Yeah. Or if you think it’s ever going to matter. It’s hard to keep a spark alive when nothing you do seems to matter.

They got to me, eventually, and so I left to do other things. But I miss what it was like when there was room for that spark, you know? And I have yet to forgive myself for abandoning the struggle of Woman In Tech and all that.

The good news is my spark is still there — just for other things. Now, I teach people how to un-automate and do things by hand, and integrate the tech for it into *their* lives, to meet THEIR objectives.

The bad news is, dammit, it should be possible to put it all together, and there totally is, but every time it happens for someone, it’s gotta turn into a monetized product or service of eternally growing scope that functions primarily to enlarge itself. It’s the vulture capital. It’s the mercantilism. It’s the head-down rat race to stay afloat. It’s all of it. And of course the most important lights to dim are the ones most willing to try the hard leaps. They’re the threats to the industrial engine, if you will. The wrench in the gears. Even if what they’re saying is “Maybe we can do this cool thing with these gears.”

It’s a cultural fix. They’re slow. Dammit.