I got into AI because Bill Wilson bit the shit out of my finger.
I had bought him one of those little woven finger traps because they’re bouncy and cats like to bat them around. Well, I decided to play with it myself. I got one finger out, but the other one was stuck, so I started batting Bill in the face with the free end. We were playing. Then he bit down. I finally got the thing off, and there was blood everywhere.
My first thought was, Oh no, I’ve got to go to improv.
So I wrapped my finger in toilet paper and went to improv.
I came home, went to bed, and woke up around four in the morning with my finger throbbing. I went into the bathroom and turned on the light. It was gargantuous. I stood there looking at it, trying to figure out what you do with a finger that size at that hour. I thought about Googling it. Then something in me went, Take a picture and send it to Chat.
So I took a picture and said, basically, “My cat bit me. What do I do about this?”
It told me to go to the emergency room. I got in my car.
When I walked in, there was a woman at the desk. I said, “Good morning.”
“Is it morning?” she said. “I’ve been here so long I don’t know what time it is.”
I told her it was about four and that I needed somebody to look at a cat bite. She started giggling, and I was like, “I know, right?”
I got antibiotics, and they told me to give that hand a couple of days.
I was supposed to volunteer at Amor Healing Kitchen that day, so I asked for a doctor’s note. The nurse asked where I was supposed to be going, and I told her about the kitchen and how we cook meals for people dealing with illness.
She got excited about being able to tell people about it. She said she sees patients come into the ER when things get really bad because they’ve had such a hard time getting care before that.
I’d been sitting there wondering if I could hold a knife long enough to chop vegetables. Now we were talking about who might need a meal and how they might hear about the people making it. At four in the morning, of all times.
Anyway, that’s what got me back into Chat.
At first, it was little things. I’d give it something I’d written and see what it could do with it. Then I started using it to help put these Because Brooks posts together. Then I had business ideas I wanted to talk through. Then I wanted a website. Suddenly I was sitting in my living room looking at different versions of a business I’d mostly been carrying around in my head.
John helped me understand how much room there is to play with this stuff. You can make five versions of one idea. You can scrap the whole thing and start again. You can spend an evening figuring out what you like and wake up the next morning with a clearer idea of what you want. I love that.
Sometimes I need to see a thing before I can tell you what I think about it. Sometimes I need to see it in a color I hate before I realize how much I loved the green.
Of course, the next night you might sit down knowing exactly what you want, and the computer might hand you the Rolls-Royce logo.
I was working on the Random Rescue website. I liked the two R’s we’d made the night before. All I wanted was to change the color. And suddenly the R’s were doing something entirely different.
“I know you can fucking do this,” I told my computer. “You did it last night.”
There I was, alone in my living room with Mr. Bill Wilson, getting an attitude with a screen.
I started thinking about how I would’ve handled that with a person. I probably would’ve said something like, “Oh, okay, I think we got our wires crossed.” In my head, I might’ve been saying something even worse than what came out of my mouth that night. I’d have been carrying on two conversations at once, one out loud and one with myself.
With the computer, the one in my head came right out.
And once I’d heard myself, I could hear what I actually wanted to say. I love the R’s we made last night. Can we keep those and change the color?
I’ve been thinking about that because it happens when I write, too. I can talk into my Plaud for fifteen minutes and spend the first ten thinking I’m telling you one story. Then I get to the part where the lady at the emergency room says, “Is it morning?” and hear myself laugh. And I go, Oh. I want to take you into that room with me.
That’s one of my favorite things about working this way. I can tell the story the way I’d tell it to you if you were sitting across from me. I can double back, remember something else, get sidetracked by Bill.
Then I can read it back and decide where I want to linger. Sometimes the sentence I want to keep is the one I almost talked right past.
I keep calling it extra intelligence. I like the idea of having a little extra room to think. I can bring a half-formed business idea, a story I’ve been trying to tell, or two R’s I’m weirdly particular about, and see what happens when I spend some time with it.
I’m still learning how to do that, and I love getting to learn it with someone who can sit beside me and show me something I didn’t know I could try.
And I keep thinking about how many people have a story they’d tell you in the kitchen if you pulled up a chair. They’ll say, “Oh my God, did I ever tell you about the time…” and twenty minutes later you’re still standing there with the refrigerator door open.
I wonder how many of those people would love to see one of their stories on the page. I wonder how many would read it back and go, Wait. I have another one.
I know I do. I’ve got stories I’ve been carrying for years, and stories I didn’t know I had until I started talking. This one happened because I bought my cat a toy and couldn’t leave it alone.
And yes, I still went to improv.
