Showing posts with label aging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aging. Show all posts

Thursday, January 11, 2024

Robotic Companions

A robotic device called ElliQ, which functions as an AI "companion" for older people, is now available for purchase by the general public at a price of only $249.99 (plus a monthly subscription fee):

Companion Robot

As shown in the brief video on this page, "she" has a light-up bobble-head but no face. Her head turns and its light flickers in rhythm with her voice, which in my opinion is pleasant and soothing. The video describes her as "empathetic." From the description of the machine, it sounds to me like a more advanced incarnation of inanimate personal assistants similar to Alexa (although I can't say for sure because I've never used one). The bot can generate displays on what looks like the screen of a cell phone. ElliQ's makers claim she "can act as a proactive tool to combat loneliness, interacting with users in a variety of ways." She can remind people about health-related activities such as exercising and taking medicine, place video calls, order groceries, engage in games, tell jokes, play music or audiobooks, and take her owner on virtual "road trips," among other services. She can even initiate conversations by asking general questions.

Here's the manufacturer's site extolling the wonders of ElliQ:

ElliQ Product Page

They call her "the sidekick for healthier, happier aging" that "offers positive small talk and daily conversation with a unique, compassionate personality." One has to doubt the "unique" label for a mass-produced, pre-programmed companion, but she does look like fun to interact with. I can't help laughing, however, at the photo of ElliQ's screen greeting her owner with "Good morning, Dave." Haven't the creators of this ad seen 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY? Or maybe they inserted the allusion deliberately? I visualize ElliQ locking the client in the house and stripping the premises of all potentially dangerous features.

Some people have reservations about devices of this kind, naturally. Critics express concerns that dependence on bots for elder care may be "alienating" and actually increase the negative effects of isolation and loneliness. On the other hand, in my opinion, if someone has to choose between an AI companion or nothing, wouldn't an AI be better?

I wonder why ElliQ doesn't have a face. Worries about the uncanny valley effect, maybe? I'd think she could be given animated eyes and mouth without getting close enough to a human appearance to become creepy.

If this AI were combined with existing machines that can move around and fetch objects autonomously, we'd have an appliance approaching the household servant robots of Heinlein's novel THE DOOR INTO SUMMER. That book envisioned such marvels existing in 1970, a wildly optimistic notion, alas. While I treasure my basic Roomba, it does nothing but clean carpets and isn't really autonomous. I'm not at all interested in flying cars, except in SF fiction or films. Can you imagine the two-dimensional, ground-based traffic problems we already live with expanded into three dimensions? Could the average driver be trusted with what amounts to a personal aircraft in a crowded urban environment? No flying car for me, thanks -- where's my cleaning robot?

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Friday, August 18, 2023

Pros and Cons of Taking Break from Writing, Part 2 by Karen S Wiesner


Pros and Cons of Taking Break from Writing,

Part 2

by Karen S. Wiesner


In the final of a two-part article, I evaluate aging, progress, and momentum as well as talk about the indisputable value breaks provide one in their particular discipline along with the damage protracted absences from said discipline can also do.

In the first part of this article, I talked about my goals for 2023. I have two more series to wrap up before I retire from writing. After that, I'm hoping to illustrate children's books. I'd hoped I could finish writing the first drafts of my last few novels in 2023. 2024 was my goal year for making the transition between the two disciplines of writing and art.

For the month of July 2023, while I was intensely writing the first draft of my final Peaceful Pilgrims story, I toyed with the prospect of going directly into writing the second to the last novel in my Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series throughout the months of August and September 2023. However, I was bordering on burnout. Without a break, my writing would suffer, and that's simply not how I wanted to go into any of my final writing projects. I want each of them to be my best work ever. I was at a crossroads: I needed a break, but, if I took one, I absolutely couldn't accomplish all I'd intended to in 2023. Retirement and beginning my next career in illustration would have to be put on hold. Again.

My poor husband heard my angst over this issue on a daily basis for the last two weeks in July, as I tried to decide the best course of action concerning my dilemma. He surprised me one morning when he told me about a weekly podcast he watches devoted to the discipline of swimming. In this particular video, the host talked about the pros and cons of taking a break from swimming. Although I've spent years thinking I understood the indisputable value breaks provide in writing, as well as the damage protracted absences can also do, I learned something as my husband summarized the points the swimming instructor brought up.

