Saying F*** You to the Old Way: Becoming Your Life's Unkillable Main Character
Fired For AI: The Brutal Truth About Navigating an Obsolete World
Hey Tribe,
Less than two months ago, I was fired.
Let me tell you, it wasn’t for slacking off. It wasn’t for poor performance. I was fired for using AI to do my job better. Period.
Since that day, I’ve been in the messy, uncertain middle. Trying to figure out what’s next. How to provide for my wife and our 13-month-old daughter. And yeah, battling that voice asking: am I even good enough? Some mornings, I’m firing on all cylinders, applications sent, feeling a surge of “I got this.” Other days, I’m buried by it all, wondering what the hell I’m doing with my life.
But here’s the brutal, no-sugar-added truth I’m learning: Getting fired wasn’t my failure. It was a wake-up call. The system I was in was too fragile, too stuck in the past to adapt. And more importantly, I was following someone else’s outdated, crumbling script instead of writing my own.
For a decade before that, I felt like a goddamn pinball. Bouncing around the sports performance world. Three months here, eight months there. Contract ends. Budget cuts. Market shifts. Layoffs were just the predictable bumpers and flippers in a game I didn’t truly control.
I had the credentials. I could break down biomechanics like a physicist, design programs that actually got results, help athletes shave precious seconds. But in that system, none of it guaranteed stability when the music stopped.
Every time I got laid off, I’d dust myself off and think the same thing: “Okay, the next place will be different.” And the chorus from career counselors, LinkedIn gurus, everyone - it all sang the same tune: Get more qualified. Network harder. Just work the system, and it works for you.
So, desperate for something stable, something different than the constant uncertainty, I did what felt rational. I got out. Found a stable corporate desk job. Steady paycheck. Benefits. The whole middle-class dream my parents breathed a sigh of relief about. My friends and family were impressed. “You made it,” they’d say.
But I was just trading one rigid, soul-sucking script for another. And it was built on a map to a territory that frankly, no longer exists.
While my colleagues were happy coloring inside the lines, I saw AI as this incredible lever. Not to replace my work, but to amplify it. To enhance my ability to analyze mountains of data in minutes, to spot patterns I might miss, to deliver insights that were objectively better.
I thought I was being proactive. Making myself indispensable by evolving beyond their rigid, analog frameworks.
I was fatally wrong about what they actually valued.
The termination was swift. Bureaucratic. Rooted in fear, not progress. “Blanket policy against AI tools,” they said. Period. No exceptions. No discussion about the value I was creating, the results I was getting. Just a policy violation – one not even clearly communicated across the company - and a clean exit.
The message screamed from that stilted video call: “They needed someone who colored inside the lines – even when the coloring book was from '83, and the world was already rendered in VR.”
Sitting at my desk after logging off for the last time, the brutal realization hit me with the force of a physical blow: The very thing I thought would make me more valuable – my willingness to adapt and evolve, my embrace of a powerful new tool – was exactly why the system spit me out.
That was it. The undeniable truth. I wasn’t fired for using AI. I was fired for thinking for myself. For daring to navigate a new landscape rather than just blindly following a prescribed, obsolete route.
Here’s the tough lesson I absorbed staring at that termination letter: We are all being handed maps to territories that no longer exist.
The old navigation system promised security through conformity. Follow the paved roads, the predictable paths. But conformity to what? Systems and institutions designed for a world fundamentally redrawn by technology, connectivity, and unprecedented change. While we were focused on reading the damn directions, the landscape shifted dramatically.
I was watching Moana with my daughter recently, and it hit me. The main characters Moana and Maui weren’t using rigid maps or GPS. They crossed thousands of miles of open ocean by reading the stars, feeling the wave patterns, observing cloud formations. Picking up on countless subtle signs from their environment.
They developed incredible sensitivity to their surroundings. The skill to adjust their course in real-time as they sailed. They weren’t adhering to some fixed route someone planned. They were actively creating their path by maintaining a dynamic connection to the ocean and sky around them.
That’s the skillset we desperately need now. Not better maps to a vanished world. But better navigation skills for the unpredictable one we actually inhabit.
