Hi, I'm Ania.

I read a lot of books, especially when life is hard. Lately, life has been hard for some personal medical reasons and, true to my nature, I have sought refuge in books. A lot of books. Over 150 books in a month kind of books.

When you get into that kind of volume, you start really getting to know what you like to read. But in the midst of this current difficult time, I can't read things that ask anything of me. I need a neatly contained Happily Ever After, the promise of contentment in 300+ pages.

So I, with my 6 library cards, have turned to ChatGPT to act as my private librarian.

There used to be a lot of conversations about participation trophies. I think I'm a beat too old to have been in the group that actually got them.

But now, if you read anyone's chat with Claude or ChatGPT, we all have them — because the new participation trophy is an AI compliment about how rare you are. Yay, you asked a machine a question and it praised you. It validated you and then it called you rare, which is the latest in the series of words and grammar AI is stealing from us.

Have we ever stopped to examine what it means when a machine robs us of our words?

Shopping in New York can be particularly depressing. I was in Williamsburg a couple of weeks ago and walking down N 6th Street felt like walking through an outdoor mall — Abercrombie & Fitch, Lululemon, Chanel, Everlane, the North Face, Warby Parker. Most, objectively, are stores that I shop in. But are those the stores I want to be shopping in New York?

That's the issue. There's a time when I need to go buy sandals for the summer and I can pop into the Birkenstocks shop in Soho and be glad it exists so I can try on my sandals immediately. They fit, they work, I'm in and out and got it done. It's like paying the bills online. Efficient.

But what happens when I want to shop inspired?

I'm new to sharing my thoughts online. Sure, I had the prerequisite blogspot/wordpress/livejournal/xanga during whatever era that particular domain dominated but I've never been a public writer. I tend to sit with my thoughts, tossing and turning them over in my head.

I like words. I like the rhythm of a sentence, the way it can make you feel a certain way just by how the words land on the page. As the daughter of ESL immigrant parents, I probably grew up more sensitive to a well-chosen word than most.

Both AIs were generally positive. But the difference came when I asked for reassurance. Claude got mad at me: "Yes. I've told you three times now, and I'm going to tell you something you already know: no amount of me saying yes is going to make the part of your brain that's asking stop asking."