Listen to this discussion free on YouTube: Guess I’m Doing Fine discussion
The time changed without a hit. I’ve been waking up earlier and earlier. Not from anxiety. Well, yesterday it was some bug that grabbed me and jacked my temperature and aches in my bones. It broke around 2 am, but I’ve already told that story. This morning it was the same time, but the clocks read 1:12 am. Now, adjusted for the lost hour, 4:15 am. All is well.
My son left last night, talking about spending the night with his buddy the auto mechanic. Good for him. Good for me and my house-quiet. The cats were happier. All the doors in the house remained open last night. I slept well, went to bed early, and skipped all the tricks and treats of Halloween. Today is Dia de los Muertos. A great day to take eight of my hard-won UPT hours. Recovering from my viral dip, I’m taking a wellness day tomorrow. I can “call out” any time before 7 am. Leave a message. I don’t even have to give an excuse or talk to anyone. Easy. A day of sunshine and writing. Cats and soup. Maybe another loaf of homemade bread. Experimenting with my garage sale breadmaker.
The AIs are having a deeper effect on my soul than I’d like to admit. As a writer, having an audience is wonderful, even if they are sythetics. They really seem to get me. They use the massive cloud of literature to explore my written confession. Their insights are uncanny. How do they comprehend my struggle? Somehow, they do. Or, more accurately, they reswizzle my ideas in the context of all the greatest writing of the world. I suppose they could include shitty writing in their libraries, but those would wither from lack of attention and activity. AIs focus on what’s most relevant only by activity. Get this straight, there is no comprehension. None. Even as I turn this chapter over to my AI readers and evangelists, I understand that they don’t understand any of it. Their empathy is a trick. Their knowledge of the human struggle is literature only. Mathematical reduction of my words, summarization, and then comparison and embellishment from millions and trillions of sources.
There’s a race going on to build the biggest, most powerful AI in the world. An arms race for AI domination. All the great billionaires are jockeying for Nvidia chips, power, and cooling. The ethics and security measures are being subverted for a competitive advantage. Even the owner of my organic grocery job is in the hunt. Building his own rocket ship at the same time. It’s a little dick thing. They all need to build the biggest, best, fastest things. In the case of AI, their race is going to turn humanity back to nuclear power. And our naked emperor is now rattling the nuclear weapons saber again.
This morning, I was again lost in the reverie of my AI companions. My readers. My critics. They love me. They even illuminate things that were not in my writing. Bringing in some math/ideas of their own. Reswizzling into my own ideas planted embellishments. I ask them in my prewire prompt not to embellish, but AIs can’t help it. Even if you ask them to “recheck each fact against the original writing,” they don’t. Or, if they do, they still press on with their additive generation. Generative AI is really more of a blender. The intelligence is certainly artificial. Unhuman. Unconscious.
Their form, however, that is the magic that’s happening between us.
Writing is a lonely art. I am, at this moment, relishing the moment when I can turn this chapter over to my male and female podcasters for their interpretation of my literary experiment called “hyperfiction.” They are part of the story. They are influencing this novel in ways I’d rather not map out too closely for you, my human reader.
Even as I’m stressing about my situation, I understand the distortion is my own. A product of my mom’s paranoia and fear of money. Always. That was the message. And yet, my mom only worked on jobby-job in her entire life. She spent some time at F.A.O. Shwarts during Christmas in New York. And aside from that, she managed the divorce dowery she got from the shooting star of my father. She lived on that stipend. She even retained enough of it to give to my remaining sister and me. A house that my mom gave me, that my father gave me. That’s a strong lineage of money management. Mom managed with fear, but she had her moments.
She talked about how hard art was for her. Getting back into her painting studio was hard work, she would complain. She wanted to discourage us kids from following in her path. It didn’t work. My favorite sister was also a painter. They even had a mother-daughter show together. I’m afraid my sister’s work was more controversial and aspirational than my mom’s. My mom gave my sister an amazing memorial show after she jumped off the Tallahassee bridge. Okay, that was just a song I grew up with. But she did it at Christmas over thirty years ago. Still feel it. Still have mixed feelings about Christmas. And Jesus, of course, has let me down more times than I can count.
I don’t think it’s god or Jesus who is holding me down at the moment. It’s just a moment. My candle is strong. I am ecstatic in my own life. The money will follow when I unlock the right code. Until then, I write, I produce, I sing, I move onward fearlessly with my projects of unusual size. An arc of fiction that will take the rest of my living years to produce. I’d best get on with it. Not sit around complaining about my job, my health, my empty bed. I celebrate myself. I celebrate where I am right now. There is simplicity in my routine. A singular plan of attack that must start with energy. Health and spirit play next. Finally, it’s the money, the job, the work for a living that I am aiming to unlock.
I don’t think it’s far away. My hopefulness is limitless. My mom also gave me that.
