A few months ago I renewed a regular journaling practice in an effort to find a way out of the writing silence that settled on me during the pandemic. Not much writing has come of that nor any progress on what I was really after—let’s call it my Next Big Thing, which may or may not involve writing.

And then something happened, the timing of which seemed Spirit-directed. My daughter told me about an AI-assisted journaling app she and her colleagues were developing. To her amazement, she said, it was working and would soon be ready for beta testing.

She described how the app, Manifestor, helped sort through your amorphous thoughts, organized them, and helped you prioritize, set goals, track progress, and solve life problems.

That sounded amazing. Maybe that would help me focus on next steps and bring some order to my free-floating existence. Could it help me find my Next Big Thing?

My retirement has been a rich and creative time, with one Big Thing after another unfolding—a dream book; Congo and the cloth, church partnership, and literacy projects; moving to the city and putting in a garden; hosting and aiding asylum seekers; and, most recently, an amazing trip to Japan with my daughter and granddaughter. These have all come to a natural end or lull—we are aiding and hosting another asylum-seeker from Uganda but this time around that requires far less time and attention, because we are more experienced and the system is somewhat more accommodating than it was during the Trump era and pandemic. Congo travel has become too demanding for me. The garden needs minimal tending and the resident asylum seeker is here to help.

It’s not just that I have time on my hands—I enjoy freedom and being available to my family and friends in their heavily scheduled lives. But I’ve been needing a bit more. I’m 78 but I’m not done “doing stuff,” and if so, I’d better do it now while I am more or less sound of mind and body (a little less in the latter than previously).

When Joanna described this journaling app I thought, what a good use of artificial intelligence. I’m as skeptical and concerned about AI as anyone. Using AI for writing content, for example, seems like cheating. AI-produced content (so far, from what I can tell) tends to be pedestrian and generic and may or may not be accurate. I am a lazy researcher so I might be tempted to use it in that way but that’s what it feels like—a temptation.

But if AI could be focused on process rather than content, that would eliminate the temptation to pass off AI content as your own. Instead of drawing on the vast universe of questionable knowledge, it would work with what you put into it. AI could be a helper, a tool, like computers and smart phones have become for all of us. It might help me think rather than think for me.

I thought the Manifestor developers were on to something, and I told my daughter so.

“Maybe,” Joanna said, “you’d like to be a beta tester?”

Me, a beta tester? “Absolutely!” I said.

The beta testing began this week. The Manifestor crew agreed to let me blog about my experience with the app, so that’s what I’ll be doing here for a while. I guess it’s my Next Thing, whether big or little, we’ll see.

Go to the Manifestor website to learn more about the app and sign up for a free trial when it is released.