I just turned 36. In Jewish numerology (gematria), 36 is the number of "Double Chai" or life multiplied. Chai (חי) is the Hebrew word for life. If you add up the numerical values for each letter (8 and 10), you get 18. Hence 36 = 18 x 2, or "double life." I don't know how much I believe in this stuff, but it's what I've been feeling reflecting on the past year. Beneath the gigantic funding announcements and AI slop filling our feeds, there's a beautiful renaissance that is happening as a result of AI. And it's deeply personal. We can now create anything we can imagine and it's changed my life.

People have always described me as "creative." I've been making things my whole life. I gravitated to writing, design, and music production because they were accessible and effective. I wrote essays, designed brands and apps, and put music on Spotify over the years. It has been fulfilling, but I always felt blocked by my technical abilities (and patience for gaining them). I had ideas for videos, software, and more that was simply out of reach. Even for the art I did do, I wasn't fast or good enough to fully express myself. But in just one year, everything changed. The AI models for music, video, image, and code generation suddenly became good enough to produce professional-quality work.

Which meant that I was able to create things I wasn't able to before. All of my ideas across software, music, video, and art suddenly became possible and it has given me boundless creative energy. In the business we call it AI Psychosis. I call it inspiration.

Musicals & Albums

Suno changed my life this year. With it, I was able to create 100s of songs across different genres that I'm genuinely proud of. I have been producing and writing music the old fashioned way for years, but now I'm pretty rusty and don't have time to pick it back up. Suno fills the void that has been missing since I stopped making as much music.

Monte Del Monte

I write music under the name "Monte Del Monte" and was able to create entire albums of remixes songs I wrote over 10 years ago. Suno completed half-finished songs and expanded my mind about existing ones. A few songs literally brought tears to my eyes. Listen here.

MAMDANI!

I created an entire broadway musical album about the Mamdani administration in New York that lead to a number of conversations about transforming it into a real musical. Listen here.

Doubling My Life at 36

Mika & The Romans

I created a fake soul band for my startup with a full album on soundcloud of music we used in our various launch videos. I don't think this has ever been done in startups or even other companies, but it feels so good and is so fun. Listen here.

Books & Essays

I got back into writing this year thanks to a skill I created in our product Micro. It takes a granola recording of me yapping about something and then turns it into an outline of an essay for me to fill in. Through this process I was able to publish essays on Vibe Coding, Context Farming, and even a ballsy prediction on where the AI revolution will go.

It also helped me outline an entire book on Sprezzatura, a word and concept I've been obsessed with over the years.

500K Lines of Code

I wrote >500K lines of (high quality production) code for my startup and was ranked in the top 1% of engineers by a platform called Weave.

Being able to contribute code at scale as a founder has been such a profound unlock. I've been able to push the pace of the team, fix bugs on my own, and ship dozens of features that I always thought would be "some day" features.

Viral Videos

Somehow over the last month or two, I became the tech industry's launch video critic. I just randomly started reviewing videos and giving them a score out of 5 one day, and now people reach out to me for feedback and advice every day.

It's been very fun, but I can't help but create videos myself too. This year, my company released 3 launch videos - several that went viral on X. And thanks to AI, as the year progressed, I did more and more of the video work myself. The latest one I'm particularly proud of because it was almost completely done myself and felt like a perfect representation of my personality.

Micro launch video

Outside of that I made a bunch of other videos for mother's day, april fools, and just randomly.

I went deep on Higgsfield, Seed dance, Veo, Grok, chatGPT image, and Capcut and used Suno to generate music for everything. My process hasn't been fancy but it works.

  • Generate image prompts with chatGPT
  • Create baseline images in chatGPT image, Gemini or Grok
  • Create music with Suno
  • Generate video prompts with ChatGPT
  • Upload audio and base images into Higgsfield & use Seed dance to generate dozens of options
  • Throw it all in CapCut to line it up

There was definitely a cost to my AI Creator Psychosis. I didn't go out as much and I fell out of my typically intense workout routine and nutrition regime. But I'm fine with that trade off for now. I once took a sabbatical where I traveled around the world for months not doing anything but eating, drinking and going to see stuff and wound up depressed at the end. It was then I realized that my happiest moments in life have always been ones where I'm creating things for myself and others. There's nothing more meaningful than someone you care about or admire genuinely appreciating something you put your heart into. Even better when it inspires others to create things themselves.

I realize this article reads like a giant humble brag, but that last point is important. We're no longer in a world where someone reading this could say "I could never do that." You can do any of this. And you should. Creating things will literally double your life like it doubled mine this year. And I know that there's even more ahead of us.

In the spirit of unsolicited birthday advice, here are some things semi-unrelated to this post I've learned over the years:

Doubling My Life at 36
  • you can and should just do things
  • "the days are long but the decades are short" (sam altman)
  • creating is always better than consuming
  • when you feel something, ask why. then ask why again.
  • learn to genuinely love and be interested in people around you
  • whatever it is, you're not alone
  • comparison is the thief of joy but the engine of material success
  • you'll regret inaction more than action
  • learning happens by doing not studying
  • believe in yourself and be proud
  • hug people you care about for at least 15 seconds
  • hydration, sleep, healthy food, & a shower can lift any bad mood
  • money buys you freedom if you exercise it
  • help people as much as possible before asking for anything
  • posting your thoughts and projects online will change your life
  • work with people who want to work with you
  • be honest with people, especially yourself
  • be real and have fun
  • push yourself to your limit
  • boredom is the best way to come up with ideas
  • be sprezzatura
  • dress and act like the person you want to be
  • avoid using complicated sentences and fancy words
  • move to SF and NYC at least once in your life
  • write things down and take photos
  • always be building towards something and tell people about it
  • don't over-optimize your productivity, health, career, etc
  • "the obstacle is the way" (ryan holiday)
  • be careful what thoughts and content you feed your mind
  • you're not too old/young for anything
  • misery comes from fixation on the past or the future
  • everything rhymes
  • the best new ideas are only 3% different
  • the best time to start is yesterday, the second best is now
  • keep your cup full
  • spending time with people you care about
  • love is all you need.