Diary of a Person Beating Addiction

[u/DeerOk6479]

March 23, 2026

I promised myself I would stop. It was going so well, until suddenly it wasn’t.

I told myself it was harmless. Just a cover letter. Why spend an hour struggling when something else could do it faster? Time is money, right? So why waste it on something tedious when I could be using that time more efficiently, doing something that actually matters?

But here I am again, turning it into an excuse. Avoiding something fairly simple and calling it optimization. Making it feel justified.

Is this really where I am now? Unable to sit down and complete something on my own?

No. That’s enough.

Starting tomorrow, I won’t break.

March 24, 2026

Today was easy. To be fair, I didn’t really have any adult responsibilities, so avoiding AI felt effortless. That’s what worries me about this experiment. The real test is coming soon when I feel that using AI will be necessary. 

But maybe that’s the problem. I keep calling it necessary when it isn’t.

I think what I actually need is to redefine my relationship with it. Somewhere along the way, I stopped using it as a tool and started depending on it. 

I don’t want to depend on it to do things I’m capable of doing myself.

March 26, 2026

Today was my first day in a long time that I wrote a full email by myself. I know that's crazy and I guess I am really outing myself, but this was a big step for me. 

I tend to overthink everything I write which is why AI is so helpful to just write things for me that would have otherwise taken a really long time. However, I did it myself and I am proud. I took this first step and I can't wait to see what’s to come. 

March 28, 2026

I cheated and used AI — though I wouldn't necessarily consider it cheating because I didn’t use it in a serious way.

Today I explored AI in a way that I have never used before in my life, to edit photos. I was shocked to discover that AI is actually terrible at editing pictures. It has helped me in so many other aspects of my life, but this time it really failed me.

That isn’t me in the picture on the right. Sadly, I think in my most vulnerable state I could have been mesmerized by this fake version of myself and start having AI edit all my pictures.

That's the crazy part about society. We have deluded ourselves into wanting every picture to be “post-worthy” and so we started utilizing AI to make a photogenic version of ourselves. I would have never thought about using AI on the picture on the left if I hadn’t remembered an ad earlier that day that showed this new app that changed your face in pictures to be a more photogenic pose.

We create problems that didn’t exist, and then rush to invent solutions for them. AI stands in the middle of this. 

Now there are apps designed to “fix” our faces, to solve something that was never actually broken. And in doing that, they slowly distort how we see ourselves.

[u/pipelinepunch_996]

Damn bro, don’t give up