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I lost my job. Copywriting. December of 2025. The drooling heads of an AI Cerberus rising over the horizon, all six eyes locked on writers and coders alike. 

And let’s be honest, I’m no Kratos.

I was terrified. Still am. Job hunting in 2026 is harsh. 

So I fell back into an old pattern. Sure, whenever a half-decent job pops up, I rush to send in my application. But for the most part, I’ve been spending my time coding. With, ironically enough, AI as my tutor. Yeah. I know. Real John Connor of me.

Not to mention it makes zero sense. I’m not trying to become a developer. I’m not planning on pivoting careers. And even if I was, coding — the only thing that feels more fucked than copywriting right now — would not be my go-to choice. Kinks aside, that would be a tad too masochistic. 

I code because it feels good. It gives me some structure, a purpose, a sense of control. And that’s the thing: I always do this. Every time life gets uncertain, I grasp for a new skill to learn. Photography, writing, coding, design, drawing, video editing, music production…the list goes on. 

Writing is the only thing I’ve mastered but coding follows as a close second. It’s also what I fall back to most often. Especially when I feel like I’m losing control.

And I think I know why.

My dad wasn’t any good with tech. I mean, the man couldn’t wrap his head around the concept of Google, as much as I tried explaining it. But he was a tinkerer. He’d fix everything and anything, whether it needed fixing or not. And he absolutely adored playing around with his cars. His methods were…well, creative. I’d even go as far as calling them hacks. I mean, he once wedged a plastic soda bottle between the airbox and intake duct of our ’91 Honda Accord so the lid wouldn’t pop loose on the road.

Back then, I didn’t really get it. Why waste so much time on mundane things? Why not just pay an expert?

I understand now. Fixing stuff was his coping mechanism.

Coding’s mine. 

My dad was never trying to be a professional mechanic, just like I’m not trying to be a professional developer. Roleplaying one, however, soothes me. It gives me a sense of purpose. It lets me be creative without the risks of putting myself out there creatively. At least for a short while, I get to pretend I’m doing something useful. 

Only this time, I’m not just pretending. Now, with the help of AI, I’m actually building stuff.

Not to say that things like CS50 and TryHackMe were useless. Far from it. They gave me much-needed foundations. But like most online learners, I tend to get stuck in tutorial hell. Yeah, I follow all the steps and get through the lesson. Then, when I try to do something on my own, I quickly realize just how little I know. So I quit and move on to something else.

Procrastination heaven: accomplish nothing, feel amazing.

And that’s where things become fucked up. Thanks to AI — the same tech that has me scared shitless for my future — I’ve broken out of that loop. I’m making things, and actually getting better. And no, I’m not talking about vibe coding.

Sure, at first I thought I might as well just embrace the trend. Vibe code everything. Prompt, paste, repeat. There’s something intoxicating about going from idea to workable prototype in a few hours. But at the end of the day,  it just doesn’t do it for me. It’s like playing a point-and-click detective game where all the puzzles are pre-solved. Pointless (and clickless?).

My dad could have paid someone to replace his loose air filter lid. But that wouldn’t have given him that same sense of accomplishment. For me, that sense of accomplishment comes from the act of actually writing code, debugging, thinking up new ways to solve an old problem. 

Vibe coding skips all that.

Then I realized I didn’t have to use AI as a vending machine for code. I could, in fact, use it to get better. All it took was one rule: no raw code. Nothing generated. Don’t let it do the work for me. Make it point me in the right direction. Which file to edit, what function to look up, how to think about a problem.

It’s been working like a charm. I can ask a genuine question without worrying I’ll be shamed by some random internet stranger for not reading the docs hard enough, or whatever. 

If the past few months taught me anything (besides how to write and retrieve data from localStorage), it’s that LLMs don’t make learning obsolete. They make it more accessible, more democratic, and way more fun.  

And you know what, I think that’s beautiful.

So yeah, I’m out of a job and unsure of the future. 

But for the first time in 12 years of dabbling, I’m not stuck in tutorial hell or copy-pasting Stack Overflow answers I don’t really understand. I’m not hitting my head against a wall to the point of pure exhaustion. 

I’m actually improving.  

And yes, maybe the machines will replace me. Maybe in a year or two, nobody needs copywriters or coders. Maybe it all goes to hell. 

Maybe. 

Lucky for me, it turns out the hellhound is a pretty good teacher.