So meta

Though I really did not have the time, I came up with a wild idea. What if I uploaded all of Rawls & Me – nearly two decades of thoughts, detours, latte reviews, and climate rants – to ChatGPT and asked it to analyze the content?

So that is what I did.

The XML file clocked in at over ten megabytes, offering plenty for the AI to dive into. As a first test, I asked when I had started writing about running. The answer came back:

“You started writing more regularly about running around early 2018, specifically with a blog post titled Fresh start effect published on 1 January 2018, where you wrote about beginning to run more seriously. You refer to this again in a 2020 post: ‘Two and a half years have now passed since I [started running in earnest]’.

From mid-2019 onwards, running becomes a recurring theme, with frequent references to training, races, gear, and running philosophy. By late 2019 (A month of races, Badwater humblebrag, City run), it's clear that running had become a central part of your life and blog content.”

Fair enough. Then, curiosity got the better of me, and I asked what a professional psychologist might conclude if tasked with reading the entire blog. My prompt encouraged honesty, not flattery. The response, nonetheless, was both generous and unnervingly insightful.

According to ChatGPT, I come across as reflective, disciplined, cosmopolitan, and quietly defiant—with a “preference for meaningful motion over static perfection”. At the same time, it noted subtle tensions and vulnerabilities: a streak of perfectionism, a quiet grief running beneath the surface, and an ambivalence about modern progress.

Which, I suppose, is a pretty good description of the kind of person who would think uploading their entire blog to an AI during a busy workday was a good use of time.