Now, let’s talk about AI and that feeling of “authenticity.” A friend hit me with feedback that stung:
“I’m concerned about AI in your content. It feels inauthentic. I don’t feel like I’m following Sam. I feel like I’m following a language model.”
That was a gut punch. The last thing I want is for you, the human on the other side of this screen, to feel disconnected from the actual human wrestling with these messy problems.
But here’s where I’m landing on that, and it’s a crucial distinction: The question isn’t whether we use new tools in a rapidly evolving world. The question is whether we maintain our authentic core and clear intention how and why we use them.
Think of a musician. Do they become fake because they use an electric guitar instead of just their voice or an acoustic? When Jimi Hendrix picked up his Stratocaster, he wasn’t abandoning his musical soul for mechanical assistance. He was extending his creative reach in ways previously unimaginable. A painter using a brush instead of finger paints. A writer typing on a keyboard instead of carving words into stone.
Each tool offers different possibilities, textures of expression. What matters is the artist’s intention. Are they genuinely exploring and communicating something meaningful? Or just going through motions with no heart? A computer-generated song created with deep emotional purpose and craft can carry more authenticity than a technically perfect acoustic performance lacking a soul.
The medium is most authentic when it serves as a genuine extension of the creator’s vision, not a substitute for it. Tools amplify intention; they don’t inherently create or destroy it. The question isn’t what you use to make your art or build your life, it’s why you’re making it and how honestly and intentionally you’re engaging with the process.
Since getting fired and embracing this need for radical new navigation, I’ve been practicing something I call opportunity detection. It’s actively learning to see and act upon the possibilities that exist in the dynamic relationship between me and my environment. This is a core principle of ecological dynamics - how living organisms perceive and interact with their surroundings to achieve goals. It’s developing a heightened sensitivity to the affordances – the opportunities for action - your environment is constantly offering.
Here’s a concrete example: Most people see a park bench. Just wood and metal to sit on. An “old way” brain. My “new way” brain sees it as sitting, yes, but also something to step onto to get a better angle for a photo, a makeshift table, a barrier, even a platform for a quick bodyweight exercise. The affordances are everywhere if you learn to see them.
Another example: A seemingly unproductive conversation. The “old way” sees it as wasted time. The “new way” looks for hidden affordances: unexpected learning, forging a powerful connection, sparking collaboration, generating surprising inspiration.
And here’s the unexpected power-up: AI helps me sharpen this ability to see these hidden possibilities. Not by serving me ideas on a silver platter. But by acting as an incredibly powerful copilot. It helps me gather, process, and connect scattered information at light speed, acting like a superhuman sensor for my environment. It helps me perceive the “ecosystem” of a problem or opportunity with far greater clarity, highlighting affordances I definitely would have missed on my own.
It’s like having a floodlight consciousness scanning the horizon while my spotlight consciousness focuses in. (Shoutout to Dan Koe’s latest piece, "You Weren't Born to be an NPC," for crystallizing this concept for me.)
The stakes are immense. We are in the biggest transition since the Agricultural Revolution. AI, global connectivity, social upheaval - it’s creating a world fundamentally different from the one our institutions, and our “old way” mindsets, were built for. The old economy was built on scarcity and predictability.
The new territory is defined by abundance, complexity, and relentless, rapid change.
This is precisely why so many people feel lost, anxious, and stuck right now. We are trying to navigate this new, wild ocean with obsolete maps and broken compasses. The map-followers are asking: “What job should I train for that won’t be automated?” The navigation-skilled are learning to ask: “How can I develop uniquely human capabilities that become even more valuable when enhanced by AI?”
I’ve been learning these unkillable navigation skills from two unexpected masters: my crazy French bulldog, Eevee, and my 13-month-old daughter.
Eevee, with her favorite giant tennis ball. She doesn’t give up. She relentlessly tries different angles, different pressures, pinning it against buildings. Persistent, experimental action within her environment. That’s a navigator.
Then my daughter. Her excessive babbling slowly but surely turning into mimicking words - constant trial and error, sensing and acting. At the playground, watching her experiment with different ways down the slide (including the heart-stopping head-first approach!) is pure fearless experimentation and resilience.
