Living and working remotely, far removed from the places I grew up and forged lifetime friendships, it’s the conversations with friends that I miss the most. Like most people, I assume, I am not very good at simply sitting down in order to let ideas come to me. Instead, I’ve found that I am the surest of my own identity and most likely to find inspiration and get a sense of my own direction while talking with friends, about life, about work, anything. Now, with a family and a house in the German countryside, these conversations don’t just happen anymore: I need to seek them out – which I do far too little.

In January this year, I realized that ‘being in between jobs’ provides a unique opportunity to carefully consider what I want to do next, what matters to me most when it comes to work. While I have a few things I really enjoy doing, and have professional experience doing a wide range of things (web development, project and team leadership, product ownership, event and meeting facilitation, marketing and technical writing), there is not a single function, role or position that clearly calls to me, in a way that would allow me to speak about my ideal work day with conviction. Aside from that, having spent 6.5 years in a fully remote WordPress agency bubble, I feel like I know very little about the different kinds of organizations that are out there, as places where work happens, as places I could potentially work.

It boils down to questions like these:

• What kind of work would I like to do? Which types of tasks and responsibilities do I not just feel comfortable performing but actually energize me?
• Which types of work can I imagine myself doing that give me a sense of fulfillment and purpose?
• What do I look for in an organization? How would I like to work together with other people – for other people?
• Do I want to keep doing work that keeps me bound to a desk? Remotely?

Since I have a hard time answering these questions by myself, I naturally came to the conclusion that conversations are the key to finding out where to go next.

That’s why, now that I am older than my mother and father when they had their daughter, I am embracing my own mid-life crisis and starting a podcast series of conversations with friends.

Friends with jobs, to be exact.

And because it seems inevitable to me as a software person, I will also ask my friends about how they (might) use AI in their work. I also look forward to talks with digital professionals focusing entirely on this topic, and if they happen, I’ll label these talks Friends with AI.

If this sounds interesting to you, stay tuned! I will report back here, on this website.