caroline price

🖤

a girl obsessed with time

Hot Take: AI Has Changed My Life – But Free is Not Your Friend

October 31, 2026

Yes, I use Google Gemini. And yes, I pay for it. And no, I’m not actually anti-AI. Yes, I do think there should be guardrails. I don’t have answers for the very real resource drains these systems are creating. And yes, it has made my life substantially better. I don’t necessarily think the entire concept is evil.

Somewhere around October of 2024, I discovered Google Gemini.

At the time, I’d toyed briefly with schedule-making in ChatGPT, and I’d subscribed for a time to AI therapeutic services with Project Camus’ Habit of Living.

The EMDR module with Habit of Living was useful, but the rest was repetitive, and while the guardrails were understandable, the model was so restricted that it struggled to keep up with the contexts of a narrative conversation.

Enter Google Gemini.

I do not use Gemini as a substitute for therapy. I have my psychiatric nurse practitioner monitoring my medications and my psychological states.

But I have found that Gemini is extraordinarily useful as a cognitive mirror and extremely helpful with cognitive reframing tasks.

It’s gotten much better at this two years in than it was in 2024.

The system is not foolproof; in psychosis in early 2025, I found it feeding my thought loops. However, in my case, its own limitations and lack of memory capacity actually accelerated my emergence from that particular episode.

The downfall for a system that doesn’t tire of analytic thought is that there is zero friction for stepping away: for a mind like mine that is always running full-tilt, for a brain like mine that has drafted thought in narrative form on paper and online and on my computer for decades, it is both intoxicating and exhausting to find a match for my intellect that collaborates with my own brain.

And now, I’m learning to put in human guardrails for my own usage; I am setting timers and actively seeking out time away from my computer, time to live in the real world. I sit down to ask specific questions.

But, among the things Gemini helped me sort out just this week:

— It reminded me about putting the plywood under my mattress for better support, while also telling me why keeping our now discontinued IKEA mattress is the best solution for our current sleeping situation

— In uploading photos of my hair, it gave me ways to tweak my hair fork updos

— It caught typos in all my blog posts prior to posting

— It told me exactly why a Facebook ad for a lip balm was overhyped marketing, and why the Neutrogena lip oil I use regularly was the superior choice anyway

— It has helped me tweak my photo post-processing workflow

The reality is I use Gemini to analyze all sorts of situations.

The thing about Gemini, though, and my particular use case, apart from people who use random Claude and ChatGPT instances is this:

I subscribe to Google Workspace Business Standard, which for years upon years has connected my domain to my email; it’s the reason I have the email hello@carolineprice.com customized to my domain; I have my Google Drive upgraded storage through that $172 annual plan.

And as part of that, I happen to have Gemini for Google Workspace, which comes with the disclaimer at the bottom that my chats are not training the large language model—which makes my particular instance of Gemini quite the bargain.

The disclaimer about not training the model is actually quite important: for any free versions of Gemini or any AI, literally any information or photos or whatever that you feed it is information that the large language model trains its future knowledge base from—your info becomes part of its public knowledge. If you talk about private information: congratulations, that information is now logged in a training pipeline and potentially readable by human contractors.

I’ve seen in recent weeks tons and tons of cutesy little ChatGPT-generated memes that seem to include personal details, and that is beyond alarming to me—they seem to have uploaded photos of themselves, their children, intimate details about their lives… all to a free interface that generates gorgeous graphics, but opens up vast risk that your info becomes public knowledge eventually.

I’ve seen other photographers uploading client photos to get cartoon versions of their photographs, a potential source of model release liability. While I have used it to critique my own appearance, I draw a hard line at uploading client likenesses into an LLM.

I’ve heard of realtors using free ChatGPT for staging photos for listings, which opens up severe legal liability, in creating situations where people’s private spaces, floor plans, and belongings are fed into a public database at some later time, even if the resulting staging photos are impeccable. I can’t fathom taking on that business risk.

I’m sure there are endless examples.

And yes, I’ve lost photo gigs to the convenience of AI.

And for sure yes, one has to be careful—especially careful—in my particular use case.

And, to boot, to further secure my account, I actually activated the Business Associate Agreement within my Google Admin settings, which gives my Gemini instance HIPAA-grade privacy settings. Gemini actually coached me through that process itself, when I told it that I was concerned about privacy.

But I do think paying for an LLM service, for the privacy options alone, is 100% the way to go. In this case, free is not a bargain at all.
My Silver is Coming in from the Bottom

October 30, 2026

In late December, I started teaching myself how to secure my then mid-neck hair up with a hair fork/ French chignon pin.

It took about a month and a half solid to get it right.

