For today’s confession, I invite you to go back in time with me 30 years. I have to write this now while I still remember it.

I might have taken the long path to becoming an adult by dropping out of college for a few years and then going back to finish my degree, after which I moved out of state with no goals other than to start over. I was a server and bartender for maybe 18 months before moving across the country to be a nanny and then landing an entry-level job at a major corporation. My early 30s were spent getting out of the financial mess that student loan bills and starting life on your own can create while earning little money.

Ok, nothing like starting a confession with a confession.   There was an AI trend going around recently saying, ask ChatGPT to describe you to someone you don’t know in a way it would be a warning and post the response here.   Oh, this sounds like fun, I’m in.  Most people had one or two paragraphs—the typical, ‘very nice girl, but don’t make her mad’—yada yada.

You guessed it, Sir Chat thought I needed a dissertation.   Apparently, there is plenty you should be warned about me. Harrumph.

I use ChatGPT. There. I said it. And I’m not ashamed. It’s actually in my career goals for the year to use AI effectively. And my boss sometimes brings things to me purposefully to complete a task using it.

I’ll start with a disclaimer: when using Chat, note the little warning that appears above the prompt line:

“ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.”

Grannie, I love your fat arms.

How sweet is that? Through all my ups and downs in weight, my arms have always held onto being a fat girl. They are the reason ¾-length sleeves were invented. To be brutally honest, I suspect they are also the reason airbags were invented, as I’ve certainly been known to throw my jiggly arm across a passenger to ‘protect them’ when I was braking. A fortune lost from not patenting the idea before airbags came along.

When I took MAPP training from DFCS, one of the assignments was to list the rules in my house. I had two.

1) Kids are allowed to play in the dirt and get dirty.

 2) Sometimes, it’s ok to eat dessert first. 

Some of my readers may not believe me to be the virtuous young woman I was at the age of 25 when the big F-bomb came out of my mouth for the first time, but I assure you, I did not embellish this tale. 

True story, I was held hostage for 90 days by a judgy little app. 

It’s called IntelliDrive and has some pretty ‘iffy’ criteria in my opinion.  It sounds straightforward enough, they evaluate you on five criteria.  They don’t tell you exactly how they measure those criteria or how the algorithm works.

I’m certainly not Oprah, but I thought it might be fun to put together a list of my favorite things.