Currently lazing in my drafts pile are five posts of varying length. None of them are at the point where I feel like they’re ready to publish yet, and they keep getting longer and longer the longer I sit on them. It doesn’t look like any of them will be ready to post soon, so this will be a short post by necessity to wish in the new year.
If you’ve been around the internet in 20251, you’ve probably come across the idea of “vibe coding.” It’s the Collins Dictionary’s 2025 Word of the Year, and in their words is “the use of artificial intelligence prompted by natural language to assist with the writing of computer code”2
When I first heard about the term vibe coding it sounded like people were just coding for fun. It felt like an anarchist methodology to computer science– rejecting the chore of productivity or profit and instead embracing desire and joy in coding, making what you desire, channeling your inner whimsy.
No; instead, it’s abstracting the code from the coder. Why is this vibe coding? It democratizes coding, sure, but why can’t you just learn how to code the same product from scratch using one of many free online coding resources?
And the answer here is time and ease, because time is a currency now and ease– well, laziness has always been enough to convince people to act on an opportunity. Or not act on it.
Vibe Writing
Now, I’m not a programmer, and I can’t comment intelligently on the process of coding or product development. I am, however, an artist in other mediums, and would like to pitch another idea of vibe anything-ing. It’s not novel, and it’s really just a literal interpretation of vibe.
I think about how I write my prose. I’m objectively horrible with grammar. I can’t tell you what a gerund is or what all the comma rules are. I kind of write what feels right to look at, to read. What punctuation makes sense in the context of the sentence, in how I want the reader to approach the rhythm of my writing. In my mind this is a form of vibe writing– embracing the flow of what feels right.
I looked up vibe writing in Google and the only mention I found was in a Substack post by Deleyna Marr3. At the beginning of the article she brings up the same idea I am, of being guided by a vibe, writing to rhythm. But quickly she talks about AI in writing too, and says:
“Lately, I’ve been experimenting with different ways that writers might work with AI. No, not in the way of “get rich quick, turn out a ton of books” but in helping to take off some of the cognitive load so that we can write more creatively.
When AI takes on the scaffolding of the outlines, the summaries, the repetitive tweaks, it frees up mental space. And in that space, creativity returns. Stories breathe again.”
Isn’t that cognitive load also the point of writing? I’m definitely more anti-LLM than pro- and the bias is tinging my opinion here, but why should AI take on the scaffolding of the outlines? Isn’t that your job, to frame the story the way your mind sees fit? Because isn’t that the way you make it your story, keep it apart from all the rest? Are the repetitive tweaks and continuous edits not a love letter to incremental change and the infinitely evolving nature of art?
At the end of the day, your creative process is your own. But I don’t want to trade out the mundane tasks in art or the process of improvement. If you keep abstracting yourself from your art, don’t you stop being the artist at some point?
Imperfect Photography
The cover picture is a photo I took when I was camping at Panola mountain in February 2024. It’s not a technically perfect photograph– it’s out of focus and I think my lens was fogged up when I took it4. But it’s one of my favorite photos that I’ve ever taken.
Mistakes can be art too. Embracing the beauty inherent to process is a valuable skill, and the people rushing to AI for art seem to miss that point sometimes.
The next 365 days
I’ve got a couple of projects I’m hoping to work on in 2026 (resolutions of sort!):
- Finish a non-school book once a week. This can be anything– a play, a novella, short story, fiction, non-fiction, poetry.
- Read more Marathi and Hindi literature, or at least just practice translating songs more.
- And speaking of songs, singing more.
- Start up my Atlanta Hot Chocolate review Instagram. See, I love hot chocolate, and have been joking about an insta dedicated to reviewing Atlanta’s hot chocolate establishments for a while. So I might as well start now. For what it’s worth, I’m almost done with the template for reviews.
- Write more often. My idealistic goal is to write something cohesive enough to post every three days, but realistically, a finished post once a week.
- It would also be fun to practice videography and start making video essays from some of my posts. As a spoiler, the latest addition to my drafts pile is a script for my first video essay.
- When I walk around with my camera I get asked if I have a photo insta more often than I expect to. I really ought to build up a photo insta, posting a batch of photos at least once a week. This should be easier, I do have a backlog of photos I can post from.
- And bleeding in from the previous note, taking more pictures.
- I want to note, the goal isn’t to focus on quantity but rather practicing concision & just putting out posts instead of waiting until they are as close to perfect as I can in the moment. And working on finishing projects I start.
- Traveling more.
- Try and build up an origami community in Atlanta outside of my college club.
- Throw many potlucks and movie nights.
- And of course, learn many new things & make many many new friends (and maybe an enemy, just to see what that’s like)
This is a non-exhaustive list, I think of new things I want to do all the time. But writing at least some of them down is the first step to achieving them.
Title Credits & Footnotes
A completely original title! My goodness!