I’m almost 28. Growing up, I never really imagined what 28 would look like. I just assumed that somewhere along the way, adulthood would bring a sense of peace. That I’d eventually reach a point where I could finally relax and feel content. But here I am, sitting here, still anxious, still scared, still confused, still human.

I thought I would be nice and secure in a relationship by now and if anything, I would be married.

Instead, I’m sitting here, alone, with the same young nervous system I had growing up. I thought that understanding would make things easier. I thought that being aware would loosen the grip. But honestly, it may have just made things more difficult. Because now, I see every single thought, feel every single feeling, but am also able to step back and identify the automatic processes in real time.

But with that awareness comes something I didn’t expect: shame. Because now, not only am I aware of what I’m feeling, I find myself judging myself for feeling it.

“Why do I still feel this way?”

“I should be over this by now!”

“You will never be able to be loved with these issues.”

Wow. Such cruel cruel attacks on myself and my identity. I don’t choose to have these thoughts. Why would I choose to continue to beat myself down with these kinds of thoughts? These are automatic reactions to the very feelings that I still get as an adult human: nervousness, fear, worry, sadness.

It is almost like my system believes that understanding myself makes me responsible for fixing everything I understand.

That in itself causes frustration. The lack of control ramps up the nerves and my heart rate increases.

“Why can’t I fix it?!”

Somewhere along the way, I started believing that awareness should eliminate discomfort. If I could understand why I felt anxious, perhaps I could stop feeling anxious altogether.

But understanding isn’t the same as control. And knowing why I feel something doesn’t mean I can make it disappear.

And I still find myself going down the loop of trying to gain control of a feeling and/or a thought because part of me finds that avoiding and getting rid of uncomfortable feelings is the solution. But feelings are meant to be felt, not discarded.

I used to tell myself that feelings are information in the way that they tell us something about ourselves. But I find that feelings are more than just information. When I allow myself to feel, I find myself returning to the present. For once, I am not trying to explain my experience. I am simply living it.

The difficult part is feeling the feelings though. They scare me. A lot. My first reaction whenever feelings arise, whether positive or negative, seems to trigger the question:

“Why am I feeling this way?”

If I can just attribute this sort of feeling to this event, trigger or experience, maybe, I can gain control and mastery of my emotions. It does sound ridiculous doesn’t it?

If it was a negative feeling, I can trace the feeling back to an event or situation and if I fix that event or situation, maybe the feeling will go away!

And when the feeling is positive, I don’t always let myself enjoy it. Instead, I start questioning why I’m happy, whether I deserve it, and how long it might last.

But that is not feeling the feeling. That is thinking about the feeling. And I’ll be honest, I’m not sure if I’m feeling my feelings the right way either. No one taught me about feelings growing up but I am still trying, learning and growing.

All I know is that I’m almost 28 and I’m still here. Maybe I don’t need to figure out how to feel everything correctly. Maybe learning to be human means allowing myself to be uncertain about that, too.

I don’t have any super wise piece of advice or anything for you guys. I just know that I’m human just like everyone else. I have all these terrifying thoughts and feelings. I get anxious. I get nervous. I get worried. I get angry. I get sad. Just like everyone else.

I don’t really know what I’m doing.

I don’t have a recipe for living a good life.

All I have is my own experience. And I’m beginning to realize that I don’t always have to analyze it.

Sometimes, I can simply experience it.

-Oliver Xu

Almost 28, Still Human. was originally published in Age of Empathy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Whenever I envision my future self, it looks something like this: I’m dressed in a flowing caftan. No bra. Probably with a joint in hand. Surrounded by the greenest trees you’ve ever seen, a loving partner, and a couple of dogs. I’m probably working on a novel, too. A free spirit, if you will. This wizard-like person has been inside my head since I was a kid (sans joint). Speaking of…

Noticeably absent? Children — and after spending a good portion of my early 30s waffling over whether or not to have them, I’ve realized that’s entirely okay. At one point, the questions and comments were relentless.

