art

The robots are innocent. So far anyway. AI has no more say in its existence than humans do in ours (none of us asked to be born). But now that it’s here, it has amazing potential for bettering the human experience. It also has amazing potential for harm. And, It all comes down to how humans are using it, which is the real problem I have with AI: watching people run rampant, forgetting – or not implementing at all – the guardrails to ensure ethical and responsible use.

Now, as some readers know, there’s a corporate side to my career (where my focus has been all this time) and talking smack on corporate use of AI isn’t a good career move in a culture that’s racing to embrace it. So, I’m not here to screech about how people are using it.

I’m not going to talk about how much water data centers suck away, or AI’s negative impact on our changing climate, because there are better qualified, more knowledgeable people doing it. Forbes already talked about how AI Is Accelerating the Loss of Our Scarcest Natural Resource: Water and NPR talked about Why the true water footprint of AI is so elusive.

Tragic death isn’t blog fodder, so I’ll let another NPR journalist tell you about AI assisted suicide.

I’m not going to harp on how AI slop content spreads propaganda like wildfire. Again, NPR provides examples, but also, everyone is talking about it. Hopefully, a child shall lead us in the discussion. Ask any young’un what slop content is, and you’ll find out just how much better they are at spotting it than the grown folks running the show.

Hell, I’m not even going to talk about what the cartoon I drew suggests: AI stealing our dreams. I’ll just introduce you to Tilly Norwood or take you to a robot sporting event. Even the tech bros building the stuff, racing to innovate without thought, are saying So Long to Tech’s Dream Job (which, admittedly, inspires a little schadenfreude, but I’m definitely not going to talk about that).

What I am here to do is make you a promise.

Now, you know I’m not using Gen AI because if I were, I’d probably post more often. It’d be soulless trash, but there’d be more of it. Thing is, I’m not about slinging soulless trash. So, should I ever pay this site the attention it deserves, it will always be me (or a human partner) creating the content. And should I ever get to that fantasy point of success where this space somehow becomes a wonderfully prolific site makin’ money and payin’ bills like a whole damn business, I’ll be paying human creators to contribute.

I will NEVER use robots as an excuse to exploit fellow human beings. And honestly, I wouldn’t do that to the robots, either. I’d hoped that humanity would have evolved into something better before we went ahead creating something in our image, but alas! Much like Mary Shelley’s classic horror story, the creation isn’t the monster; the creator is.

That’s it. Just a quick and simple promise before I disappear again for *mumble, mumble* months.

When I told my husband I wanted coloring books and nice markers for Christmas, I think he thought my simple request was much too good to be true. But we were doing a modest holiday (the eventful year was also an expensive year), and the subject of adult coloring books was peppering my social media feeds with increasing frequency. With artists tweeting about the availability of their recently published coloring books, friends on Facebook talking about how they’d forgotten how much they just loved coloring, and my nostalgia for Saturdays spent under a blanket fort convincing myself that Wilma Flintstone may very well have had some purple lipstick, it was clearly time to suck it up and embrace the trend. “No, really!” I assured my husband. “Coloring books and nice markers are precisely what I want this year.” Then I added, “And socks. I definitely need new socks.”

What I did not know was that at that very moment (okay, probably not that very moment, but it sounded nice, right?), my mother was putting together a holiday box for me in which she dropped, among other things, coloring books, colored pencils, and an epic box of crayons I would have killed for as a kid. Between my mother and my husband, I ended up with this stack of awesome:

Seriously! What kid didn’t dream of that box of crayons?

It occurred to me that with a haul like that, I had damn well better enjoy coloring as an adult.

I needn’t have worried.

Art as Therapy

Art as therapy isn’t a new concept, so I’m not going to go over it again here. I will simply say that there are all sorts of emotions I can work out on a canvas or a sketch pad or whatever I choose that day, save one. Frustration. As a creative person, I get frustrated when the picture on the page looks nothing like what I had in my head. So sure, I’m working out sadness or anger or whatever when I paint or draw, but I’m replacing it with frustration, which is no more pleasant. Coloring books solve that. The picture is already there. It’s somebody else’s art; I’m just coloring it in. There’s no real pressure to make it perfect. Peace restored.

That is not to say that I don’t shout an expletive or two when my hand slips out of a line, or I’ve made the wrong color choice, but coloring books cut the expletive output by a good 80% or so.

L, completed with crayon. R, in progress with colored pencil. Approx. 16% cussing total still to come.

Easier Than Meditation

Also frustrating for me is meditation. I can’t help it; my mind just wanders. It’s loud in my head and even guided meditations often can’t quiet things down. You know what does? You guessed it. Coloring. For me, it requires just enough attention that I can clear my mind of all of the noisy but inconsequential BS and make room for some real contemplation.

I’m aware, as I type this, of how cheesy it sounds, but it’s amazing how much I’ve learned about myself by doing no more than considering how I color: where on the page I start, what my favorite colors are, how boring the picture becomes when I rely solely on my favorite colors. Yeah.

I’m not actually a fan of yellow, and yet these are my faves.

It’s Just F***ing Fun, Okay?

Look, being an adult is freaking hard. Commutes, work, bills, random life crap that inevitably happens because, “That’s life.” The fact that adult coloring books have become a trend (hopefully one that sticks around for a while) tells me that I’m not the only one who sometimes longs for the days when the biggest thing on my mind was who had my red crayon because, damn it, I need my red crayon or Wilma Flintstone will have purple lips!

After a day of long commutes, solving problems at the office, and scrambling to pay the bill that was not in the budget–a result of some unexpected life crap, adults deserve a little childlike fun.

So yeah, I endorse this trend. I endorse the hell outta this trend! I won’t be putting my coloring books down any time soon; in fact, I expect to be through my current supply by the time the holidays roll around again. Just in time to request more.

And for those who were wondering, I also got those socks.

New socks

Trust Me, I'm a Writer

Far less glamorous than playing one on T.V.

The Promise

Coloring Books for Grownups: I Endorse This Trend