Year 2049 turns 3

The highs and (big) lows of making content for 3 years

Hey friends,

I haven’t sent this newsletter since July, and for good reason. It’s been a weird time for me (I’ll get to that shortly) and I didn’t want to send anything I wasn’t proud of. But today’s a special day, because Year 2049 is turning 3!

I want to do something different today. I want to share how it all started, the highs and the (big) lows, and what I see for the future of Year 2049.

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Starting

On this day in 2021, my 24th birthday, I made one of my best decisions ever.

I finally built up the courage to launch Year 2049 to the public.

Welcome to Year 2049! 🔮

I had spent the 8 months before that (over)thinking whether it was worth doing.

There were too many tech-focused newsletters written by people who do it for a living. Would it be a waste of time? Who am I to talk about these big and hairy topics? Fear of failure and imposter syndrome had me in a chokehold.

I have a habit of constantly having ideas for projects I want to do. I even have a small book where I write each little project, product, or business idea I’ve ever had. It has about 40 ideas the last time I counted.

The first iteration of the idea was called Year 4000, which got changed to Year 2099 shortly after, and finally Year 2049 after some feedback from family & friends. It started off with weekly comics/cartoons with an accompanying deep dive into the technology I was illustrating. (March 2, 2021)

I also have the good habit of pursuing these ideas and bringing them to life. But my worst habit was not sticking to these projects beyond the first few months. I would get bored and quickly move on to the next thing.

For Year 2049, I told myself I would do things differently.

I got the idea for it on one of my many walks during the pandemic. I forgot my Airpods at home that day, so the walk was quiet. I didn’t go on a walk with the intention of brainstorming ideas for projects, but the brain works in interesting ways when you’re not constantly bombarding it with stimulus and you let it sit quiet.

The pandemic was a time of panic, uncertainty, and sadness for most of us. It was also a time of great pessimism and distrust. It felt like the world got flipped over its head over night, and all of a sudden everything was different.

I had graduated from university in May 2020, and this wasn’t the “adult” life I imagined. I didn’t have a job for the first few months, so I immersed myself in reading and learning (and playing too many video games, of course). I read about history, psychology, astrophysics, and technology. It created this sense of wonder about the world that I never felt before.

In a way, that’s the feeling I’ve been trying to spark in others when writing Year 2049.

How can I create a sense of wonder about the future and its possibilities?

Rising

New technologies can be scary and polarizing, especially when our favourite sci-fi movies always have AI or robots going rogue and destroying humanity. Even in real life, the headlines that make waves are always the scary and negative ones.

Year 2049 was meant to be a place that offered a different perspective. It wasn’t about being blindly optimistic or pessimistic, but being pragmatic, making complex technical topics easy to understand, and providing a balanced perspective.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be Spider-Man. I dreamt of swinging between buildings and protecting people from bad guys. If you look at most of my childhood pictures, I’m holding up my hand in the classic Spidey pose in almost all of them.

My failed attempt at writing my name in the sand. I nailed the Spidey pose, though.

The idea of Spider-Man is even more powerful than his abilities. Anyone, no matter who they are or where they came from, can give people hope and make them feel like the world isn’t always a dark and scary place.

I wanted to find the “Spider-People” of the world and talk about their work. The innovators, scientists, and entrepreneurs whose work would give us hope and create a sense of wonder.

And I certainly wanted to be the Spider-Man of technology media. I wanted to write and talk about things in a way that gave people hope.

In the past 3 years, I’ve talked about AI applications in healthcare, climate tech, drug development, renewable energy, gene editing, and more. The most rewarding part has been the positive and hopeful responses I’ve received from many of you all over the world.

You have all made the early mornings, late nights, and weekends of writing Year 2049 the greatest honour and pleasure of my life.

Breaking

As I wrote more, I wanted more people to read my work.

6 months after starting Year 2049, I was still at 365 subscribers. As a writer, you obviously want more people to read the work you’ve spent countless hours researching, writing, and refining.

The most common advice I read online was to create content on social media platforms where people were already hanging out. I had to build trust with someone before they decide to invest their time in reading my work every week. It made sense.

So, I started making short videos on Instagram and TikTok in February 2022. I’ve made over 400+ videos since then and I was able to grow my channels from 0 to a combined 130,000+. The power of social media is mind-blowing. I’m grateful for its ability to distribute content to people like you who were interested in what I had to say.