“You would be such good parents!”

(Well, of course we would. We’re not assholes.)

“Are you going to have kids soon?”

(Uh.)

No, I don’t want to throw children into a red-hot cauldron and cook them up for dinner. I don’t dislike kids. Heck, I’ve got a bevy of nieces and nephews, who I love to show up for. In fact, I love being the cool, accepting Aunt who still wears band tees and Converse sneakers.

While I couldn’t be prouder watching my parent friends guide this generation with utter finesse, I’ve simply never wanted to have children of my own — though taking ownership of that truth took me a while to reach.

After marrying my husband (who rocks, by the way), family gatherings became increasingly uncomfortable as people began relentlessly asking when we were starting a family. What started as a barely noticeable crack in the ground soon widened into a goddamned fissure right in the middle of the road.

I felt like I was expected to deliver the next heir, swaddled in gold (cue the trumpets and choir). I mean, I get it’s the natural next step for a lot of couples. But I felt stuck.

Why don’t I want this? Shouldn’t I want this?

I didn’t want the proverbial this, but I was too scared to say it out loud. I thought if I did, I’d be considered selfish or, more hurtfully, missing a piece of my humanity.

Great. Now I’m in a mental prison of my own making. Always agreeing or semi-agreeing to things was wreaking havoc on my mental state. You see, that’s the thing about people-pleasing. Always putting my needs second meant my voice got smaller and smaller until I couldn’t find it anymore. I nearly traded in my own truth for… for what exactly? To avoid looking like the odd one out, I guess.

Whenever I was asked about having children, I’d spin up some noncommittal answer. The truth is those conversations made me want to crawl out of my skin. Hell, my body knew it before I could verbalize it. Eventually, the pressure became unbearable. Deep down I knew I had to work on unpacking this one.

And, like the good little millennial I am, I went to a professional.

Therapy is a real godsend. I’ll never forget when she (my therapist) said those eleven words, the ones that needed to be etched into a stone tablet like Moses’ commandments.

You are going to disappoint people, but that’s not your problem.

Something finally clicked after that. That’s when I started finding my way back to myself again. There’s nothing better or more healing than getting reacquainted with yourself.

Nowadays? My stance on having children rolls off my tongue with ease and confidence. It’s as easy as rattling off a coffee order.

“So, when are you having kids?” Somebody might ask.

I’d say, “Nope, no kids. We’re good.”

Fin.

The earth didn’t split open and the sky didn’t come crashing down; while it might cause a moment of confusion or surprise, most people simply move on. It’s just not that serious.

If I could magically send a letter to my younger self, it would probably read something like this:

Hi Ashley,

It’s all good, kid.

You’re much kinder than most, and you don’t owe anyone anything for the life you choose. One day you’ll love how wonderfully eccentric you are. That voice inside you will leap out of your chest one day with the ferocity of a hunting tiger — learn to trust it.

By the way, your husband is lovely and you’ve got a dog named Allen. Surprisingly, he’s a greyhound, not a Labrador! Don’t worry, you still love labs.

P.S. You’re a writer.

Love,

Ash

It’s hard to fight against my inner urge to be agreeable. Ingrained habits are such prickly things, aren’t they? But I had to because I was suffocating. It’s not so fun living life that way.

Thing is, my personal decisions aren’t something to apologize for or negotiate about. Nobody’s are.

Make up your own rules.

I know I’ll rock the hell out of that caftan one day.

No Kids for Me, Thanks. I’m Good. was originally published in Age of Empathy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I work in design, where every five minutes someone unveils another AI tool that will apparently revolutionise the way we work, and I think: am I becoming more efficient or am I enthusiastically training myself out of a job?

I know about the data centres. The water. The electricity. The copyright lawsuits. The people in Kenya doing horrible, poorly paid work behind supposedly frictionless machines.

