Not What I Intended

Dearest Rachel –

You just never know the sort of things that will stick with you; the smallest throwaway line heard in childhood may nestle in the back of your mind and serve as a guide from time to time whether you want it to or not.

I don’t know how your parents kept you occupied on your family’s annual trip to Middle Bass Island; even the five-hour trip we took there from the Chicago area could feel interminable (at least by the time we were making that trip, I was the one driving, so I had that to keep my mind occupied), so I can only imagine how bored you would have gotten over nearly twice that amount of time. For what it’s worth, my folks worked out a bit of a solution when we would drive up to this camp in northern Wisconsin (actually, I don’t need to be so oblique about it, since you’ve been up there. Heck, we got engaged up there, so long ago). Whenever we would make such a trip, they would buy a handful of cheap comic books for me to read, and over the eight hours or so that made up the distance, they would hand one to me at various checkpoints along the way (at least, as long as we were on the interstate; trying to read on local roads gave me motion sickness at the time, for some reason).

Somehow, I still have a good number of those comic books – yes, I have that same hoarder instinct you always did; it may have been one of the ways we found a certain connection between us. But there was one three-panel gag on a random page that stuck with me, and just came back to my memory this morning. The first couple of panels showed a fairly chunky little kid with a tennis racket, returning a serve hit to him: “I love tennis! I could play like this all day!” The final panel had his opponent (a little girl barely half his size) walking around the net as he sobbed in defeat. “Gee, Charley,” she told him, “don’t you ever want to improve?!”

That was a long and convoluted introduction, and it’s probably only going to get more so as I continue, so consider yourself warned.

The thing is, I was feeling a lot like Charley yesterday, albeit not about tennis. I spent the afternoon and evening holed up in the bedroom while the boys hung out in the family room, watching this or that as they do. You remember what those days were like, since Logan would come over maybe once a week back in your last couple of months or so. But with you gone, what else is there for me to do, but work on my new computer? I must have generated hundreds of pictures of ‘you’ over the course of the day yesterday (of which maybe only half were any good, and barely a tenth were worth saving to my picture app). And I could have kept going for ages, but there comes a time when I need to retire for the night, and get myself ready for the next day.

As I got out of bed this morning, I practically tripped over that same computer; its siren song tempting me to not bother with the day. I don’t need to go to the ‘office’ anymore in order to work on this AI art project; I can stay right here, and just keep writing prompt after prompt, putting you in one fantastical scene after another. That’s all well and good, but that’s exactly why I need to get up and head out; there are other things that I need to do, and there’s this practical side of me that really doesn’t want to spend my entire day doing just that, as relatively enjoyable as it was. I need to improve.

And that’s not something I can really do at this point with stable diffusion. Oh, I could probably make another, more specific and powerful LoRA with your images, and that’s fine, but it’s not a priority. I have other responsibilities to deal with – including this, where I keep you up to date on it all – and I can’t let myself get too preoccupied with this particular diversion for now.

***

The other day, I was on the computer with a program called ChatGPT – hey, artificial intelligence isn’t confined to artwork, after all – in order to help me research the various stops along the way when Daniel and I travel to Japan at the end of the month (yes, I plan to do the usual presentations, but I’m going to need help in order to put together that many essays; I’m not going to do them all myself). I asked it if it could copy my writing style when putting something together – and while it claimed it could, it balked because I supposedly needed to get permission from the author of this website, at which point, I reminded it that I am the author. Let’s just say it needs work to properly do the job, although it gave me a decent framework for the first few stops thus far.

But while I was asking it to assemble a long enough essay (this required cobbling three or four attempts together, and asking it leading questions, but at least it allows me to focus on what catches my attention from its first few paragraphs, and move on from there, which is a quantum leap ahead of just looking something up on Wikipedia), I also asked it to review my work on this site. Among other things, such as the simplicity of the vocabulary and the reliance on storytelling and anecdotes, ChatGPT evaluated it as “optimistic and inspirational,” emphasizing “self-improvement and helping others.”

Well. That’s not what I intended for this to be.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m kind of glad that it looks like that, even to the most dispassionate eye (by definition; after all, it’s only a computer program). But you know full well I meant to write you love letters, to reminisce with you about our time together; I had no plans to make this into a self-help journey. And yet, I suppose that’s what’s supposed to happen as anyone processes their grief; if one wants to avoid wallowing in it – and going a little bit mad from doing so – one has to move on, and make improvements in one’s life. If I can show someone else how to do this by example, then I guess I’ve done something good with this thing.

It’s probably better than me trying to learn how to play tennis, that’s for sure…