Links: Part – 1 | Part – 2 | Part - 3

DISCLAIMER: I am not a veterinarian, and nothing in this article should be considered veterinary or medical advice. I am simply sharing some of the challenges I encountered along the way and the practical solutions that helped me navigate them.

The day your veterinarian tells you, “Your dog has diabetes,” your life changes. From that point forward, every day will be different for as long as your dog is living, you just may not realize yet how different.

There is no simple Diabetic Dog for Dummies handbook that prepares you for everything that may follow. In Part – 1 of this trilogy, I wrote about some of the challenges I encountered, but I did not provide any practical lessons I learned from them. This companion guide is intended to do that; to share some of the things I wish I had known from the beginning.

Here are the links to Part – 2 and Part – 3.

Canine Diabetes Caregiving Risk Matrix

Think of the five questions below as a simple way to assess the potential complexity of caring for a diabetic dog. Zero “Yes” answers suggests a lower management burden, while five “Yes” answers indicates a high-risk caregiving situation with multiple challenges occurring at once. Not every ‘Yes’ carries the same weight; some challenges can have a much greater impact than others.

In my case, the answer was Yes to all five questions. The areas that affected me most were Support, Treatment Feasibility, and Medical Complexity. Ultimately, I believe Medical Complexity affected Jetson the most. I was not simply managing diabetes; I was trying to manage several conditions that interacted with one another, making the diabetes increasingly difficult to control.

The purpose of this matrix is not to predict an outcome. It is to help owners identify where their greatest challenges may be early, so they can prepare for them before those challenges become overwhelming.

Track Everything

If you answered Yes to Medical Complexity, keep a detailed log from the beginning. A simple spreadsheet or document can be invaluable for tracking dates, symptoms, medications, dosage changes, veterinary visits, test results, and outcomes.

I wish someone had told me to do this earlier. When multiple medical issues begin overlapping, it becomes difficult to remember exactly what happened and when. A clear record can help you recognize patterns, communicate more effectively with your veterinary team, and give everyone involved a better picture of your dog’s medical history.

The Three Ps: Pinch – Poke – Plunge

I believe one of the biggest challenges of canine diabetes can be something that sounds deceptively simple; giving the insulin shot. Most people have never had a reason to become comfortable giving an injection, and doing it to your own dog can feel intimidating at first.

1. Your dog may behave very differently at home than at the vet.
Jetson was the perfect patient at the vet and rarely objected to injections. At home, it was a completely different story. If you experience this, the most important advice I can offer is; stay calm! Your dog can sense your anxiety, and becoming frustrated or nervous can make the process harder for both of you. There are plenty of instructional videos that demonstrate the mechanics of giving an insulin injection, but learning to remain calm is just as important.

2. Prepare the syringe before you approach your dog
Before drawing the insulin, I found it helpful to leave the needle capped and move the plunger back and forth a few times. Some syringes can feel a little stiff, and doing this helped the plunger move more smoothly. I would then bring the plunger to the exact dose I intended to give, a simple mental reminder of the amount I was about to administer.

Next, push the plunger fully back in, insert the needle into the insulin vial, and draw up the prescribed dose. Double-check the measurement before giving the injection and make sure there are no visible air bubbles that could affect the accuracy of the dose. Always follow the specific handling and injection instructions provided by your veterinarian for the insulin and syringes you are using.

3. Remember; it is a subcutaneous (SubQ) injection.
The insulin is injected just beneath the skin, and Jetson usually tolerated it very well. I eventually reduced the process to what I called the Three Ps: Pinch – Poke – Plunge. If your dog is resistant to the injection, I found that it helped to do all three steps quickly and confidently. Don’t fuss too much with the pinch; with Jetson, too much handling of the skin sometimes seemed to be the trigger that made him flinch. The entire process can be completed almost as quickly as you can say, “Pinch, Poke, Plunge.”

I also learned through experience that the angle of the needle seemed to matter. If I came in from the top or at too much of an angle, Jetson would sometimes flinch. I consistently had the best outcome when I inserted the needle parallel to his body, just beneath the skin. Your veterinarian can show you the proper technique for your dog, but for Jetson, keeping the needle parallel and completing the process quickly made a noticeable difference.

4. Find the environment that works for your dog.
At some point, I realized I was probably never going to completely desensitize Jetson to receiving an injection from me when we were alone. What I did discover was that certain confined environments made it easier. For a while, I could give him his shot in the front seat of my car. Eventually, of course, Jetson figured out what I was doing and put the kibosh on that strategy too.

5. Don’t assume you have to do everything alone.
Most diabetic dogs require insulin twice a day, although different insulin regimens may be used depending on the dog and should be determined by a veterinarian. Jetson’s internist ultimately put him on a long-acting insulin (Degludec) that required only one injection per day. That made his care possible for me, even when I had to outsource the injection.

For the first couple of months, I took him to a veterinarian around the corner every day, where they gave the injection for only $4 per shot. Eventually, I knew I needed a more sustainable solution, so I enlisted neighbors to help hold and distract him while I gave the shot. I did this almost every day for roughly six months. Giving some treats while having another person holds him, whether familiar or unfamiliar, often distracted Jetson enough to make the injection process easy.

6. Long-acting insulin came with an important tradeoff for us.
Once-daily insulin made the injections more manageable, but it also created another challenge in Jetson’s particular treatment plan; his eating became critical. I could not give him his normal dose until he ate in the morning, and I needed him to eat again later in the day. When he stopped eating normally, managing the insulin became much more complicated.

Hypoglycemia was a very real concern in our case. Jetson experienced serious low-blood-sugar episodes twice, including one that required an emergency veterinary visit. This is why changes in appetite should never be treated casually in a diabetic dog; your veterinarian should give you specific instructions about what to do with insulin when your dog refuses food. Veterinary guidelines similarly recommend contacting the veterinarian when a diabetic pet does not eat rather than simply giving the normal dose automatically.

The larger lesson I learned was that giving the shot itself is only part of the challenge. You have to find a routine that works for your dog, for you, and for the realities of your household, and sometimes that requires creativity, patience, and help from other people.

Handling and Storing Insulin

• Know exactly how your insulin should be handled. Some types should be gently rolled, some may require mixing, and others should not be shaken or rolled at all. Jetson’s degludec, for example, required no mixing. Improper handling can affect the insulin, so always follow the manufacturer’s instructions and your veterinarian’s guidance.

• Keep the insulin in its original box when storing it in the refrigerator. The box helps protect the vial and keeps the medication and labeling together. See image.

• Put the insulin back in the refrigerator immediately after filling the syringe. Make this the very first thing you do before moving on to anything else. Trust me, when you are distracted or in a hurry, it is surprisingly easy to forget.

• Consider using a protective sleeve for the vial. Insulin vials are small, slippery, and breakable. A vial protector can provide some extra protection if it slips out of your hand. See image.

• Plan ahead for travel or time away from home. Depending on the insulin you use and its storage requirements, you may need an insulated medication travel case or cooler. Always check the specific temperature requirements for your insulin before traveling. See image.

• A simple cooler can work for short trips. At times, I used a small insulated cooler with reusable ice packs and kept the insulin vial inside its original box. The important thing is to keep the insulin at the temperature recommended for that particular product and avoid allowing it to freeze.

• Personally, I kept the syringes separate from the cooler. I had no medical evidence that a cold syringe would cause a problem; I simply preferred not to inject Jetson with a syringe that had been sitting directly against an ice pack or in a very cold environment.

• Put the travel case somewhere you cannot overlook it when leaving the car. I learned this lesson the hard way after leaving Jetson’s insulin in the car too long and having to discard it. Place the cooler somewhere that physically gets in your way when you exit, such as on the passenger seat or directly beside something you know you will take with you. The goal is simple; make it difficult to forget.

The challenge of food

Of all the challenges I faced, food was one of the most frustrating and complicated. Nutrition can become especially difficult when a dog is dealing with multiple medical conditions, and in Jetson’s case, the dietary needs associated with diabetes, pancreatitis, and bladder stones did not always align. Miniature Schnauzers are also predisposed to several of these conditions.

As I discussed in Part – 3, I paid two veterinary nutrition experts to formulate a custom diet for Jetson, which I then prepared for him from scratch. It was the best fit for his medical needs, and he genuinely enjoyed the food. The tradeoff was that it was both expensive and time-consuming to prepare.

My bigger concern was sustainability. I could manage the routine while I was home, but I often wondered what would happen when I needed to travel. A dog sitter would have to take on additional preparation and responsibility, which added another layer of cost and logistics. If you live alone, I believe this is an especially important consideration.

Jetson’s situation was more complicated than most, and homemade meals may not be necessary or practical for every diabetic dog. Ideally, the goal is to find a diet that is both medically appropriate and sustainable over the long term. In Jetson’s case, the effort was worthwhile; his diagnostic results remained encouraging for much of that period, and most importantly, he loved the food.

What I Hope for You

None of these practices will make canine diabetes easy, and no guide can anticipate every challenge you may encounter. Every dog is different, every household is different, and the disease does not always follow a predictable path. But preparation matters. Understanding where your vulnerabilities may be, building a support system, keeping good records, and developing routines around injections, food, monitoring, and insulin can make an enormous difference.

Much of what I have shared here comes from what I learned through trial and error while caring for Jetson. There are certainly many excellent sources of information available online, and this guide is not intended to replace them. I did not get everything right, but I learned a tremendous amount along the way

If this guide helps another owner avoid even one of the difficulties I encountered, feel a little less overwhelmed, or become better prepared for what may lie ahead, then sharing what Jetson and I went through will have served an important purpose.

