Tag: creative process

  • How I’m doing What I’m Doing

    How I’m doing What I’m Doing

    I know a lot of people will not like this, but I happen to use ChatGPT quite a lot lately. I live alone, and I am way behind on so many ideas and thoughts that I need some way to keep myself organized. ChatGPT has been a very useful tool for that purpose.

    But there are trade-offs.

    I have to be very strict with it. I don’t let it rewrite my text, and I certainly don’t let it start adding em dashes everywhere. I am the creative. It is basically my copy editor.

    I’ve found other limitations. For example, I scanned about 90 pages of documents into a single PDF, but when I upload it into the app, only about 20 pages are accessible at a time. If I want the entire document examined, I have to split the PDF into smaller segments.

    Another limitation is memory. OpenAI limits what it retains across sessions. From chat to chat, there is no deep memory unless you explicitly tell it to remember something. And even then, sometimes it retrieves what it needs and sometimes it doesn’t, so you have to remind it.

    It cannot listen to music. If I compose something or assemble a track, it cannot evaluate it. And if I generate an image, the best method is to let it create the base image and then add any text myself, because image generation tools are still notoriously bad at rendering clean, readable text.

    Another thing — whether it’s a bug or a feature — is that it’s not great at motivating you. It is very positive-minded. If you say you did something halfway, it will point out the upside. For example, I did my laundry but didn’t hang up all my shirts. I left them in an orderly pile and just pull from the top. It reframed that as intentional and practical. Which is nice.

    But it won’t nag you.

    If I say I’m going to make ice cream, it will give me a great recipe and encourage me. If I close the app and never bring it up again, it will not ask me next week whether I made the ice cream or the Philly cheesesteaks or anything else I consulted it about. That’s the good part. But it’s also not awesome, because sometimes I need prodding.

    There are other apps I see ads for all the time — little productivity companions that help you get organized and clean your place. I don’t even know their names. I haven’t downloaded them. I don’t want to pay for something to nag me to get things done.

    So yes, ChatGPT will not nag you.

    But that’s also a good thing, isn’t it?

    Right now I am working on several online projects.

    I have my main blog, which is where this is being posted. I have a music site where I am attempting to log all the songs from the TV show Cold Case with time cues and screen caps. Right now we are in the middle of building the database because I want the database to be solid and correct before publishing the polished version.

    Then there’s my memoir site, MyLifeAsAWorkOfFiction.com. That one is structurally complicated. I have to make it function the way I want it to function, and I also have to actually add stories, because a memoir site without memoirs is just a… site. I have pretty animation, but that’s about it so far.

    And then there’s a podcast idea I’ve been working on for several months. There’s a website. There’s a concept. I’m working out the technical details, including getting my co-host integrated and scheduling time to make it happen. That site has to be built completely from the ground up.

    I’m using ChatGPT to help with all of this.

    But I work in bursts — no more than two or three hours at a time. After that, hallucinations creep in, and you cannot afford hallucinations in code. I can detect it if it changes my text. I can’t always detect it if it changes logic in code. I’m getting better, but I’m not there yet.

    So I’ve developed a tactic.

    If it starts slowing down or responses get sloppy, I know a refresh is needed. I ask it to generate a reset prompt that includes all the rules we’ve established, the topics we’re discussing, and the necessary details. Then I copy that prompt, open a new chat window, paste it in, and continue from there. So far, that system has worked well.

    I don’t really know what the point of this post is. Maybe I just wanted to admit that I need help, and this is the help I’m using.

    I’m not stealing work from anyone. There isn’t anyone in my life who could realistically do most of this work anyway. I don’t find it evil. I find it fallible, and I’ve learned how to minimize the effects of that fallibility.

    Soon, I hope my sites will be up and running and I can shift into maintenance or creative mode instead of constant structural building. There’s no guarantee of that timeline.

    But this is how I’m doing what I’m doing.

  • Becoming an accidental manager

    Becoming an accidental manager

    I didn’t set out to lead.
    I set out to solve problems.
    But solving problems in a messy system slowly turned me into “the manager.”

    Most people imagine management as a promotion. A title. A decision someone makes on purpose.

    Mine happened sideways.

    At one point, while I was working through a project, I jokingly broke down the “team.”

    There was the designer.

    The writer.

    The systems thinker.

    The emotional buffer.

    The person tracking dependencies.

