NOSTALGIA
NOSTALGIA
Remember the old adage, "Garbage in, garbage out"...
Every now and then I’m overwhelmed by the feeling that I’ve forgotten everything. And it’s only getting worse now that the kids have left the nest. Since there’s a part of me that wishes things didn’t have to change, it’s comforting to go back and look at pictures.
The pictures remind me of the first day of school, sports games, prom dresses, and the day we dropped them off at their college dorms. I remember thinking then that things would never change. It was hard to imagine a day when we wouldn’t be juggling parenting with working and taking care of our parents and grandparents. Then, every day was a rat race and the rat was winning.
Looking back now, I can say with certainty that everything has changed. The kids have left for faraway places and the great-grandparents have passed away. We are fortunate to still have our parents—the kids’ grandparents—but they, too, are spread out across the country. Technology helps; chatting through Zoom or Facebook is almost like being there. But I wish I didn’t have to log on to see what everyone was doing. I’d much rather talk on the phone or meet for lunch. But as the old saying goes … When in Rome…. We haven’t answered our landline phone in ages. And we still have a landline for the fax machine. I know, who has a fax machine anymore? We do.
The pictures are a great way to reminisce about the days gone by. However, what wakes me up at night is the fear that while I was struggling on the rat wheel, I forgot to teach them anything meaningful. Did I send them out into the world without any skills? When I ask them for their answer, it’s probably the answer for a whole generation, “We don’t need to actually KNOW anything because we can look it up!”
This response used to drive me crazy. But yesterday, I sat in on a Zoom presentation that talked about using AI in business. The business coach/host was demonstrating how to enter prompts into Chat GPT, and in a matter of seconds, multiple answers to any question popped up on screen. And not just history questions and recipe advice. Depending on the prompt, the function can spit out almost anything. I would have never believed it if I hadn’t seen it, but one prompt asked for a book about starting a business. In less than 20 seconds, out popped an outline, 15 chapter headings, and 15 full chapters! I didn’t read much of it, but the experience left me understanding why the Hollywood screenwriters’ guild was on strike.
Then I remembered the old adage, “Garbage in, garbage out,” something we were taught way back in the dark ages when computers were first introduced as a household necessity. The Zoom presentation was eye-opening and maybe even a little scary. AI could take over the world, as my husband likes to say. But when the show ended, it left me feeling appreciative of my old pen and paper and reaching for the photo albums.
I was hungry for a little nostalgia.