My morning started simply enough. I finished the crossword I’d fallen asleep working on the night before. I got Wordle in four. I made a cup of coffee and opened the shades to let the sun in. I stood for a moment and noted how its light lined up with the cars on the street. Is there a morning Manhattanhenge? Something to google later. I crawled back into bed and propped myself up on my left arm, grabbed my notebook and started to work on my morning pages.
Morning pages are meant to be done before the world can intrude on the subconscious mind. Three pages of whatever flows from thought to ink. The idea is to just write, clear the pipes, address any residue so you can approach work with a clear mind. A thought surfaces, it is translated into a scribble of ink on the page, where it stays. No pressure, just release. I’ve been very hit or miss with my morning pages as of late but today I needed the tactile feel of pen on paper. I started with the date and time. November already. I took an inventory of my body, noted how my sinuses are struggling, how sometimes it feels like I can’t get enough oxygen to my brain—allergens clouding the air. I noted the ache in my muscles from the previous day’s workout and the pain in the spot where neck meets shoulders. I need to fix my posture. My pen stopped moving and I grabbed my phone.
Is morning Manhattanhenge a thing? When? What time? The answer was quick: The sun aligns to the Manhattan grid for one to two minutes on November 30th at 7:12 am and January 12th around 7:15 am.
My fingers instinctually opened the news app. I looked at my calendar. I asked my AI personal assistant to remind me to do a task. I went back to writing in my composition notebook, resuming my morning pages. I couldn’t remember what I was writing about before and my handwriting is terrible so I just started writing what was on my mind. I got two sentences in when I had another thought. I opened ChatGPT and set an agent on a task researching privacy policies for AI enabled apps.
I wrote a few paragraphs and inched my way to my three-page target. Another thought: I need to figure out how to add a paywall. I asked Gemini to research compatible options. While on my phone I opened Claude and reviewed a task from the day before. I took a sip of my coffee, now cold.
I went back to my notebook and finished my morning pages—45 minutes, gah. I’m usually done in twenty. A hint of shame crept up in my chest. Disappointment in allowing so many intrusions on my “protected” analog time. Worse, I’d defeated the point. Morning pages are supposed to put stray ideas to rest. Instead, I broke the ritual and handed those thoughts to an AI agent and gave myself a to-do. More brain clutter. Tomorrow, I’ll do better tomorrow.
I showered, ate toast, and returned to the tasks at hand. By 10 am I was working across 4 screens: laptop and monitor, tablet, phone. I had several tasks running on ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Muse. Actions, research, reporting, if it popped into my head and was related to a project it was initiated with a quick prompt. As one task completed, two more were started.
I wouldn’t particularly call this a flow state. That implies intense concentration. A oneness with the work. This feels more like an overachieving octopus.
A floating head with eight arms, each one tethered to an AI tool. As fast as I can think is as fast as I can kick off a workflow. A flittering thought that once would have been fodder for my morning pages, left in marginalia, now gets transmitted to the cloud for action. The only limit is my 5-hour token or weekly usage allowance, but even then I just move to a different tool. I feel empowered. Like I have a team of hundreds able to handle the sea of work before me. It is modern magic: my Dot pulls rabbits out of hats, Gemini turns frogs into princes.
The rush of productivity floods my body with endorphins. The day stretches into afternoon and then into evening. I raise my desk so I can stand. My shoulders scream with tension. An answer arrives, a task is completed, and all I can think is just one more.
But like after too much candy the day after Halloween there is a crash. A sugar hangover. All those empty calories and somehow still unnourished.
At the end of the day, I can see progress, but it doesn’t feel like accomplishment. At least it doesn’t feel like the time matches the output. Which is odd, because the output is significantly more than I would have been able to accomplish without these tools. A lot got done, but I can’t exactly remember how. There was no real friction in the execution. No tangible lesson learned. I didn’t have to read through dozens of irrelevant sources or curate the information myself. Those roadblocks, as frustrating as they are, made the experience memorable. I miss the flow state.
The thing about octopuses is that they have dense bundles of neurons in their arms, so they can act independently of the whole. In fact if an arm were separated from the body, it could still grasp and feel. Like an octopus’s arm my AI tools keep on working even if I am sipping a glass of wine in the MoMA sculpture garden. And as those tasks resolve, the intrusions begin. A notification that one task has completed triggers the desire to begin another. The pull to use up every moment of available compute tugs at my fingers. Just one more.
The other day I took a walk in Central Park. Even with a podcast playing through my AI Glasses, I tuned into the sound of leaves crunching under my feet. The feel of twigs snapping as I made my way up a hill, atop which a Sugar Maple caught the late afternoon sunlight. The tree’s red and orange leaves glowed bright against the Manhattan skyline. I reached for my phone to take a picture. As I lined up the shot a notification came in. I took a few photos, but soon I stood there tapping responses so the work could keep on going.
I took a deep breath. My gaze returned to the tree atop the hill. In just the few short minutes I’d turned my attention away, the light had shifted and the brilliance of the leaves started to dim. I felt a catch in my chest, my mortality present behind my ribs.I shut off my phone. I put my glasses in their case. The temperature began to drop as the sun moved behind the buildings along the southwest edge of the park.
No matter how many arms on my octopus, they can’t slow the sun moving behind the buildings. They can’t stretch the morning Manhattanhenge beyond its perfect alignment. They can’t extend my time on this planet. The only thing I can do is choose how that time is observed. What experiences fill it. The arms may grasp, but it is the job of the body, the head, the heart, to determine what is worth reaching for.
I still may be doing too much, but on December 5th, I’ll stand on my balcony with a cup of coffee, leave the phone inside, and watch as the sun stretches perfectly across my street.
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