I Finally Hit a Major Milestone While Still Active as an Implementer
People call turning 30 a major milestone, and they say the same about turning 40. Here, the milestone means turning 50. Today, March 11, I finally turned 50. For the past 15 years, it has become my birthday routine to watch special programs about the Great East Japan Earthquake, look back on the past, and think about my own future.
Maybe I have been lucky, but I have managed to stay active as an implementer until this age. Of course, as I have gotten older, I sometimes work in positions such as technical director or art director. Even in those roles, I think the fact that I am still active is part of the core value that leads to those assignments.
Personally, I think having a wide range of positions has been the key to surviving for so long. For example, I doubt there are many people who, in the same year, gave an almost two-hour talk about web design trends at CSS Nite and also spoke at JavaOne, a Java conference, about the Java / Scala framework Play Framework.
This connects to something I have said before: I am like a Red Mage. On the flip side, it also means I am not an overwhelming specialist. I try not to think too much about whether that is really okay, because it makes me anxious.
Can This Be a Role Model?
Whether anyone would want to use me as a role model is another matter, but I do think a way of living like mine is one valid option among many. In my case, for example, I filed a business opening notification two months after graduating from university, went through many twists and turns, and arrived where I am now. I started as a freelancer, then went through being a business owner and an employee, and now I am a freelancer again.
People often talk about role categories such as designer or engineer, but for me design is engineering, and programming is also engineering. To me, they are equally just "making things with computers." I think the AI era is also just another era of making things with computers.
When people of my generation saw the Flash industry disappear, some could no longer continue working. I happened to make it through that wave, but the AI era may not be so forgiving. Still, when an era changes, it is inevitable that a certain number of people close their businesses. I do not think that is a matter of winning or losing. Even if it were, Cao Cao said that victory and defeat are common in military affairs.
The Next Ten Years
When I turn 60, it feels unlikely that I will still be able to say I am active in the same way, but I still want to put that forward as a goal. That said, I vaguely feel that the next ten years will be far tougher than the previous ten, so I want to stay focused.
As a way to live in the AI era, I am taking a strategy of creating a feedback loop between study and achievements by catching up with technology through the development of OSS tools such as Seiro MCP. I would be happy if you starred it on GitHub! The strategy is to publish one tool and keep incorporating each change of the era into it, learning at the same time. By being not only someone who uses AI but also someone who builds tools, I inevitably learn about the protocols and mechanisms. That should help differentiate me from others. So far, I feel good about being able to pick up new AI trends through the work of improving the tool.
At the same time, Seiro MCP is a tool for visionOS, so it also serves as a base for XR activities. If XR had become more popular, maybe I would not have needed to get involved with AI, but that is the current flow of the times. With XREAL and with Vision Pro, I kept hoping they would take off, but they did not quite get there. So when I turn 60, I may still be thinking, "I hope this becomes popular," while it probably has not quite become mainstream. In any case, I plan to keep working on this for the long term.
For web work, thankfully I continue to receive it as my main job. I implement together with AI, design in Figma, and work alongside people to build things together. But I also think the way we work in this area will change greatly over the next few years, and by the time I turn 60, the kind of work I am doing now may no longer exist.
Beyond That
After 60, I hope I will not have too many health problems at that point. Leaving money aside, I am actually rather prepared to become an older person. I have served as a neighborhood association chair, and I will start work with the council of social welfare this year. I have also been volunteering in local Japanese-language learning support for a full three years. Most of the people I work with in the community are over 70, and I sometimes think I may have started early. I am already doing many of the things I might do when I am older, so even if I became an older person tomorrow, I would be completely fine.
In other words, the problem is the next ten years or so.
Finally, as a bit of an announcement, I would be grateful if you would feel free to contact me, whether it is about something not yet at the level of paid work or a serious implementation project. With that, I will end this note on turning 50.