Category: Essays

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ChatGPT didn’t write this (but it probably could have—it’s very talented)

One of my biggest struggles as a writer over the years has been figuring out how to handle the cavalcade of “asides” that show up in my writing. My rough drafts are a dizzying landscape of ideas so haphazard, it would be like the worst, ADHD-fueled, Seth MacFarlane nightmare of a storyline that consists of a main character saying one thing, followed by a complex web of nested pop culture references that continued, Inception-style, all the way to the end. 

It’s bad.

To handle this, I would almost always use parentheses (like this, but with multiple ideas and paragraphs therein (which is a great way to confuse people (but can also be fun because it FEELS vaguely math-y (even though it isn’t because no numbers are involved (which is a great way to do math, if you ask me (at least until you’re trying to engineer something like a bridge or an airplane, because all these words and no numbers is how you end up killing people (and that’s bad (usually))))). 

To handle this – and cut down on parenthesis inception – I landed on the em-dash. I had avoided it for years, because it felt strange (and also: I didn’t really understand it all that well (my elementary school teachers did a poor.job teaching me that (they are all dead now, so I can say that without angering them (probably))). 

I settled into it, I figured it out, and my writing got better. 

“This is what growth is!” I told myself. I was happy. 

Then ChatGPT happened. Now, all those people who WANTED to be grammar Nazis (but never had the balls to do it (because they are cowards (stupid cowards (stupid, lazy, selfish, cowards!)!)) came out in force to let everyone know that any instance of em-dashes AUTOMAGICALLY means you used Chatty Geepts, Cope Pilot, Clawed, or some other AI to generate your post. 

How dare you!

Yes. I generated my LinkedOn, FaseBok, or InstantGram post – which got three whole likes (and a retwit from someone in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia!) – with [enter your AI], and will now use my newfound glory to take over the world!

Things are going to start happening to me, now! (*cue evil laughter*).

Here’s the kicker (<— a phrase of which our good friend, Chatty Geepts is quite fond).

I don’t use AI to generate content. Ask anyone I write with. Ask my bosses at my various jobs over the years who have suffered through my weekly status updates (one of them said “You don’t write updates. You write Testaments).

I LIKE to write. Why would I give that up?

But also: I use AI to evaluate some of what I write. It gives me good feedback, helps me see my blind spots, and in a pinch, it can help me spell words like “pulchritudinous” AND find ways to work it into a post! That works for me. 

I’m not judge-y. If someone out there can find a way to make their ideas make sense by prompting AI, so much the better. It’s just a faster and more efficient way for all the Stephen King clones or Stack Overflow Engineers that had already been flooding the market for decades to keep on doing what they’re doing. 

If you’re not using AI to help your job in SOME way, you’re going to be the guy in waist-high pants and thick glasses, screaming at the neighborhood kids to get off your lawn, and that’s going to happen fast. 

AI is innovative, but true, revolutionary innovation still exists solely in the human realm. It might evolve one day, but if we ever DO get to a point where the robots are more creative than us—hell, that sounds like a party to me. 

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The Suspenders of Time

Every few years (usually when I’m already teetering on the edge of emotional ruin) this picture pops up in my digital memories like a ghost in a thrift-store frame. It’s from my Aunt’s wedding: a time when perms were plentiful and the color blue was available only in “electric.”

There we are, my sister with a hairstyle that’s classified as its own municipality, my mom in mid-floral renaissance, my dad channeling Tom Selleck if Tom Selleck had worked in corporate accounting, and me, front and center, with a bowl haircut so hemispheric it could’ve doubled as NORAD’s backup radar dome. My outfit, which I can only assume was chosen by a rogue haberdasher on the run from the fashion police, included teal and turquoise color blocking and suspenders so wide they had their own zip code.

For years, I used to share this picture every time it resurfaced. I’d post it with captions like “The Hair That Ate Cincinnati” or “When Moustaches Ruled the World.” Friends would laugh, strangers would comment “iconic,” and someone would inevitably ask if the picture had been Photoshopped (now, AI-generated) to look “extra 1980s.”

But lately, when the photo pops up, I don’t share it. Not right away, anyway.

Because these days, I don’t just see the comedy. I see the loss. My dad, still sharp, still funny, is now in his seventies. We talk every weekend. He always picks up whenI call, but it still feels like we should talk more often. He lives iwth my sister and her family a thousand miles away. She’s busy raising her own family. Neither of us are the kids we used to be.

And my mom? She’s been gone for five years now. Some days, I can still hear her voice in the back of my mind, clear as a bell. Other days, I have to dig through old voicemails or grainy videos to conjure even the sound of her laughter. That’s the part nobody warns you about, how even voices fade if you don’t keep them alive somehow.

The Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh Away, yes. But the Lord doesn’t hold a candle to Time. Time is a petty thief with excellent patience and no sense of remorse. He’s the kind of houseguest who doesn’t just steal your silverware, he takes your stories, your smells, the way your mom’s perfume used to linger in the hallway. All of it. You don’t even notice at first, until you look up and realize everything’s been rearranged and half your furniture is missing.

So I hold my kids tighter now. I listen to their nonsense stories about Minecraft and fart jokes as if they were poetry. I smile more often than I want to, which is saying something for a man whose resting b**** face looks like it was rear-ended in traffic. And I pose for the pictures. Every one of them. Silly ones. Unflattering ones. Photos where I’m wearing a Star Wars shirt and crocs with socks. Because one day, I want my kids to have something to look back on, to laugh at, to share. I want to be their moustached memory, their suspenders-wearing dad in a photo that’s both ridiculous and deeply, achingly dear.

Because in the end, it’s not about how we looked. It’s about what we still see.

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Rites of Manhood

When I was a child, my Saturdays were not filled with joy. No cartoons. No baseball. No running through the yard with a stick I had declared to be a sword, a lightsaber, and an anti-zombie defense device all in one. My Saturdays were reserved for a sacred ritual known in our house as shopping.

Not just any shopping; Mom and sister shopping. You have not known endurance until you’ve spent five hours trailing behind two women comparing fifty shades of beige shoes. 

As a child, I believed shoes came in two styles: ones you put on your feet and ones you didn’t. But apparently, there’s a third style: ones you almost buy and then leave in a pile next to rack, muttering, “I wish they had these in taupe.”

I remember one afternoon at JCPenney that felt longer than most presidential terms. My mother and sister tried on everything – skirts, tops, dresses, shoes, belts, possibly a toaster oven – while I sat in a plastic chair shaped like a broken promise. I was ten. I had needs. Like pretzels and air conditioning. But instead, I was stuck there, trying to disappear into a rack of discounted scarves like a traumatized meerkat.

That afternoon was an eternity. 

Eventually, I grew up, became a man,  discovered deodorant and cynicism. Shopping with mom and sis became less frequent. I found freedom. I entered stores that catered to men. Dark, quiet places that smelled of cedar and body wash with names like “Thunderwolf” and “Crisis Response.”

I thought I was safe.

Then I got married, and the torture began anew.

Only this time, it was more sophisticated. Gone were the days of Claire’s and Limited Too. Now, I was subjected to Williams Sonoma and searches for cast iron Dutch ovens that cost more than a semester of college.

And I cared. That’s the terrifying part. I actually had opinions now.

“No, babe, I don’t think the eight-piece ceramic pan set is worth it if the handles can’t go in the oven. I mean, what if we want to sear and roast?”

Who had I become?

Then there were the questions. The questions no man is prepared for. The kind that make you feel like you’re defusing a bomb.


“Does this skirt make my hips look bad?”

Internal monologue: What is the correct answer? What is the safe answer? Is there a safe answer?

I would answer delicately, diplomatically, only for her to buy the exact opposite of what I had suggested.

“I just wanted to see what you thought,” she’d say, handing the cashier the dress that I said looked like it was designed by a hungover pilgrim.


And then I’d carry the bag.

Over the years, I grew numb to it. I’d mastered the art of standing quietly in the corner of some oddly named department store or biutique, holding a purse and trying to look like I belonged. I found ways to cope: pretending to text, counting ceiling tiles, seeing how many times I could hum the Knight Rider theme song before anyone noticed.

At least I’m not being asked to waste my Saturday replacing a perfectly operational ceiling fan, I argued to myself. That felt like growth. Maturity. Marriage.

And then, we had sons. Little boys. Innocent spirits. Joyful, Free.

Until one Saturday, I watched as they followed their mother into a candle store. They made it two steps in before their eyes glazed over like cinnamon rolls at a state fair.


“Why are there so many smells?” one whispered, clutching my leg like a child in a haunted house. I knelt down and looked him in the eye. 

This is how it starts.”

I realized then that life is a cycle. Once, rites of passage for men meant hunting, battle, building fires with flint and rage. Now it’s about enduring Marshalls on a Saturday. About pretending to be excited over shams. (Pillow shams. Not like, actual lies. Though honestly, they feel like both.)

We don’t track game anymore. We track sales on cookware. We don’t bring home meat. We bring home area rugs.

It’s a rite born not out of necessity, but out of love. And I suppose that’s somehow beautiful. Maybe. 

But sometimes, when I’ve been wandering behind a cart in HomeGoods for an hour, trying to understand the metaphysical difference between “seafoam green” and “ocean breeze,” I find myself yearning for a lion to fight or a mountain to climb. Anything that doesn’t involve decorative gourds.

And then I see my son, ten years old, holding a candle labeled “Autumn Whispers,” looking like he just lost custody of his soul, and I put a hand on his shoulder.

“This,” I say, “is the cost of love. Hang in there, buddy. Someday, you’ll care about ceramic pans too.”

“On that day, you will be a man.”