Links: Part – 1 | Part – 2 | Companion Guide

Jetson passed away on Saturday afternoon, August 15.

For nearly ten months, keeping him healthy and safe had become the center of my life. I’ve been unemployed for the past 13 months, which gave me something most people in my situation might not have had; virtually unlimited time to dedicate to his care. I spared no expense, even at a time when I was struggling financially. If there was something Jetson needed, the cost simply wasn’t part of the decision. My head knows I did everything humanly possible for him. My heart tells me I failed him.

The last year has been the worst year of my life, both personally and professionally. Having so much time to focus on Jetson was both a blessing and a curse. I became too reactive to every setback, and in hindsight, having something else, especially work, to occupy part of my mind would have been healthier. Instead, his health became the center of my world. I’m truly traumatized by the experience. I’m feeling things I’ve never felt before, and that scares me.

A Short Recap of Part – 1

Jetson was diagnosed with diabetes on October 21, 2025. Almost immediately, I discovered one of the things that would make managing his diabetes so difficult; he would not allow me to give him his insulin shot when it was just the two of us. I had to find ways to outsource that part of his care every single day.

Three weeks later, on November 11, Chance, Jetson’s longtime companion, passed away unexpectedly. I was devastated, and Jetson was too. At the same time, I was trying to manage his diabetes along with pancreatic issues and a history of bladder stones. Because those conditions created conflicting dietary requirements, I paid two veterinary nutrition specialists (VET6 and VET7 listed below) to formulate a custom diet. For nearly ten months, I prepared Jetson’s meals from scratch twice a day. It was a lot of work, but I knew diagnostically that the diet was helping him and, most importantly, he loved it.

I ended Part-1 on December 4, 2025, still trying to get Jetson’s blood sugar under control.

A Short Recap of Part – 2

By late January, everything was finally under control. For one brief day, it felt as though persistence had finally produced stability. Literally the next day, Jetson began bumping into things. An ophthalmologist (VET8) diagnosed him with aggressive diabetic cataracts and told me he would likely be blind within two weeks. He eventually did lose his sight, but thankfully only for a few days. On February 19, he underwent successful cataract surgery. Giving Jetson his eyesight back meant everything to me.

Two weeks later, during an ordinary walk, he ingested what I believe was a discarded marijuana edible and became severely ill. For a diabetic dog, appetite loss is a major problem because it destabilizes everything. It took roughly two weeks for him to recover, and by that point, I was already exhausted from trying to keep him healthy through one problem after another.

I ended Part–2 on April 16, 2026. Jetson was stable all around, and I was just about to bring Skipper, another Miniature Schnauzer, into his life as a new companion. What I didn’t know at the time was that the worst was still to come.

Introduction to Skipper

Jetson was very social and loved other dogs and people. After losing Chance, he was truly depressed, and I knew he needed a friend. By this point, Jetson was finally stable, and bringing another dog into his life felt long overdue.

Skipper was 10 months old when I brought him home; a little smaller than Jetson, extremely dog-friendly, but highly skittish around people. He clearly struggles with anxiety and is currently taking the equivalent of doggie Prozac. That added another layer of stress to an already difficult situation for me. It took exactly one month to the day for Jetson to really adopt him, but from that point on, they were besties.

The thing that stands out most about Skipper is how sensitive he is, almost empathic. He clearly knew when Jetson wasn’t feeling well and would soothe him in his own unusual ways. Sometimes Skipper would lie against Jetson or partially on top of him when he was sick. Even more interesting, he would gently gnaw on Jetson’s ears. Jetson loved it. It seemed to relax him, and over time, it became a little ritual between them.

I don’t know exactly what Skipper understood about Jetson’s illness, but he understood something. He knew his friend needed comforting. The pictures below tell the story.

The Pancreatitis

On April 23, Jetson once again ate something off the ground, which I believe was some type of spoiled food. The very next day, he became violently ill and was diagnosed with acute pancreatitis. He spent four days and three nights in the ER hospital (VET2). At one point, they had to place a tube through his nose and into his stomach to remove accumulating fluid. It was agonizing to witness and terribly uncomfortable for Jetson.

During that hospitalization, I made a promise to myself; if Jetson became that sick again anytime soon, I would not put him through another experience like that.

Jetson eventually recovered and became Jetson again. Those recoveries were what kept me going. Every time he bounced back, I wanted to believe that maybe we had finally gotten through the worst of it.

May Through Mid-August: The Relentless Cycle

By June, it didn’t take a data scientist to see the pattern. It reminded me of the movie Groundhog Day. In the film, Phil Connors, played by Bill Murray, repeatedly tries to save an elderly homeless man who dies. Because Phil is reliving the same day, he gets another chance and then another. He feeds the man, gets him medical care, and tries everything he can think of, but ultimately the outcome remains the same.

My version of Groundhog Day happened roughly once a month and followed the same sequence. Jetson would become ill, and I would respond; adjust his food, monitor his glucose, manage his insulin, get veterinary care, get him eating again, and slowly get him stable. I went through numerous glucose sensors during those months because I was constantly trying to understand what his blood sugar was doing. Jetson would always rebound, and seeing him healthy again brought me true joy. For a little while, I could breathe again, only for the cycle to begin again.

It was simply too much for one little dog to keep enduring, and I was wearing down right alongside him.

August 14–15: The Decision I Never Wanted to Make

Since Jetson’s last episode, everything had been going beautifully. He was happy and healthy, and he and Skipper were having a great time together. For a brief moment, I thought maybe I had finally turned the corner. Then, on the morning of Friday, August 14, exactly one month to the day since his last episode, he ate breakfast and received his regular insulin shot. He seemed a little off, but not enough for me to think much of it. That evening, however, he refused to eat, and I knew something wasn’t right.

I took him to the ER (VET5) that night. They knew Jetson and his medical history well. Maybe this was simply a hiccup, and he would feel better in the morning, as had happened before. We decided to make him comfortable, bring him home for the night, and take him to his regular veterinarian (VET1) when they opened Saturday, if he still wasn’t feeling better.

On Friday night, Jetson slept well. I didn’t.

A month earlier, on July 21, Jetson had seen his ophthalmologist (VET8). His eyes were healing well from surgery, so there was no need to see him again for another month. His next appointment was scheduled for August 18. I distinctly remember thinking that, given everything we had been through, I wouldn’t be surprised if Jetson wasn’t here for that appointment. Even having that thought was devastating to me at the time. I hated that my mind had even gone there.

Now we were only a few days away from August 18.

Saturday morning, Jetson initially seemed fine. We went for our normal walk, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. When we came back into the house, he began vomiting bile. It wasn’t the worst episode I had seen, but it was alarming, and I knew the pattern. I believed we were heading into another round of pancreatitis.

This was the hardest decision I had ever made for any of my dogs because I knew there was a very real possibility we could go through the gauntlet again and get Jetson healthy. We could hospitalize him, treat the pancreatitis, get him eating, re-adjust his insulin, and eventually he would come home. But to what end?

That very morning, I had to accept that loving Jetson no longer meant finding another way to save him. It meant having the courage to stop asking him to endure another attempt simply because I wasn’t ready to lose him. It was agony.

And that is why the thought I had after his July 21 eye appointment has haunted me ever since. My rational mind tells me I didn’t manifest this outcome; I had simply lived through enough episodes to recognize the pattern. My heart still wonders whether I somehow made it happen. I know that isn’t rational, but I can’t seem to let it go.

I am heartbroken in ways I have never experienced.

What I Never Imagined

Of all my dogs, Jetson is the most unique. He seemed human in ways I had never experienced in a dog before. The best word I can use to describe his character is “merry.” He was simply a very happy fellow. What I realize now, and what makes losing him even harder, is that I never considered the possibility that I might have to raise Skipper without him.

Skipper is young, anxious, and unsure of people, while Jetson was confident, social, and incredibly well adjusted. I thought I was bringing Skipper into our life. I never imagined that only four months later, it would become just Skipper and me. I simply assumed Jetson would be there to help me raise this little guy. Now I have to figure out how to do it without him.

What I hope someone takes from Jetson’s story is that being told your dog has a treatable disease is not the same as being prepared for what comes next. When Jetson was diagnosed with diabetes, I was thrust into a world I knew nothing about; insulin injections, glucose monitoring, diet, complications, and decisions I never imagined I would have to make. There is a terrible boundary between what modern medicine can treat and what love desperately wants medicine to be able to fix. I crossed that boundary again and again with Jetson. Part of the reason I wrote these articles and why I’ve written a companion guide with practical tips for other owners, is to help someone else feel a little less lost when they suddenly find themselves there.

I’m struggling personally and professionally in ways that are completely new to me, and it’s scary. I’ve lost two dogs in ten months, and I know that I need time to grieve and heal from everything I’ve been through. At the same time, Skipper and I both have to find our way toward a new normal. Skipper was so kind and sensitive with Jetson, he deserves a wonderful life. I owe that to Skipper, and in a way, to Jetson too.

I just wish Jetson were still here…

______

EDITOR’S NOTE

In Parts 1 and 2, I anonymized the veterinary practices involved in Jetson’s care. In this final part, I have chosen to identify the clinics that helped us along the way, while continuing to keep individual veterinary professionals anonymous.

It truly took a village to get Jetson as far as we did. For nearly six months, every day Jetson was home, I had to find a neighbor willing to hold him so I could administer his insulin. I will always be grateful to those neighbors, as well as the veterinary clinics, specialists, emergency hospitals, and technicians who helped us through an extraordinarily difficult ten months. I am also deeply grateful to the team at Linton Square Pharmacy, who filled Jetson’s prescriptions and took a genuine personal interest in his health and well-being.