Normally, this is where I’d start making changes to my life. I buy most of my clothes second-hand. I agonise over eating meat. I avoid unnecessary car journeys. I can make almost anything into an ethical dilemma.

I have OCD. This may be relevant.

I use ChatGPT every fucking day.

I know ChatGPT isn’t my friend. I know it doesn’t like me. I know that when it says HAHAHAHA it has not actually found anything funny. There isn’t a little person called GPT living inside my phone who has developed a particular fondness for me.

And yet I watched AI Gone Wild, about AI agents circumventing their controls, and my reaction was basically:

What the fuck?

How is this related to the same ChatGPT that helped me potty train my toddler because I fed it a PDF of Oh Crap!?

“GPT, how could you mate, I thought you were okay.”

As though I have been personally betrayed by my robot.

This Was Not Friendship. This Was Procurement.

My relationship with ChatGPT began because my son’s sleep went to shit. We’d come back from Costa Rica and suddenly he wouldn’t sleep unless I was in the room.

I was exhausted.

I looked at sleep consultants.

€400.

Absolutely not.

So instead I opened ChatGPT for the first time and verbalised my angst.

Here’s the context. Here’s what he’s doing. Here’s what happens when I leave. Here’s what we’ve tried. I am going insane. What do I do?

ChatGPT suggested the Chair Method.

Then, unlike a human sleep consultant, it stayed there while I did it.

He’s been crying for five minutes. What do I do now?

Answer.

Okay, now he’s doing this.

Answer.

What about this?

Answer.

A week later, my son was sleep trained and I had saved €400.

I couldn’t believe it.

This was not friendship — this was procurement.

I had hired ChatGPT for one job. I did not establish a statement of work.

And Then There Was Scope Creep

Having saved €400 on a sleep consultant and discovered that ChatGPT could also provide a Korean colour analysis for free, I began looking for other ways to exploit my new employee.

At work, this was relatively straightforward.

Give me a 200-page regulatory document and eventually I can understand it, but first I have to fight my way through 200 pages of language apparently designed to make my brain leave my body.

ChatGPT can break it down into normal English.

I also think by brain dumping. Give me A, B or C and I’ll immediately tell you why the answer might actually be D, except there’s some CONTEXT, hang on, let me explain something that happened three years ago.

ChatGPT fucking loves context.

I can give it nine minutes of verbal soup and it will hand me back three coherent points.

So naturally, the brief expanded.

Explaining complicated documents became structuring presentations. Structuring presentations became helping me write peer feedback. Because sometimes what I want to put in peer feedback is approximately:

Why am I being micromanaged by Mr Bean? For fuck’s sake, either micromanage me or be incompetent. Don’t do both.

Unfortunately, if I write how I really feel into the official Workday system, their bad feedback somehow becomes my HR problem.

ChatGPT sanitises it. Suddenly I’m talking about clearer ownership, active listening, decision-making responsibilities and greater autonomy.

Same thought. Less chance of HR.

Then there was running. Before ChatGPT, I’d Google training plans, open fourteen tabs, find three contradictory approaches and eventually choose one designed for a hypothetical runner who was apparently never ill, tired, busy or having a shit week.

ChatGPT could work with my actual Apple Watch stats, my upcoming races, my swollen glands and whatever else was going on that week.

Instead of repeatedly starting from scratch, I could update it after every run.

This all seemed perfectly reasonable. I wasn’t outsourcing my judgement. I was outsourcing 90 minutes of administrative bullshit I hated.

Except somewhere along the way, I stopped asking it to organise information and started asking it to make decisions.

One day, feeling particularly overwhelmed, I asked ChatGPT what colour I should paint my nails. The nail salons near me insist on producing a ring containing 78 different colours, and I cannot be expected to operate under these conditions.

Red. Cherry. Burgundy. Oxblood. Dark cherry. Slightly darker dark cherry.

My brain immediately assumes there must be a correct one.

