I turn older in a few days.

53. It’s an odd (as in ‘not even’, of course) number, an unusual number, but one that feels strangely meaningful. It’s a prime number, and as a bit of a nerd, in a low-key sort of way, I like prime numbers. It’s also one more than the number weeks in a year, but most importantly, as there are 52 cards in a standard deck, it’s my own personal year of the joker.

I don’t mean the DC comic villain, although I mean the joker in a deck of cards.

In some games, the joker is used as a wildcard. It can be anything, become anything, fill any role.

It’s a game changer.

For a while now, I’ve felt like I need one of those.

Some changes just happen to us. Many of them come with getting older, that’s just a fact of life. Other things are simply outside our direct control, and that’s OK too.

Shit happens.

Other changes, you have to make happen.

Make Good Shit Happen.

That’s my plan.

Change. For the better.

Time for the wildcard.

So, off and on today, I’ve been chatting with ChatGPT (for my thoughts the ethics of using ChatGPT and other LLM’s, as a writer, please refer to this post). Putting together a plan to move things forward, to move my life forward, to make changes.

Now, of course, I could do this in a calm and reasonable and wholly structured way, but I want the elements of surprise, of challenge. Of randomness.

I want some sort of excitement in my life.

I want the wildcard.

So.

Each Sunday evening, I will ask ChatGPT for this week’s Wildcard information. This will include:

• A wildcard challenge for the week
• A word, to meditate on, and incorporate into my week in some way.
• A reminder to add one “impossible” idea to a list of impossible ideas.
• At random, one weekend day a month will be a Deep Work Residency. ChatGPT will tell me when that is.
• A reminder that I want to spend some time each week creating visual art. One piece a week.
• A checkin on my progress with some exercise goals I’ve set for myself.
• A reminder of any public holidays in the next week, so I can plan to take full advantage of them. Maybe even ask for a bonus challenge or two.

Sundays are my catchup days. Sunday mornings, I’ll check in with the same entity, get a summary of what I’ve reported I’ve done, giving me a todo list of what I need to do to complete the week. Then, at the end of the day, the week starts over.

Once a month, there will be an audit, potentially a revision or updating of the instructions to ChatGPT.

There’s structure there, and amid the structure, there’s chaos, room for serendipity to happen.

I’ll blog about some of this as I go. Share my experiences, maybe some of what I’ve learned.

I’m excited about this.

I’ll leave the last words on this to ChatGPT.