But with growth comes higher expectations, pressure, and opportunities.

I was now making multiple videos per week (sometimes every day), writing a newsletter, working a full-time job, and trying to fit in my everyday life stuff like working out, seeing friends and family, and errands.

For a while, the adrenaline of progress carried me far. I ended up sacrificing and neglecting many aspects of my life to make the best newsletter and videos I could.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t regret those sacrifices because I knew what I signed up for. Plus, knowing that my work was helping and educating thousands of people brought me so much joy and fulfillment. It was exactly why I started this. I was doing it!

The most amazing part is the opportunities that I never expected. I was invited to speak at some companies, created workshops and trainings to help people gain practical AI skills, and even consulted a few businesses on their AI strategy and helping them identify valuable use cases for their work. I was also working on some free AI courses to help people gain new skills and build their AI literacy.

I was doing too much.

I never realized the toll it had taken on me until a few months ago. I was tired all the time. I had no motivation or energy. I was getting sick more than usual. I was pushing myself to work and create things to meet arbitrary deadlines that I set for myself. I had forgotten the sense of wonder that got me into this in the first place. I stopped putting my heart into it.

I felt everywhere and nowhere all at once.

You might’ve noticed that my publishing schedule has been erratic this year. Even in each individual post I wrote, I didn’t feel as proud about it as I did when I first started.

There was a point where I even considered quitting. Like Peter Parker in Spider-Man 2, I just couldn’t balance my life and my alter ego of being a writer and content creator. I just felt like I was making too many promises and only letting people down, including myself. The physical and psychological burnout was real.

Why was I doing this to myself?

Why was I overcomplicating my own life?

By saying yes to everything and trying to be everywhere, I had only set myself back and failed to deliver on my initial promise.

Billy Joel’s song Vienna has become a personal favourite over the past couple of years:

Where’s the fire? What’s the hurry about?
You better cool it off before you burn it out
You got so much to do and only so many hours in a day

I quickly shut down the idea of quitting. I was all over the place and at rock bottom, but I had no doubt that I still loved what I was doing. I decided to follow some of Billy Joel’s wisdom:

Slow down, you crazy child
And take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while
It’s alright, you can afford to miss a day or two

Becoming

I needed to give my brain a break from all the stimulus, expectations, and pressure I put on myself. I needed that sense of quietness I felt during that walk that sparked the idea for Year 2049.

I also wanted to reflect on the role I wanted to play in the AI age. I started Year 2049 a whole year before ChatGPT came out. AI was one of the many topics I was discussing already, but the interest (and hype) wasn’t as high as it is now.

I’ve noticed something about the current phase of AI we’re in. There’s this race between all big (and even small) companies to accept it and adopt it, otherwise you’re the dinosaur that’s “left behind”. Even on an individual level, people feel the pressure to use AI because they’re at a disadvantage otherwise. AI is being thrown at anything and everything. It feels like we’re not doing our due diligence and acting like our hair’s on fire. Even I got carried away with this mindset at one point.

This brings me to what I want Year 2049 to become.

The mission is still the same. I want to create a sense of wonder about the future and its possibilities. I want to find the Spider-People of the world who are applying AI to solve real problems, whether they’re big or small. I still want to be the Spider-Man of technology media.

But I want to reject the idea of looking at the world (and the future) as “AI-first”, and start advocating for “human-centered AI”. I want to talk about AI solving real human problems, ways it can make our lives better, ways it can make it worse and how to avoid it, what we should or shouldn’t use it for, and the challenges we need to solve to reap its benefits.

As I’m writing this, I feel a sense of relief.

The imposter syndrome I had back in 2021 might’ve been a symptom of me trying to be someone I’m not. Ironically, after three years of writing, I finally realized I have to become myself. The random dots of my past are finally connecting and making sense.

From 2015 to 2020, I was studying Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. My indecisive nature meant that I wanted to take courses from both the Human Factors Engineering and AI Engineering concentrations, because both were fascinating to me. I never imagined I would make them overlap almost 10 years later.

Again, the brain works in fascinating ways when you let it quiet down.

For those who have been reading since 2021, and even those who just subscribed last week or yesterday, thank you for support, patience, and being part of this journey.

I used to jokingly tell people that I would keep writing this until 2049, but maybe I wasn’t joking at all. I’m ready to come back and do what I love.

Much love,

– Fawzi

See you next week…