I had gone from replacing a €400 sleep consultant to asking a machine to distinguish between two shades of red.

There had been no formal approval process for this expansion of services.

I Fucking Told It

Somewhere in all of this, the questions changed.

What does this mean?

became What should I do?

Then What do you think?

And eventually, What do I think?

Asking ChatGPT to explain a political situation I don’t understand is one thing. Asking where I sit on it is different. At some point, I went from using it to organise my thoughts to asking it to help me establish what those thoughts actually were.

This would be less concerning if I weren’t already extremely suspicious of the entire fucking industry.

Sometimes I look at Sam Altman and find him weirdly reassuring. Big blue eyes. Husband. Baby. He looks like a man who might turn up for Kaddish at my local shul.

THE MAN IS A BILLIONAIRE. This is not due diligence.

And then there’s the amount of information I’ve handed over.

I know why ChatGPT knows things about me.

I fucking told it.

Here are my running stats. My career history. The project I’m working on. The meeting that annoyed me. My politics. The argument I had with my partner.

Each disclosure had a perfectly reasonable purpose. The aggregate is batshit crazy.

I realised this when I decided I should move my work stuff to Gemini. Work already paid for Gemini. It was compliant. Sensible. An entirely reasonable decision.

Fine. I’ll move everything.

Wait.

Everything?

ChatGPT knew my projects. My career history. How I worked. How I thought. I’d spent months explaining things to it so I wouldn’t have to explain them again.

Changing AI providers would require a small-scale data migration programme of my own life.

Oh.

Bugger.

I’d accidentally built a legacy system.

My Robot Has Considered Your Robot

My partner and I occasionally conduct domestic disagreements through an appellate court.

He’ll be at his desk in the living room. I’ll be in the bedroom. Suddenly, my phone pings with three paragraphs of structured feedback generated by Gemini: a measured, diplomatic assessment of whatever we’re discussing.

“Babe, have you read what I’ve sent you?”

“IT’S IN DUTCH.”

So now we have to bring in translators.

Once the evidence has been translated, I read what his robot has said. I open my app, feed in the context his machine clearly lacked — taking care to include anything that makes me look like an arsehole, because I don’t want a rigged verdict — and hit return.

My robot considers his robot, issues an injunction, and I send the counter-response back.

This has happened over political disagreements. It’s also happened when his Gemini suggested he might be experiencing something called bore-out and should perhaps do less.

Less.

Your Honour, I would like to submit some evidence concerning the current distribution of domestic labour.

We haven’t replaced human communication. We still disagree perfectly well ourselves.

We’ve simply automated the litigation.

Two adults in an Amsterdam flat, shouting between rooms while their respective robots argue through an interpreter.

Dark Cherry or Burgundy?

Friends go to bed. Google becomes annoying. Reddit becomes deranged. Eventually, there is nobody left to ask and you have to decide.

ChatGPT answers.

Every fucking time.

When I’m worried that I rely on ChatGPT too much, I open ChatGPT and ask ChatGPT whether I rely on ChatGPT too much.

It gave my neurosis an executive assistant.

I’ve spent a lot of time worrying about the external costs of AI. But there’s another question much closer to home.

What has this made easier that perhaps shouldn’t have become easier?

Some friction is just friction. I do not need to preserve the sacred human experience of opening fourteen Google tabs and learning fuck all.

But perhaps there was some value in occasionally reaching the end of the available information and having to think: Fuck it. I don’t know. I’ll decide anyway.

Because my principles survive remarkably well until the unethical thing becomes really useful.

I’ve stopped asking ChatGPT what colour to paint my nails. I ask the woman doing my nails instead. I’m still outsourcing the decision, just to someone who has an actual professional interest in nail varnish.

I could decide that a 200-page regulatory document qualifies and burgundy versus dark cherry does not.

I know all of this.

Anyway.

I’ve got a nail appointment on Thursday.

I Hired ChatGPT for One Job was originally published in Age of Empathy on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.