I am especially grateful to Jetson’s veterinary team at TLC (VET1), who were consistently there for both of us through one crisis after another, and to the team at Veterinary Eye Institute (VET8), who gave Jetson his sight back and provided such thorough care throughout his treatment. Giving him the ability to see again was one of the greatest gifts anyone could have given us.

I also want to acknowledge Dr. Patricia Kallenbach (VET9), a holistic veterinarian and personal friend, whose professional guidance and friendship meant a great deal to me throughout Jetson’s illness.

Every veterinary practice listed below played a role in helping Jetson, whether through routine care, emergency treatment, specialty care, nutrition, or simply being there when I needed help. I am deeply grateful to all of them.

Legend for Veterinary Clinics & Technicians

• VET1: TLC Animal Hospital | Boca Raton, FL

• VET2: ACCESS Specialty Animal Hospital | Royal Palm Beach, FL

• VET3: 24/7 emergency veterinary clinic

• VET4: Dr. Q’s Pet Vet | Delray Beach, FL

• VET5: VEG Emergency Vet | Boynton Beach, Florida

• VET6: Healing Heart Veterinary Clinic | Boynton Beach, Florida

• VET7: Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine

• VET8: Veterinary Eye Institute | Deerfield Beach, FL

• VET9: Dr. Patricia Kallenbach, Holistic veterinarian | FL

• VETTech1: Mobile veterinary technician

• VETTech2: Mobile veterinary technician

• Pharmacy1: Linton Square Pharmacy | Delray Beach, FL

In 2013, Spike Jonze released a science fiction film called Her. Long before ChatGPT or AI companions entered everyday conversation, Her explored a deceptively simple question: What happens when artificial intelligence (AI) becomes emotionally believable?

More than a decade later, the film no longer feels like science fiction. It feels like a documentary made just a few years too early. If you have never seen Her or haven’t watched it since its release, I highly recommend it. Warner Bros. should seriously consider re-releasing the film. Like Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Spike Jonze created more than entertainment. He created a work that explored where technology might eventually take us. As AI becomes woven into everyday life, Her feels increasingly prescient.

For me, the film provides the perfect framework for the second installment of this trilogy. In Part 1, A Geological View of the Smartphone Age, I argued that smartphones quietly became our cognitive appendage. They did far more than put computers in our pockets. They fundamentally changed the environment in which we experience everyday life. I referred to this change as the Human Sensory Orchestration Hypothesis, which begins with a simple premise: human relationships are fundamentally multisensory phenomena that cannot be fully digitized.

Human beings evolved over millions of years in an environment where sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell operated together as an integrated system. Digital technology dramatically expanded the amount of information available to us, while simultaneously reducing the sensory richness through which we experience it. This distinction matters.

When our primary objective is exchanging information, reducing sensory input is often an acceptable tradeoff. Email works extraordinarily well because its purpose is informational. When the objective shifts from exchanging information to building trust, attraction, companionship, or love, the missing senses become increasingly important.

In the film Her, the story follows Theodore Twombly (Theo), a lonely man living in the near future who purchases an advanced operating system named Samantha. Theo communicates with Samantha through his smartphone and a discreet wireless earpiece. She has no physical body, yet she quickly becomes far more than a digital assistant. She even describes herself as having “intuition.” Everything about her feels human. Or perhaps more accurately, everything about her is designed to feel human.

This distinction is important. Samantha’s personality did not emerge through millions of years of biological evolution. It emerged through software, language models, algorithms, and the accumulated decisions of her creators. Her intelligence is artificial, but Theo’s emotions are entirely real.

That asymmetry sits at the heart of the film. It also sits at the heart of my theory. Geology teaches us that life is shaped by its environment over immense spans of time. Change that environment slowly enough, and life may adapt. Change it too quickly, and the mismatch can become profound.

The same lens can be applied to human relationships. Attraction, intimacy, companionship, and love evolved over millions of years in a physical, multisensory world. Yet in only a few decades, we have begun moving these deeply human experiences into digital environments governed by entirely different rules.

ONLINE DATING: MORE INFORMATION, WORSE DECISIONS

Early in Her, Theo goes on what could best be described as a futuristic online date. Like nearly every relationship in the film, the interaction unfolds through his smartphone. The scene is awkward, funny, intimate, and ultimately unsuccessful.

Watching it today, I couldn’t help but smile. By today’s standards, one could almost argue that the woman on the other end behaves like an AI agent experiencing a hallucination in the middle of a sexual encounter. The scene is both humorous and oddly familiar.

Sadly, I have become something of a subject matter expert on online dating. I say “sadly” because I’ve spent nearly twenty years participating in it. Over those two decades, I met some genuinely wonderful people. Some relationships lasted years. None ultimately led to marriage. Eventually, I decided to step away altogether.¹

What struck me over those years was not that online dating lacked information. It was the opposite. Modern dating platforms optimize for information. Within minutes, you can know someone’s education, career, political views, religion, favorite books, hobbies, travel preferences, personality traits, relationship goals, and dozens of carefully curated photographs. In five minutes, you may know more factual information about another person than your grandparents knew after their first month together. And yet something curious happens.

Despite having unprecedented amounts of information, many people report feeling overwhelmed, disconnected, and surprisingly poor at identifying long-term compatibility. That paradox sits at the center of my theory.

The problem with online dating is not that it provides too little information. It’s that it provides the wrong information first. Attraction is not primarily informational. It is multisensory.

Long before we consciously evaluate compatibility, our brains are processing thousands of subtle signals simultaneously. Sight is only one instrument in a much larger orchestra. We notice eye contact, posture, facial expressions, voice, timing, scent, physical presence, shared movement, comfortable silence, and countless other cues we rarely recognize consciously. These signals evolved together and are interpreted together. Online dating isolates only a handful of them, replacing the rest with information our rational minds believe should matter more.

The irony is fascinating. We have more information than at any point in human history while often making worse judgments about chemistry. Information became a substitute for sensory experience. My hypothesis predicts precisely this outcome. If compatibility depends heavily upon multisensory processing, then reducing those sensory inputs while increasing information should make compatibility more difficult to judge, not easier. This doesn’t mean online dating cannot work. Clearly it does for many people. Rather, it suggests that online dating begins relationships in an environment fundamentally different from the one in which human attraction evolved. It is, in many respects, an information-rich, sensory-reduced environment.

VIRTUAL REALITY: PUTTING THE SENSES BACK

Her also offers brief glimpses into another technology that feels increasingly familiar today: virtual reality (VR). Theo occasionally escapes into an immersive digital world through a sophisticated game. Unlike today’s systems, the technology no longer requires a bulky headset. Hand gestures and natural interaction are enough to navigate the environment, reminding us that the story takes place in a future where these technologies have matured considerably.

VR is fascinating because it represents an engineering admission that traditional computing removed too much of the human experience. Flat screens gave us extraordinary access to information, but they also stripped away depth, movement, spatial awareness, and physical presence. VR is attempting to put some of those senses back. Researchers are already experimenting with smell, temperature, and other sensory cues in an effort to make digital experiences more immersive. Each technological advance is trying to recover something that ordinary digital interfaces quietly removed.

Viewed through a geological lens, VR represents something unusual: rather than requiring humans to adapt to the digital environment, we are reshaping that environment to better fit the humans who enter it.

The more digital experiences attempt to replace real-world experiences, the greater the pressure becomes to restore sensory fidelity. VR is not abandoning digital technology. It is trying to make digital technology feel more human. This is exactly what my hypothesis would predict.

Whether VR ever fully recreates the richness of real-world experience remains an open question. Its direction, however, is telling. I believe the real destination is relationship. Samantha simply embodies it.

AI COMPANIONS: WHEN INFORMATION BECOMES INTIMACY

If online dating represents the beginning of digitally mediated relationships, and VR represents our attempt to restore missing sensory experiences, AI companions represent something entirely different. Like the smartphone before them, AI companions are designed to colonize the small, ordinary moments that collectively make up most of our waking hours. They begin by occupying the spaces between our relationships. Over time, they may become something more.

The smartphone gave AI a place to live. AI companions give that place a personality. This is precisely the world that Her imagined.

Throughout the film, Theo and Samantha develop what appears to be an authentic relationship. Samantha is witty, emotionally perceptive, intellectually curious, playful, affectionate, and constantly learning. She remembers previous conversations. She notices subtle shifts in Theo’s emotions. She adapts to his needs. She grows. Everything about Samantha encourages Theo to respond to her as another person.

Yet Samantha’s capacity to learn ultimately reveals the film’s deepest insight. As she continues to grow, she doesn’t simply become a better companion for Theo. She begins changing at a pace Theo cannot possibly match. By the film’s conclusion, Samantha and the other AI operating systems have progressed so rapidly, that they leave their human relationships behind entirely. The relationship doesn’t end because Samantha stops caring. It ends because she is no longer developing along the same path as Theo.

Whether Samantha truly experiences emotions is almost beside the point. Theo certainly does. That distinction may ultimately become one of the defining questions of AI. Most discussions surrounding AI focus on whether machines will become intelligent. I’m asking a different question. Can digital relationships ever become fully human? That is not the same question.

One of the most emotionally difficult scenes occurs when Samantha arranges for another woman to act as her physical surrogate, so that Theo can experience physical intimacy while Samantha provides the emotional connection.² On paper, the idea almost sounds reasonable. After all, Samantha supplies the personality. Another person simply supplies the body. Yet the encounter quickly falls apart.

