You Are What’s Missing from Your Content
Authenticity is the new currency
I should know something about this. I've written and published over 70 books in the past couple of years, most of them with the help of AI. Some were deeply personal. Some weren’t. Some were just me needing to get things out after a lifetime of silence. For me, writing started like a hurricane, sixty years of not saying what I felt, suddenly turned loose. And I’m proud of these books. I know some of them have helped people. I don’t regret any of them.
And here’s what I’ve started to really notice lately: The books that have reached people, really reached them, aren’t necessarily the most structured or optimized. They’re the ones I had a personal, emotional experience with. Where I wrote something that touched my own heart first.
My most successful book to date is Alexithymia in Relationships. Not because it was the cleverest concept, but because I lived it. I was in a recent shorter relationship where the emotional connection kept slipping through our fingers, slowly, painfully, like trying to hold onto something vital that kept dissolving right when we needed it most. That book came from the ache of that experience, and people felt it.
Authenticity will be the new currency. Not because it becomes trendy, but because everything else is becoming so easy to fake. AI can mimic wisdom. It can generate faces, write convincing essays, and compose music that sounds almost human.
But it can’t bleed. It can’t tell you what it felt like to sit in silence for hours with someone you love, knowing something essential is missing but not knowing how to name it. It can’t pulse with the exact tone of your pain and your becoming.
We are entering a paradoxical age:
More content than ever, but less connection.
More stimulation, but less stillness.
More intelligence, but less intimacy.
And what heals that imbalance isn’t louder brilliance. It’s the quiet hum of truth and authenticity.
I sometimes laugh when people ask why I wrote so many books. I didn’t write them to impress anyone. I wrote them because something inside me was finally allowed to speak. Some of them are more AI-generated than others, sure. But the ones that carry the most resonance are the ones where I had a deeper, more personal connection to the content, where the ideas came from lived emotion, not just curiosity or craft.
That’s what I think many of us are starting to feel and discover now: You are what’s missing from your content.
Not a better title. Not a perfect prompt. Not more polish. Just you.
I see this danger creeping in, the AI-shaped identity. The kind of work that’s clever and quick and says all the right things but has no blood in it. No fingerprints. Just output without origin.
And in that kind of world, people won’t just want authenticity. They’ll need it. They’ll crave it like water. They’ll look for the person who says, "I’m not here to impress you. I’m just here to share something that mattered to me."
When someone says that, you stop scrolling. You breathe differently. The air reorganizes.
So that’s where I am now. Not trying to write more. Just trying to write more real.
Because in a world where everything can be generated, what will still be true?
That’s the question I’m walking with. And maybe you are too. If so, then let this be a reminder: Your presence is the point. Your truth is the thread. And what you reveal, when you stop trying to perform and start simply being, is the most valuable thing you have to offer.