First of all, apologies for the complete radio silence the past few months. This year has been heavy. The world is falling apart at what seems like ever-increasing speed. And at the same time, everything is happening in slow motion.
And while the outside world crumbles, we’re all just expected to keep living like nothing has changed. There’s work every day. Groceries to buy. Places to go. People to see. Things to do. Carving out time for anything other than survival can feel impossible.
I’ve spent a lot of time vegging on the couch, binge-watching whatever streaming service strikes my fancy that particular day. I’ve also taken on extra work and since I’m so amazing at time management (that’s sarcasm…), that has meant putting in some 12-hour days on the weekends to meet deadlines. (To be clear, it’s worth it. I have a big financial goal I’m working toward this year, so taking on extra work gets me there faster.)
What all this means, though, is finding time to do creative things has been tough. Especially creative things that require brain power, like writing. My primary job is writing. So writing and/or editing for 6-8 hours a day, followed by trying to write non-work things for another hour or two in the evenings is rough. It’s not fun and my brain often (almost always) just says no.
At the same time, I’ve been feeling more creative urges lately than I have in years. A million ideas, coming at me faster than I can even write down. Which is a problem in itself: how do I choose between all of the possibilities? It creates even more paralyzation.
So I start slowly. I make a mala. I lose track of counting the beads while making it and my 108-bead mala turns into a 126-bead super mala. Guess I needed a little more blue kyanite (expands psychic abilities), snowflake obsidian (balance, purification, and grounding), and gray moonstone (helpful in times of transition) in my life than I thought I did.
I write a poem. Something short, perhaps a haiku.
I daydream about a novel I’ve been sporadically working on for almost 20 years, which has taken on many different forms and iterations, to the point it’s turned into a hypersigil (this video from Grant Morrison is a great explanation of what a hypersigil is, if you’re unfamiliar with the term). Which means I need to take even more care in how I approach it this time (which will hopefully be the final rewrite, going in yet another entirely new direction). With the last iteration I accidentially gave myself a month-long migraine.
Slowly, I’m working creativity back into my life. I’m daydreaming more. I’m cutting out distractions. I’m allowing my mind to wander more.
Part of why I’m so focused on my own creativity this year is to combat the rise of AI. A study came out recently from MIT talking about the effects of using LLMs like ChatGPT on the human brain.
It’s not good. People who rely on ChatGPT are showing less brain activity than those who create using their own brain power. They’re showing less original thought. A big part of me thinks this is intentional (for more on why that might be, check out Douglas Rushkoff’s book Team Human). Now there are even reports of ChatGPT and other LLMs exacerbating mental health crises and causing psychosis.
Original human thought, creativity, and individuality are becoming endangered. People—experts—around the world are trying to sound the alarm, but for the most part it seems their cries are being ignored, dismissed, or downplayed.
I don’t have a good solution for that, other than to minimize the use of AI (which is becoming ever more difficult as virtually every app or piece of software out there has started incorporating it, either behind the scenes or as a “feature”). Reconnect with other humans. Connect with nature. Connect with the world around you. Disconnect from screens as much as you can.
If you do choose to engage with AI, do so in a conscious manner. Understand the limitations, understand that as much as it can emulate being human, it’s definitely not and never will be. There are certain things that specialized AI is actually good at (analyzing large data sets, for example, and there’s a lot of amazing potential in medicine and some areas of science), but don’t confuse that with it being generally good. And remember what it is: large-scale pattern recognition and replication, not any actual form of intelligence.
Foster your own creativity and your own thoughts. Take time for yourself and your loved ones. And don’t buy into the hype.