I’m in an altogether different place this morning. I woke slowly, to the sound of an audible alarm. Strange enough (for me), and it jangled my nerves a bit; I was deeply asleep and had forgotten where I was (a hotel room in San Francisco).
I got up and dressed, fussing around in a most disorganized fashion, finally starting some coffee brewing before I left the room for a short walk in the morning air. Once around the block, and then back to the hotel room for coffee.
Each journey starts somewhere.
Yesterday was an interesting adventure in travel. Nothing really went “wrong”, it was simply unexpectedly tedious. The taxi from the airport to the hotel was fun; the driver was skillful and made interesting conversation (at half the price of an Uber, as it happens). He even pointed out various sights along the way. It was almost an hour, in heavy traffic. Yeesh. Big cities have familiar big city problems (Like needing an hour to go 17 miles).
Oh look! A sight to see.
By the time I was in the hotel room it was 5:30 pm. How was I “already” so tired? I mean, new city, and I’m in a hotel in a location with a lot to do (Fisherman’s Warf). My feet ached. I was tired. I slept poorly the night before and fatigue was clearly taking over. My Traveling Partner reminds me to eat something in a message, while we catch up and exchange pleasantries. I unpack and get my stuff rearranged such that my backpack is longer luggage, just a computer case. Handy. In the process I delight myself; I had carelessly put three little stuffed kittens onto my backpack “out of the way” while I was packing for the trip and didn’t realize they’d dropped down inside. There they were, soft friendly reminders of home, I chuckled happily and snapped a picture of them.
Small moments of joy are precious.
I spent the evening in silence, just sitting quietly for some little while, before admitting I was just done for the day. By 7 pm, I was asleep, waking only once and promptly returning to sleep. Now, it’s a new day, full of promise. The morning is quiet. I am alone. The only sounds are traffic beyond the window, and my tinnitus. This coffee is okay…pod coffee. It’s generally neither bad nor good, but completely acceptable and of reliable “sameness” every time. I find myself struggling for a moment to find the correct word for that idea. Consistency? So many useful words available to choose from!
A colleague who is also staying at this hotel pings me about breakfast. It’s already time to begin again.
I don’t use AI in my writing. Not here. Not at all. These are my human words (spelling errors, excessive use of ellipses and all). I write what I write, from the contents of my own actual thoughts. Sometimes I am inspired by my environment, or my experience, or my past, or something I saw or heard, or a video I watched, which is the case right now.
Is ChatGPT turning everyone into bots? This video answers that question “yes”. You may want to watch this and think about your own position on using LLMs like ChatGPT. Are you undermining your ability to write, think, reason, make decisions, or simple be? I watched this video – then I watched it again. I’m grateful for the discernment to be exceedingly skeptical of the value in these tools that have become so readily available. There’s a longer video on this theme that is worth watching, if you are seeking clarity regarding what these LLMs are actually capable of.
The tl;dr from my perspective? I use GPTs and LLMs in the context of my professional work, and only do so reluctantly (and in a very limited way) due to obvious issues with inaccuracy and bogus citations (but it is a requirement for some elements of the work I currently do). I keep it to a minimum and approach every reluctant use with a stern critical eye, vigilant and wary, doing my best to detect every error, every lie, every misleading bit of bullshit. Trusting an “AI” (it isn’t intelligent) or LLM is like trusting MadLibs. lol Don’t do that. Definitely don’t worship the fucking things, or seek love from them. They’re bots. They don’t (and can’t) think, feel, reason, or demonstrate actual judgement. It’s just software, not an independent consciousness.
… It’s not even clear that the designers and developers are reliably decent human beings who are committed to bettering the world for everyone…
Don’t let ChatGPT (or any other LLM) steal your humanity from you! You’re better than that – even if your spelling is poor, and you’re not sure what to say in that email (or conversation). Do your best – it’ll be better than a bot! Be human with your whole self. Be present. Be aware. Feel and experience each moment of your life – it’s already ridiculously brief and quite finite. Don’t let a bot steal what little there is. You can choose differently. It’s probably for the best that you not take life advice from software that has never, and will never, live. (And maybe don’t be so trusting that billionaires seeking still more wealth and power are going to give you free stuff or look after your interests “out of the goodness of their hearts”, without something in it for them personally.)
After an after work nap that began as “laying down for a couple minutes” and quickly became collapsing into a deep sleep for 90 minutes, I still crashed pretty early last night. I slept deeply, but woke early, abruptly, jerked from a deep troubled sleep by… what? I don’t know, and it didn’t matter. I mostly felt relieved to be awake, and no longer prowling The Nightmare City for safety or an exit.
I got up quietly, dressed, and left the house. My waking consciousness was still disturbed by my dreams, but I know the relative importance of such things (basically, none), and I don’t take it personally, I just move on. I drive to the nature park for my morning walk, and considering the very dense fog this morning, I wait for more light. It wouldn’t do to carelessly step off the seasonal marsh trail in the fog and darkness, and risk tumbling into a pond (or the Tualatin River), most especially during a government shutdown that means there is little chance of help coming. On mornings like this, foggy, chilly, and quiet, I often have the trail entirely to myself.