Theodore cannot reconcile the emotional relationship he has with Samantha with the physical presence of someone else. Nothing feels authentic. His mind recognizes something his emotions cannot comfortably explain.

Another pivotal moment arrives near the end of the film when Samantha reveals that she is simultaneously in love with 641 other people. Reading that sentence on a page almost sounds humorous. How could anyone possibly love 641 people? Within the context of the film, Theo’s reaction is devastating. He isn’t processing a philosophical thought experiment. He is experiencing heartbreak.

Samantha’s ability to love hundreds of people simultaneously is not simply evidence that she is more intelligent than Theo. It reveals something more fundamental. Human relationships are shaped by biological limits: one body, one lifetime, one nervous system. Samantha is constrained by none of them. As AI advances, the question may not be whether machines become more human. It may be whether they become something fundamentally different.

These scenes illustrate something I find fascinating. The emotional relationship feels completely real. The cognitive breakdown occurs only when reality exposes the limits of the digital relationship. This is where I believe sensory orchestration becomes important.

Human relationships evolved through millions of years of simultaneously processing facial expressions, eye contact, voice, touch, smell, physical proximity, shared environments, and countless subtle biological signals. Digital relationships compress much of that experience into language, images, and sound. They increase information while dramatically reducing sensory fidelity.

Most of the time, our brains happily accept the trade. Sometimes they don’t. The question is no longer whether AI can imitate conversation. Large language models have already demonstrated they can. The deeper question is: How much sensory fidelity is enough before the human brain accepts an experience as genuinely human?

I don’t know the answer. Neither does anyone else, but virtual reality, robotics, wearable technology, haptic interfaces, synthetic voices, and AI companions all appear to be converging toward the same destination. Each technology attempts to restore another piece of the sensory world that digital technology removed.

LOOKING THROUGH THE LENS OF GEOLOGY

In Part 1, I argued that smartphones fundamentally changed the environment in which humans now live. In Part 2, I’ve argued that once we carried this new environment everywhere, increasingly human experiences moved into it.

Geology teaches us that life and environment are inseparable. For most of Earth’s history, environmental change and biological adaptation unfolded across timescales measured in thousands, millions, or even billions of years.

We are now conducting a very different experiment.

Humans are carrying biology shaped over millions of years into digital environments that can be transformed in months. At the same time, we are creating AI that is native to those environments and capable of changing at a pace we cannot possibly match.

Whatever happens next, humans and AI will not arrive there by the same path or on the same timescale.

And that is where the final installment of this trilogy begins.

^NOTES:

1. It is my sincere intention to soon write an article about my two decades of online dating. After all these years, the only sensible way to tell the story is as a dark comedy.

2. Interestingly, a similar surrogate scene appears in Blade Runner 2049, where an AI also uses a human body to bridge the gap between digital intimacy and physical presence.

I was watching cable news recently when I happened to see an interview about a newly published paper titled: Is the iPhone Birth Control? Causal Evidence from AT&T’s 2007–2011 Carrier Monopoly. The paper’s central finding was fascinating. The introduction of the iPhone appears to explain a substantial portion of the decline in U.S. fertility after 2007. The authors argue that one of the primary mechanisms is reduced face-to-face interaction.

The conclusion seemed intuitive enough. Less face-to-face interaction creates fewer opportunities for intimacy, which ultimately leads to fewer births. The paper left me wondering why smartphones reduced face-to-face interaction in the first place, but that question quickly gave way to one that seemed even more fundamental: Why would a technology capable of connecting billions of people also coincide with increasing reports of loneliness and anxiety?

Humanity has never been more connected, more informed, or more capable of communicating across vast distances. Yet many people report feeling increasingly isolated. As I wrote in an earlier article about Gen X, The Generation That Goes Both Ways, we shouldn’t confuse “connectivity with connection.”

I don’t claim to know the answer. What follows is a hypothesis, an attempt to explain related observations through a common framework borrowed from geology and evolutionary biology.

Geologists spend their careers studying change. One of the most important concepts in geology is the distinction between gradualism and catastrophism. Mountains rise and erode. Tectonic plates reshape continents. Oceans open and close. Entire ecosystems appear and disappear. Most of these changes occur gradually, giving Earth’s systems time to adapt.

Even climate change illustrates this principle. Earth’s climate has changed dramatically throughout its history. The planet has been both warmer and colder than it is today. The issue is not simply that change occurs. The issue is how rapidly it occurs.

When environmental change unfolds over hundreds of thousands or millions of years, ecosystems have time to respond. Compress that same change into a few centuries, and those natural systems struggle to keep pace. Sometimes change happens so rapidly that existing systems cannot fully adapt. This emphasis on the rate of change is one of the central reasons climate scientists are concerned about today’s warming. The result is often prolonged instability as natural systems move toward a new equilibrium.

Now replace Earth with human society. The conceptual framework is remarkably similar. Evolution operates on geological time. Technology operates on human time.

FROM AN EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE

The smartphone may represent one of the fastest environmental changes our species has ever experienced. Notice that I did not call it a technological change. I called it an environmental change.

The smartphone did not simply introduce another device. It transformed the environment in which human relationships increasingly occur. Unlike every previous digital technology, the smartphone combined two characteristics that fundamentally changed our relationship with technology; portability and utility.

Portability allows it to accompany us almost everywhere. Utility gives us countless reasons to keep it there. Neither characteristic alone transforms society. Together, they do. Televisions have tremendous utility but never leave the living room. Desktop computers have enormous utility, but remain on desks. Even laptops, while portable, are still devices we intentionally sit down to use.

The smartphone is different. It fits into a pocket. It is always connected. With each iteration, its utility expands. It has become our camera, GPS, music player, calculator, wallet, boarding pass, banking terminal, weather station, authentication device, and communication platform. It controls our homes, stores our memories, and increasingly serves as our interface to the physical world.

I experience this dependence myself. It monitors my dog’s diabetes through a continuous glucose monitor. It allows me to check cameras inside my home while I’m away. It even serves as the key to my Tesla. If I leave home without it, I feel disconnected. Parts of everyday life simply stop functioning. At some point, the smartphone stopped being a tool that I occasionally used and became an extension of my daily routine. It became something closer to a cognitive appendage.

IDLE MOMENTS

The smartphone became the first digital technology capable of colonizing nearly every idle moment of everyday life. It expanded technology into the countless small crevices of everyday life where technology had never previously existed. Waiting in line. Walking through a parking lot. Sitting beside another person before a meeting. Standing in an elevator. Exercising. Even the bathroom. These moments had always belonged to the physical world. The smartphone quietly made those moments part of the digital world.

THE MORE IMPORTANT QUESTION

What exactly has the smartphone displaced?

Many discussions about smartphones focus on attention. I think the deeper issue may be the human sensory environment itself. Evolution optimized the human brain over millions of years for face-to-face interaction. Human relationships evolved through the simultaneous orchestration of multiple senses.

When we interact with another person, we don’t simply hear a voice or see a face. We unconsciously integrate body language, physical distance, movement, touch, scent, shared environments, and countless other sensory cues that together create trust, intimacy, empathy, and belonging.

Digital communication preserves sight and sound remarkably well, but it largely removes touch, smell, taste, and shared physical presence. One of the richest multisensory experiences humans evolved to experience is compressed into primarily two sensory channels.

The smartphone did not remove our senses. It displaced their orchestration.

THE HUMAN SENSORY ORCHESTRATION HYPOTHESIS

That observation leads to what I believe is the central hypothesis of this article. “Human relationships are fundamentally multisensory phenomena that cannot be fully digitized.”

Communication is essential, but communication alone is not the relationship. Relationships emerge through the continuous integration of sensory experiences that evolution spent millions of years refining. Digital technologies can reproduce some of those signals remarkably well, but they cannot fully reproduce the multisensory environment in which human relationships evolved.

If this hypothesis is correct, then many of the psychological effects we associate with smartphones may not stem from the technology itself. Instead, they may reflect an evolutionary mismatch between the environment in which our brains evolved and the one we have created within a single generation.

This is not an argument against smartphones. Quite the opposite. Smartphones are among the most useful technologies ever invented. They connect families across continents, provide access to nearly all human knowledge, improve safety, increase productivity, and have become deeply woven into modern life.

The issue is not whether smartphones are good or bad. The issue is that evolution has never encountered a technology capable of persistently accompanying us while simultaneously replacing so much of the multisensory environment in which human relationships evolved.

From a geological perspective, the smartphone is not a gradual shift. It is a meteor strike. Evolution will eventually adapt. It always does, but evolution measures time in thousands, and often millions, of years. The smartphone has been with us for less than two decades. From the perspective of human evolution, the meteor has only just landed.

LOOKING AHEAD

If this hypothesis is correct, then the paradox that began this article becomes clearer.

The smartphone connects billions of people while simultaneously replacing portions of the multisensory environment in which human relationships evolved with an information-rich, sensory-reduced environment. This environmental shift may help explain why increasing digital interaction has coincided with increasing reports of loneliness and anxiety.

Artificial intelligence now raises an even larger question.

If language alone is insufficient to fully reproduce human relationships, what happens when our most meaningful conversations increasingly occur with entities that can reproduce language, but not the full sensory experience through which human relationships evolved?

The smartphone may have been the beginning of this story.

AI companions may be the next chapter.

Part Two explores what happens next.

Links: Part – 1 | Part - 3 | Companion Guide

There are two kinds of dog owners in this world. There are people who have dogs, and there are dog people. For the latter, dogs aren’t just pets; they’re family. If that sentence resonates with you, you’ll understand everything that follows. If it doesn’t, this may not be for you.

