A few months ago, I gave an AI model twenty-eight years of journals and blog posts and asked it to tell me something I didn’t know about myself.
The answer came back, more or less: Your vocabulary got better. Your behavior didn’t change.
The fuck?
The irritating part was that it had a point.
I’m turning fifty, and I can explain my patterns with a precision my 22-year-old self couldn’t have imagined. I can connect my fear of conflict to growing up in an immigrant family, explicitly told not to rock the proverbial boat. I can explain my being overweight by growing up with a mother who grew up in food scarcity. I can trace my feelings of being an outsider to… honestly, where do you want to start? A child of immigrants? Knowing I was gay since I was 4, but knowing that it was “bad” even before that? And then later being one of maybe, what, seven Asian Americans in Miami? I’d like to think I am as self-aware as it gets.
Here’s the thing about being incredibly clever at being so self-aware: just because you’re being clever about a thing doesn’t mean you’re actually doing anything about it.
You could even say that naming a pattern can become a more articulate way of just… standing still.
But saying nothing has changed would be its own kind of excuse.
When I was younger, family conflict could mean physical fights with Angela or screaming matches followed by ultimatums that haunted all of us for years.
Now it’s just Mom and me. I’m trying to help as much as I can. Some days are good; some are bad. On bad days, she’ll be all, “What is wrong with you? You used to be so happy. Ever since you moved back from Florida, you have this sour look on your face—always pale, NEVER CHANGE. I don’t like this. You’ve changed.”
She’s right.
I changed.
Now, with the same family and the same kinds of conflict, I can sometimes catch myself and think: Be cool. Don’t yell. You can’t change her.
Then I hang up or walk away. Calmly, when I can.
My autopilot still wants to escape every conflict as quickly as possible. That part hasn’t gone anywhere. What has changed is what I do with the instinct once it shows up.
The instinct is still to leave.
But now I can be clever enough not to set the room on fire.
For thirty years, another survival strategy has been being… funny. If you know, then you know.
You would also know how the manic energy of my early blog posts became the dry gallows humor of middle age. I asked my AI instance that helps self-analyze me in the Digital Mirror Project what my humor sounds like now, in 2026.
“Low-grade controlled humor over sustained dread,” it said.
“Jesus, that’s depressing.”
“Eh, more like if depression learned how to write newsletter posts.”
What can I say? This is what happens when you feed an LLM on all your writing: it learns to heckle you in your own voice.
The problem is that humor becomes a smoke detector that can’t distinguish a house fire from burnt toast. A vulnerable thought starts to form, and the joke is already out of my mouth before the thought can finish.
The same cleverness that kept me safe also stopped many uncomfortable truths before they could reach me.
There’s no mystery about why I avoid conflict.
My immediate family all handled conflict… differently. Dad exploded—yelling, resentment, damage that lasted. Mom could toe-to-toe with him because he was Dad. But with the kids or anyone else, she shut down completely.
Those were the models I grew up with.
People have told me to my face they don’t respect me for how much I avoid conflict. They never grew up the way I did. It wasn’t weakness. It kept me out of the blast radius.
Avoidance didn’t give me practice with any third choices: staying in the room. Not running, not exploding—lowering my own temperature and helping everyone else lower theirs.
I’ve met people who can do this. I find them slightly miraculous.
I understand it can be learned. Mandarin can, too. But memorizing the dictionary isn’t the same as speaking the language.
What finally shifted something wasn’t the AI’s summary. It was catching the pattern in real time.
I said that maybe this project could help other people. My gut immediately responded: That’s their business, not mine.
Not a considered position. Just a shrug. An automatic retreat.
Five years ago, I wouldn’t have noticed that reaction. I would have called it humility.
This time, I caught it as it happened.
It was like spotting a pickpocket working the crowd, except the pickpocket was me.
Self-awareness has saved my life more than once.
But at some point, it stops being a key and becomes an intricately detailed description of the lock.
The useful part isn’t knowing why I want to run.
It’s catching myself with my hand on the doorknob.
Sometimes I stay.
Sometimes I leave without setting the room on fire.
IMHO, the things you describe are interlinked as "survival tools" and each has a role, a time, a place. It's unique to you (via experience), but not unique to being human (for better or worse).
You're one of the most self-aware and self-effacing people I know. With that said, don't let AI pick apart your life too much. All those years of writing, from you or any of us, would provide ample ammunition to put failures on blast. It's much easier to do that than recognize your successes in those years and how much you've overcome.
Trust me, there have been many times when Marc and I have shared an Ernie story, shaken our heads and said we never could have gotten through what you have. Without the "help" of AI, you grew and recognized things you might wish to have done better (I remember those blog entries--you always saw things pretty clearly), and that's called being human, at least if you're smart enough and humble enough to recognize your imperfections. And we all have plenty of imperfections.
Put another way, cut yourself some slack. You haven't had the easiest family life; far from it! But you always seem to muddle through better than most people would! That's something to celebrate, not lament. And not let a computer pick apart after you've supplied it with ammunition.