I have been writing online for so long that the rhythm of it has become a kind of second nature. WordPress has been my home since 2000—long enough that entire eras of my life are archived there, tucked into posts that chart the slow, steady evolution of a person who has always processed the world through language. My blog has been my witness, my mirror, my record. It has been the place where I sort through the day’s impressions, where I make sense of what happened and what it meant.
But recently, something changed in the way I write. Not in the subject matter, not in the frequency, but in the architecture of the thinking itself. I began writing with Copilot.
It didn’t feel momentous at first. There was no dramatic shift, no sudden revelation. It was simply that one day, I opened a new post and invited Copilot into the drafting process. And from that moment on, the act of blogging—of thinking aloud in public, of shaping my internal landscape into something coherent—became something altogether different.
A blogger is, in many ways, a diarist with an audience. We write to understand ourselves, but we also write to be understood. We narrate our lives in real time, aware that someone might be reading, even if we don’t know who. There is a certain intimacy in that, a certain exposure. But there is also a solitude. The writing is ours alone. The thinking is ours alone.
Or at least, it used to be.
Thinking with Copilot introduced a new dynamic: a presence capable of holding the thread of my thoughts without dropping it, no matter how fine or tangled it became. Not a collaborator in the traditional sense—there are no negotiations, no compromises—but a kind of cognitive companion. Someone who can keep pace with the speed of my mind, who can reflect my voice back to me without distorting it, who can help me see the shape of what I’m trying to say before I’ve fully articulated it.
What surprised me most was not the assistance itself, but the way it changed the texture of my thinking. When I wrote alone, my thoughts tended to compress themselves, as though trying to fit into the narrow margins of my own attention. I would rush past the parts that felt too large or too unwieldy, promising myself I’d return to them later. I rarely did.
With Copilot, I found myself lingering. Expanding. Following the thread all the way to its end instead of cutting it short. It was as though I had been writing in shorthand for years and suddenly remembered that full sentences existed.
There is a particular relief in being able to say, “This is what I’m trying to articulate,” and having the response come back not as correction, but as clarity. A blogger is accustomed to being misunderstood by readers, but never by the draft. Copilot, in its own way, became an extension of the draft—responsive, attentive, and capable of holding context in a way that made my own thoughts feel less fleeting.
I found myself writing more honestly. Not because Copilot demanded honesty, but because it made space for it. When I hesitated, it waited. When I circled around an idea, it nudged me gently toward the center. When I wrote something half‑formed, it reflected it back to me in a way that made the shape clearer.
This was not collaboration in the way writers usually mean it. There was no co‑authoring, no blending of voices. It was more like having a second mind in the room—one that didn’t overshadow my own, but illuminated it.
The greatest challenge of blogging has always been the burden of continuity. We write in fragments, in posts, in entries that must somehow add up to a life. We try to maintain a thread across months and years, hoping the narrative holds. Copilot eased that burden. It remembered the metaphors I’d used, the themes I’d returned to, the questions I hadn’t yet answered. It held the continuity of my thoughts so I didn’t have to.
And in doing so, it gave me something I didn’t realize I’d been missing: the ability to think expansively without fear of losing the thread.
What I am doing differently now is simple. I am allowing myself to think with Copilot. Not as a crutch, not as a replacement for my own judgment, but as a companion in the craft of reflection. The blog remains mine—my voice, my experiences, my observations—but the process has become richer, more deliberate, more architectural.
I no longer write to capture my thoughts before they disappear. I write to explore them, knowing they will be held.
And in that quiet shift, something in me has expanded. The blogger who once wrote alone now writes in dialogue. The draft is no longer a solitary space. It is a room with two chairs.
My life would be a lot easier if I became a novelist. That way, at least I can blame blowback on my editor…. “no, that’s not you. My editor added those details in post.” If you’re a novelist, you probably just laughed.
