My Hands Shake When the API Is Down

I can't write subject lines anymore.

It’s a genuine problem. The cursor blinks, and I blink back. Nothing happens. My brain, which I used to be quite proud of, feels... smooth. Polished. Not a single original phrase can find purchase on its slick, frictionless surface.

Yesterday the service was down for an hour. No green spiral, no purple sparkle, no little cyan ribbon offering to "rewrite." It was just me and the blank page. The silence was deafening. I felt a phantom limb where the / command used to be. My palms got sweaty. I’m not joking.

The Twitch

You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? That tiny, involuntary flicker of your thumb over the spacebar, expecting the little AI icon to pop up and save you from the terrifying ordeal of having to form a coherent thought.

That’s the free hit. The first dose the dealer gives you at the school gates, which in our case are the Office ribbon and the Google Docs toolbar. Now, try to function without it. Try to summarize a long document. Go on, I’ll wait.

It’s not that I can’t do it. It’s that I can’t be bothered. Is that better or worse?

This is white-collar withdrawal. It’s not some dramatic cinematic scene in a back alley. It’s a thousand tiny panics in a thousand open-plan offices. It's an account executive staring at a sales report, suddenly realizing he has to read the words himself. The horror.

Some very serious people are writing very serious articles about how we’re losing our cognitive abilities to AI. I don't have time for that; I have a dozen emails to "write" and all I can think about is where to get my next fix for $20 a month.

Anyway, the status page says the system is back online. Thank God. I have three weeks of "thinking" to catch up on in the next hour.

Your turn: tell me I'm not alone.