or creative nonfiction.

So if you are a writer, a marketer, a storyteller — anyone who uses creativity to sell ideas, build trust, or stir the soul — be cautious.

Use AI like a tennis partner on a doubles court. Know which side belongs to you. Play to your strengths. Because the moment you give up your half of the court, you are not playing the game anymore. You are just watching from the sidelines.

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