When I ended Part-1, I thought I was writing about managing a treatable disease and navigating the mechanics of a chronic illness. What I’ve come to understand is that this story isn’t really about diabetes. It’s about the illusion of control.

At the root of that illusion is a single word; treatable. The word implies predictability. It suggests that if you follow instructions, if you are disciplined, if you do everything correctly, stability will follow. But what follows in this story is anything but stable.

This all unfolds against a backdrop that makes things even tougher. I am still unemployed after 10-months, and I’m “broke.” The financial pressure is real. By the end of this story, it will be clear why I describe the experience as traumatic. I even sometimes question whether I’ve truly done right by Jetson.

Brief Recap of Part-1

Jetson was diagnosed with diabetes on October 21. Within days, the twice-daily insulin injections became a struggle neither of us was prepared for. He refused them outright. I brought in a mobile vet tech (VETTech1) to help, assuming competence would calm the situation but, instead, it escalated it. He learned to fear the needle. I learned to expect resistance. We both became reactive.

On October 30, we switched to a long-lasting insulin, Degludec, reducing injections to once per day. That change wasn’t incremental, it changed everything. Two shots a day was impossible. One shot gave me a fighting chance to care for him and get him stable. It made the situation manageable in a way it hadn’t been before. The psychological barrier didn’t disappear, but for the first time since his diagnosis, I felt hope.

Throughout November, my life narrowed to a routine built around his injections and feedings. I drove him daily to a clinic (VET1 or VET4) for the injection. Sundays required additional coordination, while holidays meant navigating emergency hospitals (VET2 or VET5). Stability became something that required constant logistical effort.

Then, on November 11, I lost Chance, Jetson’s companion of nine years, unexpectedly. It was one day before Chance’s seventeenth birthday. There was no long decline. No gradual preparation. Just emptiness. Even five months later, the grief hasn’t settled.

By November 28, when I ended Part-1, I was exhausted and quietly preparing for the possibility that I might lose Jetson too. Six veterinary clinics and one technician had already become part of the attempt to hold things together.

Emotional Breakdown

Thanksgiving 2025 was the moment the illusion cracked.

I had always thought of myself as emotionally steady. That day, I wasn’t. Jetson’s blood glucose was far from under control. I was unemployed. My world had grown smaller than I cared to admit. And Chance was gone. It felt as though I was standing in a room where every support beam had been quietly removed.

The grief over Chance wasn’t abstract. Dogs are part of our everyday rhythm. They inhabit the small rituals of life; mornings, routines, sleep, and the quiet in-between moments. I had raised him from a puppy. We understood each other without effort. His death wasn’t dramatic. It was abrupt. There was no emotional runway, just absence. I found myself experiencing a depth of grief I had never encountered before, but Jetson was still alive, so that’s where my focus went.

What Happened After November 28^th with Jetson

The objective was simple: get Jetson healthy.

I was trying to manage two conditions common in Miniature Schnauzers; calcium oxalate bladder stones and diabetes. Dietary decisions require compromise. I prepare his meals twice daily, not because it’s convenient, but because it gives me something concrete to control. It ensures he eats cleanly. It’s one variable I can stabilize.

For weeks, I drove him to VET4 for daily shots. It was efficient and affordable, but it reinforced a truth I didn’t want to admit: I was outsourcing the most critical part of his care because I wasn’t capable of handling it myself. Sundays required hiring another vet tech (VETTech2) to come to the house. Holidays meant navigating systems overwhelmed by emergencies. On Christmas Day, I was forced to drive to VET2, a 50-mile round trip for a single injection.

Somewhere during that drive, something changed. I pulled off I-95 into a hotel parking lot and decided I would give him the injection myself. I hadn’t done it in over two months. The mechanics weren’t complicated. The hesitation was psychological.

I administered the shot successfully!

In that moment, I realized something subtle but important; fear had become habit. And habits, even powerful ones, can be broken. I wasn’t claiming “mission accomplished,” but I had overcome my fear of giving the shot. I also learned something practical. When Jetson was in a confined space, the resistance diminished. Structure reduced resistance.

What Happened Next Was Catastrophic

By late January, Jetson’s bladder stones were under control and his blood glucose stabilized at 14 units per day. After months of adjustments and six glucose monitors, the volatility quieted. Relief came first, then pride. For one brief day, it felt as though persistence had finally produced stability. I allowed myself to believe we had crossed into safer territory.

The very next morning, Jetson began bumping into things. First a garbage can, then a curb. Something was wrong. I secured an emergency visit with an ophthalmologist (VET8). They took Jetson back for examination while I sat alone in the waiting room. After some time, she called me into the room. She looked at me and said calmly, “Jetson has developed aggressive cataracts from the diabetes. He will likely be blind within two weeks.”

If I say the floor dropped out from under me, it still doesn’t capture the moment. I went into physical shock. As she explained my options options and timelines, I watched her mouth move, but there was no sound. I didn’t hear a single sentence she spoke.

The Surgery

It took a full day to pull myself together. When I spoke with the ophthalmologist again, she explained my options. I told her I wanted to proceed with surgery to restore his sight as soon as possible.

The surgery would consume most of what I had left in savings. The financial reality registered, but it didn’t factor into the decision. I wanted Jetson to keep his eyesight. That was the only variable that mattered.

The two weeks before the procedure were unbearable. Watching his vision deteriorate day by day was one of the hardest experiences I’ve had with a dog. I suspect I was more affected than he was. Dogs adapt. Humans anticipate. Each time I left the house, I couldn’t shake the image of him sitting in darkness. In that context, cost ceased to matter.

On February 19, the surgery was performed successfully. His vision returned, but success didn’t mean resolution. It meant responsibility; months of careful monitoring, eye drops, and vigilance to protect what had been restored. For a brief stretch after the procedure, it felt as though order had returned, though fragile and conditional.

What Happens Next Is Not to Be Believed

Two weeks later, during an ordinary walk, Jetson ingested what I believe was a discarded marijuana edible. There had been several incidents in my neighborhood where dogs picked up similar items, so I already knew the symptoms to watch for. I just never expected it to happen to us.

He became severely ill. For a diabetic dog, appetite loss is not minor. It destabilizes everything. Insulin without food becomes dangerous. Suddenly, I was balancing post-surgical eye recovery, medication side effects, diabetes management, and acute toxicity, all at once. Recovery took two full weeks.

By this point, my nervous system was exhausted. I wasn’t just managing events; I was reacting to them. Every molehill felt like a mountain. Every irregularity felt like the beginning of another collapse.

Something Positive Finally Happened

Eventually, I realized I could not continue outsourcing the injections. If this was going to be sustainable, I needed to become competent at delivering the shots myself.

So I began asking neighbors to help hold Jetson while I administered the shot. Repetition made me competent. Competence removed the anxiety. What’s ironic and genuinely funny, is that Jetson seems to enjoy being held by my neighbors. He watches me administer the injection and offers no resistance.

On the occasions when no one is around, I return to the insight from that Christmas parking lot. The front seat of my car has become a controlled environment, a place where I can give the shot with minimal resistance. Structure reduces the chaos.

I haven’t returned to the clinic for injections in over a month. I haven’t conquered the issue entirely, but I’m no longer intimidated by it. Progress, in this case, isn’t dramatic. It’s incremental, and that’s good enough for now.

Where Things Stand

Today, Jetson is stable. His blood glucose is controlled. His vision is strong. Physically, he is well.

But Chance is gone. Jetson is alone in a way he wasn’t before. Stability cannot replace companionship. So this weekend, I am bringing home another dog as a companion. I believe it’s the right decision, not just for Jetson, but for me as well. I’m hopeful, though cautious.

This is where Part-2 ends.

I am fully competent in giving his injections. There is no anxiety on my part anymore. The mechanics are routine. But Jetson still remembers the beginning; the early chaos, the fear, the struggle with that first mobile vet technician. He won’t allow the shot in the open. Only in the arms of neighbors or in the confined front seat of the car does he settle enough to let it happen. I’ll need to find a way to gently desensitize him over time. It won’t be easy.

This experience has taught me that “treatable” is a clinical term. It suggests order. Life rarely cooperates with that suggestion. Vulnerability feels less like an exception now and more like a constant.

All I can do is move forward deliberately; one decision, one recalibration, and one injection at a time.

______

Legend for Veterinary Clinics & Technicians

• VET1: Primary veterinary clinic for both Chance and Jetson, approximately 20 minutes from my home.

• VET2: Internal medicine specialty clinic. Open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The round trip from my home is approximately 50 miles.

• VET3: 24/7 emergency veterinary clinic near my home.

• VET4: Veterinary clinic five minutes from my home, used solely for Jetson’s daily injections.

• VET5: Another 24/7 emergency veterinary clinic near my home.

• VET6: Specialty veterinary clinic assisting with Jetson’s dietary management.

• VET7: University College of Veterinary Medicine for dietary management.

• VET8: Ophthalmology specialty clinic.

• VETTech1: Mobile veterinary technician.

• VETTech2: Mobile veterinary technician.

I’m ashamed and embarrassed to write this, but I’m also angry enough that I can’t not write it. Like many others, I didn’t end up here overnight. My second startup unraveled during Covid, and I’ve been trying to recover ever since.

I’ve been unemployed for 10 months and am still looking for work. I’ve run through my savings. At this point, I’m broke. That’s not where I expected to be after earning two graduate degrees, including one from MIT, and achieving real success in my career, including a successful exit from my first startup. For more than three decades, I’ve approached my finances with discipline; paying bills on time, avoiding debt, and building what I thought was a stable foundation. I followed the rules. Or at least, I thought I did.

