The Work Before the Vision
Blurry vision, immersive learning, and what Dharmesh named for me this week
Late 2025 and into early 2026, so many things were changing at once and I struggled to find my footing.
Journey’s path forward felt unclear. The tech I had spent thirty-five years working with was moving fast enough to make even me, someone who loves this stuff, stop and breathe. Some things were getting easier. Other things were harder to make sense of. I could feel that something was shifting, but I could not name it yet.
I thought I was on to something. So I did what I do.
I protected my time fiercely, and spent time in my office, mostly by myself, for a few months. I read, researched and poked at things. I built half-finished experiments to see what they would tell me. No deck. No plan. No clean output anyone could have looked at and said, oh, that is what she is up to.
Just the work of trying to think a thing through.
And then in early February, I reached out to a trusted friend and asked her to pressure-test a direction with me. I couldn’t describe it cleanly but I got on her calendar anyways.
That was a pivotal moment for me.
Not because I had figured anything out. Because I stopped waiting until I had.
The vision was still blurry. Turns out a blurry vision is enough to walk toward. That is what I learned this year.
Once I started walking, the next steps showed up. The working through things with another informed trusted friend. the meeting. The next conversation and the thing in front of me. I didn’t have to see the whole road. I only had to see the next step, take it, and trust that the one after would show up when I got there.
That part is not mine to control. My higher power handles the rest. My job is the next action; recovery taught me that first. Business is teaching me the same lesson (again), in different clothes as it did in 2019, 2020, 2021 …
Being true to myself and now having a word for it, I know that I am an immersive learner. I have to build to learn. Reading about a thing doesn’t stick for me. Watching someone else do it doesn’t stick either. I’m very practical and I have to put my hands on it, break it, fix it, sit with the mess, and then I know it. And not just “know” it intellectually but enough to connect it to other things.
That is how I learned every system I have ever had to manage, automate or build. It is how I have been learning AI. It is why my office has been full of half-finished experiments for months. Most of them did not survive - some of them may be revived.
But I had to get my own house in order first and that mean building for myself.
The pace of tech right now is something I haven’t seen in thirty-five years. New tools every week. New capabilities every month. New language for things that did not have language six months ago. It would be easy to chase.
I’m not chasing. I anchor on the work in front of me, and I turn toward a new tool only when the work actually asks for it. Sometimes the work has asked and actually replaced something I wanted to build, that’s when I smile.
Most of the time it hasn’t. Not being skeptical, but knowing the process and what I am building thanks to 35 years of building systems.
And then this week, Dharmesh Shah published a piece that, in plain language, explained what I had been doing alone in my office for months.
He described it as the harness around AI and … as a ladder with 7 rungs….
> Prompts (what I type)
> Custom instructions (telling the AI who I am, once))
> Skills (reusable playbooks for how I work)
> Plugins (packaged extensions that connect to other apps)
> Tools (single actions like search or send email)
> MCP (the standard that lets all those tools work together)
> Full agentic system (AI agents that actually do the work for me)
He gave names to the layers I had been quietly building without names.
I’ve been building my harness … stepping the through the various rungs … and may have skipped one because I didn’t need it yet (plugins)
That happens to immersive learners. You build the thing first. Someone else writes the map later. Both are real.
The important part was the vision - to honor and hone my own skills and experiene so that I can be of maximum service to my fellows.
There’s still some uncertainly in some things; like here on Substack, my plan was weekly writing and sharing and well …. but reality is I need a place to write and this was my go to when I left facebook land — which has been a blessing; my head is quiet most of the time.
If you’re here and curious about how tech can help you do what brings you joy more fully, I honor you!
If you’re here and curious about Making Recovery Visible —— please share what you learn, recovery has always been around and available; just not talked about. Share what you learn as you learn it.
Recovery is possible and there’s help available.
Grateful for my bonus life.
Take good care,
Carolyn