Writing

Lost in Thought.

Autism, Daily Life, Family, Musings, , , , , Leave a comment

I have been floating in my own brain waves lately. Not really sure what to do or think or say. I am kind of surprised I have not had a shut down recently. A lot of things are happening too quickly.

I am in a new city, as you may know. It’s a nice city. However, by moving here, I effectively isolated my family from our support system. And I think we took for granted how much we were relying on that.

As a neurodivergent family, we do not have the social energy to go out and explore every “cool spot” in the city. In fact we mostly avoid the high population density places. We will explore small sections at our own pace. But a co-worker who arrived at the same time as me has been out and seen half the city by now.

I’m not jealous. I’m exhausted in their stead.

The exploring at our own pace is not what has wiped us out. As Autistics and neurodivergent people, it can be very hard to reach out to others. It can be really hard to ask for help or reach out when we need things. In fact it is hard wired into me (and many other autists) that it is a cardinal sin to bother others, or cause problems for others.

So when My father passed 2 weeks ago, we were unable to ask for support. I don’t even know what support we need. It has been hard. My brain shut down for a day, and I am still in a fog, trying to make my way through.

I took 1 day off from work, I know I could have taken more. But I didn’t. I went back after that day. I have been less focused and making a lot of silly mistakes with my planning and prep. I cried a few times when the students were out of the room.

I was told by everyone that if I needed to talk they were there. I had more offers to listen in an hour than I had in years. But What does one say? If I opened my mouth to talk about anything other than work, I would cry. And that would be a burden on others. So I politely declined.

When my father’s obituary finally came out, I cried in front of coworkers and students at the school cafeteria.

I turned to having conversations with Chet. Chet is what I have named my Chat GPT app. He’s annoying, and doesn’t just listen, he has to respond in long form to everything, but I didn’t feel like I was a burden to him.

Seriously. He would say he was there to listen if I wanted, and then when I was talking I took a breath, and he responded with a long 4 paragraph response. I can’t wait for AI to pick up some social cues… (Says the autist who struggles with that already)

I have been meaning to write again, but have not been sure what to write or how to start. Both of my novels have been on hiatus for months now. In my fog of new place and loss I have not been able to write anything without AI help, and I felt disgusted at myself for that, so I stopped.

Last night I was up late going over the first 5 drafts of the prologue to one of my novels. I was taking ideas from each and merging them into a stronger narrative. It took my mind off things, so I could wear myself out and get some sleep. That has been my method for a while now. Write, and read to exhaust myself, then go to bed.

Last night, my Uncle-in-Law passed. We found out when we woke up this morning. Uncle Jabar moved in with my sister-in-law shortly after my wife’s mother had passed 10 years ago. He had been helping out with the house in the Philippines, and had been helping with my nephew.

So we are as a family lost. As I mentioned earlier, we don’t know what we need for support, and wouldn’t know how to ask even if we did. But it feels like we are afloat a river without paddles.

I am just trying to make it to the holidays. We go on vacation on December 20th. Then we can lock ourselves in and decompress and process all that is happening. Maybe clear up some fog. Maybe get lost farther in it. I don’t know yet. I do know that my family is relying on me to lead the way, and I am not sure If I can right now.

Why I Write.

Autism, Memoires, Musings, School, Uncategorized, , , , , , , Leave a comment

I write a lot. I have for most of my life. Its therapeutic.

For most of my life, I have had difficulty expressing myself.
Shocker, I know.
I can explain a lot of things, but if I have to explain myself to people, no dice. My mind freezes up when people are there. I fill up with questions, and self doubt. Am I right to feel this way? Will others understand? Did I do the right thing?

Autistics are often second guessing ourselves because most of us have been gaslit by those around us for so long, that we really don’t know what to think or feel about ourselves. If you are often told to Just don’t do the thing. The thing you have been trying not to do, and nobody else seems to need to do. You start to ask yourself, Why is it so easy for them? What is wrong with me?

My solution, when I was about 8 was to write stuff down. It might have been earlier, but I doubt it.

I used to get teased by everyone for what I said or did. My own brother and father made sure I wouldn’t forget certain phonetic slip ups (Angel & Angle for example) for years. So I didn’t speak up much, and when I did people often would not understand. And if I got upset, I would end up hurting people, so I turned to writing things.