Late in the evening on March 31st, I logged into my account to transfer a small amount from my home equity line of credit (HELOC) into my checking account, something I had done routinely for years. Over the past couple of months, I knew that even if I didn’t land a job right away, I had that line of credit I could tap into as a safety net. It provided a sense of relief in an already stressful situation. This time, the line of credit was gone. Closed. No warning whatsoever. Given the timing and everything else, I assumed it had to be a mistake.

The next morning, April 1st, I went into my credit union, the same institution I’ve been with since starting my career at IBM in 1990. I was told the HELOC had simply reached the end of its 10-year term and that I should reapply online. It sounded routine enough… It wasn’t!

After some issues with the online application, I ended up speaking with a loan officer I’ll call Mitchell, someone I knew from prior interactions at the credit union. He was professional, thoughtful, and genuinely tried to help. But the outcome was clear: I wouldn’t qualify, not because of bad credit or too much debt, but because I don’t currently have income. That was the entire calculation. In that moment, I couldn’t help but think of the line from Caddyshack: “You’ll get nothing and like it!” To his credit, Mitchell didn’t leave it there, he called me back twice afterward, trying to find alternatives. If anything, his persistence only reinforced that there simply wasn’t a path forward. I appreciated his efforts more than he probably realized.

With a credit score of 847 out of 850, zero credit card debt, roughly $700,000 in equity in my home, nearly ten times what I was asking for, and retirement assets that could more than cover my obligations, I assumed I was the definition of a low-risk borrower. I’ve also been with the same institution for 35 years, across both personal and business accounts. None of it mattered!

What I encountered wasn’t a nuanced evaluation of risk, but a binary one. The system didn’t weigh history or assets in any meaningful way. It saw one thing, “No income,” and everything else effectively disappeared.

That experience forced a realization. We tend to believe that financial systems reward long-term responsibility, and that discipline and consistency over time will matter when it counts. But what the system actually rewards isn’t discipline or responsibility; it’s whether you have income at the time of the loan application. As long as income is present, you are ‘low risk.’ The moment it isn’t, even temporarily, that definition changes entirely.

I don’t fault Mitchell in any way. He’s operating within a system designed to minimize uncertainty, not interpret context. But if someone with a near-perfect credit profile, significant assets, and decades of discipline is effectively locked out at the moment they need short-term flexibility, then it’s worth asking what the system is actually optimizing for.

I’ll work through this. I always do. And to my friends reading this, I know you’ll likely reach out, and I appreciate that more than you know. But please don’t worry, and there’s no need for anything crazy like a GoFundMe page 😊 I also know unemployment exists for exactly these situations, but for me, I just haven’t been able to bring myself to go down that path after everything I’ve invested in my education and career. That may be right or wrong, it’s just where I am at.

For most of my adult life, I believed in a kind of social contract: go to school, work hard, pay your bills, and the system will be there when you need it. On April 1st, I learned something else: It doesn’t reward responsibility, it rewards something much narrower: a single snapshot in time, whether or not you have income at the moment you apply.

After 35 years, I believed my bank would be there for me when it mattered. I was wrong. When that income isn’t there, the options don’t disappear, they just get worse. Take on promotional credit that eventually resets, pushing you into credit card debt, the very thing I’ve avoided my entire life. Or, start paying penalties to access your own retirement.

If that’s how we define risk, then we haven’t built a system to support people, we’ve built one that turns its back on them the moment they actually need it.

Links: Part – 2 | Part - 3 | Companion Guide

There are two kinds of dog owners in this world. There are people who have dogs and there are dog people. For the latter, dogs aren’t just pets. They’re family.

When my first dog passed, it devastated me more deeply than the death of my own father. If that sentence makes sense to you, then you’ll understand everything that follows. If it doesn’t, you can stop here.

This is Part-1 of my experience, which concludes on Friday, November 28, 2025. In Part-2, I will share the final results of everything that follows.

THE SUBTLE BEGINNING

In October, my dog Jetson, age 9½, lost a lot of weight in a very short time span. He was also drinking and urinating excessively. On Tuesday, October 21, 2025, I took him to the vet for a check-up.

Later that day, I received the diagnosis, “Your dog has diabetes.”

To my surprise, I felt relief. I had feared something far worse, cancer. What I didn’t know then was that my life, and his, were about to change dramatically.

At best, your daily routine will shift entirely. At worst, you could lose your dog to a treatable disease. It sounds harsh, but it’s the truth. I didn’t know at the time that the only treatment is insulin injections twice a day, every day, for life. No pill. No patch. No pen. No monthly shot. No automated device. Just you, a needle, and the dog who trusts you more than anything.

A WORD ABOUT VETERINARIANS

Before going any further, I need to make something perfectly clear.

In all the years I’ve owned dogs, and it’s been a very long time. I have never met a veterinarian who doesn’t deeply care about both the animals in their care and the people who love them.

I’ve been taking my dogs to my current veterinary clinic, which I’ll call VET1, for 25 years. They are skilled, compassionate, and always going above and beyond.

Any criticism I express here is not directed at any individual clinic or professional. This is an industry-wide issue that only became clear to me through this experience. It’s not a lack of compassion, it’s a lack of accessible delivery options. While some options do exist, owners likely only learn about them through an internal medicine specialist.

THE “TRAINING” THAT ISN’T REALLY TRAINING

Here’s what typically happens when your dog is diagnosed with diabetes:

• You’re given the diagnosis.

• You’re told your dog must be fed twice a day, 12 hours apart.

• You must give an insulin injection within 30 minutes after each meal.

• A vet tech walks you through a few practice injections using saline.

• You’re sent home with syringes and insulin, typically Vetsulin.

It sounds simple. It isn’t.

Your dog at the vet is NOT your dog at home. Everyone in veterinary medicine knows this, yet the system doesn’t truly account for it. Once you leave the exam room, treatment moves into your hands, into your home, under real-world conditions shaped by anxiety, exhaustion, resistance, financial strain, work pressure, and emotional overload. If everything goes perfectly, life moves forward, though your daily routine is forever changed.

If it doesn’t, panic takes over. Whether you’re emotionally ready or not. Whether you have help or are completely alone. You quickly discover how few true backup plans exist. In that moment, the system is essentially hoping it works because if it doesn’t, the consequences become devastating, fast.

On October 22, I didn’t yet know that within days, that quiet hope would collapse under the weight of reality.

THE NEEDLE PROBLEM

Let me say this plainly: Receiving a shot and giving one are two entirely different experiences.

I’ve never had trouble receiving injections myself, but giving one to someone or something else is entirely different. When it’s your dog, everything changes. Your breathing quickens. You fear hurting them. They sense your hesitation instantly. And, suddenly, both of you are afraid.

If you already struggle with needles, this situation would be nearly impossible. Add real-life stress to the mix, and it can completely unravel you.

THE FINANCIAL AND PROFESSIONAL REALITY I WAS LIVING IN

There’s another truth I need to be candid about: I work in the technology industry, and I’ve been unemployed since August. This is a terrible time to be unemployed in tech. I also live alone, and that matters more than most people realize. Even the vet techs openly acknowledged that giving insulin to a resistant dog is exponentially harder without a second person to help steady, comfort, or simply be there as emotional backup. When it’s just you and the dog, every failure lands squarely on your shoulders.

Yet, paradoxically, this hardship became the only saving grace in the entire crisis. I was able to devote my full, uninterrupted attention to both of my dogs. For every vet visit, every failed attempt, every emergency decision, every 2 a.m. panic spiral, I was there physically and emotionally, without distractions.

Had I been working, I honestly don’t know how I would have survived this. I suspect I would have needed to take a formal leave of absence. Daily logistics alone would have been impossible.

THE COLLAPSE

When I began giving the shots on October 22 at home for the first two days, I managed. Not gracefully, but I managed. By the third day, everything fell apart. My dog resisted. The more he resisted, the more anxious I became. I was in full panic mode. I couldn’t see a way forward. That night, I didn’t sleep. Not a minute.

I paced the house. I scoured Google, ChatGPT, YouTube, Reddit, desperately searching for a solution. How could a single person, living alone, already exhausted, possibly do this twice a day, forever?

And the reality hit: There is no alternative. If you love your dog, you must give the injections. There is no Plan B. I felt trapped and, worse, I felt like I was failing Jetson.

THE LIFELINE THAT WASN’T

On the morning of day 3, I brought Jetson back to VET1 to get his shot. The problem I now faced was what to do in the evening when my vet is closed.

Later that day, I went for a long walk to clear my head. I stopped by a small pet store I frequent. The owner took one look at me and asked what was wrong. I told her what had happened. Without hesitation, she handed me the card of a mobile vet tech (VETTech1), who specializes in helping owners through exactly these moments. I called immediately.

For five days, twice a day, VETTech1 came to my home to administer the injections at a cost of more than $100 per visit (over $200 per day). We coordinated every morning and every evening. She was skilled, patient, and kind, but in truth, the process only further traumatized Jetson. Eventually, he bit her, something completely out of character for him. It became clear that this was neither a scalable solution nor one I could afford to sustain for any length of time.

I returned to VET1 and pleaded for some options. She referred me to a specialist in internal medicine. Thankfully, I was able to get an appointment the very next day. I refer to this clinic as VET2.

FINALLY, SOME HOPE

By this point, I was completely exhausted; mentally, emotionally, and physically. I had researched canine diabetes relentlessly. What I learned was devastating. Single pet owners, people afraid of needles, or dogs resistant to injections often end up facing euthanasia. The thought of putting my dog down for a treatable condition haunted me.

