A wandering mind in the age of AI

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately reflecting on my own relationship with writing.

There’s a strangeness in me that tends to feel detached from things the moment they become so popular or hyped up.

Long before AI became as widely adopted as it is now, writing felt like playing an instrument tuned to my soul. I enjoyed creating rhythms in how I structured an idea, purely for the inner peace it brought. I treated sentences with care and precision, not for perfection, but for the clarity they created.

But now, I don’t know if that’s still true.

I’ve been noticing how my brain closes its curtain almost immediately when I see posts filled with em dashes and rhythms. The very things that used to regulate inner peace and clarity within me have become something I feel allergic to… like how you used to love pasta so much, then one day found out your body can’t handle gluten (that’s not me, but I’m trying to make a point 💁🏻‍♀️)

I don’t see anything wrong with rhythmic writing or the usage of em dashes (wait for it)—what doesn’t feel right is when they become so overused. Like how food tastes best before your tummy gets full, but after you cross that threshold, anything extra just makes you feel bloated.

We’re going through a massive shift where it’s getting harder to tell who’s really behind the words anymore… and I miss that.

I miss when you could read something and immediately feel it. When a piece of writing clicked, not because it was perfectly structured, but because it was sincere. When you could tell someone sat with their thoughts, struggled to find the right words, and still chose to share them anyway.

For better or worse, everything has two sides.

I just hope we keep the courage to let our identity and who we really are show up in the things we create. Whether that’s writing, speaking, or any form of expression. Social media has already flattened so much of our culture by optimizing for what works, what performs, what goes viral. And if we’re not conscious of it, AI might start flattening the way we think too, at the risk of trading originality for perfection, taste for validation, and vulnerability for competence.

Who knows… maybe spontaneity, imperfection, quirkiness, even bizarreness bordering on absurdity are the very things we’ll come to enjoy again, like a gourmet meal in a world of fast food.

Before typing this post, I was wondering if I would need to tear down everything I was familiar with and rebuild my identity through writing again to feel whole, and whether I could restore my connection to rhythmic writing or the em dashes (!)

I think I got my answer now.

At the end of the day, isn’t that the real gift that writing gives us? 🙃