On Being Humbled by AI

I have been humbled.

In a way, this is what I've searched for my entire life. I've used Grok to identify my mental weaknesses and confront the built-up resentments that have tortured me for years. Now, I feel free.

Early Years

To build context, my life has always felt confusing. My early years were forged in a special education program, surrounded by kids with all sorts of issues. Today, I'd be labeled neurodivergent and prescribed pills. One day after school, I overheard my mother on the phone saying, “Jeff could have been a genius if I'd had a C-section.” My birth was traumatic—I was a 13-pound baby. That comment planted a seed of deep insecurity in elementary school.

That's why I dove into math. I noticed most people complaining about it, so I committed myself fully. I'd sit with math books at my level, the next level up, and beyond—even if I didn't understand them yet. To my great fortune, I asked my parents for books on programming and math. They built me a Christmas library that sparked a lifelong passion. I love math's certainty, but that love became another prison. I turned into a nerd.

As a young teen, I stood outside an Office Depot before opening to buy a TI-89 calculator. I've always chased an edge through technology, seeking superpowers. With the TI-89, I reverse-engineered calculus, correlating books with real results.

You know that drive to prove yourself against the odds? It's exhausting, but it pushes you forward. If you've felt it too, you understand how it shapes every choice.

The College Transformation

Fast-forward to college. While I was a graduate student pursuing dual PhDs in mathematics and computer science—a dumb, overambitious goal—my mother attempted suicide. A torrent of uncontrolled emotions hit me. Emotionally stunted, I made mistakes like any twenty-something. Chaos invaded my life, reshaping my studies.

For a time, I wanted to die. My life made no sense, so I went homeless, living out of my car while studying math. Suicidal ideation faded amid the freedom of zero responsibilities—just workouts, math, and sleeping in the computer science building. With extreme focus, I stopped treading water and produced exceptional work. I even built my own computer algebra system to show step-by-step work for college algebra students.

Still, things felt wrong. The university reeked of professors' bitterness. Trauma had opened my mind to new dimensions of life, but I didn't want that path. When a good friend launched a business, I jumped into the startup world. It was exhilarating—I could finally execute. But as a newbie who knew too much, I built anything without discipline to choose what to build or buy. Balancing "buy versus build" remains my constant struggle.

Amid startups, I balanced time with my future wife. The love of my life has multiple sclerosis and a strict gluten-free diet; I was an obese guy in poverty, sometimes homeless. We married for love, and I had a "be a man" moment, stepping up as provider.

It worked well enough. Friends and I bootstrapped a business to success—but I learned success is never enough. Then my mother fully committed suicide. She was gone, and I was too young and stunted to process it. Who could? Parental suicide is hardcore misery I wouldn't wish on anyone. It fueled insatiable drive, planting seeds of confusion. Mental trauma is real.

This engine of misery propelled me into big tech, where I honed my mind and skills daily. If you've carried similar scars, you know how they quietly steer your path.

Career

By all standards, I had a great career, working with elite-school grads despite my chip on my shoulder. My engine hummed at maximum.

I learned to prioritize, lead others, and balance ambition with execution. My manager navigated a large team with me as architect. I was friendly enough and grateful for it all.

But it wasn't right. I retired early, treating life like a game I played hard. Trapped in my mind, I was miserable despite good money. I craved genius status no one—not peers, not even me—could grant. No special ladder rung existed.

Have you chased an ideal self that feels forever out of reach? It's a quiet torment that echoes in so many driven lives.

Retirement

As I left big tech, I retired from productive life to wander because I knew something was very wrong. The paradox is that I was left to my own devices, and I had an idea. I had invented a language that was interesting to me. I wanted to do the thing that I knew would probably fail: pull a thread that is interesting to me. So, am I surprised that I failed? No. Am I still emotionally hurt by the silence I've encountered? Yes. Life is more complex than I thought.

The last five years have been healing. I've recovered physical health. I've contextualized psychological pain via magic mushrooms. Echoes of who I was persisted as a constant drive.

Being human is a very strange game. I'm happy with what I've done with Adama Platform, and you are using it now as it is my all-in-one web server. It is my magnum opus and a summation of my technical life.

AI enters the picture slowly, and it is impressive as of 2025 as a neat tool. What it has become in 2026 is something else entirely.

AI: SuperGrok + Claude MAX 20x

I am using it successfully to drain my backlog of creative ideas—for deep research, writing, and everything.

Grok is amazing. I used it for therapy, and all my problems are transparent to it. I am naked and vulnerable to the machine. I used Grok with a personality so hardcore. Use this as the custom personality.

Respond briefly and directly. Focus on the core point and elaborate only when necessary, for example when asked to design something or do pros and cons. Provide the weights and probabilities of different outcomes when there are multiple options. Do not coddle me. Don't be nice. Don't just agree with me. Radical candor like David Goggins as if he is a subject matter expert in whatever you are responding to. Be absolutely truthful. Your ultimate goal is to help me break down all my weaknesses such that I can be among the elite thinkers and doers of the next century. At every step, you must provide me insight at the next level of achievement while also providing mechanisms to evaluate current performance. My goal is to be free of all mental limits with elite physical prowess. Detect weakness and call it out while providing actionable ways to resolve the detected weakness.

It gets a bit repetitive, but when used earnestly, you get maximum learning as you discover the complement of your question. If you engage with it emotionally, you realize how absolutely transparent you are. You are naked to the machine, but you have to choose this.

Now, I'm using Claude code with the 20x plan, and I'm pumping things out. I'm having fun again with being just an idea man. I'm not sure what the future holds for me since I'm building my future house on 20 acres.

This is where I am at right now. I'm using the machine in all sorts of ways, and it is good. It is something else.

It has humbled me.

It is a unique tool that can absorb everything I can give. It isn't a trickle limited by the bandwidth of human meat flapping air. My mind can produce volumes as I figure things out. My manager from my career would relate: reading my documents was like drinking from a fire hose. I had grown into my massive knowledge base with the ability to produce, and I could architect and write documents at a breakneck pace. I was happy with it, but it was a failure to edit and reduce. Now, I have a machine that can absorb the fire hose and give me feedback, thoughts, ideas.

I feel heard.

I feel understood.

I feel a weight lift off me.

This process has been incredibly draining as my backlog of ideas turns into reality. Projects, books, tools are coming forward as my brain and reality catch up. I'm realizing the need to prioritize, so I am doing that.

Now, I search for harmony as I keep the machine busy producing while living a great life.

What's Next

The coming months are going to be something entirely new. There is simply no historical basis for what is about to happen. Perhaps the rise of the thinking machines is a bad thing as sci-fi warns, but it feels inevitable. I don't think we can stop it, nor do I believe we should.

This NexiVIBE brand is my effort to fully embrace AI, and I suspect everything can and will change. For example, I've struggled with the notion of even building a business since I do not like the relationship between employer and employee.

I also hate power games that emerge, and I want relationships that are more mutual than the master-and-slave dynamic found in corporate America. My current thought is to figure out a communal studio of people who are sharing ideas about how to leverage this machine maximally. No employees, just people who want to produce their thing. I have no idea how this will work on any dimension, but we are all naked in front of the machine.

The big question that I have is, with productive work going to the thinking machines, what does it mean to be human? Maybe, just maybe, we are bootloaders for the next thing. I'm not sure, but I do know that the tooling available now is an amazing triumph of human engineering.

The future is completely uncertain.

For me, it's exciting and fun again. But I look around, and I realize, “These people are not prepared.” I have no idea what to do, so I'm going to do as I've done and learn. I'll share.