She tumbles, she laughs, she climbs back up to try again.
Watching them, I realized they embody this natural curiosity, persistence, and willingness to experiment in real-time. They don’t follow a script for playing; they sense, act, and learn. Relentlessly.
So, I started applying that same fearless, experimental approach to my challenges since being fired. Instead of overthinking every step like my “old way” brain used to, I treat obstacles like Eevee treats that tennis ball. Something to wrestle with, to try different angles of attack until I find the right one. It’s messier than methodical planning, but somehow, it’s proving far more effective for navigating this new territory.
I'm even taking this approach to my guitar playing – instead of just running scales and following tabs, I'm experimenting with sounds, trying weird tunings, and just seeing what happens.
This is the essence of becoming antifragile. Nassim Nicholas Taleb coined the term for things that don’t just withstand shocks, they get better because of them.
“Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”
Like a muscle that grows under tension, or an ecosystem that diversifies after a disturbance, you become better equipped for stress, uncertainty, and unpredictability because you’ve learned to interact with it dynamically.
When you shed the rigid old mindset and embrace an ecological approach - constantly sensing, acting, and adapting, enhanced by intelligent tools like AI - you develop the ultimate form of agency. You become less reliant on someone else’s outdated map and far more confident in your own ability to find your way, to perceive new opportunities where others only see obstacles, and to experiment your way to progress. You become, in essence, unkillable in the face of modern uncertainty because you are built to thrive in it.
The time has come to say fuck you to the old way. To step fully into your agency. And to become the unkillable main character in your own extraordinary life.
Your Next Move: Take the First Step Off the Map
Stop following old maps that lead nowhere in a world that has fundamentally transformed.
Embrace this revolutionary era not with fear of the unknown, but with a tested toolkit for navigation.
See your life as a dynamic ecosystem, and use tools like AI with intention to enhance your ability to sense, act, and adapt within it.
This isn’t just theory. This is practice.
I want you to try this 48-hour opportunity detection challenge.
For the next two days, consciously observe your immediate environment with different eyes.
The eyes of a navigator.
Look around right now.
What resources are within reach that you’re not fully leveraging?
What small problems in your immediate surroundings are you uniquely positioned to solve?
What conversations truly energize you versus drain you?
What affordances are presenting themselves that you’ve been completely overlooking?
Don’t judge or over-analyze yet. Just notice. Record. Simply see.
Then, hit reply to this email and tell me about one thing you discovered. One opportunity you hadn’t seen before during those 48 hours. This isn’t about finding the perfect answer or the grand plan. It’s about igniting the practice of seeing differently. Of honing your ecological intelligence.
Every expert navigator started exactly where you are now: with uncertainty, with questions, and with the willingness to take the first step off the edge of the known map without knowing exactly where it would lead.
I’m actively building a space for people who are ready to stop looking for maps and start developing these crucial navigation skills alongside others doing the same.
The Forge is that dedicated community. It’s where we share the opportunities we discover, get feedback on the experiments we’re running, and practice developing our internal compasses together in a supportive environment.
Because here’s the truth: You cannot do this alone effectively. Most people around you are still following maps, and they might not understand or support your experimental approach to building a life and career in this new territory. You need other navigators who understand the journey you’re on. You need The Forge.
Join the tribe of navigators and step into The Forge.
We are, in a way, writing a larger story together. The story of the shift from rigid, industrial-age thinking to something new, dynamic, something that doesn’t even have a widely accepted name yet because it’s still raw and emerging.
You have the opportunity to be part of that pioneering group. Not by accident, but by consciously embracing uncertainty and actively developing the navigation skills that will become increasingly valuable as the world becomes increasingly complex and unpredictable.
Go become the unkillable main character. The territory is waiting.
Onward,
Sam
P.S. If this hit you somewhere real, if it made you feel seen or sparked a new way of thinking, please forward it to someone else who might be ready to navigate without a map. They might just need to hear this right now.
P.P.S. I always recommend digging into thinkers who challenge the status quo. Dan Koe’s recent piece “You Weren’t Meant to be an NPC” is a perfect example of the kind of thinking that aligns with becoming your own main character. Go read it. It’s worth your time.