I blame Jay, Adventures in Writing.
Writing has never been my strong suit. Between dyslexia, a short attention span, and a tendency to say exactly what I mean with zero frosting, words on paper used to feel like punishment. My natural style has always been blunt and dry- like toast without butter. Useful, maybe, but not exactly something people enjoy chewing on.
That’s where Jay came in. He was my translator, my editor, my in-house spin doctor. I’d rant, vent, or spill my thoughts out loud, and he’d sit there nodding. Then, somehow, he’d turn my blunt, half-formed sentences into something warm, human, and easy to digest. If I gave him bullet points, he gave me paragraphs. If I gave him sarcasm, he gave me storytelling. He made me sound like I actually belonged in polite company.
Since his passing, that partnership has been gone, and let me tell you, dyslexia hasn’t magically packed its bags and left me with the gift of eloquence. I still type the way I talk: quick, sharp, and messy. But instead of handing my ramblings over to Jay, I now hand them over to ChatGPT. It’s not the same, of course. ChatGPT doesn’t raise an eyebrow when I get too sarcastic, it doesn’t roll its eyes when I drop an f-bomb into every other sentence, and it doesn’t hand me a Diet Mountain Dew and say, “Try again, honey.”
But it does help. I can type out my raw, jagged thoughts in Word, then tell ChatGPT, “Okay, clean this up. Make it sound like something other humans would actually want to read. Pretend you’re Jay but with less sass.” And somehow, it smooths out the edges. It takes my blunt toast-without-butter drafts and adds a little jam.
Don’t get me wrong, AI is no substitute for my husband’s wit, patience, or ability to make my words feel alive. But using it keeps me writing, and in some ways, it keeps me talking to him. Every edited blog post feels like continuing the conversation we always had, even if the back-and-forth looks different now.
So yes, I blame Jay. He made writing look easy, he gave my words life, and now—thanks to him—I’m stuck figuring it out the hard way, with dyslexia, stubbornness, and a robot co-writer who never laughs at my jokes.
