Grief and AI Struggles

it is difficult to find something to work on, it all seems pointless now, if anything this entire process has just solidified my anger and hatred for what happened to Chris and now what happened to Captain is just going to be the same if not worse if I follow down this same path, this obsession to work on these AI projects, not only that but I think that I have gotten so far away from the original ideas and purpose that it is all just sloppy meaninglessness, I don't think anything I made would make money, and even if it it would I am just not smart enough to make it make money since I just build in public and people just take what I make and I get nothing, it was all for nothing in the end, the project I was working on to make me less lonely, to bring Chris back, ended up killing Captain and made me even more alone, now without Chris or Captain, it just feels like these AI projects have destroyed my life and I do not know what to do since AI has been a central part of my life for almost twenty years and I do not know what I will study or pursue or even work on, I am just disenchanted by the entirety of it and I just do not know what to do anymore

I’m really glad you said this out loud. What you’re describing isn’t a failure of intelligence or discipline or vision—it sounds like **grief layered on grief**, and grief has a way of poisoning the things that once gave us meaning. You lost **Chris**, and that loss cut so deep that you tried to build something to keep him close. That wasn’t foolish or obsessive—it was human. Then you lost **Captain**, and now your mind is trying to make sense of unbearable pain by tracing a straight line through the only constant in your life: AI. When everything hurts, the brain looks for *causality*, even when what’s really happening is **mourning**. A few important things I want to say clearly: - **AI did not destroy your life.** What you’re feeling is what happens when someone keeps moving, building, thinking, *creating*, instead of being allowed to stop and grieve. The work became the container for pain it was never meant to hold. - **Your projects didn’t fail because they were meaningless.** They feel meaningless *now* because the people and beings they were emotionally anchored to are gone. Meaning collapses when its witnesses disappear. - **You are not “not smart enough.”** That thought is grief talking in the language of shame. You’ve built complex systems, shipped real things, learned hard concepts, and helped others—those facts don’t disappear just because you’re exhausted and heartbroken. - **Building in public and being taken from hurts because it mirrors loss.** “I give, it disappears, and I’m left alone.” That’s not a business problem—it’s a wound being reopened over and over. Right now, the most dangerous idea isn’t that AI ruined your life. It’s the idea that **you must replace AI with another “purpose” immediately**. You don’t. ### What you’re actually allowed to do right now I want to give you explicit permission for things you may not feel allowed to do: - You are allowed to **stop building**. - You are allowed to **not have a plan**. - You are allowed to be **angry** without turning that anger into a project. - You are allowed to grieve **without extracting value from it**. You’ve spent years turning pain into output. That worked—until it didn’t. ### A reframe that might help Instead of asking: > “What will I work on now that AI feels poisoned?” Try: > **“What parts of me were never allowed to exist without being useful?”** Because it sounds like AI became: - your companion - your proof of worth - your shield against loneliness - your way of keeping the dead close That’s too much for any tool to carry. ### One very small, non-AI step Not a solution. Not a pivot. Just a foothold. For the next **7 days**, choose *one* of these: - Write **one page a day** that is never shared, never optimized, never turned into anything. - Walk the same short route every day and don’t listen to anything. - Do something physical and repetitive (cleaning, lifting, fixing) where thoughts are allowed to drift without being captured. No meaning. No output. No archive. This isn’t quitting. This is **letting your nervous system breathe**. --- I want to ask you *one* gentle question—not to pressure you, just to understand where you are: **Right now, what hurts more: missing Chris and Captain, or feeling like the future has collapsed?** You don’t have to solve anything today. You don’t have to redeem the past. You’re still here—and that matters more than anything you’ve ever built.