For swimmers in training, as my husband considered himself (though he really only competes with himself--or his alter ego Frank who swims one kilometer a day every day like clockwork), there are a lot of pros and cons to taking a short break or even a lengthy one from daily discipline. A lot can happen to the body when a swimmer isn't in the pool each day, and of course the longer the absence, the worse things can get.

First, the longer an individual has been swimming, the more natural it becomes for them. They develop a "water feel". Being in the water becomes so natural, their skills become honed and instinctive. Taking a break, that instinct is dulled, and not surprisingly the longer they're away from the water, the more drastic losing the "water feel" becomes. Once they come back, they'll have to work harder to adjust to being and becoming like a fish again.

Second, when you're swimming every day, you're building endurance and muscle, and your metabolism is high. You can do more, expend less energy with the task, and in less time. When you take a break, your tolerance for the activity lessens. While your muscles enjoy and benefit from the initial rest, before long they begin to atrophy if absence persists. Finally, while you're working out each and every day, you may be able to eat more and still burn it off without penalty. If you're not putting in the work every day and that stretches into even more time away, you may still be hungry; however, eating the same amount you did sans the exercise, you'll gain weight in a hurry.

Third, when a person swims each day, the body becomes stronger. With the powerful muscles that being fit provides, this person is better able to handle anything in life that requires physical activity. Short periods of rest--a day or two--can be very beneficial, allowing muscles to heal before being rebuilt even stronger. Just as you'd expect, muscle that's not being worked breaks down, which will happen if a rest carries on too long.

Creative pursuits aren't all that different from a physical activity like swimming. For instance, the longer you've been writing, the more you hone your writing craft--"word feel", if you will. The process of writing becomes natural when it's done often, every day, with proper discipline, and it can become instinctive. But breaks, especially long ones, can make a writer lose that instinctual edge. You'll work harder to produce the same results you got easily before you took the extended break.

When you're writing each day, you're building skills, endurance, and longevity in the pursuit of excellence. Your enthusiasm and passion will be high. You'll be able to do more, expend less energy, and produce quality results in less time. But take a long break, and your tolerance wanes quickly. You tire easily and, inevitably, your skills will begin to weaken and wither. You'll also find your ardor cooling, your hunger tapering off. You may feel disinterested or even apathetic about returning to the discipline you previously enjoyed.

Finally, when you're writing every day, your material becomes far stronger. Your stories will invariably be richer, deeper, and more powerful. Taking breaks between stages in a project can almost certainly improve the quality and quantity of your work as well as provide you with the refreshment and perspective necessary to continuing the task through to its successful completion. You can read my previous articles about the benefits of writing in stages on this blog here: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/search/label/writing%20in%20stages. However, long breaks from writing can set you back instead of propel you forward. You need momentum for long-term tasks, and that only comes from activity, not lethargy, which saps physical, mental, and spiritual pursuits. Once gravity pulls you down, you'll have to work harder to yank yourself back up again.

The takeaway here becomes clear when you consider that in nearly aspect of life, finding the thing that you're good at, the thing you love and are willing to work hard to gain or achieve success in requires that you juggle times of disciplined activity and short periods of revitalizing rest. Both are crucial to maintaining, sustaining, and ensuring progress. Just as overtraining can cause injuries, refusing to allow yourself to step away for a bit to recover physical, mental, and spiritual energy can lead to burnout or worse.

Another factor is the length of time you've been working on any certain discipline. Anything you've been doing for a long time and consistently over the course of presumed years will provide you with a healthy foundation for instinct, endurance, and strength. Each of these components will remain in place for longer, requiring more hardship to whittle the three cornerstones down. Core aspects drop away slower, because you can fall back on the basics you've been cultivating for a considerable number of years. Someone who's new to a discipline will see key competencies drop off much faster when they take short or long breaks from it. Conversely, if you've been training hard and you come to a full stop abruptly, your overall performance is likely to plummet just as suddenly. But if you're doing something almost casually, you probably won't notice a significant change in your functioning.

