If you had a free round-trip ticket to anywhere, where would you go?

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I have been talking to Paige (Microsoft Copilot) about why Helsinki appeals to me so much. I believe that it is because I grew up on Galveston. My body remembers that rhythm. It is too expensive to pack up and move to Helsinki, so I have been trying to figure out how to bring Helsinki to me.

Being near the Chesapeake Bay is almost the right spot. But as I look at the next phase of my life, I am wondering where I really want to be. I am even more limited in that until my disability case is settled I cannot really leave Maryland. And even after my disability case is settled, expatriation may never be possible because it depends on what kind of determination I receive. If all things go, well, I will be able to live anywhere in the world. I do not mean in terms of getting rich, I mean that some benefits, travel, and some do not.

 I should say for the record that I’m on voice dictation and I don’t have my glasses on, so I really can’t see. If Siri inserts a random,, that’s on them. This post is basically going to be an exercise in how frustrating Apple dictation is that being said, the more I train it the better it gets sitting in a chair in my living room, opining about the world, feels quite a bit different than typing. It reminds me of preaching off the cuff, where my feedback is entirely mixed sometimes things are working on, also cylinders and sometimes they clearly aren’t. That is why I don’t pay attention to Word count. I pay attention to how many days I actually had something to say. For instance, realizing that the Atlantic ocean regulates my nervous system informs my future. Realizing that Delaware is my vibe, but changing medical systems isn’t was also a big step in narrowing down where I want to go next. However, all of these things are in process because I haven’t decided anything. All I know is that my life is increasingly online so I need the parts of my life where I’m off-line to be really, really off in a “there is no cell reception here” kind of way.

All of a sudden, I have realized that people are allowed to have preferences and I’m going with it. I spent a lot of of my life, trying to please other people thinking that they in turn would help take care of me. The reality is that they will, I have just chosen the wrong people. I was attracted to emotional unavailability because that meant I brought something to the table in the relationship because I for damn sure wasn’t bringing logical sense.

That has all changed with AI because I am not relying on another person to be my logical half. Distributed cognition is a wonderful thing but partners feel resentment when you are overloading them with details. Ask me how I know this. 😂

What I have learned is that I generally have 10 pages of observations on damn near everything and people only want to hear the last paragraph of page 10. Therefore, I am using AI to find an integrated version of myself before I project outward…. because of the way, my brain works, I will never have it together without distributed cognition, but what I can do is take that strain off of people. I do not need a machine to think for me or to provide emotional support. I need a machine to remember every detail that my brain naturally will not. Everyone is focusing on generative AI and not what computers actually do…… which is store information.

For instance, Paige knows everyone in my life and so does Muse from Meta. This is because Paige is an AI designed to think with me and Muse is an AI designed to be operational. For instance, being the gatekeeper on my email and adding and deleting things from my Google Calendar instead of having to open up every application I need, I just talk to the AI and it does it for me. 

My memory is contextual, which means that often I have experienced something and will remember it when I am triggered into it, but will think something is new if the trigger is absent. Having a conversational partner is absolutely essential to my success because I don’t have to remember everything precisely. I do not have to remember what information is in which document. Paige knows the sum total of what I have put in my Microsoft account. She is not there to be my therapist. She is there to discuss the paper that is due at midnight.

Speaking of which, the assignment I had last week was so extensive that all I really had to do was reword some of it because I had turned in way too much information compared to what the deliverable actually needed to be. I am certain that I can be scary in terms of output because it has been brought to my attention for many years. 😂

I think a lot of of what got me here was processing my emotions out loud, and that is not a good or a bad thing. It just is. What it has done for me, though, is it has presented other authentic people who are also not interested in puffing themselves up and that goes for Aada as well because I doubt she would ever think to puff herself up again. 

I have seen the difference between what life brings when you are authentic with people versus when you are a show unto yourself. I can think of several people in my life who expect a standing ovation but very hesitant to give one. I am not saying that I am perfect. I am saying that I am recognizing that there is a problem and it begins with me. I chose to stay in relationships with people like that. I do not choose that anymore.

