In college, crewing up in our tiny dorm rooms to watch Sex and the City was a ritual.

We would turn it on while swapping between rooms down the hall, borrowing each other’s clothing articles, tossing shirts and skirts room to room like lady shrapnel, attempting to pull off a “look” that we dismissed was crafted by multiple HBO stylists.

We were inspired. That show made us move differently.

Number one, women in their 30s and 40s could be hot? And fashionable? Show their midriffs? It was the first show that actually made us excited to age as women — that maybe the best years were truly ahead of us.

Number two, writing could make you rich? — let’s be honest here, no fucking way Carrie’s column could afford her that sick ass pad and all those designer clothes in New York City of all places, especially in the early episodes — but the inspiration was there: art is a career.

It made me inspired: I could be an icon no matter my age, and I could truly live off making my essence into my job.

There’s part of me that channels a bit of Carrie Bradshaw on Tuesday mornings when I write this newsletter. Like I’m zoomed out, watching myself write the TV show of my life.

This morning, I couldn’t help but think, what if Sex and the City had been written 10 years from now? Carrie has a screen on the wall helping her style herself ala Clueless circa 1995… a robot is dressing her while some souped-up version of Alexa is spitballing column ideas with her through the walls.

Would college-aged girls in 2035 watching Robot Sex and the City be as inspired? Would fashion, aging, and creativity as a personal brand and career seem as riveting?

The Hustle

I think we’re forgetting something in the age of Ai integration and automations: creativity isn't just the output. It's the struggle to get there.

The best ideas don't come from the first pass. They come from the twentieth. From the moment you want to throw your laptop across the room because nothing's working. From sitting in a writers' room for three hours just to land on one good line. From a 3-hour brainstorming session fueled by dry erase marker fumes and exhausted desperation. From your brain having to actually WORK through the mess.

That process is not wasted time. It's where your brain expands. It's where connections form that wouldn't exist if you just asked a tool to "give me 10 ideas."

AI is an incredible collaborator. And I do use it. Creatives can have a hard time wrangling creativity, and I use tools like Notion to contain my mind into notes, and reclaim to help automatically time block my schedule. Tools like these help me with structure, organization, the tedious shit that bogs down the actual flow of creative work.

It's like having a really efficient assistant who can help me wrangle my to-do’s so I can focus my energy on the parts of my life that require my actual brain.

But there's a line…

When I’ve sat down with a creative team to brainstorm a TV show logline or name a new project, those hours of throwing terrible ideas at the wall — like literally on the wall like EXPO dry erase marker vomit — that wasn’t inefficiency. That was the work. The process. That's where team bonding happened. That’s where you’re both laughing at the spitballed ideas and crying that it’s now 11:59pm and you’re nowhere near done. That's where your brain learns to think differently. That's where you surprise yourself.

If you skip that part — if you just plug in "give me 20 loglines for a show about X" — you might get usable options. But you won't get the one that makes everyone in the room go "oh SHIT, that's it!" Because the Eureka! moments come from the collective struggle. From someone saying something stupid that sparks someone else's genius. From the weird alchemy of humans actually thinking together. From the dumb ideas that become inside jokes you can tell on interviews.

Two weeks from today, I’m giving a Keynote performance on the subject matter of creativity in the age of Ai, attempting to showcase through working with Ai just how necessary a human experience is to comedy and creative art forms. I’ve been toiling over it in a very different way than my TED talk. Yet I write nothing without bringing my human experience and vulnerability to the table.

Memory is the currency of connection.

The reason a room full of strangers laugh together at a comedy show isn't because the joke was technically well-crafted. It's because you give the words life through delivery and timing. People can feel your lived experience. The bodies smashed into a club create energy. Something you said triggered a memory, an experience, a moment of "holy shit, I thought I was the only one who felt that way."

It’s cellularly bonding.