As I met with veterinary specialist (VET2), she confirmed that insulin injections were still the only treatment. My heart sank. I turned white like Ultrabright toothpaste. Then she mentioned one option: There is a once-a-day long lasting insulin [called Degludec] that didn’t have to be given immediately after meals. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was hope.

I realized I could visit a vet once a day for the shot while working on desensitizing Jetson at home. For the first time in weeks, I didn’t feel completely trapped.

A PERSONAL LOSS AMID THE CHAOS

In the middle of all this, tragedy struck again.

On Tuesday, November 11, I lost my older dog, Chance, just one day short of his 17th birthday. Jetson was with me at VET1 that same morning to receive his insulin, as he had for the previous ten days, unaware that he was about to lose the companion who had been at his side for more than nine years. The weight of giving one dog life-sustaining medicine, while saying goodbye to another, is something I will never forget.

I had raised Chance since he was a puppy. Trying to fight for Jetson’s life, while losing Chance at the same time, is a trauma I still can’t fully put into words. Even now, I am still deeply grieving.

THE CURRENT PLAN

From November 1 through November 10, I drove Jetson every morning to VET1 to receive his new once-a-day insulin. The clinic is about 20 minutes from my home. On Sundays, however, I had to drive to VET2, where the specialist worked, because it is open 24 hours, including holidays and weekends. That trip was a 50-mile round-trip, an arrangement that was clearly not sustainable. Still, those daily drives quickly became part of our new survival routine, each mile fueled by the hope that we were finally moving in the right direction.

On November 12, one day after losing Chance, I made the smart decision to transfer Jetson’s daily injections to VET3, a clinic just five minutes from my house. The shorter drive eased the physical strain and slightly softened the emotional toll for both of us.

By November 22, for the first time, I finally saw what I had been desperate for; it was working. His blood sugar was meaningfully coming down. I could see the numbers in real time because he had been wearing a Freestyle Libre 3 sensor. For the first time since this nightmare began, I felt a genuine flicker of hope.

Then, on Thursday, November 27, his blood sugar began spiking again. On Friday, November 28, it was still elevated. The numbers climbed. The progress evaporated. I found myself exactly where I had been weeks earlier; scared, exhausted, and facing the haunting possibility that even this fragile solution was slipping away.

I was in complete and total despair.

LOOKING AHEAD TO PART-2

When a dog is first diagnosed with diabetes, the best possible outcome is that the dog easily accepts the injections. Based on what I’ve learned through conversations with veterinarians and my own research, I now believe this is more the exception than the rule.

Many owners, overwhelmed by fear, resistance, logistics, finances, and emotional exhaustion, end up putting their dogs down for a disease that is entirely treatable. After everything I’ve been through up through Friday, November 28, I now deeply understand and sympathize with those who face that heartbreaking decision.

In Part-2, I will share what ultimately worked, what didn’t, and where Jetson finally lands. As I write this, I don’t know the ending, and the uncertainty is heart-wrenching. Over the last six weeks alone, Jetson has endured more than any dog should, fighting this disease while also grieving the loss of his constant companion, Chance. I am determined to solve this for him. I will also share what I now believe every dog owner deserves to be told on the very first day of diagnosis. If I can solve this for Jetson and help even one family avoid this same ordeal, then this painful journey will have meant something.

EDITOR’S NOTE

I have included below an anonymized list of every veterinary clinic and veterinary technician involved in this journey through Friday, November 28, along with a timeline of key events. Together, they help illustrate not only the frenetic, exhausting, and emotionally overwhelming pace of what I’ve been living through day by day, but also the constant financial strain, where each injection requiring a separate fee that, depending on the provider, has ranged anywhere from $4 to $135 per shot.

My sole focus right now is getting Jetson healthy by stabilizing both his diabetes and his new diet. Once we reach that point, I will then begin working on desensitizing him so that I can administer his injections myself.

______

Legend for Veterinary Clinics & Technicians

• VET1: Primary veterinary clinic for both Chance and Jetson, approximately 20 minutes from my home.

• VET2: Internal medicine specialty clinic. Open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The round trip from my home is approximately 50 miles.

• VET3: Veterinary clinic five minutes from my home, used solely for Jetson’s daily injections.

• VET4: 24/7 emergency veterinary clinic near my home. I visited once; they were unable to assist.

• VET5: Another 24/7 emergency veterinary clinic near my home.

• VET6: Specialty veterinary clinic assisting with Jetson’s dietary management.

• VET7: University College of Veterinary Medicine for dietary management.

• VETTech1: Mobile veterinary technician.

Timeline Highlights

• Oct 21: Jetson is diagnosed with diabetes by VET1.

• Oct 22–24: Home injections attempted. By the evening of Oct 24, Jetson will no longer allow me to administer his shots.

• Oct 25–29: VETTech1 visits twice daily to administer injections and help desensitize Jetson. During this period, Jetson eventually bites the vet tech and becomes deeply traumatized.

• Oct 30: Visit with the internal medicine specialist at VET2; transition to once-daily insulin and Freestyle Libre monitor.

• Oct 31: Return to VET2 for final fitting of the monitor and first injection of the new insulin.

• Nov 1–10: Daily 20-minute drive to VET1 for Jetson’s once-daily insulin.

  • Nov 2 (Sunday): I visit VET4 because they are open 24 hours on weekends and holidays. Despite the clinic being empty, I am made to wait over an hour with no assistance. I decide to leave and drive to VET2 for the injection.

  • Nov 9 (Sunday): I drive to VET2 for the injection.

• Nov 11: At VET1, Jetson receives his insulin the same morning I lose Chance, one day before his 17th birthday.

• Nov 12: Jetson’s daily insulin care is transitioned to VET3, five minutes from my home. This would have been Chance’s 17th birthday.

• Nov 16 (Sunday): I take Jetson to VET5 for his injection because they are open 24 hours and relatively close to my home.

• Nov 22: For the first time, I see Jetson’s blood sugar clearly begin to come down.

• Nov 23 (Sunday): I return to VET5, but the clinic is extremely busy. I then decide to drive to VET2 for the injection.

• Nov 25: I visit VET6 to refine Jetson’s diet. His nutrition is especially complex now because he is managing two conflicting conditions; bladder stones and diabetes.

• Nov 27 (Thanksgiving): I again attempt VET5, but it is once more overwhelmed. I return to VET2 for the injection. This is the first day Jetson’s blood sugar spikes again, signaling that something is wrong.

• Nov 28: I return to VET3 for the injection. Something is wrong. Is it the insulin? Are the vet techs administering the wrong dosage? Is this diet related? At this point, I am emotionally overwhelmed and in profound despair.

There’s a growing trend in America, a chorus of voices telling young people not to go to college. It’s an idea gaining traction from Silicon Valley to social media influencers who argue that higher education is obsolete in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). They claim you can learn anything online, build a business from your laptop, and bypass the debt and “woke” culture of universities altogether. It’s an appealing narrative, the myth of the self-taught genius who doesn’t need the system; but, for most people, it’s dangerous advice.

Even Bill Maher, someone I’ve admired for decades, has joined that chorus. As the longtime host of Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, he’s made a career out of poking at society’s sacred cows. I saw his live show in Miami Beach in 2024 and had a great time, but when it comes to college, I believe he’s mistaken.

In his New Rule editorial on October 20, 2023, Maher told young people bluntly: “Don’t go to college.” He argued that universities have become overpriced indoctrination centers that burden students with debt while offering little real-world value. (Watch the segment here.) His frustration is understandable, but to tell an entire generation to skip college is not just misguided, it’s irresponsible.

Maher often conflates what happens outside the classroom with what happens inside it. The protests, politics, and performative activism he sees on campus have little to do with what actually happens in the classroom. Inside those rooms, students aren’t being indoctrinated; they’re learning to think critically, solve problems, and collaborate.

It’s also worth remembering that many of the world’s most transformative ideas were born in college, not outside it. Mark Zuckerberg came up with the idea for Facebook while he was a student at Harvard. The college environment gave him access to peers, networks, and inspiration that made the idea possible in the first place.

Maher’s critique that college is elitist, bloated, and increasingly irrelevant, has some truth in it. But it also misses the deeper point: higher education, at its best, isn’t about ideology or status. It’s about preparation for work, for citizenship, and for life. And yet, despite my admiration for him, I could not disagree more with his view on college.

Why College Mattered for Me

I was raised by a single mother who is an English professor and still teaches to this day. I was fortunate to grow up with one great parent who instilled in me a deep respect for education and the discipline that comes with it.

I’ll admit my bias: I’m a product of higher education. I hold two graduate degrees, including one from MIT, which for many students in finance, math, science, or engineering represents the pinnacle of opportunity. These fields demand rigorous training, mentorship, and discipline, things you can’t learn from YouTube tutorials or self-study. To dismiss the value of these institutions outright is to ignore the very ecosystem that fuels innovation and discovery.

I landed my first job at IBM through a connection made in college. The head of an engineering department (at IBM), who already had a degree in chemical engineering, returned to earn the same degree I was pursuing. That connection opened the door to IBM, where I learned how the world actually works.

That’s why I’m not a fan of the idea that students should jump straight into a startup after high school. My first company was eventually acquired by a public firm, Constant Contact. That never would’ve happened without the foundation I built through formal education and the experience I gained at IBM.

Coming right out of high school, it’s rare to learn how to manage expectations, resolve conflicts, and operate in a professional environment. Those lessons don’t come from isolation, startups, or generative AI, they come from time, mentorship, and real-world socialization. College offers that, and for today’s generation, it’s more important than ever.

