When I think of the word luxury, I think of the Hermes Kelly bag. Yes, the one that costs upwards of $40,000, where you need that dough plus the right associate AND the right purchase history where maybe you'll get the invite to purchase said purse. That's traditional luxury: specific, exclusive, timeless.

But there's a new form of luxury in town, and it's at your fingertips: YOU. Your brain. Your emotions. Your life experiences and how you’ve spent your time so far. You're rare. There's only one of you. You are one of one! How freaking rad is that? If no one told you that today: I hope you know how rare you are.

I keep two notepads on my desk. One is the 100,000-foot view. At the top it says: "What is my calling?" The other is the microscope. Small ideas, games, random blurbs that come and go in between my two ears.

There's a balance and tension between these two notepads: having that overarching vision is really helpful. But when you're taking out the trash or reheating spicy Vindaloo for the second time this week, it can feel discouraging. Why am I doing this when my calling really is [FILL IN THE BLANK]? You still have to do those little things. Stop judging the comparison.

I used to think the "calling" notepad was more important. That's where the big questions and strategic thinking live and breathe. The "what am I building for the next decade" kinda stuff. But lately, I've been spending more time with the microscope notepad. The one with half-baked app ideas and random observations.

Because here's what I'm learning: your calling often emerges from those small, specific problems you notice. The things that annoy you enough to write down.

On that microscope notepad I write down personal problems I'm trying to solve. How can I prevent my brain from foggy thinking? A myriad of small, specific annoyances. And here's where the luxury piece comes in.

AI tools like Bolt, Replit, and Lovable should be on your radar. You can build solutions specifically for problems you have. For the solution you need. And for the people you know that would benefit from that discovery. It’s the launch of a new kind of signal.

You can take those specific problems to those tools, start playing with ideas on how to solve that problem, and ship even just a mockup of what a solution could be.

These aren't venture-scale ideas. They're personal luxuries. Solutions tailored exactly to how your brain works.

The goal is always for my work to feel like the most me (well that’s what my friend Shawn reminded me during our chit chat this week.)

That means picking up the phone and talking to friends, not AI. Sometimes it means building a tiny tool that only I will ever use. Sometimes it means reheating leftovers and trusting that the mundane moments are part of the calling too.

The Hermes bag will always be exclusive. But the luxury of solving your own problems, in your own way, with tools that used to require entire teams? That's available at your very finger tips.

You just have to give yourself permission to start small.