Jonathan McKay

In 2025, AI became impossible to ignore. I submitted to the siren song, and returned to industry, this time with headquarters in Redmond. The SF-Redmond commute brought transit time, more reading time, and twice as many books as last year (109 vs. 54). My focus reverted back to English, though AI translated Chinese is creeping into short-form content. Books settled into three foci: AI (mostly disappointing), 20th-century presidents (useful grounding), and escape—fiction, with a few deliberate turns toward print and poetry. ...

Finishing Amber Spyglass was an event in my life. Like 9/11, or first heartbreak, I remember the details of that day, and the way that I felt afterwards. Longing, emotional, yet not quite able to understand nor articulate how I felt after finishing the read in a marathon session on the lazy-bay of my father’s house. I’m being driven up I-5, and the memories and plans of private planes through BFI are fresh. It’s a different layer than driving up I-5 on the motorcycle to make $60 teaching with the Princeton Review. Soaked on Seattle streets. There is no part of me that thought I would have been a Microsoft executive, not in this amount of time, not 15 years. ...

Life doesn’t get many turning points, but 2024 was one. After being tossed from the OpenAI rollercoaster, I’ve expanded work on our family office. Both kids are now in school, and my day to day is an axis between the local coffee shop for me and the BMX park for my son, with much less idle time available for reading. I also focused more on Chinese, which means I read about half as many (54 v. 120) books this year as last year. ...

2023 was a return to the new normal – full-time work resumed, but at OpenAI. Daily commutes resumed, but on a skateboard rather than a bus. On the home front, our decision to teach our children Chinese has been a case study in unintended consequences, with this decision affecting their interactions with each other, with us, and with the broader world. In reading, 2023 focused on four areas - books directly relevant to my profession, catching up on nonfiction around China, understanding America’s military foreign policy in the 20th century, and strategies to raise a family. I ended up reading about 120 books, and here were the best of the lot: ...

Yesterday I discovered that I could play Starcraft on the mobile internet connection here in Casa Blanca. Discovered this at 1am last night, and went to bed at 6am this morning. Then played I think two sessions of Starcraft today. I don’t know, it all gets thrown together in a blur. I play until the ragged edge, until I hate myself for playing, until I swear that I will never play this game again, or at least not until I return back to Spokane for Christmas. And then I go back to playing it. ...

I’ve been surprised at how different experiences have proven themselves useful in consular work here in Riyadh. Arabic, Islamic Studies, and Political science all have obvious connections. Now that I’m working on the embassy website, even the computer science courses I hated make me an ’expert’ in meetings. But more than work, degrees, or anything I could put on a resume, the best preparation for consular work has just been playing Starcraft. ...