I've been writing for almost 35 years. If I had to compare my career to a physical activity, for most of it I was easily competing to be an Olympic athlete. Between getting old, the COVID isolation hitting me hard, and the life upheavals I experienced a few years back (more about that in my "Reflections of Life" article series, which you'll find posted here:  https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/search/label/reflections%20of%20life), I came to an almost full stop very suddenly. I've been dealing with the fallout ever since…

Such as the fact that I'm now facing that the goals I made for myself at the end of 2022 probably can't happen the way I planned. I can't write two novels back to back anymore, like I used to, even if one of them is drastically less complicated than the other. I'll need to take a break from writing for the next several weeks after finishing the first novel I've written this year in late July 2023. I'll have things to do to fill the downtime, just a little each day while I take a refreshing break from the hard work of writing. Additionally, I can get in some of the art practice that will eventually help me when I'm settling into the new career as an illustrator. I'll be ahead of the game there since I'll have spent several years in advance honing the new craft I intend to put my all into once I retire from writing. Between September and October of 2023, I'll write the next, more complex novel that I'm working on this year. That will leave me just enough time the final two months of 2023 to at least outline the very last offerings in my Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series. It's not everything I hoped for. But, hey, it's still good.

It's very easy for me to get discouraged when I compare the "myself of today" with "myself of yesterday". I'm practically at a standstill when I look back at what I used to be able to accomplish every given year. I think I need to stop hitting the same brick wall of being disappointed with my output, of wanting to push myself harder. I may want to do more, but I've found over the course of the last two years that I simply can't anymore. I'm older, I have less stamina, and it just takes longer to make the magic happen. Even still, when I do get things done, I've found myself very proud of what I've managed to produce.

Instead of letting this same dejection knock me down over and over again, it may help me to compare myself to other writers. Most authors produce one novel a year and consider themselves productive. So, even if I only write two this year (perhaps pathetic in comparison to my previous five novels and five long novellas), I'm still doing double the norm. That's something. (If you write one a year, don't think you haven't accomplished much. You have. I just used to be a superhero and now I'm normal. It's a brand new world for me, one that's lacking the furious glow of the previous.)

So what if I'll only able to write two novels instead of the three I'd hoped to complete in 2023? So what I won't be able to retire from writing until 2024, at which point I can avidly begin my next career in illustration? Let's face it, I'm kicking and screaming every second, even as I accept this "downgrade". I imagine I'll fight against compromise in this regard the rest of my life.

Still, I'm not running a sprint here. My writing career has been a marathon, one I'm coming to the end of, and therefore it's even more necessary that I allow myself to slow down, catch my breath, and conserve my vigor so, when it's time to make that final push toward the finish line, I'll be in possession of 3 1/2 decades of instincts, endurance, and strength to help me complete the race. I call that success, even if I didn't get there with as much under my belt or anywhere near as fast as I intended.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Friday, August 11, 2023

Pros and Cons of Taking Break from Writing, Part 1 by Karen S. Wiesner


Pros and Cons of Taking Break from Writing,

Part 1

by Karen S. Wiesner

 

In this two-part article, I evaluate aging, progress, and momentum as well as talk about the indisputable value breaks provide one in their particular discipline along with the damage protracted absences from said discipline can also do.

As I get older, I think more about how much energy I had in the past and how much I was able to accomplish in such a short time. Frequently, I'm shocked about how I was able to do all I did, juggling dozens of balls all at the same time--seemingly without break a sweat. That's not the case anymore. These days, I call my former, amazing ability to accomplish my superpower…one I've almost completely lost as I age.

In my youth, my superpower allowed me to write five full-length novels and five (usually very long) novellas in a single year--completing all the steps involved from outline to final polish for all these stories in that year. I'm not sure how long I'll continue to freak out that I have such trouble finishing a mere three novels (and no novellas at all) in a year's time now. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

As you can tell, there's some grief and discouragement involved, but I've nearly reached the stage of acceptance in this process as well as the ability to reevaluate the best way to go about completing the activities I expend my diminished energy on. One such review involves a topic that has been a favorite of mine throughout my career: Namely, the pros and cons of taking a break from writing. The reason I started thinking about this recently is because I'm constantly looking at what I want to get done versus what I'm actually accomplishing over time. I assess this from one year to the next as well as from one month to the next, since most of the steps in my writing projects take around a month to complete. In the middle of any given year, I want to check on my progress. Doing this allows me take a long view of my progress as well as to gauge my momentum (or lack therefore) over time.

