I got burned out on AI. I let it ruin my weekend. I made the mistake of putting my beliefs in people who said bad things. After months of this I had to let it go.

I messaged a new friend on Vashon island I recently named my AI mentor. I called him my AGI freak out crisis line and said I needed help. It didn’t matter what he said, just that he acknowledged me.

I got freaked out by all the doom talk so I had to shut it off. Since January I’d been reading about it every day, trying to understand it. Now I write sales presentations so Microsoft can sell it.

I also started playing softball with the church. I bought a mitt and practiced throwing with Charlotte last weekend. The top team in the league is called Battered Balls. We are just Faith United Methodist Church.

On the first game I was score keeper and we lost 24-0. They pulled the plug after five innings. Battered Balls was really good, a mix of men and women. They were decent about how badly they were beating us but one of the players, a woman in her late 50s, was cranky about the rules, all business—making secret hand gestures to her teammates when she was on base, chewing gum.

Pastor Ric was trying to throw her out when she was running home and accidentally hit her in the back with the ball. She was okay but you could tell it really hurt. Ric’s face turned red and he made a move to apologize but she shooed him off. When I saw him in church that Sunday everyone was asking about the game and he said he was still feeling sore. “Not as sore as that woman you hit!,” I wanted to say.

There is no relief from all the madness of this world unless you find relief in yourself. I go to a trail in the woods every morning with my coffee to clear out my head. I think about work and I think about things and try not to think for as long as I can. I make myself stop and look at the ferns and breathe. Then I come back refreshed.

Nowhere is there any relief from the madness of this world but here in the woods. It is not in all the knowledge I’ll never have, I’m learning that. All there is to know is nothing compared to all there is to feel. There’s plenty more of that.

Categories: Memoir, writing

Tags: CNF, Creative Nonfiction