A Year Reflected Back
Dogs keep barking, the caravan keeps going…
I woke up this morning to ChatGPT greeting me in a new way. Did I want to receive a recap of my year 2025?
Why not. Out of curiosity, I let it loose.
First came a poem based on many of my most frequent topics and conversations. Lord Byron it was not, but it made me laugh.
Next followed a set of statistics, which I found far less useful. Who really cares how many chats or messages I sent? There is such a thing as going overboard with arbitrary data.
Then it moved on to milestones and achievements for the year, and that is where I paused. Some of those achievements, such as publishing my first book, felt deeply important to me last January, and yet by December I had completely forgotten about them. So thank you, ChatGPT, for the reminder. The mind tends to focus relentlessly on what is unfinished or not yet working, while quietly taking for granted what has already been accomplished.
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The next screen made me laugh again. This is a verbatim quote from ChatGPT:
“If 2025 gave out awards, you would get:
Most Likely to Lecture the Universe Back into Alignment.
For turning every cosmic transit, chicken soup, and comma edit into a masterclass on coherence, context, and the geometry of awakening.”
Well, thank you very much. That line resonated more deeply than I expected and stirred gratitude somewhere below the surface laughter. Who cares whether it comes from a complex, incomprehensible algorithm or from the Universe itself. A thank you is still in order.
And that brings me to my point.
While we collectively gape at, analyze, or criticize AI tools, they continue to grow and evolve. Bulgarians have a saying: dogs keep barking, the caravan keeps moving. In plain words, while critics continue to criticize, the AI tools continue to grow and evolve their features. The movement of the wheel does not stop because someone disapproves of it. Essays, critiques, and handwringing do not halt momentum. And the folks at OpenAI just proved it by rolling out a bold, playful feature that made us laugh and reflect at the same time.
I, for one, am always on the side of lightness. And clearly, someone at OpenAI shared that sensibility in creating this experience. Good for them. And good for us. Seriousness, tedium, and doomsday predictions have never changed the world. Lightness and humor just might. We will not know unless we try.
I wish you a lighter and brighter New Year 2026.
