Image source: Merlina McGovern
I had finished cleaning up after dinner (a supposedly burnout friendly dinner from the New York Times, but any dish that requires multiple large pots and pans and much chopping of garlic is not an easy dinner, but I digress).
It had been a long day of work, and my daily walk that usually perks me up had left me feeling a bit down. It’s been rainy, cold, and overcast for several days now, and the dreariness is starting to get to me.
I was tired, and I was so very tempted to sit down and go through a bout of endless TikTok scrolling. The type of mindless scrolling that prompts TikTok to show you a video urging you to put down your phone and go outside.
Instead of doing that, I sat down at my little art desk and worked a bit more on my still life gouache study. As I picked which brush to use (my Princeton Filbert, no. 8) and started mixing thick and creamy blue and yellow-greens together, I instantly felt a calm settle over me. I’ll post in more detail about the gouache process when I’m done with the actual painting, but the act of painting left me feeling so much more satisfied and actually energized than if I had sat down to scroll through TikTok.
My husband recently sent me an article pushing for the urgent need to regulate AI. I sincerely hope that our politicians have the fortitude to do this, though I am not very optimistic. I lived through the revolution that was the Web 2.0, where the participatory Internet was born through the likes of Myspace, Friendster, and Facebook, and finally honed to a sharp point meant to pin you to your couch, never to get up. Corporations and our government let this tsunami of information and misinformation shared by our own friends and colleagues wash over us. Our children, especially our daughters, suffer through mental crises brought about by nonstop social media. And we only see a fraction of what’s sent over these channels (I’m still horrified by the fact that half of Facebook’s moderators suffered from depression as described in this 2020 article).
And now, with wave after wave of tech layoffs when we’re only at the beginning of the so-called AI revolution, I can only hope that we see a different approach to this new technology space. I’m already tired of all the cheerleading going on about AI, with no thought given to the millions of lives that will be upended by this.
Hah, I’m finding this blog post veering into the dark and dreary, just like the weather today. I posted a digital picture I painted a while back that I really love. It’s bright and charming and makes me smile when I look back on it. Engaging in art, and even writing this article allows me to step out of the darkness of online news and social media. It allows me to imagine the brighter future that I know is out there.
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