Yesterday I watched an odd Welsh series about a boy who accesses his ancestral magic by knowing how to cast spells in his indigenous language…an hour later I was hammering out the outline for Book 7 and by the end of the day, I’d written over 3000 words! I think deactivating my Facebook account was a good idea and I’m no longer surrendering my whole day to half a dozen streaming platforms (canceled or paused Netflix, Britbox, Apple+, and Prime, which leaves Acorn and Hulu). Is it too late to reclaim our brains? My friend in Toronto sent me an article about the reverse trend towards “old-fashioned” flip-out phones because people are realizing that smartphones are interfering with the way we want (and used) to live our lives. AI is the worst, I think—last night on the news there was a report about AI “hallucinating” and making up phrases (including racial terms) when used to transcribe medical notes. MS Word now offers an AI icon on every document that you can’t get rid of, though you can stop them from scraping your content by changing your privacy settings. Things seem bleak…why do so many people NOT want to use their minds to generate original ideas? A principal recently shared that a 5th grader asked why he should learn to write an essay when the computer can do it. If our society is structured around productivity and saving time, then of course it will be hard to impress upon students the value of creativity and originality—because those things take time and can’t always be monetized…

As a writer, I enjoy solitude but I see how social media creates the illusion of community; for this introvert, it’s helpful but not necessarily healthy. Getting involved in the community where I live takes more effort but I’m going to try. I’m sticking with Instagram for now but will try to just post events there and blog here more often. I finished this puzzle last weekend and decided to try a 3-month subscription to Completing the Puzzle. My first puzzle should arrive this week and hopefully I can pace myself instead of standing at the dining room table for hours on end until my knees and neck ache…once I’m done, I return it in the same bag and they send me another puzzle. Seems environmentally sound and a good way to save money since most puzzles cost $30 or more and you’ll likely only complete it once before storing it away.

Am I in denial about what Trump is doing to our country? No. Writing and puzzling can be forms of escape but mostly I’m trying to keep my mind sharp. Now is not the time to get lulled into complacency…