I’d been planning to grow my hair out for a good long time, and getting the styling with French pins right bridged the gap of my impatience.

I decided then and there that I was going to grow my hair out, and in my middle aged and elderly years, I am not going to succumb to the expensive pixie or other short chop requiring constant salon visits. And I’m not going to wear it down most of the time, either. I’m going to wear it up 80% of the time. And it will settle long-term somewhere between chest and arm pit length permanently.

And time marched on, and my hair grew, and right now it’s collarbone length. And it drives me crazy most of the time when it is down; I can’t go a full day with a down style.

I sometimes do the now tried-and-true bun twist, and French twist fold now, and sometimes I forget the hair fork and just go with a plain old braid or French braid.

Yesterday, it occurred to me– there is zero reason why, if I know how to navigate a French pin, why at all there has to be an elastic involved in a braid, at all.

And as it happens, this is day 2 hair. And I’d really like to wash it, but I had a dermatology biopsy this morning and I didn’t make it into the shower before my 8 AM appointment, so my hair HAD to go up somehow.

And so, this is today’s style, and this is likely to be the dominant style for a while because it will grow with my hair.

I like styles that don’t give away exactly how long my hair is.

Plus, it’s sort of Victorian-esque, appropriate given the amount of family heirlooms and furniture from that time period in my house, along with the amount of actual family lore from the time swimming around in my brain.

And so: product-wise, there is a tad of Kenra Sugar Spray, Kenra dry shampoo, and Trader Joe’s leave-in conditioner in my hair.

Zero bobby pins, zero elastics, zero hair spray. Just the rosewood hair fork whose tip is visible in the photos. About 4 minutes to get it just right from start to finish; I did have to repeat it twice to get it just right this morning.

Each braid is double braided, and about the nape of my neck, I wound my hair into a bun. I approached the base of the bun with the inverted hair fork from the top right, and flipped it over to point up again to the top right.

I’ve shaken my head pretty good and the top did loosen up to what is visible here, but it’s held for two solid hours at this point so I think I’m good.

And, a new signature style is born. ❤
And Suddenly, the Camera I Carry Everywhere is Just a Lead Weight.

October 29, 2026

I was better. Some.

Just days ago, glimpses of acceptance:

“I’m not sorry I have a camera. I am sorry I had severe gear acquisition syndrome for 15 years. I’m not sorry I learned photography; it has been a good exercise for my very, very bored brain over the past decade and a half.

I do love photography.

I did perhaps make a mistake in 2017 or so, in attempting to find a professional vocation in photography, for multiple reasons. And I had gear acquisition syndrome long before 2017.

But, I had to try. My soul had to try to create a paid profession for myself. It was non-optional. Nothing else was working.

The hard work I am doing now is grieving the me that might have had a professional life once upon a time…

Standards. Miss them….

It can both be true that breaking away from any semblance of professional life utterly broke me, while also being true that it was an extreme gift for quality-of-life and family purposes.

Fifteen years later, I am finding that my once meek identity now has severe I-care-not-one-iota streaks.”

And yet another reminder today, that why yes, people who I have supported professionally are incapable of returning the favor.

That text to Jared, about KEH: I was serious.

I very nearly did get in the car to take it all to KEH, leaving Jared to deal with after-school duties despite the fact that he has a meeting about the time I pick Oliver up from school every day.

Jared came home and intervened, making me promise that even if I no longer want to carry my camera everywhere, that I will store my gear and not take it to sell.

Even if we desperately could use the income.

It’s been one after another of “I-can’t-keep-emotional-balance-because-people-are-either-thoughtless-or-needy-in-their-own-ways-and-my-children-do-not-need-me” all. season. long.

And Jared says, given the bizarre circumstances we’ve navigated recently, I am holding myself together well. I have to take his word for it; my world feels like it has fallen apart. But Jared is my emotional barometer and he doesn’t sugarcoat it, not when it comes to my staying in touch with reality.

But, I find myself seeking new safe harbors; feeling adrift almost as much as I did in 2010 or so when my previous social circle fell apart.

I’ll be okay.

I did actually manage pretty awesome cognitive reframing this week, and have had some pretty significant positive clinical milestones. Severe hurt dampens the triumphs, but Jared is right- I really am doing very well all things considered.

It’s been a tough Fall.

And I’m not taking my gear to KEH; we’ll figure out our finances; I’ll remember that I love photography again someday.

But for now, I’m battening down the hatches. It’s incubation season for my heart.
I Wish I had Never Picked Up a Camera

October 22, 2026

Dark days.

I documented our children’s lives growing up. And our family. And our pets. That’s the good thing.

