I was skeptical of AI use as a writing partner ever since Grammarly hit the scene some time ago. I decided to take a few elective college courses as well as some non-credit courses to keep some of my credentials current as a certified peer specialist in my state. I didn't like the way it wanted to change my tone and voice. It simply no longer sounded like me anymore. One of the elective courses i enrolled in was creative writing and Grammarly took the creative right out of it and replaced it with robotic. I just wasn't having it. At all... So, I already had confirmation bias lurking in my subconscious mind before Open AI and ChatGPT hit the scene. That was long before I had my spinal injuries and a whole slew of unfortunate events that would give me a running chance at winning a law suit to change the name of "Murphy's Law" to "Rushton's Law". But, with a twist, it wasn't a matter of what could go wrong would go wrong, it was a matter of how soon I had to prepare for the inevitability of it. I was just resigned to the fact that I would live the remainder of my days from crisis to crisis. I never whined about it. I just dealt with it as best as I could with what I had available at the time. So, I saw a perk on my Paypal home screen that involved Perplexity AI Pro. A one year subscription free as a Paypal perk. There had to be a catch. Right? Sure, after a year it's expensive as all hell. But, I liked what I saw and I was willing to give it a try. Then came Comet browser and Assistant. Then I started using assistant as I would use spell check and grammar check in MS Word. I use Google docs now. I was very impressed and it seemed like the AI assistant could learn my voice and tone in writing. It was able to extract life events from documents I fed it such as resumes, reference letters, etc. It took a detailed personality assessment I had done when I had decided to go back to college years ago and built context to address me with as a learning module. I started asking questions and realized the amount of power I had at my fingertips.

Here is an interesting situation, I wrote an Investment Summary of 10 pages after significant manual research. I have trained 2 LLMs to write in a specific style, which then helps me with proper grammar, word selection and layout. It got rejected today since it looks bot generated? Not sure what to think about this??

I have now been in this VA hospital for six weeks and the poking and prodding hasn't ceased. My assessment and evaluation at this East Orange NJ Spinal Cord Injury/ Disease hub was over 5 days after I arrived. I just can't go back to my former home. Not accessible and won't be made accessible. I'm now fighting for VA disability and Social Security. I'm also writing while rehabilitating two major spinal surgeries over the past two years: https://www.nobigrush.com if you're interested in details. So, I have a February 1 deadline for my Social Security stack of paperwork nearly an inch thick (all of which I already filled out online) that I'm sure they gave me to frustrate me and grind me down to deny me benefits. Oh yeah, physical therapy and occupational therapy schedules are intense as well as doctors poking and prodding. Then I write to inspire others not to give up. That's a priority to me. But, I have to take care of the other things or I can't do what I love to do. Ughhh! Anyway, thanks for having me. Hear me rant on Medium. I'd love some criticism of my whining and boo-hooing.

If you're here, you're probably over 40 and fighting the same fight I am. Sending out resumes that disappear into the void. Getting ghosted by recruiters. Watching younger people get hired for jobs you're overqualified for. Wondering if you're unemployable or if the entire system just broke while you weren't looking. You're not imagining it. The job market is brutal right now. Especially for us. I'm 57. I've been freelancing for over 20 years. I have a degree. I use AI tools every day. I'm faster and better at my work than I've ever been. And I still can't get hired. Not because I'm not good enough. Because companies don't want to invest in people like us anymore. We're too expensive. Too experienced. Too likely to know our worth and not accept garbage wages. This group exists because we're all dealing with the same thing. And most of us are doing it alone. Scrolling LinkedIn at 2am wondering what we're doing wrong. Applying to jobs we're overqualified for and still not getting callbacks. Trying to figure out how to rebuild a career in a market that decided we're disposable. You're not alone. That's why we're here. Drop a comment and introduce yourself. Where are you? What kind of work are you looking for? What's your biggest struggle right now? Let's actually talk about this. Let's help each other. Let's stop pretending this is normal and start figuring out how to survive it together. Welcome. I'm glad you're here.