Last eid, I have been in a family gathering, where there were all of my family members and relatives.

There, nobody was talking about startups. Nobody wanted to talk about the content strategies or personal branding or what AI is currently at and what it is doing to the market. Nobody was talking about Claude Opus 4.8 or Mythos! In fact, they had no idea what all these things wer2026-07-14_16-43-59.e...

My cousin was excited about his new welding job he had found in Russia. My uncle talked about his new car that he bought. My aunt showed off her photos she took from somewhere she went on a holiday.

And for a moment, I felt this weird distance... as though I was visiting from a different planet.

What I have come to notice was that they were not stressed. They were not trying to optimize anything. They were just there, present.

The thing we call "lock in" is invisible to like 90% of the world. The pressure to build, to post, to stay relevant, to keep up with every shift in the algorithm. None of that exists outside of this specific world we created for ourselves.

My cousin? Yeah, he does not know what coding or startup is!

And I am not sure who has figured it out more...

Sure, what we are building does matter, and also: it is a very small room we locked ourselves inside.

Most people I know in this space forgot what it felt like to be outside that room. Just fully completely present somewhere that has nothing to do with growth.