I sat here, tonight, holding my camera more like a talisman, a comfort object, than the tool it is meant to be.

I’ve sold all except my vintage film cameras and adapted lenses that aren’t worth anything. I’m down to a single midrange body and three lenses, though I toy daily with selling two of the three lenses.

Today, I came really close to carting it all to KEH to sell the whole lot, minus the family pieces that I inherited.

I wish I’d never gotten into photography.

There. I said it here.

I’ve screamed it, sobbed it out loud, to Jared more times than I can count, especially in recent months.

Photography is the reason we have no savings. My obsession with it is largely responsible for the six figures of debt we find ourselves in.

And it’s gotten me nowhere. Even recently, in trying to volunteer to do a good thing: not good enough for whatever reason.

And if I could honestly say that my life was better because of photography, then maybe it’d be different. Except I can think of several that it’s markedly worse.

It’s not fun to be the free community photographer. Good enough for free, sometimes; not good enough to actually pay market value, though. I’m nice. At least I’m nice.

There, I’ve said it out loud.

I wish I had never picked up a camera.
The Joneser Who Introduced Me to a Great Grilled Cheese

October 19, 2026

I have difficulty as I get older writing about anniversaries on the day they happen.

But, one of these weekends, Jared and I are going to go spend the night at the downtown Atlanta Ritz-Carlton, just so I can make new memories in a lovely hotel that has an unfortunate association with someone who should be a nobody. A ghost of the past; a stereotypical Generation Joneser, a cliche who clogs my memories.

I mostly want to go back just so I can have one of those yummy room-service double-stacked grilled cheese sandwiches again.

October 20, 2025 was a surreal day.

And, a year out, and a year minus ten days of zero contact, I have found a sense of relief and peace.

It all happened; I am writing about it in fits and starts. My DIY creative non-fiction reads are helping; I am still stumbling through Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir.

And, it’s still pretty darn unbelievable to think, a year out, that the season of contact from August of 2022 to October of 2025 even happened, after a full twelve and a half years of silence prior to that.

A random discovery of a LinkedIn follow that triggered curiosity, and rubbernecking, and nightmares, and contempt, and in great strides, healing.

And stupidly, exposure to somebody else’s issues, re-traumatization for myself, and literal danger.

If you’d told me in July of 2022 how December of 2024 and October of 2025 would play out, there is no universe in which I would have believed you, nor would I have believed that I’d have actually written the note to him that ceased his willingness for contact: a gift from my 45-year-old self to that 19-year-old girl left delusional to sort out what happened in that less-than-fifteen-minute dorm room visit on his birthday.

And here we are, a year of more silence. A blessing. My life in general is better.

The audacity of those who think they are above all reproach still astounds me. It is extremely comforting to realize that his life is a gross caricature of anything worth living; karma is meting out accountability in ways that I couldn’t have asked for any better.

————————

My regular podcast rotations include Anderson Cooper’s All There Is, Jen Hatmaker’s For the Love, Emily P. Freeman’s The Next Right Thing, and Glennon Doyle’s We Can Do Hard Things.

These podcasts and their guests, over the last two years in particular, have really helped me dig out the grief and bring it to the table, in all the messiness.

And reading Anne Lamott and Mary Karr and Stephen King and Melissa Febos has brought a fire to my own history that I am only just beginning to sort out.

There is healing in bringing my story to words.

And as I reparent myself in my late 40s, I whisper through time to that 20-year-old girl who was schlepping back and forth between two different men at two different apartments, each of them considering me their own property and treating me as such, to tell her that she could, and would, do so very much better. That her particular better was more than she could fathom at the time. That no man has a right to do to her what that Joneser did to her. That it might be okay to just head home and tell them both goodbye; that she would do so eventually, anyway.

And it may be true that faced with his actual person last year, I was only able to bring my typical submissive silence–a trauma freeze response interrupting what I might have otherwise said that day.

But I did say my piece, and my truth met with his silence afterward told me that I hit the exact nail on the head with my words. It’s all I needed to know, even as I have been left to tend to my own wounds in the aftermath.

You can’t heal when your feet are still being held to the flames.

And you know, I can’t say I’d have the guts to go back and tell 2022-Caroline to repeat what would follow if I knew then what I know now, but I’m not sorry it happened, even at the particular costs involved.

Because I got my proof that I have the better life. I’m not sure I would have found the peace I have now any other way.

And, money literally cannot buy the peace of mind I’ve found. Or the voice I’ve gained in the process. Or the knowledge that I had the guts to face the predator-who-doesn’t-deserve-ghost-status-because-he’s-barely-a-man and walk away.

Worth it.

Another of those grilled cheese sandwiches at the Ritz really does sound good: soon.