Are you growing? Y/N
I have a new job, and it has me thinking about what makes work worth doing
“Love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life” is one of those quotes that shows up everywhere—needlepoint pillows, LinkedIn headers, letterpress posters. I’ve owned a few, proudly hung them above my desk as I moved rectangles around or wrote copy about cloud infrastructure with perhaps too much zeal.
Eventually, the sentiment soured. Work is work, and most of us wouldn’t do it if we didn’t have to. (Right?) More importantly, the binary started to feel hollow. If you didn’t love your job, were you doing it wrong? Did you lack passion, or worse, purpose?
The binary was a lie
There was a time when I believed in drawing sharp lines between work and life. I’d come off an intense role where the boundaries had blurred too much, so I went in the other direction: I clocked in, clocked out. Grew a nice garden. Read more novels. Took deep breaths. And still, I dreaded Mondays.
recently wrote about why designers can’t stop joking about hating their jobs. Many of us felt seen. I hated being asked what I did, even when I had a good answer. I felt embarrassed around friends who were pursuing creative work with conviction, ashamed I didn’t have anything exciting to say about my own. I gave unhinged meeting recaps over dinner. (“And then she said—get this—”) It was exhausting. And worse: boring.You don’t hate Mondays
There’s another saying: “You don’t hate Mondays, you hate your job.” You start to think maybe that’s just how work is. You say things like, “How is it only Tuesday?” Everyone on the call laughs. Ha-ha-ha. You eat a protein bar at your desk.
Earlier this year, I wrote about building a set of principles to guide your practice. I wrote: “The things outside those boundaries? That’s where I quickly spiral into feeling unappreciated, compromised, angry, sad, and generally out of sync with the universe.” How that manifests can vary. It can look like Sunday scaries. Or becoming the least interesting version of yourself—someone who lives for the weekend, but doesn’t know what to do with it. Sometimes you don’t even notice it, but a bad day becomes a bad week, and suddenly you’re wondering if anything will ever feel exciting again..!
Work worth caring about
Eventually, I took a role that came with a clear warning: you’ll work harder here, but the work will matter. And it did. I felt proud of what we made. I adored the people I worked with. I remembered that I like caring about my work. I like talking to people about what they make and why. I love design. That’s why I got into it in the first place. And I feel incredibly lucky that this is something that I *get* to do every day.
I also love caring about the people I work with. I’ve made deep, meaningful friendships in every chapter of my career—at Google, at Figma, at every freelance gig in between. I met my husband at work and nearly all of my friends, too, thanks to one creative project or another.
Somewhere along the way, the advice became: don’t care too much. Caring was cringe. Vulnerable. Uncool. But as Mira Joyce put it: “Caring deeply and openly about your craft shouldn’t feel embarrassing. It feels necessary to me.” I agree.
The age of agency
Lately, the new industry mantra is “agency.” High-agency people don’t wait for permission. They act. They move fast. They ship things. They have rallying cries, too, as
points out:you can just do things
it’s time to build
move fast and break things
the quick shall inherit the earth
It’s catchy. And maybe a little overplayed. But it’s not wrong. Agency isn’t handed to you—it’s made. It grows through action. It compounds.
It also has a flipside. As Grant Belsterling notes, “A high sense of agency also means that everything that goes wrong in your life becomes your fault.” When you take responsibility for everything, you end up owning the failures too. The risk of caring is that when it doesn’t work, it’s on you.
So, what are you going to do about it?
When I started writing this newsletter, I found myself with more energy than I’d had in months. I was paying attention again. Ideas beget more ideas. Writing led to talking led to connecting and I started having conversations that felt interesting. And then, as often happens when you start doing things, something happened.
My long-time friend (and wedding officiant), Cameron, reached out about something new he was building. It would mean leaving a stable role and heading toward the unknown, but in many ways, it was a return: to community, writing, events, conversations. It felt like the right risk at the right time. I DM’d another long-time friend about it, who tweeted:
This, too, is agency. Not the loud kind. Not “move fast and break things.” But the quiet kind. Agency as alignment: between what you do and what you believe.
AI, taste, and what comes next
Design is in flux. AI is reshapinig the playing field. Execution is getting cheaper. POV is scarce. Just as mobile reshaped computing in the 2000s, AI is redrawing the creative canvas. Small teams are shaping what the next decade of software will look like.
In this new landscape, design will differentiate the products that endure. Taste, storytelling, brand clarity—all of it matters more than ever. Distribution is a design problem now. Craft matters. Not just for aesthetics, but for meaning. This moment feels electric and deeply uncertain. And that’s what excites me most.
After nearly three years at Figma, I’ve stepped into something new: I’m helping run AIR, a NYC-based startup accelerator, investing in teams are building design-led consumer AI products. Backed by Collaborative Fund and in partnership with Fictive Kin, we back early-stage builders making experimental, culture-shaping AI products.
We kicked things off with Cohort Zero last month and it’s been incredible: weekly critiques, surprise demos, and DMing brilliant people I admire (even the ones I don’t know yet) to come hang out. This is the kind of work I want to be doing. The kind of people I want to be doing it with.
We’re designing with models, not just interfaces. We’re building weird, beautiful things for the internet. And we’re doing it together.
Are you growing? Y/N
In additional to my principles, I have this flowchart that helps me know when it’s time for something new. It seems a bit obvious at first, but has helped me more times than I’d like to admit. It’s also a reminder that it’s a question you keep asking. You check in. You build. You rest. You try again. Growth isn’t linear. It’s a loop.
I feel lucky to be in a season of deep alignment. Where my work and values and relationships feel interconnected, not compartmentalized. Where I get to care—deeply, embarrassingly, joyfully.
If you’re building strange, delightful things at the intersection of AI and culture, I want to hear from you. Let’s make something good.
—Carly
Grateful to Cameron for bringing me in, and to Craig, Chris, Martina, Jacob, Jar, Gemma, Robin, Merri, and everyone who helped bring this to life. And most of all, to Cohort Zero—Carlos, Marc, Emily,
, , Jordan, and Pedro—thank you for your trust and for building with us.
Made my day to read this! Glad to hear you're in a good season. Looking forward to catching up.
As someone who’s visited AIR in the past few weeks I can def say, that place is alive and the energy is palpable. Highly recommend if you have the chance to be apart of this! (not a paid spokesperson)