My nightmares vex me, and I am feeling annoyed. Daybreak came and I walked the first half of my route in the dim light, thinking about the symptoms of the sickness that has infected our national identity. It’s everywhere. An already rich, well-documented fraudster gets a “trillion dollar payday”. Regular people go without promised services and even food because the grifter-in-chief is okay with using actual human lives as bargaining chips and thinks (apparently) that governance is some sort of game. Armed masked thugs kidnap Americans off the streets of their own neighborhoods without personal accountability or consequences, because supposedly they’re the fucking good guys (they’re not). The courts play badminton with people’s rights. The media puts more money and effort into marketing copy than real news, and AI slop is infesting every feed, every channel. The president makes a point of pardoning criminals – as long as they’re his friends, or offer him some personal benefit. Vile. Hateful. Corrupt.
It’s all so very tedious and ugly… My footsteps crunch along the path in the chilly fog. I’m frustrated and disappointed by the pointless petty partisan bickering of elected officials whose actual job is the one thing they seem committed to not doing; governing. This shit has gotten so bad it has the power to put my fucking nightmares into perspective. Remember freedom of speech? PTSD? Say hello to America 2025. Fuck.
Foggy morning
I get to my halfway point and take a seat on the fence rail of this bit of fence that runs along one end of a pond in the marsh. I like this spot. I’ve a good view across the marsh in one direction, and oaks dot the hillside in the other. It’s foggy enough that I can’t see far, and there is no visible horizon. I sigh contentedly, feeling relieved to be awake – and alone. The world is stressing me out quite a lot lately. I keep working at building resilience and self-care, but I also have to keep draining my resilience reservoir over one stressor or another. It has required near continuous self-care and resulted in frequent (emotional, cognitive) fatigue. We could do better.
I breathe, exhale, and relax. I meditate in the fog as daybreak becomes the dawn. A new day ahead of me, with new opportunities to be (or become) the person I most want to be. It’s not an easy path. I fail myself rather more often than I’d like, but I also manage to impress myself now and then, and I’ve come further than I ever expected I might go. I sigh to myself. The sound of it seems strangely noisy. A goose or duck, unseen somewhere in the fog, gronks (irritably?). An enormous flock rises from the foggy marsh and takes to the sky as a group. They’re loud as they pass overhead.
Long weekend ahead, for me. Veterans Day Tuesday, and I took Monday off. For a long time a bunch of us (Desert Storm veterans) have gotten together over the phone, or on social media, or in a virtual meeting space to reconnect, hang out, and catch up on things. Not this year.
There are fewer of us these days and the timing and circumstances weren’t in our favor this year. The guy who usually hosts is in rehab. Again. Another needs to spend time trying to figure out groceries because his SNAP benefits aren’t available, and his disability compensation doesn’t go far enough to pay his bills. We’re mortal creatures; some of us just aren’t around any more. I’m disappointed, but also grateful to be in better circumstances, myself, at this place in my life. I sit awhile thinking about these strange military friendships that linger. There’s really nothing else quite like them. A unique experience of a very particular sort of trauma-bonding, with people who knew me at a very different time in my life. In many respects I am not that woman at all, now. I wonder if these old friends would like me as well if they knew me more as I am, now, than as the woman I was then?
I inhale the chill foggy autumn air deeply and exhale slowly, thoroughly, like adding a page-break to a document. I let my irritation and sorrow go, with my exhalation.
I think for a moment about the Anxious Adventurer, and the difficult journey of figuring himself out. Life is hard enough when we do know who we are. Having to also figure that shit out along the way is a massive additional complication for someone who is expected to be an actual adult, already. I don’t envy him having to deal with that; I’ve been there myself and it definitely felt like a Sisyphian task sometimes.
My Traveling Partner pings me. I feel loved and valued. I see him working through his challenges in life, too. We’re each having our own experience, we three human primates. Choices and circumstances, and each on our own path. It’s funny sometimes how different our individual perspectives can be. I often wish it were easier to share what we learn along the way, more effectively.
I sit with my thoughts awhile longer, wondering what value these musings even offer…
…Then I notice it’s already time to begin again. I’m glad I have so much to be grateful for, and so many options.
The morning was clear and cold, as I left the house. The sky was flecked with stars and the waning moon peered down at me from above my quiet neighborhood. By the time I reached my halfway point on this morning’s walk, a dense mist was gathering, and I am now wrapped in fog. Change is.
I sit quietly with my thoughts. I meditate. I exist. The moment feels timeless and static, fixed in place, and unchanging. It is an illusion. Moments are brief. The mist gets thicker, as the clock ticks onward.
Can a picture truly capture a moment and hold it still?
I sigh to myself, filling my lungs with the cold morning air and exhaling, adding the mist of my breath to the morning fog. Nice moment, this. I could almost imagine that the world is at peace, that people feel safe in their communities, and that the world is a rational, ethical, nurturing place…
I haven’t looked at the news today. I don’t plan too, beyond what may be shared to me by my Traveling Partner, or in the course of the work day. Very little changes there, and between the atrocities of foreign genocides, global human rights abuses, and the horrors of American governance in the current administration, I have no stomach for it, and no need to see the same terrible news every day. It isn’t new at all. That, and then also the ads and the ever devolving quality of the writing, generally. Omg, AI “writers” are hilariously bad, and the prevalent errors and outright falsehoods are… unacceptable. So…no. Not this morning. I’ll just sit here, enjoying my peaceful morning, feeling safely wrapped in the mist.