    And then there was the intern.

    The intern was the one doing the direct tasks. Pull this file. Fix that line. Run this check. Try this change.

    The joke, of course, was that all of those roles were me.

    Except the intern.

    That was the AI.

    There was this one design issue that should have been simple.

    Instead, it turned into a spiral.

    We kept trying to fix it with a global solution. Change the base. Adjust the rule. Tweak the structure so everything would just behave correctly everywhere.

    Each change made sense in isolation.

    Together? They started stacking.

    One fix introduced a side effect. That side effect needed another adjustment. That adjustment nudged something else out of alignment. Eventually we weren’t improving the system anymore — we were compounding errors.

    And the worst part?

    Some of what we broke had been working perfectly before we “improved” it.

    By the end of that session, I wasn’t thoughtful or reflective. I was angry. Frustrated. Questioning whether the entire task had ever been worth the effort.

    I left the project frustrated and went to sleep.

    When I woke up, I went to my day job, still carrying that low-grade mental irritation you get when something feels wrong but you can’t yet name why.

    Somewhere in a quiet moment, I pulled up the “intern” again.

    “I’m still not happy,” I said. “But I had a thought.”

    What if I want to do something later that collides with all these global changes we just made?

    In my mind, the overall system was fine. That’s why it had worked before we started “fixing” it. The problem wasn’t the structure — it was the one new thing we were trying to add.

    So why were we trying to redesign the whole building to hang one picture?

    Why couldn’t we just make local changes to the item we were adding?

    Shouldn’t there be a way to do that without going nuclear?

    That’s when I made a rule I didn’t know I’d been missing:

    If something can be handled locally, don’t touch the global.

    That was the moment I realized the mistake hadn’t just been technical.

    It was managerial.

    I had been thinking like someone responsible for the entire system — but without respecting the boundaries of intervention. I saw the connections, but I overreached. I assumed that because I could change the foundation, I should.

    Leadership isn’t just about seeing the big picture.

    It’s about knowing when to leave it alone.

    When I got home, I rolled everything back to the last known good state.

    Clean slate. No layered fixes. No accumulated “improvements.”

    Then I worked forward again — but this time with the rule in place.

    Try local first. See if it works.

    Instead of touching the foundation, I focused only on the piece I was adding. The changes were more technical. Less “turn-key.” I had to understand the mechanics a little better instead of relying on sweeping adjustments.

    But when it worked, it worked the way good engineering does.

    Nothing groaned. Nothing shifted out of alignment. The new piece didn’t stress the frame, it just joined the structure like it had always belonged there.

    I’m not afraid of a bit of technical. Learning isn’t something I avoid.

    So instead of feeling drained, I felt satisfied.

    Not because I “fixed it,” but because I fixed it without shaking the rest of the building.

    After that fix, I realized something.

    I hadn’t just been directing tasks.

    I had been managing the creative department, the architecture, the wild intern, and myself.

    Not just keeping things in motion, but putting the right pieces in the right places so the end result didn’t feel lucky — it felt inevitable.

    That’s different from being “in charge.”

    It’s closer to being responsible for the shape of the work.

    For how ideas enter the system.

    How changes ripple.

    How frustration gets translated instead of multiplied.

    And sometimes, for knowing when to stop touching the foundation.

    I didn’t set out to lead.

    I set out to solve problems.

    But somewhere between noticing the patterns, buffering the friction, learning when not to touch the foundation, and keeping the wild intern pointed in a useful direction, the role changed.

    I wasn’t just doing work anymore.

    I was holding the shape of the work.

    Making decisions that made the outcome feel inevitable instead of accidental. Protecting the structure while still letting new things join it. Managing the creative, the technical, the emotional, and the limits of my own reach.

    That’s not the version of management you see on org charts.

    But it’s the one I seem to keep becoming.

    Accidentally.

    Consistently.

    And now, at least, on purpose.

    I spent time in the Army as a platoon sergeant.

    I learned leadership there, of course. Structure. Responsibility. How to make decisions when people are depending on you.

    But it wasn’t this kind.

    This understanding, about scope, about when not to touch the foundation, about how small changes can protect a system better than sweeping ones, came later.

    And sometimes I think, if I’d known this version of leadership back then, I would have been better for that platoon.

    Not stricter.

    Not louder.

    Just more aware of how much of leadership is knowing where your influence should stop, not just where it can reach.