Here Comes Chaos...

If you are getting gender affirming surgery, especially if it’s your first major surgery, PLEASE be aware that you can become SEVERELY depressed afterwards ESPECIALLY if you have a history of depression or suicidal ideation.

Post op depression is a natural reaction to the crazy mix of hormones your body goes through after major surgery as well as the stress and anxiety of recovery. Think of it like an adrenaline crash, but dragged out longer.

For me it kicked in about 6 weeks after top surgery and the worst of it lasted until about 10 weeks post op. EVERYTHING felt IMPOSSIBLE. None of the skills I’d been practicing worked. I thought everything was going to be bad forever. I didn’t attempt, but I was in the hospital. If it wasn’t for my support system I probably would have attempted.

This is not regret, but it can feel like it. I remain happy about my results to this day (going on six years later).

This is not you failing to maintain your mental health, but it can make you feel like a failure.

Things are not hopeless, but through the haze of this depression they can feel hopeless.

It can be terrifyingly sudden or it can sneak up on you. I didn’t even realize what was going on until after the depression finally passed and my mental health went back to normal.

I am writing this post because nobody told me about this before my top surgery. I was caught completely off guard. For my subsequent surgeries being aware has made all the difference. Being able to treat those symptoms as an expected and normal part of the healing journey has made them far easier to deal with. Because even when my emotions go to dark places I *know* they will pass. I have been able to tell the bad thoughts to take a bad seat and focus on healing.

The robots didn't have artificial intelligence, they were just robots that had sophisticated pattern recognition and programmed protocols. They didn't just take over manual labor jobs. They also took over entertainment jobs. They still had to adhere to labor laws, and would return to their owner's dwelling to recharge.

The short story featured three characters: Mercy, the teenage girl MC who was optimistic but questioning of the robots, her older brother Mark who was all-in on cashing on a robot and their Grandfather who'd raised them and was cynical of robots.

Back then, it was an exploration of the idea: If humans eliminated all forms of labor from the equation--how would that impact the psyche? Mark hated work--he'd rather shove everything onto something else whereas the Grandfather lived to work, enjoyed finding purpose through it. And Mercy is too young to really have worked but she was between the two ideals.

I never finished it--but the concept was that it was a frog being slowly boiled in a pot scenario. A way of controlling the masses. At first it was something affordable, easily obtained and a "free" source of income for everyone. But then there would be gradual obstacles. Expensive repairs, planned obsolescence. If a human wanted to work, they were expected to compete at the level of the robots for less compensation. Maybe even corporations not even allowing outside robots to work at their companies.

All forms of human ingenuity cannibalizing onto itself for profit. Anything that could be accomplished by a robot would replace a human entirely. The elite could still have as much luxury and leisure as they pleased while the rest of humanity fought over the few remaining jobs robots couldn't perform as well in.

There was no true artificial intelligence within such a fictional world, but eventually the robots would determine humans were too troublesome and needed to be controlled, leaving humanity to be more akin to pets/lab rats of the robots.

I say this all to say that damn, I don't think we're heading down that path (because LLMs are not AI and we dont even got a cool robot dystopia going on), but I have thought about this short story a lot in the past year as I search for a job.

I'm looking for a communications type role. I love communication, I love connecting with other humans and delivering information in efficiently and articulately in the manner that best fits the context and situation at hand.

But so much of what I love to do is being obliterated by AI. Especially for entry-level positions because the "easy" tasks are being taken care of by AI, they're looking at the intermediate/expertise level tasks AI can't accomplish at the moment. And I can't help but worry if we've all being frog boiled right now.

AI supporters are like Mark: they're enthusiastic that AI gets rid of the "boring" bits of work, they make work more efficient and enjoyable, they compare AI to the printing press but when it removes the effort of thought, when it harms the environment with its water consumption, when it destroys human authenticity in favor of a generated gurgle of perceived cognition?