Sometimes I feel like stretched bubble gum.

Sometimes I feel like stretched bubble gum, how long it takes me to finish things.

A colleague recently asked me, “When is Lavegavon ready? I want to read that book for sure.”

And yet, here I am on my third major revision.

This time it’s because of everything that has been unfolding with the Aetheris UI and the generative AI phenomenon. I started thinking more seriously about what interacting with a computer would actually feel like in the year 3011. That changed the ship. It changed how the crew works. It changed how information moves through the story. And, inevitably, it sent me digging back into Lavegavon again.

The problem is, I keep running into this feeling that I am not thinking big enough. Bold enough.

There’s always something more I need to tweak, rethink, recommit to.

With Lavegavon, I am convinced that each major revision has been worth it. I was a chump before, and I am digging up gold now.

And that’s the scary part.

Believing that I am excellent.

Uber-talented.

Some kind of mecha-craftsman who might actually be capable of making the strange things I see in my head.

Because the more I learn, the more I can see.

I revise the book. I learn something new about the attitudes of people who endure spaceflight. That makes me think about their jobs and cognitive tasks. Then the interfaces that would aid them. That changes what 3011 feels like. Changes what the characters can experience. Then AI agents organize into unexpected collectives in reality. I think about Ka’rith. I think about the Nemorax. And suddenly something I thought was finished opens again.

And I realize—the new version really is better.

I can tell.

That’s what makes stopping so difficult.

I often think, too, that if I had more money, I would have better exposure, supplies, and tools. Hopefully with that cash, better time to allocate too.

But I don’t.

So sometimes I feel like my creativity is interest collecting over 40 years.

Cue my mocking, nasally Wall Street voice:

“Consider two individuals. One saves $1,000 a year. The other invests $10,000.”

You know the story.

Except I’m not talking about money.

I’m talking about all the things accumulating in my head that I haven’t had the time, tools, or money to make yet. Things I can imagine faster than I can afford to manufacture them.

A book. A robot. A film. A strange little object. A world. A new perspective. An entire studio.

It makes me melancholy sometimes.

But I’m not sure I could have it any other way.

Over the years, I have had to become more comfortable with the fact that it all can’t come at once.

Creativity seems to behave the same way.

It doesn’t particularly care about my preferred production schedule.

Maybe my job isn’t to force everything to arrive faster.

Maybe it is to get better at recognizing when something has arrived—and to be ready to catch it when it does.

There is a danger in all this, of course.

“I haven’t thought big enough yet” could become an infinite loop.

There will always be another idea. Another skill I haven’t learned. Another tool I can’t afford yet. Another version of myself who could theoretically make the thing better.

If Lavegavon has to wait until I know everything I might someday know, it will never be finished.

Eventually, I have to let the work become a record of what I was capable of seeing at this particular moment in my life.

Maybe that is what finishing actually is.

Like taking out a new stick of gum, chewing it for a few rounds, popping a couple bubbles.

Then spitting it out and moving forward fresh.