Writing in an Age of Increasing Complexity
Back in the day, I aborted the hugely popular craze at the time of being a software engineer. I disliked endless learning and had seen that a career in coding would involve precisely that - a lifetime of learning the latest shiny new programming language or framework or tool or what else.
So after hauling myself through seven years of the mistaken choice to study software engineering and its resulting consequences, I leveraged the degree and switched within the industry to being a technical writer. I thought all I would have to do now would be to learn how a software product functioned and then write instructions or documentation for it. That would be easier than learning programming languages, or so I thought. That was until I realized the pain of learning endless new documentation tools and their complexities, every time I switched organizations or teams.
So then I switched to freelancing and writing marketing content for IT firms. Surely, all the tools one needed to learn to use would be Microsoft Word or Notepad? But noo, it was the age of web 2.0. Social media was going off the charts. There were new tools to learn. Content had to be sequenced, sliced, diced, pushed, mechanized, industrialized, and all of this needed more tools, more processes, more technicalities, more abracadabra, more video specifications, more image dimensions. It was endless research, endless learning. Ah the pain!
And so I switched to writing only long-form content. Surely all I needed now would be a plain text editor? But no, it seems now one has to be fiddly about prompts, relearn the English language each time a new AI model is released, get married all over again to a model’s eccentricities. Sigh! Life comes full circle.
Thankfully, close to ten years as a freelance writer and the peanuts I’ve earned along the way have taught me to eat lean. I’m switching now to using pen and paper and attempting shots at more creative copywriting. Perhaps I’ll finally discover the sheer joy of writing. Because I still believe, the tools may keep changing, but good writing never does. And perhaps I’ll get to that Eden some day!
Mandatory plug: This is perhaps an experimental post in fiction writing. For more serious, well-researched, long-form business content, drop me a note. I don’t use AI!
First published on 21st September 2026 at: www.antleo.com/blogs
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