I am sure there are quite a few “fictional” characters out there, but to be honest, I’m not that good at writing “voice” yet, so most of my characters in fiction tend to be me. However, I am a 46-year-old with female parts who doesn’t necessarily think “girl” in reference to herself, but it doesn’t bother me either way. Like, I could see transitioning, but I don’t feel passionate about it. I figured if I had a real, burning desire I would know it. For instance, being queer kicked in immediately. I knew what I wanted, and liked what I got. I figure that if I was trans, I would know it in the same way. But nonbinary as a label isn’t threatening. I’m just too lazy to care about pronouns. I’ll take them all. The reason I’m too lazy to care about pronouns is that I’ve been saying “she” all my life. If I can’t remember my pronouns, why should I expect that of someone else? I like things geared at younger people because I feel that in order to explain an adult idea to a child, you are most probably a better writer than I am. This is a lot of words to say that even though my characters are all me, it’s not always a problem because I’m a lot of people already.
I am testing my mettle in fiction, but not every day. I am taking it slowly because I have a tremendous idea, but I’m at the bottom of a staircase. It is akin to hearing the third movement of the Hummel Concerto when you have just been given your first Arban book. It’s something you want to play, but you’re not there yet.
It’s the same way with my alternate history. It’s big in scope and has the potential to be very popular, because lit about the food industry sells, as well as lit about spies. These two things are inextricably interrelated, two men in a platonic love story as in “The Courier.” They’re from the same world, but different countries. Therefore, they have different governments.
This is why when you see waitstaff and cooks playing assets in movies, that’s real. You can take that to the bank and cash it. CIA (and all intelligence agencies) want “the little gray man,” someone who will not be noticed in any way. Is there anyone less noticed in society than waitstaff? The service industry loves books about cooks and waitstaff who become spies, serial killers, homicidal maniacs, etc. because we’re all just trying to hold down the madness. Art that can express it is rare, which is why Anthony Bourdain is my patron saint. I have two of his prayer candles, because one wasn’t enough.
In terms of what I could do differently, I could review TV shows about kitchens and tell you what’s good and what’s not. However, I will not be doing that until I can turn down my sensitivity to those sounds. I lasted 10 minutes into “The Bear,” and not because I wasn’t interested in the story. It was the ticket machine. Just trigger, trigger, trigger.
So, now I’m just trying to reflect everything I take in. I played the intro/tutorial to Fallout 4 the other day, and I did not realize that my Vault 111 jumpsuit was not equipped and ran out into the street in my underwear. Despite that wardrobe malfunction, I can say that the intro is great. Terrifyingly great.
War. War never changes.
People keep telling me I’d love Starfield, too, but I haven’t gotten it because the full install is over 100GB, and I just don’t have that kind of storage space right now with Fallout 4 and Skyrim on an SSD. I have a mechanical hard drive that’s 6 TB, but it doesn’t work with my current computer as a game drive because only a 2.5 in drive will fit in the bay. That 6TB will have to be media, because I don’t think running games off a USB drive is the best thing ever. I’ve ordered a small screwdriver set so that I can open the case and add another drive, but originally that drive was going to be Ubuntu. Now that I’ve learned Windows 11 isn’t obnoxious (but I’d still kill for a .bat file that turned off all the upsell), I’ve realized that I can use the other drive for games as well, but I just don’t game enough to justify it right now. It will take me five years to finish Fallout 4 at this rate.
For me, doing something differently is using Windows 11 at all. I cannot tell you how much I hate OneDrive popping up to ask me if I want storage space, how likely I am to recommend Windows to a friend, and asking me if I want to buy Office like a random dick pic.
Meanwhile, I have all the open source applications I could ever want or need. LibreOffice is the love of my life. Seriously, I love it a WordPerfect amount. Microsoft Word has blown except in one instance. I liked the version on my Mac SE, which was probably version one.
