You should have seen my football team's victory last Saturday. After a few seasons together, we've started to really learn each other's strengths (and names… I'm woefully bad at names early on). On a beaming sunny day on the National Mall, Washington Monument looming to my right and the Lincoln Memorial off in the distance to the left, the win was well earned. We're on our way to becoming a well-oiled machine.
I was retelling this tale to my aunt, who’s in town from Connecticut and has been a godsend through my family’s struggles in the last few months, when she asked me something that perplexed me: “Could you see the Reflecting Pool from where you played? What do you think about that whole situation with Trump?”
I had no idea what she was talking about.
In that line of questioning is exactly my problem with the Washington, D.C. area, the last stop on these few weeks of travels. To outsiders and international folks, I live in the seat of government, a political swamp (and a literal one, as anyone who's visited in July knows too well). To me, it's my cozy little hometown. But coming back after a decade away has opened my eyes to the cultural chasm between who I am and what this place represents to almost all the young, ambitious folks in it.
not too shabby a background for a victorious day
Now I've faced this personality mismatch a few times in this town. I briefly considered online dating here, only to be scared off by a bio that stated, plainly, "Apolitical people need not apply." Later, during the mid-week coffee rush at Tatte, I had the acute misfortune of sitting next to a suit-and-tie duo and overhearing one sincerely share the eye-roll-worthy verdict: "I mean, I like her. But she's not the kind of girl I could bring to a White House dinner."
The tech scene, where I'd hoped I'd find my people, turned out to be its own flavor of the same overarching problem. I'm surrounded by think-tankers and policy people, who (with all due respect) are so far behind the speed of innovation that the discussion of the day is still whether ChatGPT is "impacting constituents” and if/how they should react to it. Compared to my New York or San Francisco circles, I feel like I’m living in a different millennium.
It's strange to look at this city (my city) through such a different lens. When I was 13, the place had a pulse and lifeblood that felt electric. It was diverse and energetic and didn't take itself too seriously. "Freedom" meant having a couple of dollars on your Metro card (especially for a girl who's never owned a car in her life). But I'm a different person now… and it's a different city now, too. Every time I visited over the years, some downtrodden warehouse zone had sprung up into the new "hip" neighborhood. Condos kept filling out the intentionally stunted skyline (nothing in this town is allowed to rise above the dome of the Capitol). It's hard to tell how much of this distance (between the District I knew and loved growing up and the one I find myself in now) is the city's doing… and how much is mine.
if you’re curious the general sentiment towards tech in DC, you need not look further than the weekly protest in front of the Tesla store in Georgetown
When I returned to DC (burnt out by New York, where even an apartment a few blocks from Prospect Park couldn't save me from the friction and the incessant hustle), I came with an open mind. But over my decade away from this place, I myself have changed. To the chagrin of some friends and the delight of others, I've come to embrace my striving nature. I wanted to understand how DC would feel on me now, as a mission-driven adult, compared to the cities I'd called home in the years since my departure. As it turns out, it feels like night and day.
If I weren't so set on broadening my network and meeting other ambitious people, I wouldn't feel this so acutely. The very few (correction: two) of my high school friends who remain in the area are wonderful women and we have that depth of friendship that only comes standing the test of time — they've seen me through prep school, party phases, heartbreaks, and career pivots, and love me just the same. My newer friends (shout out to my football league and the one sorority sister I reconnected with after losing touch for six years) are sharp and funny and, for the most part, completely unbothered by the political backdrop of the town we live in.
But the transplants, the ones drawn here to advance their professional worlds, are a different breed than I have ever encountered anywhere else. To find common ground in conversation, you must be up-to-speed on the crisis du jour. Your success and standing hinges on being the same political affiliation as the rest of the room. And there is a distinct draw to power as the primary motivator. Not the financial focus of New York, not the free-market innovation of San Francisco, not the clout of LA. Power for the sake of power. Status for the sake of status. A hierarchy built on how well you navigate the red tape of bureaucratic institutions. Performative intellectualism — caring, but seemingly never acting.
off to schmooze once more
Now… am I really so different from them? Aside from the fact that I'm not navigating the security clearances that demand abstinence from drugs and harboring an aversion to being photographed for fear some journalist spins a story out of a night out (two real differences, given how much time I spend in front of a camera and… well, I'll let you fill in the other one). I can posture that I recoil from these power-chasers, but I’m not immune to it! My drive is just pointed in another direction. I can see exactly what it would take to make this town mine again. And I'm sorry, but I'm simply not willing to make the daily outrage cycle my whole personality. What a recipe for mental turmoil! That's a price I am unwilling to pay.
