Ground Control
Staying grounded when everything else is anything but.
Finance That Feels explores the psychology and mindset behind our financial decisions—asking why we are the way we are with money—and offers tools to help you align your money with your biggest dreams and deepest values. For more regular updates, follow @emiliedayanhill on Instagram.
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For here
Am I sitting in a tin can
Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue
And there’s nothing I can do.
- David Bowie, Space Oddity
Monday was a holiday for some—President’s Day. It’s a tricky one. Some offices are closed, some aren’t. For families, some daycare centers are closed, others remain open. For some students it’s the beginning of winter break. For others, that break isn’t until next week or maybe there isn’t a winter break at all.
In a country that loves profit-maximizing efficiency, I will never understand holidays like President’s Day where no one can truly be efficient whether they are at work (and half of vendors are closed/some colleagues have chosen to take the holiday) or whether they are at rest (but half of their friends are working or, for parents, one holds down the fort at home while the other is at work because…America.)
In our household, both my husband and I work in banking/finance. One office was closed, one was open. We opted to make it a holiday for the whole family.
It was gorgeous in Atlanta. We spent the day at the local garden center, buying supplies for the spring season and bird houses and feeders to create the sanctuary I dream of in our backyard. Like birds emerging from their winter to build their spring nests, we too are emerging from the “winter” of rebuilding after a tree fell on our house at the end of 2024. When I wrote *this post* the tree hadn’t even fallen yet (it happened the next day!) This is the first season we will truly get to enjoy our full home and yard since that event.
Change, and the rebuilding around it, takes time.
After playing in our little postage stamp of native soil, we took the kids to the tennis courts. On such a mild and sunny February day, the single neighborhood court was in high demand. We mostly let the kids play in the creek that runs by. I sat there watching them for I don’t know how long. I could see their imaginations running wild, the adventure of getting their feet wet and hands dirty. The sun glimmered through the straggling leaves overhead. Time felt slow. I felt alive.
I had the distinct thought that Artificial Intelligence is not here. AI is not in real life.
I’ve written before that in my work as a high net worth investment advisor I have a front-row seat to the spectrum of life experiences in my clients’ lives. This seat also reveals the anxieties felt at the collective level—themes emerge in the conversations I have each week. The trepidation around AI and how it might upend life as we know it—work, education, culture—is on people’s minds. So it is on my mind, too.
I don’t know how AI will play out (I think anyone who says they do is silly!) I certainly see its productivity benefits—I am actively working on my AI literacy. Its power is frightening, too, if I think too much about it. It feels like we are watching the world change before our very eyes and it feels like it’s happening fast. At least, this is what we are being told.
How much change is real and how much is simply hype?
Humans don’t like change. This fact is so thoroughly documented that we should approach every decision, every transition, with this knowledge front of mind. We will often choose suboptimal outcomes to avoid change and uncertainty. I am trying to approach AI with this awareness.
I found Josh Brown’s recent LinkedIn post to be incredibly refreshing. Here’s an excerpt:
The venture capitalists told us fifteen years ago that school would be replaced by the top five percent of teachers for each subject broadcasting their lessons via the internet to millions of children.
They called this a MOOC - Massive Open Online Course. Terrible name, but let’s put that aside for now.
Why isn’t everyone in a Massive Open Online Course? Surely it would be preferable to save time and learn from the top professors from the convenience of a screen. Isn’t everything about efficiency and saving money?
Well, it turns out that the weirdos who were all in on MOOCs didn’t understand a f***ing thing about humanity and what people actually want. It turns out that most people want to be around other people. They actually derive something important from their interactions. Not everyone has social anxiety. Not everyone is trying to so perfectly optimize every minute of their day and every dollar of their spend.
— Josh Brown
Splashing in the creek with my kids, there was no threat of AI. No bombardment of alerts telling me how the world is changing. No profit-and-time maximization. It was real, slow life, something completely irreplaceable by technology. We were together as a family, with the chirping birds and gnats in the grass. We felt the sun on our skin and inhaled the fresh scent of new growth—spring is near. Our shoes were wet and dirt traced our fingernails. In that moment, I was happy to be human.
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DISCLAIMER
The opinions of Emilie Hill are solely her personal opinions and not necessarily the opinions of her employer. Social content provided by Emilie is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy any security.
This! Beautifully written. Thank you.