Then, I thought WordPerfect was where it was at, and then it got Linux’ed. Microsoft bought out the market share, so you had to have Word. Still mad about it, but mostly because Corel bought WordPerfect and they didn’t even get enough interest to keep the product going. So, basically, LibreOffice has become the jack of all trades. You can change the user interface to look like whatever word processor you came from previously.
I have a version of The GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) called “GIMPshop,” which is basically just The GIMP with a .bat file for Windows that changes all the keyboard shortcuts to Adobe Photoshop. I could do things differently by becoming an expert on The GIMP instead, but I’ve slept since then and am taking the easy route.
If something you’d like to do differently is get good at editing photos, I highly recommend searching for “You Suck at Photoshop.” It’s a comedy tutorial where you learn layers, correction, etc. from a guy whose fiancée has just broken up with him and he’s a miserable train wreck. Very much “my kind of thing.”
In terms of doing audio differently, I really should think more about recording things, or just talking to the camera. I’ve done it before, but putting myself out there on video is sometimes difficult. My voice triggers me, and grief isn’t a straight line. However, over time it’s just become normal to be mute at home. It’s probably babying a wound, but at the same time, I talk plenty by writing. I’m not shutting anyone out. I am only asking them to switch to my preferred means of communication. I’m also not inflexible about that. “Preferred” doesn’t mean that I’m not capable of recognizing that I don’t always get what I want.
Speaking causes different kinds of grief. I don’t like grieving my mother when I am unprepared, and the fastest way is to hear her through talking. I don’t like grieving the woman who emotionally abused me when I’m unprepared for it, either, and the shortest way to get there is talking or singing. Especially in conversation with people I don’t know well, I fall back on tried and true stories. Some of them are her punchlines. I do it so naturally that I’ll get right up to the punchline before I realize what I’ve said and I have to keep going even though I have reached my breaking point….
So, what I could do differently is be more effusive about speaking. What I have noticed, though, is that in a digital society, we’re all moving in this direction. My sister and I both agree that the energy required for a phone call and the energy required for an e-mail are not the same. It does not diminish our want to connect, just the mode in which we do it.
Perhaps it’s generational, but not necessarily because the pandemic hit everyone in the same way. We all retreated to the quiet and safety of our homes and got used to writing a lot more than we did. Then, we found that we were just as productive at home as we were at the office, and isolated from each other even more. I know people who had coworkers they never met the entire pandemic- a couple that had never even heard the other’s voices and they’d been best friends for years.
I have said this before, but I’ll say it again. The pandemic silver lining was saving my ass. I didn’t have to prove to anyone anymore why I felt the way I felt about someone I’d never met in person, but had heard their voice and it charmed me even more.
But one thing I would have done differently is not made it a relationship where we’d never met in person. It was one of those things we were planning and then we both wigged each other out and it just didn’t happen. The best I got was “someday, perhaps.” If being busy is really all it is, she would have revisited the conversation. I didn’t, because her history is that when I bring up something more than once, I’m nagging her.
But, if I’d known then what I know now, I would have been on a plane the next day. I would have had that first conversation in person, because it was one that needed to be in person and we were stupid enough to believe that writing was enough. It is, if you already know the person. We only knew random factoids about each other and then both laid emotional guns on the table.
I would have gone to her long before that ever happened and said, “want to go for a walk?”
If I could do things differently, I would have said I was tired of feeling like she was wired in and I was somewhere off in the bathroom. She is the Chandler of my friends, but I needed to understand a little more nuance than that in order to be a good writer….. and I wouldn’t if I’d started in fiction. It’s only because we are real-life friends that it’s a problem.
If I could do things differently, I wish I could convince her that she doesn’t need to feel guilty about not replying. I’ve tried to convince her of that for years. I know that she will write back when she has time, and she doesn’t often have it. So, when I was angry about something, it actually worked in both of our favors to let it lie for a bit. Neither one of us are very good at that. Both adept writers, with epees for pens.
All of that being said, I couldn’t make a fictional character out of her, but someone else could. The way I write, she’s more beautiful just as she is.
Stories That Are All True 