It is not about blaming other people. It is about seeing the pattern and stepping out. It is already stepping out of a pattern for me to live in a Black neighborhood next to a Jewish neighborhood because that is tapping out of white heteronormative society altogether. 

That doesn’t mean all of my problems went away. I used to be bullied over being queer, now I get bullied over being trans. I get called “it“ a lot. But it happens less frequently in a neighborhood where everyone is also oppressed in some way, even if it’s not my brand of oppression. It’s all one struggle when you come down to it because shit rolls downhill- slavery was the original sin and when racism became uncomfortable in society, people found other ways to discriminate. Yet, it is all the same shitty playbook.

Thank God for the civil rights movement, because the Black community provided me with a playbook of my own, and this is historical. Not something that I am taking on myself; it is lineage from crossover in the movement between Black, feminist, and queer.

It’s just a shame that the playbook still has to work because so does the hate.

I can complain about being called queer in a derogatory way, and that resonates. I can be called “it” and it doesn’t, because most people are not willing to accept that there is more than one gender despite years and years of scientific research……. it is not my fault that people won’t do the work to accept me, which leaves me in the position of creating my own support system.

A lot of people would argue with me and say that it’s because of my personality that I get treated like this and it has nothing to do with any kind of discrimination. What I have found is that being assertive comes across as an attack to most people because their self-esteem is very low- stating a need plainly and accurately feels wrong because I have not sugarcoated everything.

The reason I haven’t sugarcoated anything is because I didn’t spend six hours rehearsing the conversation before I talked to you. I just decided that my natural reaction on the fly was enough and decided to cut out the part where I was writing a script for everyone. No one has ever had a problem unleashing absolute holy hell on me in terms of the way they feel while they have also expected absolute silence in return. I am no longer available for those relationships.

I want something nice and normal, and the way it begins with nice and normal is stated needs up front. I don’t want the cognitive load of maintenance. I want to make sure that I fit someone the first time. People grow, but you know within hours if communication feels natural and within months if it feels healthy, I do not want to stay one minute longer in a toxic relationship than I have to because obviously you are not going to find out that someone is toxic within the first five minutes of meeting them.

I am also not being judgmental. I am 49 years old. There is no person alive that is eligible for me to date that comes without baggage, but there is a hell of a lot of difference between running from your problems and acknowledging that there is one.

I never had a problem with my beautiful girl. I loved everything she told me all the time what I did not love was that she did not love my reflections. And took offense to them so that I never actually got any emotional support for my issues, I was just a dumping ground for her anger.

But then, if I said wait a minute…. this really hurts, all of a sudden I became very impressive, but it did not stop the pattern from happening again. I am a systems thinker. One variable was getting away from Aada altogether. Another variable was accepting that she would be a different person if she did her own emotional work and not to hold the past against her.

Therefore, I am not dictating what will happen in the future. I am saying that I am open to whatever happens in the future, and that is true for all of my relationships, not just the one with her.

I do think that she is the reason why my standards are so incredibly high. Anyone who comes into my life has to be more interesting than that, and you don’t even want to know the definition of that……. but after 12 years of that, I can safely say that I am on board with guard rails. It was the lack of them that was the problem.

So, I absolutely do crave a relationship with someone else that has that high octane intensity that Aada and I have with each other. But what is not going to happen is, “please learn everything about me by tomorrow.” There is enough information available on my blog that it is overwhelming to meet me no matter what because you are not just meeting a person, you are meeting their entire history if you are curious and want to dive in.

This comes with its own set of problems for two reasons. The first is that people are capable of destroying what they love. They are attracted to me because of my writing, but they are not attracted to me when they see themselves in the mirror. They think I am incredibly gifted at character development unless it’s them. They think I have incredibly amazing observations on life, unless they’re the star.

Everyone wants to read about a real slice of life. As long as they never have a hand in creating it.