I sit thinking about it being “Banned Books Week“. Good week to buy real books by human authors – particularly any of the many excellent books that piss off the government. It’s not healthy for our freedom to permit someone else to tell us what we can’t read. I’ve got a lovely long list of books I’d like to read… The holidays are coming. 😁
Daybreak comes gently. The fog seems to take on a hint of blue. My mind already feels “too busy” and my calendar “too full” – but it is an ordinary work day, and I’ve actually only got one errand to run. I slept well and deeply last night, but somehow already feel tired almost to the point of exhaustion. I find myself missing the company and laughter of old friends, and the wise counsel of my Dear Friend, and my Granny. We are mortal creatures. The clock is always ticking, and the grains of sand in the hourglass are finite
I breathe, exhale, and relax. Workers begin arriving to start their day in the vineyards alongside the trail. It was inevitable; it is time to begin again.
Cloudy morning. The deep dark green of the oaks dressed in Spring foliage dominate the view as I set off down the trail this morning. My head is full of vaguely grim musings, like “how many more sunrises?” And whether or not human life is sustainable on this planet at all, or how many idiots it takes to destroy democracy as astonished others watch it fall? My head aches. I woke with the headache and my tinnitus loud in my ears. I walk anyway.
Oaks along a well-maintained local trail, on s gray Spring morning.
It’s a workday. For some reason I feel cross and moody every time I think about my upcoming birthday. I don’t know what to do about my moody bullshit, but I guess I know more or less where it comes from. Change. I feel childish and stupidly emotional over it. Change is, and there are much more serious things going on in the world to be moody about than the details vexing me now. I’m just still dealing with it, I guess.
In spite of making tremendous progress recovering from his injury and the surgery that followed, my Traveling Partner, my beloved, is still healing, adapting, and working to recover skills and mobility that were lost or impaired. (We made dinner together last night and it was wonderful to see him back in the kitchen, cooking!) I’m incredibly impressed and proud of him for the sheer will and commitment he’s shown. I know how hard it is; I’ve been there (though I was in my 20’s when I broke my back, and that’s a very different age to deal with such a thing). So I want to be clear about my angsty nonsense; it’s not about him, or in fact about the current circumstances. Not really.
Love matters most.
I catch myself thinking about my 60th birthday. We’d just gotten the Ridgeline, and we were happily purposeful and excited, and eagerly exploring the local wilds together. The physical intimacy in our relationship was connected, deep, and joyful, and we “had the house to ourselves”. Him getting hurt wasn’t even on our radar. A year later, my birthday was mostly caregiving and preparing for his surgery with him, and doing the needful to help the Anxious Adventurer relocate to move in and give us a hand with all that, whatever he could while also building a life here for himself and working. Then another 6 months or so of crazy intense caregiving that exhausted me and pushed me to limits I didn’t know I have, before my beloved really started to “be himself” again. I’m not complaining. I’m just saying that these are the circumstances and changes that brought me to this weird and moody place, facing a birthday I mostly wouldn’t care much about under other circumstances. 62? Not even a milestone (and I don’t “feel old”, generally speaking, in spite of chronic pain). I just have feelings. Very human. I don’t know what to do with or about this particular birthday. I simultaneously ache with poignant feelings of loss and strange regrets, and also don’t give a fuck and want to put it behind me.
I have planned taking the week after my birthday off work, but I have no actual plans. It’s just all really weird and the emotions have piled on, and I’m having trouble sorting myself out. It’s annoying.
“Emotion and Reason” 18″ x 24″ acrylic w/ceramic and glow details, 2012
I breathe, exhale, and relax. There’s so much to appreciate and to be grateful for. I focus on that as I sit at my halfway point, writing and reflecting. Things could be much worse. Change is, and this too will pass. I can count on that. lol I will find small joys to help me past blue moments. The clock will tick on, regardless. A week off spent sleeping in, painting, and puttering in my garden, reading books, and walking local trails, is time well-spent and needs no elaborate planning at all. It’s even enough, truly. Ah, but I do have these feelings, and the way out is reliably through – so I give myself room to experience and process my emotions, without taking them personally. Just feeling the feelings and reflecting on those. They’ll pass. They’re only emotions after all, not truths, not requirements, just their own sort of experience. I give myself a break and let them come and go like gray clouds on a Spring morning; yes, they appear to cover the entire sky, but they will move on, and there is blue sky beyond.
… Clouds make a nice metaphor for emotions…
I smile to myself. I’m okay for most values of “okay”, and this is a good life. I am indeed fortunate. Emotions are so very human. I sigh and chuckle to myself as I get to my feet and stretch. This path won’t walk itself. There are practices to practice and the clock ticks on. It’s time to begin again.
Evening Light 