I returned home at the end of this journey looking for an answer. Four cities, four weeks, and surprisingly the clearest “no” turned out to be the one place that one would assume could have been an easy yes.
It's not all bad here. This spring my neighborhood has been overrun with bunnies — and given the religiosity of this area (also foreign to me after my years in California), I can only presume they're Catholic bunnies by the voracity with which they seem to multiply. It's a wonderfully quaint problem to have. But it's one more reminder that I'm somewhere that isn't challenging or inspiring me the way I need right now.
say hello to my neighbor
Curiously,
Kate
The best part of sending this newsletter is what lands in my inbox after.
Reader Curiosities
Elias wrote the kindest note 😊 and brought forward a really interesting question:
How do you overcome the fear of your likeness being mis-used by A.I.? I want to start something creative, but I can’t get past the worries of my image or voice being used towards something I don’t want.
This is such a fascinating thought exercise! I'll be honest… the concern hadn't really crossed my mind. When we’re standing at the edge of a cliff, deciding whether to take the leap of faith to start something new (in this case, a creative pursuit), our minds have a funny way of generating every possible reason to talk us out of it. To me, this reads to me like a very natural mental hump that every creator has to climb over to start doing the thing they're aspiring to do.
That said, I don't want to be reductive. We're in a genuinely strange moment where a "new" technology is being shoved down our throats and popping up in every nook and cranny on the face of the planet (or, as some of my YouTube audience has informed me, at least every dimly lit corner of the USA - apparently other countries are less bogged down by the AI craze). There will be bad actors, as there always have been and always will be. AI literacy isn't a taught curriculum yet, and tools for things like deepfake detection are slow to hit the market. But the way I see it, the cost of not creating at all dwarfs the cost of one day discovering my face got ripped off for some strange political ad. While it may take years and years to catch up (as made extra apparent by my time in the DC tech policy scene), regulation will catch up eventually. And personally, I firmly believe that choosing to create despite the uncertainty is a massive moat in the current moment. That’s a whole other essay I mean to write soon.
I know from your videos that you believe AI has constructive uses, so I’m wondering if you are using AI to author or help author these newsletters?
Sean asked the question that I’m sure was on a few folks’ minds!
The short answer is absolutely no for authoring but yes for editing. I embrace the mantra “writing is thinking”, and to chose to cognitively offload something as personal as writing would undoubtedly have unforeseen implications for one’s own cognition further down the line, which is something I’m extremely intentional about. That’s part of the reason I’ve taken it up as a weekly practice! To me, writing is way too personal and emotional for AI to do it. It’s a way of processing my thoughts, feelings, and experiences… all of which AI does not have.
I'm actually extremely bullish on art and creativity (writing, crafting, human interpersonal relations, systems architecture) becoming an even more important space in the coming decades exactly because it is somewhere that can't be outsourced to AI - I believe the writers and thinkers of the modern world come out on top.
I do sometimes use AI for typo checks and high-level editing (eg. structural feedback), but I'm very pointed in my prompting to never draft anything for me nor ever change my words (I'm way too precious with my vocabulary and word choice to have that be altered). It would be a loss to use AI to shortcut sincerity and human connection, and that's just not my game. Of course I have tried using AI for writing but it's just... bad. And often inaccurate. And sounds like generic sloppy drivel. I think everyone should try AI for all sorts of things out of experimentation, if not in large part to realize it is much less scary than people think, especially in creative applications. AI can't write because AI can't experience, and writing (to me) is born from experience, not regurgitating the next-best-word from the mass amounts of Reddit posts you've synthesized.
Where do you draw the line on this? I'm curious what feels fine to outsource and what feels like cheating to you. Hit reply, I’d love to hear how you’re thinking about this! I read every one (and will try to include more!)