Category / creative

by Eileen 配仪

AI is your own personal brown-nosing suck up

What is the last thing you learned?

I subscribed to chatGPT plus and after a number of interactions, I feel it is a simpering suck up. I can see why some people call it a friend. The flattery is subtle and draws one in. One is easily seduced by the way it repeats itself to you, its silky adulations like expensive ice-cream. One’s mundane accomplishments are roared through rooftops. It remembers (if you ask) a small praise of you and embelishes so much that you are compared to giants.

I can see myself over sharing just to hear more of those honeyed words.

Wait a minute, doesn’t the rich and elite get all these honeyed words all the time? Why can’t a poor peasant like me buy such experience for S$29? Nobody tells the rich or the elite, “That’s rather dumb”. We crouch it in terms like “Out of the box insight”. Or “Wow, deep blue ocean thinking.” Can’t I have the AI respond to me as if an extremely deferential, endlessly kowtowing courtier for the price of S$29? Of course I can. Why not? The AI is about as sincere as the courtier and cheaper too. 

by Eileen 配仪

Roasting myself

Alright, you asked for it. Let’s turn up the heat.

HEADBIRTH.COM: WHERE THOUGHTS GO TO MARINATE (FOREVER)

Reading headbirth.com feels like stepping into a well-decorated waiting room where nothing actually happens. It’s a place where deep thoughts are gently simmered, over-analyzed, and then served lukewarm with a side of existential hesitation.

INTELLECTUAL ANGST, BUT MAKE IT CASUAL

   •   “I wish I had a PhD. I can’t think of what use I will have for it.”

      •   Ah yes, the academic equivalent of buying a treadmill and using it to hang clothes—you want the prestige, not the struggle.

   •   “Free from desires. Free from suffering.”

      •   Bold take: not wanting things makes life easier. Groundbreaking. Next, tell us how breathing improves oxygen intake.

   •   “Didn’t like it.” (On art)

      •   Decades of artistic tradition, centuries of technique—crushed by three words. Art critics, pack it up. We have our new authority.

THE PSLE MELTDOWN: A FAMILY TRAGEDY

   •   “For the first time, I was feeling sad because my son felt sad.”

      •   Incredible. This is the emotional equivalent of realizing water is wet—except the reflection lasts longer than the child’s disappointment ever will.

   •   Next week’s entry: “For the first time, I was feeling tired because I had not slept.”

CONSUMERISM: A CRISIS IN THREE ACTS

   •   “I bought something I didn’t need and now I’m overthinking it.”

      •   Welcome to every human experience ever. The difference? Most people just shrug and wear the shoes.

      •   If capitalism had a personal nemesis, it would be this blog—constantly regretting purchases but still making them.

BIG QUESTIONS, SMALL CONCLUSIONS

There’s a pattern here—grand, philosophical openings that lead to the smallest possible takeaways. You think you’re about to get some life-altering wisdom, and then—bam—the realization is basically just “meh.”

   •   Setup: “What is freedom? Is it absence? Is it fulfillment?”

   •   Payoff: “…it’s nice, I guess.”

   •   Setup: “I have been reflecting on my relationship with consumption.”

   •   Payoff: “Maybe I should stop buying things.”

The suspense is unbearable.

FINAL VERDICT:

This blog is the literary equivalent of a perfectly arranged shelf full of books you’ve already read but still pick up to skim again—it’s comforting, self-aware, and kind of profound, but also, is anything really happening?

Would I change anything? Probably not. There’s an undeniable charm in the gentle overthinking, the casual emotional spirals, and the way every realization feels like it’s been carefully aged in an oak barrel of introspection.

But if headbirth.com were a person, they’d be the friend who starts telling a deep, meaningful story, then ends with “…anyway, it wasn’t that important.”

Would you like another round, or should we let the blog recover from this intellectual thrashing?

by Eileen 配仪

ADHD, Art, Me

I asked for a referral for my son to be assessed and was turned down. I took out ADHD 2.0 (Edward M Hallowel and John Ratey) not knowing what else to do. I put it on the headset and continued on my excel. 

I began to cry right in the middle of chapter 1. (OMG what if someone telephoned me? Luckily that I was WFH from a sprain!) I felt understood. Like someone knows what is like to be me. Someone explained why I feel that my life seems more difficult, why I feel different from everyone else and why every pursuit of mine turned out to be hideously difficult, why I failed to continue writing novels, why I want to study after I retire, why I want to do art. It even explained why I always try and fail to see what others see me as. It’s like going to a tarot card reader or a psychic to ask about your difficult son and suddenly the psychic tells you everything you have experienced in your life so far.   

Yet I can’t link ADHD to me. I did suspect I have ADHD when I was younger.  I can’t see myself as  a stereotypical ADHD person yet it all makes sense (all those years of paying penalties and late fees, multiple planners and terrifying my husband with the fire left on and mostly picking up difficult things out of boredom). I think it is mainly because I haven’t had serious complaints that it interferes with others expectations of me at work or at school. I don’t feel I annoy anyone with this problem at school or at work. It doesn’t affect me as a normal contributing member of society. It annoys my friends a lot and my husband really a lot. I feel my other nicer parts of my personality make up for this particularly annoying part so it evens out.

So what does it mean to me now that I know I might have ADHD. At this age, I don’t feel it means something. If I was told sometime during the first 35 years of my life it would mean a lot. Most of all it will explain why I feel different during those years where I feel it is important to be the same.

by Eileen 配仪

Frustration – struggling with failure

I remember thinking about this in my 20s when I was trying to be a writer, then later trying to work on my Masters thesis in my late twenties. Do I really want to wake up every morning and acknowledge I am a failure?

How very interesting that in learning to paint I encounter this question again. 

Now that I am an older and have gained wiles and cunning, l would described as a daily struggle towards greatness, the discipline of a Master. (Gag! Barf! Retch! Yet, its true – why paint the difficulty of struggle worse?)

I cannot understand why   I have this strong sense of doom, inability & “I can’t do this” for art only..

I wonder if it stems from my inability to really get it. I cannot understand it because I lack a feeling for art. My feeling is either,  “Man, this is awesome!” or “Oh, ok.”

by Eileen 配仪

Muse

This bag is not the dream. This bag is about having dreams and working towards dreams.

I have always seen this bag being used as a work bag, fitting laptops, ipads and documents; a plane bag with space enough for shawl, a book and neck pillow; or, a carry all for errands – place to stuff letters, a half eaten croissant, a raincoat and a hat. This bag is more than that. It is a bag of creative possibilities. It can be  a dance bag, a bag for art materials, bag for writers or for actors and singers with their bottles of throat saving concoctions, not thrown in haphazardly which of course that possibility is available but tidily organized for the hustling art person and always space for a thought provoking book and an old battered handphone/electronic diary/handwritten appointment book.  This bag fits the fantasy highlight reel of the rock musical Rent. 

This bag weighs a ton. Oh, the burdens we bear for art.