Notes on AI, work, and making money with it.
The question feels unanswerable because it is five questions in a trench coat. Untangle them, and the answer stops being a life plan and starts being one small move.
Not a pep talk and not "just quit." A diagnosis, a playbook, and a first move you can start this week without touching your paycheck.
The old career change was a cliff: quit, retrain, re-enter at the bottom. The new one is a staircase. How it works at 30, 40, and beyond.
Money-this-week and money-this-month are different problems. Triage the first honestly, then use the gap's real asset, time, on work that pays and fills the resume gap at once.
Unemployment is not a two-week gap to survive quietly. The average stretch runs months, and the honest question is whether that time buys rent money only, or a real income skill that outlasts the job search.
The "7 streams" meme makes people start five things and finish zero. Streams are built one at a time: stabilize, systematize, stack. Here's the honest sequence.