On Blogging and Writing

When we were buying our house we looked for a bunch of different houses, put down a lot of different offers on a lot of properties that frankly I liked a lot better than the one we ended up with. This is, or was (depending on when you're reading this), just kind of the way house buying is. This would have been in 2024 and for those who may not have known or weren't around the house buying market was insane at this time. People were waving inspections bringing cash offers 10% over asking, and scooping up properties within hours of them being on the market. So we were just playing the game. None of this truly upset me… With one exception

One of these properties was a very charming little brick house from the 1950s with everything we wanted and needed. It was a really perfect fit. It was a teeny tiny bit out of our Self-Imposed price cap but still within the what we could afford. The kicker was it just so happened to be, in the neighborhood and one street over (like 300 yards away) from my best friend of 25 years (shout out the Daily Downshift)

I really wanted this property. So I asked our real estate agent if it would be appropriate and helpful for me to write a letter to the seller, entreating them to consider our offer (as it was likely to be a lower offer) for the sake of the story of my friendship. I was really attempting to pull on the heartstrings. I even asked for the opportunity to increase our offer if it was close to their top offer. Essentially I was trying to ask for something like the right of first refusal

Anyways, in that letter, as I'm wont to do, I used…what I would call…AP vocabulary, or put less kindly 11 Dollar Words (Its just like 10 Dollar Words but they go to 11). Most of which I'm confident and familiar enough with that I didn't figure it would be a problem. However, one of these words stood out to me as having been misused in a pique of overwrought verbosity…

::Cough::

If you've spent any amount of time reading this blog, hanging out with me, being internet friends. Then you know that it's something of a foible of mine to not proofread well, I don't have an editor, and you must know well that sometimes my word choice gets in my own way. I do find that I often forget words or know that I know a word for a thing but have a hard time bringing it to mind. All of which is why when I went back and reread my letter, this particular word stuck out to me is possibly being used incorrectly.

So, being the modern era, instead of having a human that I trust and love proofread/edit my work, I threw it into ¹Chatty-G and asked if I was using the word correctly… I was not. So I asked if it could help me find the right word or refactor that sentence to actually ask what I was trying to ask or say what I was trying to say. After I was happy with the results I gave the letter to my wife to proofread. I did ask specifically if she thought any of it was written by AI. I explained what I did and she said it sounded pretty much just like me. Which was encouraging because, ultimately I only swapped out a few words.

Well, we didn't get that house. I never go any feedback about the letter either. I was so frustrated at this point in the house hunting process that I deleted this letter and I don't even remember that word I was trying to use. BUT, what that whole kerfuffle was good for was making me realized that when its something I am passionate about…I can and do enjoy writing.

All my life, all through school I hated writing. I was bad at it and that made a lot of my education very fraught and caused me no end of trouble. In fact, once in middle school I failed a history test because it was all essay based and my teacher graded on grammar as well as content. So it has been quite refreshing actually to learn that writing can actually be something that I can not only do…passably…but can also be something that I enjoy doing. Thus. This blog.

~ Corey

Yes, sometimes I use LLMs for doing stuff. Sue me. ↩

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