I Did Not Use AI To Write This
Rest assured I wrote these rhythms. Up before the sun to toil and tender, to plot and plan each paragraph, to worry over every little word, every world I’m wishing into being. Have faith I’m typing away this morning like it’ll keep me alive. Like I’m trying to find not words but a way in this world.
It’s not that I don’t understand the allure of AI. It’s hard to rise every morning, and some mornings more so than others. Like bread baking, like dawn coming, like the world spinning us around the way it always does, the days stack up like breadsticks and we burn like cordwood in need of cooling. Life gets in the way of everything, as does work. Kids, bills, the crashing economy. Some days my words are so filled with worries they stick in the throat or lodge in the lungs, and some days there seems so little hope it’s hard to summon the energy to breathe past all the bullshit.
Truth is, I didn’t have a lot of time this morning. Nor did I want to write. Too many things on my mind, like the MRI scheduled for later today that will measure and map my insides to see if my worries have become cancer again. If my life will be upended another time, if my insides will be cut open and more of me removed, if more and more of my money will be sucked away by a system that doesn’t seem to care about me.
So I didn’t sleep well, worried about the shuffling off of my mortal coil. No more baking bread. No more rainstorms in the morning like the one I woke to not even 30 minutes ago, Jenn asleep on my arm and lightning drawing our bedroom into being in flashes just brief enough to believe the darkness is ending. That the storm will soon pass. That all this will pass as well.
Still, I would have preferred to stay in bed and let someone else do the work for me. To lie beside the woman I love and hope I have more time with her. That my storm is not tapering off. That my bread will still bake.
And I would be remiss if I didn’t announce my appreciation for machines. As I said, it’ll be an MRI they slide me inside of. Digital imaging and computers that scan through our whole bodies looking for traitorous cells, for what is not forming right, for what might be killing us.
But it will be a doctor who comes out to give me the diagnosis, and that’s why I’m writing this morning, why I’m awake in the darkness doing the work—it will be an actual person who tells me if I’m going to live or die.
Hope this is a scheduled MRI and not because you are having symptoms of a problem returning. My husband is a 2 time survivor and I remember how anxious he would be before follow up scans. I think it is the not knowing and of course the waiting. Please keep us updated. 🙏
Paul, I deeply appreciate your specific lens into the world and the way you give us access to your inner world. I hear you that machines in and of themselves are not bad; many times, they save our lives. I hear you about the enticement of using AI for creative work--just this morning I was thinking, "Wouldn't it be nice if I just plugged in some questions to an AI program and asked for help with this essay I'm working on?" I choose not to, for a lot of reasons. I realize AI would be saving me time. I realize in many ways it is "smarter" than I am. At the same time, I don't want to lose my ability to research, to critically think, to analyze, to distill, to consider nuance. Machines can't do that. A machine can't replicate my very human thoughts and feelings and needs--my writerly voice.
Finally, I will be thinking of you as you get your MRI. Please know I sincerely mean that.