01 Jan 2026
I’ve heard it said that writing is thinking out loud, and I’ve resolved to write more this coming year. First and foremost, I hope to strengthen my writing habit, but also I want to begin archiving my ideas in a way that makes them easier to retrieve, build upon, and implement.
I’m an old computer nerd. I live alone. My version of talking to myself is to wander over to my standing desk, place my hands on the keyboard, and begin spilling my messy brain stuff onto the screen. This habit comforts me, because the computer never interrupts me, never begins to sidle slowly away…it patiently waits as I shape what I want to say.
In addition to computers, I have other life-long loves: books, television and movies, games (tabletop and video), art and design. Over the decades, as I’ve aggregated billions of words, millions of images, thousands of sounds, patterns, and concepts, I begin to see new stars in the night sky of my mind.
As impactful ideas coagulate and collide, those interconnections begin to create new shapes, new perspectives. I try to gather them, like constellations, and redraw them in ways that feel meaningful. I struggle to codify the skeletons of these new symbols. I want to map them and name them as they appear, hazily, in my consciousness.
I’m not good at this.
I’m too easily distracted. I’ll be marveling over some recently recognized star cluster, edging toward a deeply moving epiphany, when “Oh, hey! Look at that new [ fill-in-the-blank 1 ]” and I lose all hope of returning to that insight ever again.
But word on the street is, computers can do this kind of thing. Really well. Really fast. AI can not only scan my sky and all its incipient symbology lickety-split, but it can give me an analysis of interconnections and recommended paths forward, to boot.
We all know AI, at this point, right? It makes the proverbial 800 pound gorilla look like a pet chihuahua. I leveled up to a paid tool last year, and have been trying to use it more these past few months. It can be hard, though, working through the black cloud of funk that envelops it. Such as: The mind-boggling amounts of money being spent on the construction of data-centers. The staggering amount of energy it chews through, the offensive amount of water it guzzles. Oh, and the potential destruction of humanity as we know it. Y’know. That cloud.
But I hold out hope. At least at the micro-realm of me, my keyboard, and my lazy brain. I have come to appreciate AI’s input on my half-formed screeds. And the idea of bringing its capabilities to bear on a private repository of my mess is kind of exciting, I have to admit.
So, I’m going to throw what I can at this particular techno wall and see what sticks. I’m curious to see what’ll shake out over the course of a month, a quarter, a year (if I make it that far). Maybe my new AI buddy will help make me a clearer thinker, a better worker, more fun at parties.
Ha ha! I don’t get invited to parties.