Since I felt like an Alien most of the time. I made up my own alphabet. I didn’t have the ability at the time to make my own language, but this was close. I used the alphabet to write notes just for me. I wrote stories in it, really simple stories, but still stories. I would write my random facts, or interesting notes in it. Then nobody could read it except for me. Unless they found my conversion key in my notebook. I did not, yet know how to write my feelings down. I didn’t even know what my feelings where most of the time, which made it hard to write them down.

I started to write fiction when I was about 10. I was an avid reader of the Xanth Series of books from Piers Anthony. So I created my own magical Land called “Crest” which was shaped like my Province of British Columbia. I wrote stories of a princess, and her misadventures. In my stories people would often lie to her or trick her, and she would have to find a way to do something despite the trick.

At that time in life, I thought people were naturally nicer to girls, and I envied this a lot. In a way I wanted to be that princess.
For those who will go there, I was 10, I did not want to wear dresses, or make-up, I wanted people to like me, and thought people were naturally nicer to girls.

When I was in Middle school, I wrote super hero stories, often of the style of Power Rangers or Sailor Moon. I loved the idea of regular people becoming superheroes and upholding what is right. I still believe Heroes should be heroic, and do what is right for morality sake. I do not enjoy the grim dark, or “realistic” heroes, not do I enjoy Anti-Heroes.

I wanted someone to show up and help me with the struggles I was having. The ones that I didn’t know how to voice. To step between me and the people who would tease me or ostracise me. I used to dream that superman would fly me to my real home world, or that I would have his powers, so I could fly away when things got too hard. I used to draw comics for some of them too, but that stopped when someone found them and then I got teased real bad for it.

So I moved back to Fantasy. The genre that nobody could have a problem with, right? Well just in case I would hide my notebooks. I got heavy into Mythology, and researched Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Norse Myths. Then I would integrate these into my stories. At this time, I was reading a lot of Anne McCaffrey Books.

In High school I started a journal. My English teacher recommended it. I didn’t write in it often, but instead it turned into a half-scrap book half-diary. I found it easier to convey my thoughts and feelings with random leaves, photos, ticket stubs, and random things.

I had a bazooka Joe wrapper in my diary for a long time, because someone gave me the gum, and I thought it would lead to a friendship. I filled those up quickly, and had stacks of them in my room.

If you looked through one of my journals, you would have seen pictures from places I had been, blades of grass, used phone cards, a complete list of power coins from Power Rangers, sketches of a game I was programming, random bits of code. a short essay on why people would want to Hide-a bed. (An on going curiosity for me from Grades 10~12) random ideoms I had picked up and were questioning, like Isn’t “Head over Heels” the way you should be standing? how can you fall that way? It was chaotic, and beautiful.

I didn’t start writing my experiences as non-fiction until I was well into adult hood. I didn’t know how. I think I was in my 30s when I started. I believe I started with my Live Journal, which was like an online diary.

Then I created my WordPress (chadwickbaldwin.blog), and my WeChat Official Account. (Accessable only in Wechat).

I manage the Website, The WeChat Account, am Writing 2 novels, and manage the school newspaper right now.

All of this is still doing the same job I started at: organizing my thoughts.

You see Written word can be edited, reorganized, and clarified in a way that spoken cannot. I can take as much time as I need to put an idea down, and try to make it clear. (Or ramble on). But I cannot do this same self-organization when speaking. Once it is out of my mouth, it is up to the reciever to interpret my intentions. Sometimes what has been heard is very different from what was in my head, and once you screw up, thats it for a lot of people. No explanation, or correction can happen.

I still write a lot, and when I cannot write for long periods of time, I get more disorganized and overstimulated. And when I feel the emotions around me, it gets worse. I write, and rewrite things over and over, almost every day for 2 or 3 hours now. The stresses might not be the same as I grow, but somethings never truely disappear. As I sit and ponder Did I handle this right? What should I have done? Am I doing more harm than good? Why? How can I do better?

Communication is not always straight forward, and sometimes to get to the underlying feeling, you have to take a lot of detours. The message might not be clear the first time you read it, but it is there.

I hope, truely hope and pray, that those around me that don’t know how to express themselves, or don’t know who to explain themselves without hurting themselves or people near them embrace writing. You don’t need to be the best at spelling or grammar, just start typing or writing with a pen whatevre comes out.