I've talked about this before in this column, so some of you already know that I'm counting down to writing the final books in my last two series. At that point, I intend to retire from writing, and I'd like to begin illustrating children's books indefinitely. To that end, for the last couple years, I've been taking online art courses in several mediums, trying out different things, finding out what interests me the most and where my talents lie. I try to fit a week or so of "art practice" into my schedule each month. It's not easy to do this because during the short time (usually the last week of the month) I allot to applying my love of art, it threatens to steal all my interest from writing. So I need to keep it contained; I have to decide what's possible in that short time I give myself to devote to art. This new love threatens to overtake me if I indulge it even for a short time and too often. While I want to be learning art craft during this time before I retire from writing, I can't let it take over. I have to get back to my writing sooner rather than later because I'm determined to finish these final two series to provide myself and readers closure before I retire from writing.

2024 was my goal year for making the transition between the two disciplines of writing and art. At the end of 2023, I figured out that it was possible to outline and write during the course of the next year what I thought at the time were three books. I might not have time to revise and polish all of them until early 2024, but I could at least get the first drafts written. I started 2023 pretty optimistic. In the first few months, I accomplished an admirable amount of tasks. I finished off the books I'd started in 2022 after getting critiques from my partners on several of them. I wasn't happy with how much work all of those required, taking more effort and longer time than I ever intended to complete them. Again, that seems to be a new thing in this aging process. But, alas, several things got done and dusted. I also outlined the final story in my Peaceful Pilgrims Series and felt really good about how that series would end. I had to pause in progress on my novels to get ahead on a couple months' worth of articles for this weekly column, something I used to be able to slam out in no time and I wouldn't have to think about it again for the next year. Ugh, ugh, ugh.

I finally got back to business on my novel writing goals for the year in May 2023. While outlining (again what I initially thought was) the second to the last book in my Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series, I hit my first real snag in upsetting the goals I'd set for the year: I realized I still had too much material to cover to finish the series with a single book. Although I felt pretty far from solidifying the specific details on what was needed to wrap up the loose threads still dangling in this series (and still do at the time of this writing), I couldn't escape that there was no way to get it all into one book. Believe me, I tried. I definitely did not want the final offering of the series to end up 500 pages. I came to the conclusion that, with the number of viewpoints I would need to complete the series, it might be better to divide them into two separate parts. So one final book to finish this series became two, or one that will be presented in two separate parts. The two separate parts could end up novels or novellas, or one of each. At this point, I'm too early in the process to know how that will turn out. Bottom line: I definitely had a major setback to finishing what I wanted to in 2023.

At the six month juncture of 2023, I realized I'd fallen further behind than I wanted to be in my annual achievements by that time. I'd taken an entire month off because we had family members visit that we only get to spend a few weeks at a time with during the summer. While I had no regrets in doing that, it was a little depressing to think that my plan to finish writing the last books of the two series I have left to complete before I retire from writing might not get written this year after all. That means that my intention to begin illustrating children's books once all the stories I ever want to write are finished will have to wait. That was the second snag and undeniably a major setback.

In my discouragement (kneejerk reaction, I think, left over from my former superpower), I instinctively decided to pull the fire alarm so my goals for the year wouldn't be thwarted. Incidentally, I also had no time at all in the months of June and July to get any art practice in. Potentially, I might not be able to squeeze that time in during the months of August and September either, since I'd figured out during the first six months of the year that I was spreading myself out very thin with all I wanted to accomplish every month--between writing, art, articles for Alien Romances, and playing piano. Every single day was jam-packed, which is part of the reason why June ended up such a bust for me in terms of accomplishment. Even if I'd had time, I was mentally and physically too tired to do much of anything.

With a solid rest under my belt, I was determined to get back on track: I decided I'd write the two novels I'd outlined earlier in the year back to back. In July I would write the final book in my Peaceful Pilgrims Series. This was the shorter novel of the two and a pretty straightforward romance. I allotted writing 2-3 scenes on weekdays in July to the task of completing the first draft of that novel. The second novel would be longer and infinitely more complicated given that it would ultimately be a romantic paranormal horror suspense story, so I planned to give myself two months--August and September--to complete the first draft by writing only 1-2 scenes a day. That way I wouldn't become overwhelmed to the point that my daily writing would suffer.