AI can analyze what makes people laugh. It can study patterns and structure and timing. But it can't remember what it felt like to be 9 and humiliated because you wore your favorite white spandex biker shorts with a daisy cutout on the leg and backed your ass into a wet painting in art class and had to justify why it was funny your butt cheeks were blue all day by singing “Blue Moon” when you walked into the classroom. It can't recall your grandpa’s weird bent finger that he would joke with you to fix by smashing it straight with a hammer. It can't access the specificity of a dorm room in 2004 while doing our hair between episodes of Sex and the City and marathons of RENT songs (yes, we loved that musical).

That's why my writing — this newsletter, my comedy, my TV projects, my talks — is anecdotal. Because it has to feel lived in. Not just written. Lived.

The moment creativity becomes purely transactional output, it stops connecting. And if it's not connecting, is it actually creative anymore?

The Chill

AI isn't going anywhere. Neither am I, for that matter. Not yet, at least.

I remember when the internet became a household thing. My family got AOL in the late 90s (the 1900s as the kids now say…) and suddenly we were all navigating dial-up tones and chat rooms and emoticons and email. People were terrified. "Kids won't go outside anymore!" "No one will talk face-to-face." "This is the end of real connection."

Sure, some of that happened. But we also got access to information we never had before. Communities formed across distances. Opportunities opened up that didn't exist when everything was analog. I went on my first overseas People to People student ambassadors trip the summer after 8th grade — a trip I busted my ass farming to pay for — and was actually able to stay connected via email and AIM with all my new friends afterward.

We adapted. We figured out the balance. We learned when to log off. We translated real life community and connection into ongoing cyber friendships.

This feels similar. AI is here. It's powerful. It's useful. But like any tool, it's about how we choose to use it. If we learned anything from the film Arrival, tools can quickly become weapons.

I could automate everything — let algorithms write my newsletter, generate my social content, draft my jokes. It would be faster. More efficient. But it wouldn't be mine. And the second it stops being mine, I've lost the only thing that makes me special.

So here's my line: I'll use AI to help me research, but not to think for me. I'll let it organize my chaos, but I won't let it attempt to turn my chaos into art. I'll collaborate with it the way I'd collaborate with a personal assistant — travel suggestions, schedule optimization, document outlines. But the lived experience, the vulnerability, the weird specificity of my brain? That stays mine. That stays human. Because it is.

At the end of the day, people don't show up for perfect. They show up for real. And real can't be automated.

It’s Thanksgiving week. Let’s all lean into our chill… I’m excited to go home mid-week and spend time with my family — sit on the couch with Grandma as she plays Hallmark movies back to back, play cards with Jake and Mom and Dad, enjoy eating Jake’s grandma’s cranberry chutney that I swear has crack in it, it’s so divine. I eat that shit like soup.

Let’s reflect on all the good in our lives. Even the bad is good in a sense, because it means we’re real. We get to experience this life; the joys and the challenges alike. And that’s pretty fucking special.

Upcoming Shows

I have some unique shows/events coming up that I’d love to see you at:

Thursday December 4th: iO Theater Chicago — I’ll be doing my second co-headlined show with Hypnotist Chris Jones. We met awhile back in the creators circuit here in Chicago, and he was doing his TED Global pitch the same day I spoke for TEDx. I was BLOWN AWAY at the show we did together last month. His work literally made my mind explode. You’ll have one of the most unique experiences with the two of us — different than any other comedy show you see me on.

Sunday December 7th: Karaoke Storytellers at Schubas Chicago — another unique show with an artist lineup of storytellers (I’m the only comedian) who share a story followed by karaoke-ing a song. It’s almost sold out!

Tues December 9th - Wed December 10th: Creativity in the age of Ai Los Angeles — the inspo behind today’s newsletter. My co-founder is speaking on the 10th, and I’m closing out the first day on the 9th. This event will be filled with Hollywood decision makers and studio heads, as we all navigate Ai’s place in the future of creativity. Tickets are really pricey - $500 - $1000+… code: CAET50 gets you 50% off… which is still very pricey. So if you’re dying to come and can’t swing it, let me know and I’ll see what I can pull.

And if you missed last week’s newsletter, you can read it HERE.

Love you all and cheers to the hustle + chill. We create memories, and thus, we are human.

xx NPH