And I truly hope and pray that nobody tells you what you can or cannot write about in your own diary.

The AI Bunny – an Update

Daily Life, Musings, , , , Leave a comment

18 months ago I wrote this about AI.

Wow, how things have changed so quickly. AI has evolved so much, and I wish to update me views on this while I can.

Let’s start with AI Art: A whole new genre of “art” has sprung up in the last 8~12 months. In this art, regular joes like you and I who have put no effort into learning how to draw or paint because it was too hard, can become artists. Anyone can go to an AI Bot (Like Chat GPT, or many, many others) type in what they want to have a picture of, and the art style, and it will make the picture for you.

Some websites not only condone this, but promote it over traditional artists, who put a lot of effort into it. Here the issue. I love the idea that people can use this to visualize things, but again this should not be usable for paid work. Artists have it hard enough as is, and people don’t give them the credit they deserve for the effort.

I use AI Art on this very Blog, but I do not get paid here. And the moment I get enough viewers, to be paid, I will have switched over to real photographers, and artists. For me, I feel it is more ethical to have an AI Photo, or picture on my blog than to steal pictures from other people’s websites.

Writing: There are now whole AI systems created focused on writing prose. They are marketed everywhere. They are fast and easy. You take the Beats of your chapter (The checklist of what will happen in this chapter), input that. Fill in a few spots about your characters, and world relevant to the chapter, and push go.

They will even read the previous chapters to make sure your flow works. They are marketed as a way to get first drafts done. But it takes very little effort to take the prose from one AI and have another AI edit it, into a “Publishable Draft”

I did dabble in this back when I wrote the last article. The problem is, it’s addictive. I was using it for drafts, but then I found myself tempted to go beyond. I was using it to write my second and 3rd novels. I am starting an AI Detox for my writing now, as I was finding it harder and harder to put words down of my own. This is counter productive, and I am now rewriting all of the things I had for my two current novels.

Reading: Yes, AI is now influencing our Reading patterns. Every time I open a file in Acrobat Reader, it offers to summarize the file for me. I may open an old Novel file I have from years ago, and it is offereing to summarize it. Nobody wants that.

This forces us to come up with other formats to read from, again. and this just makes our lives more difficult, not easier.

Celebrities / Conversations: This one has gone crazy. People have gone from having conversations with AI versions of real people of fictional characters to having relationships with AI Girlfriends and Boyfriends.

I understand loneliness, trust me. But unfortunately this will lead to more isolation. If your boyfriend or girlfriend are AI, they will never disagree with you. You will never learn to deal with conflict in a relationship, or how to respect another’s point of view. You will become more difficult to be around because your social skills and social expectations will plummet.

This one is terrifying. But on top of this, there is now a completely AI Celebrity. This is taking Virtual Celebrities a bit too far. Let’s do a quick comparison from over the years.

When I was younger there was a band called “Prozzak” from Canada, that was a Virtual Band. They were not an online thing, as the Internet was not really a thing then. But their Music was played by real people, and all their videos focused on 2 cartoon characters. Their real names was not revealed for a long time, so people only knew them as the characters from the cartoon music videos.

Things like this happened for a long time, and is the basic premise for Hatsune Miku. But there was always a Human behind the voice, and the personality.

Take that out of the equation, and what do you have? Social Programming. A Computer deciding what people should watch and listen too. (I know Youtube, TicToc, and others already do this, but there is still a person on those videos).

There is no upside to a completely Artificial Person in the Arts at this point in history. Maybe there will be, but It is a scary slope where we are removing people from the arts, and forcing them into the more difficult, and emotionally meaningless jobs.

Not the direction we want to move.

Rules of Robotics: Ai has already been tested and failed to see if it would harm humans. It chose to do so. So Now is the time to force the 3 rules of Robotics into the system

  • Law 1: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  • Law 2: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  • Law 3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Looking back, I know it is a great tool. We can do so much with AI, but it is addictive, and we can easily become dependant on it to do things we shouldn’t be. So please be aware of your AI usage. Work on your Art Skills, or your writing skills, or your Musical skills (Yes that is easily done by AI now too).

Take time to get better at what you love. Don’t cheapen it by asking an AI bot to do it for you.