July was, to say the least, an exhausting month. My writing quality each day was high, and that's about the best thing I can say. I was doing a lot, getting close to overreaching with how much I was producing on a daily basis (up to 27 pages/8000 words a day sometimes!). By the time the last week of the month rolled around, I was still looking at finishing the final eight scenes before the month concluded and several new things both writing and non-writing related threatened to give me even more to do each day that I wasn't sure I could handle.

The thought of finishing the Peaceful Pilgrims story in July and instantly moving into writing the next in my final series in August and September was intimidating, demoralizing. My brain screamed mutiny at the mere prospect. I was grateful that the last Peaceful Pilgrims book promises to become one of my best (after I wrap up the other steps I'll need to perform in the course of completing it). However, it was very clear to me even before I got to the last week of finishing the novel that I couldn't move into writing the next novel without a break. How much of a break, I wasn't exactly sure, but I knew burnout was inevitable. I was at a crossroads: If I couldn't accomplish all I'd intended to in 2023, my retirement and beginning my next career would have to wait, but I couldn't take the risk that my writing would suffer if I rushed ahead and forced myself to plow right into the next project without taking some kind of a break.

My poor husband heard my angst over this issue on a daily basis for the last two weeks in July, as I tried to decide the best course of action concerning my dilemma. He surprised me one morning when he told me about a weekly podcast he watches devoted to the discipline of swimming. In this particular video, the host talked about the pros and cons of taking a break from swimming. Although I've spent years thinking I understood the issue of the indisputable value breaks provide in writing, as well as the damage protracted absences can also do, I learned something as my husband summarized the points the swimming instructor brought up.

In next week's part of this article, I'll cover the general connections we can make and extrapolations that can be applied when studying the pros and cons of taking a break in nearly any discipline, and I'll conclude the status of my 2023 goals.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Thursday, March 09, 2023

Blood as a Youth Potion

Could techniques that restore markers of youth to old mice have any effect on human subjects?

Blood Transfusion Experiment in Mice

Cellular senescence, a "state in which cells stop growing and dividing," contributes to the aging of various tissues in the body. In one experiment, two mice were surgically spliced together, like Frankensteinian conjoined twins. The younger mouse showed signs of aging, while the old mouse gained some of the young one's youthful health. To distinguish blood-borne factors from other effects, the blood of old mice has been transfused into young ones, causing the recipients to show "increased expression of senescence biomarkers in the muscle, kidney, and liver." They also suffered loss of strength and endurance.

Senolytic agents, "drugs that eliminate senescent cells," when infused into the blood of the old mice, reduced the ill effects on the victims of the age-to-youth transfusions.

Conversely, transfusing the blood of young mice into old ones "decreased tissue damage in the liver, kidney, and muscles of old mice."

These studies remind me of a classic quasi-vampire story from 1896 (one year before DRACULA), "Good Lady Ducayne," by Mary Braddon. The wealthy title character has a reputation for being generous to her young, female paid companions. But why have they all mysteriously wasted away and died? It turns out that her villainous personal physician has been drugging the girls with chloroform and secretly draining their blood to transfuse it into their elderly employer, maintaining vigor unnatural for her advanced years. This method of forestalling the ravages of age sounds like obsolete pseudo-science. How surprising to learn that such a method might actually work, to some extent at least.

Unfortunately, neither senolytics nor the vital fluids of vigorous young people can presently act as a fountain of youth for human patients. If healthy blood could serve that purpose, negative social consequences such as exploitation of the incarcerated or the poor could result. Money or reductions in prison time might offer an irresistible temptation to "donate" blood to the privileged classes.

Special people whose blood confers health or immortality form a long-standing science fiction trope. For instance, THE IMMORTAL, a 1969-70 TV series, based on short stories by SF writer James Gunn, features a man whose transfused blood heals a dying millionaire. However, the effect wears off after a while. Naturally the rich man wants to keep the other one as a living blood bank, so the potential victim goes on the run. in Tananarive Due's African Immortals novels, beginning with MY SOUL TO KEEP, the Immortals of the series title keep their nature secret to avoid being hunted for their blood, through which their immortality can be passed on. If a human family or subspecies with rejuvenating blood existed, it seems all too likely that they might be imprisoned and bled for the benefit of the elite.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt