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I’ve been so anxious this past week.
This past month if I’m honest about it.
Without understanding why.
###
Yes, yes, of course: the upcoming trip. Will I get my flight dates mixed up and miss the flight to Guatemala? Will the plane disappear in the Bermuda Triangle? Crash in the approach to Guatemala City when Pacaya decides to spew a real live ash column for the first time since 2010? Will Mara Salvatrucha decide to storm La Aurora airport and take all elderly gringo ladies with purple hair hostage? Will the shuttle I’m taking from Guate to Antigua blow a tire, killing all aboard?
The usual pre-trip anxieties, in other words.
###
But I was also thinking there was more to the omnipresent jitteriness than the pre-trip wobblies, and at last, I admitted to myself: It may have to do with nervousness about ongoing revenue streams.
So a couple of days ago, I took the bull by the horns and contacted my three most regular clients: Do you foresee the rise of AI tools having a marked influence on our professional relationship?
Best to know, right? So I can start putting in those job applications at McDonalds.
My retirement income pays all my basic bills, but anything I do beyond paying basic bills is subsidized by Remunerative Projects.
###
By yesterday, I’d heard back from all three clients.
No, said one.
No! said another.
NO, NO, NO! said the third—and confided they’d recently had to terminate the contract of another writer when they’d detected the unmistakable ChatGPT fingerprint. All AI does is spin existing content, the client told me. We want original insights.
So, that's a relief.
Though, of course, I am still anxious.
Because anxiety is what my body is used to.
It will take it a couple of days (at least) to get used to something else.
###
To that end, I have decided to do absolutely nothing today but read, watch TV, ablute (I have a new fabulous body wash,) and play with the cat.
Decompress.
I may tromp—but only because the sun is out and the sky is blue. Not because I want to exercise.
###
I’m reading The Ink Black Heart, J.K. Rowling’s latest Cormoran Strike detective procedural.
I admire Rowling for many reasons, but her writing ability is not among them.
Rowling seems never to have heard of Chekhov's gun. At least 250 pages of every 1,000-page tome she writes is filled with unnecessary details that add absolutely nada to plot or characterization.
I will say that degree of imagination micromanagement leads to a very dense parallel world in which it is oddly comforting to lose oneself in certain moods—like the one I’m in presently.
Also, she is dead right about the toxic nature of the Internet. Twitter, in particular. But really, all social media. I get that mileage varies on this one, but personally, I think fandom is a creepy phenomenon because it collectivizes what really ought to be a one-to-one relationship with a piece of art that moves you personally. And fandom is the engine that drives social media.
###
I was a very early social media adopter. I joined the Well—the great grand-daddy of all social media—in 1988.
I’d have to say that, yes, there was a sense of “community,” the like of which I hadn’t encountered before, and that sense of community was intoxicating. Many, many people I liked. A few I still consider friends.
But the Well was also a cesspool of bullies.
Just before I joined, these bullies had actually shamed and abused one prominent Well member so thoroughly that he committed suicide.
It was very obvious to me, a newcomer, not bound through fear or misguided loyalty to dissemble, that Blair would not have committed suicide had he not been pushed.
So, I said something. I am ever Joan of Arc into the fray!
And then I was bullied.
I was bullied pretty consistently by the same group of creepy people throughout the five or six years I remained an active Well member. But as I say, there were also people I had real bonds with.
Still. I roll my eyes whenever I read the private Well group on FB and read the nostalgia for old times.
And whenever—as happens from time to time—an old Wellie asks me, Why don’t you come back? I think, For the same reason, I don’t put Drano into my morning coffee.
This past month if I’m honest about it.
Without understanding why.
###
Yes, yes, of course: the upcoming trip. Will I get my flight dates mixed up and miss the flight to Guatemala? Will the plane disappear in the Bermuda Triangle? Crash in the approach to Guatemala City when Pacaya decides to spew a real live ash column for the first time since 2010? Will Mara Salvatrucha decide to storm La Aurora airport and take all elderly gringo ladies with purple hair hostage? Will the shuttle I’m taking from Guate to Antigua blow a tire, killing all aboard?
The usual pre-trip anxieties, in other words.
###
But I was also thinking there was more to the omnipresent jitteriness than the pre-trip wobblies, and at last, I admitted to myself: It may have to do with nervousness about ongoing revenue streams.
So a couple of days ago, I took the bull by the horns and contacted my three most regular clients: Do you foresee the rise of AI tools having a marked influence on our professional relationship?
Best to know, right? So I can start putting in those job applications at McDonalds.
My retirement income pays all my basic bills, but anything I do beyond paying basic bills is subsidized by Remunerative Projects.
###
By yesterday, I’d heard back from all three clients.
No, said one.
No! said another.
NO, NO, NO! said the third—and confided they’d recently had to terminate the contract of another writer when they’d detected the unmistakable ChatGPT fingerprint. All AI does is spin existing content, the client told me. We want original insights.
So, that's a relief.
Though, of course, I am still anxious.
Because anxiety is what my body is used to.
It will take it a couple of days (at least) to get used to something else.
###
To that end, I have decided to do absolutely nothing today but read, watch TV, ablute (I have a new fabulous body wash,) and play with the cat.
Decompress.
I may tromp—but only because the sun is out and the sky is blue. Not because I want to exercise.
###
I’m reading The Ink Black Heart, J.K. Rowling’s latest Cormoran Strike detective procedural.
I admire Rowling for many reasons, but her writing ability is not among them.
Rowling seems never to have heard of Chekhov's gun. At least 250 pages of every 1,000-page tome she writes is filled with unnecessary details that add absolutely nada to plot or characterization.
I will say that degree of imagination micromanagement leads to a very dense parallel world in which it is oddly comforting to lose oneself in certain moods—like the one I’m in presently.
Also, she is dead right about the toxic nature of the Internet. Twitter, in particular. But really, all social media. I get that mileage varies on this one, but personally, I think fandom is a creepy phenomenon because it collectivizes what really ought to be a one-to-one relationship with a piece of art that moves you personally. And fandom is the engine that drives social media.
###
I was a very early social media adopter. I joined the Well—the great grand-daddy of all social media—in 1988.
I’d have to say that, yes, there was a sense of “community,” the like of which I hadn’t encountered before, and that sense of community was intoxicating. Many, many people I liked. A few I still consider friends.
But the Well was also a cesspool of bullies.
Just before I joined, these bullies had actually shamed and abused one prominent Well member so thoroughly that he committed suicide.
It was very obvious to me, a newcomer, not bound through fear or misguided loyalty to dissemble, that Blair would not have committed suicide had he not been pushed.
So, I said something. I am ever Joan of Arc into the fray!
And then I was bullied.
I was bullied pretty consistently by the same group of creepy people throughout the five or six years I remained an active Well member. But as I say, there were also people I had real bonds with.
Still. I roll my eyes whenever I read the private Well group on FB and read the nostalgia for old times.
And whenever—as happens from time to time—an old Wellie asks me, Why don’t you come back? I think, For the same reason, I don’t put Drano into my morning coffee.