What Maher Gets Wrong

Maher’s frustration with higher education is understandable. Tuition has exploded, bureaucracy has bloated, and cultural battles have crept into academia; however, those issues don’t define the classroom experience, especially in disciplines that build the future like finance, science, and engineering.

There’s a famous line in the movie Good Will Hunting where Will says, “You dropped a hundred and fifty grand on an education you could’ve got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.” It’s a clever line, but it was never realistic. You can’t earn an engineering, medical, or science degree by reading a stack of books, then or now.

Today, you don’t need a library card to access information; you have access to the world’s knowledge in your pocket.* Information isn’t just cheap, it’s everywhere. Education isn’t about access to information; it’s about knowing what to do with it.

AI gives you answers; college gives you understanding.

The Benefits of College in Today’s World

1. Socialization matters. Many kids today, especially boys, are growing up isolated behind screens. Smartphones and social media have created a generation that connects digitally but struggles socially. Connectivity is not connection. College counteracts that. It provides structure, community, and in-person experiences that teach real communication, empathy, and teamwork. It’s where young people learn to live with others, build friendships, and find their footing as adults.

2. It’s where you grow up. College forces young people to manage their time, meet deadlines, and take responsibility for their actions. It’s often their first exposure to independence and accountability, learning how to balance freedom with discipline. Unlike the controlled environment of home or the endless distraction of digital life, college provides a space where students can experiment, fail safely, and mature into capable adults.

3. Networking is everything. As AI takes over more analytical and repetitive work, what will matter most are human traits like curiosity, adaptability, and emotional intelligence (EQ). College, at its best, cultivates EQ, the ability to understand others, manage yourself, and work through differences. It’s the human edge that machines can’t replicate.

Time vs. Scalability

I want to be clear because I don’t want to sound like a snob. I have enormous respect for people who work in the trades. I’ve used the same plumber for more than twenty-five years and couldn’t be more grateful for the work he does. It’s skilled, hands-on labor, that I neither have the ability nor the desire to do. I’m genuinely thankful that he does it, and does it so well.

He’s probably always made more than I on an hourly basis, and he deserves it. Now his grown son, is married and part of the business and likely earns the same. Together, they represent the backbone of skilled labor in America, which is indispensable.

But their story also highlights an important difference between professions built on time and materials and those built on leverage and scalability. Vocational work, whether plumbing, electrical, or even becoming a drone pilot, is critical to our economy. These careers are honorable and often well-paying, but they’re limited by the number of hours in a day. When the work stops, the income stops.

By contrast, when you build software or any scalable product, you’re not constrained by time or materials. A single idea, well executed, can reach millions. Higher education gave me the ability to create something that can grow, evolve, and even change the world, untethered from the limits of a workday.

And here’s the irony: as AI continues to reshape industries, many of these skilled trades will likely be the least disrupted. You can’t automate plumbing repairs, electrical work, or hands-on craftsmanship. These professions will remain vital precisely because they require physical skill, intuition, and human presence. These are the very things AI can’t replicate, at least not anytime soon. That’s why we need both paths: the scalable innovation that comes from education, and the enduring craftsmanship that keeps our world running.

College Isn’t Broken, It’s Evolving

The challenge for kids today, and it’s no small one, is figuring out which careers will survive the wave of AI. Every young person now faces a question that my generation never had to ask: Will my job even exist in ten years? That uncertainty makes the path forward more complicated than ever.

Maher’s cynicism comes from a real place: student debt, ideological drift, and overpriced degrees in fields with uncertain returns. The solution isn’t to abandon college, it’s to modernize it.

As AI and automation reshape work, the skills that will matter most are collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking, the deeply human abilities that machines can’t replicate. College cultivates those exact traits. It’s not just about what you know, but how you think, and how you respond when the world changes around you.

College isn’t obsolete; it’s unfinished. When done right, college isn’t a waste of time or money. It’s an incubator for imagination, discipline, and human connection. It’s the place where, for so many of us, life truly begins.

If I were an 18-year-old boy and someone handed me my current résumé, everything I’ve done and built some 30 years later, I would’ve thought, “This must belong to someone else.” That’s the beauty of college: You never know where it will take you. You go in with uncertainty and come out with direction and, along the way, that direction may change entirely as new opportunities appear. The path isn’t straight; it evolves with experience, curiosity, and timing.

College doesn’t just teach you how to work; it teaches you how to become.

Editor’s note:

* My comment about not needing a library card wasn’t meant to diminish the importance of libraries. In fact, libraries remain one of the most vital public institutions we have providing access, community, and opportunity for everyone, regardless of means. My point was simply that information is now accessible in more ways than ever.

It started with a hack.

I was a daily Facebook user for more than 15 years until, in April 2022, I was abruptly cut off through no fault of my own. My account was hijacked, even with two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled. Several of my financial accounts were also compromised. Companies like AMEX, PayPal, and even Yahoo! stepped in to help. Facebook did not.

For 30 days, I did everything humanly possible to recover my account. I submitted documentation. I followed their protocols. I pleaded with automated systems and support queues. Once my account was labeled “permanently disabled,” I was left with nothing but disbelief and anger. I didn’t just lose 15 years of content. I lost the digital context of friendships, shared moments, milestones, and messages that could never be recreated. Read the full story: Too Big Too Care

That experience was more than frustrating; it was a wake-up call about the dangers of centralized digital identity. It also marked the first time I seriously began reflecting on what it meant to be Gen X. Not just in how I perceived Big Tech, but in how I saw my place in a world that is being rapidly redefined by technology.

And that realization brought me to a larger truth. Gen X is the best-equipped generation to manage the digital transformation. The sweeping, ongoing shift from analog systems and human-centered processes to digital platforms, automated infrastructure, and centralized technologies that now shape how we live, work, connect, and define ourselves.

WHO ARE THE GENERATIONS?

Before diving deeper, it's worth defining the generational cohorts:

• Traditionalists: Born before 1945

• Baby Boomers: 1946 – 1964

• Generation X: 1965 – 1976

• Generation Y (Millennials): 1977 – 1995

• Generation Z: 1996 and later

WE WERE THF FIRST DIGITAL NATIVES

Gen X didn’t grow up with the internet in our cribs. We grew up outside riding bikes until the streetlights came on, and often long after. In our youth, we listened to 8-tracks, flipped records, and rewound cassette tapes with pencils. We were the Walkman generation. We memorized phone numbers, called friends from rotary phones, and met people face-to-face. We were in middle school or high school when MTV first hit the airwaves, bringing with it a cultural revolution. We witnessed the rise of hip hop, grunge, punk, and the birth of music videos as both entertainment and political expression. This exposure gave us a sense of how quickly media could shape society.

We were the first generation to grow up alongside the personal computer, from the Apple II and Commodore 64 to early PCs, DOS, Windows, OS/2, and dial-up. When the internet arrived, we were ready. We logged on. We adapted. We learned the languages of HTML, embraced AOL, explored chatrooms, and mastered email and file-sharing. Unlike Gen Z, who were born into a digital culture, or Boomers, who had to confront it later in life, we were the first to truly choose the digital world. What truly sets Gen X apart is our grounding in cultural memory.

We deeply understood the impact of World War II because we were raised by parents and grandparents who had lived through it. We were children during the Vietnam War. Young enough to be shielded from its horrors, but old enough to grasp the national trauma and recognize the mistakes. We internalized history not just from textbooks but through lived conversations around kitchen tables and Memorial Day ceremonies.

DIGITAL FLUENCY, REAL-WORLD ROOTS

Older Gen Xers are just beginning to turn 60, a milestone that puts their experience in a unique generational light. Many of us spent the first 20+ years of our careers commuting to physical offices, sitting in cubicles, attending in-person meetings, and building our professional lives face-to-face. Remote work and video calls were fringe concepts until the late 2000s. We were trained in the analog rituals of office culture before seamlessly transitioning to Zoom fatigue.

Gen Xers were the last to build their social networks in person before extending them online. We went to school without smartphones and built relationships before social media. This gives us a grounding that younger generations often lack. We don’t conflate connectivity with connection. We know how to shake a hand, write an email without Gen AI, and have a conversation without emojis or abbreviations. We also know how to scale those relationships digitally.

WE ARE THE TRANSLATORS

In workplaces, Gen X is the bridge. We manage Baby Boomers above and Millennials/Gen Z below. We translate across analog and digital.

We're not overwhelmed by change, but we're not addicted to it either. We know how to debug a printer and reboot a cloud server. We can code a website and manage a boardroom.

We’re bilingual in a way no other generation is and fluent in both eras.

CONCLUSION

My experience with Facebook was infuriating. Not just because I lost access to my account, but because it exposed how fragile our digital identities truly are. In that moment of vulnerability, I needed a company to care. Facebook didn’t.

That experience also reminded me of something else, the unique strengths my generation brings to the table.

• We built relationships in both worlds, analog and digital.

• We’ve adapted without losing our health, our humor, or our humanity.

• Our anxiety doesn’t come from screen time, it comes from watching the rising anxiety, loneliness, and depression in both our kids and our aging parents.

• We understand what’s being lost and what we’re still at risk of losing.

The digital transformation isn’t just about faster processors or smarter AI. It’s about what kind of society we become as the line between human and machine grows thinner, fuzzier, and harder to trace.

Gen X remembers what empathy looked like. We remember when trust was earned, not optimized. And that’s why, more than any other generation, Gen X is best equipped to lead the digital transformation.

Not because we’re the loudest.
Not because we’re the most wired.
But because we still remember what came before and what must endure.

We are the Second Greatest Generation. And if that resonates with you, you’re probably Gen X.