Recursive mirror

I have five years of raw journal entries. Unfiltered. No audience in mind. Just me talking to myself about games, music production, philosophy, frustration, and the occasional boat gender question.[1]

This site exists because I wanted to share some of that thinking. But there's a transformation involved. Raw thought → readable prose. And I use AI to help with that transformation.

So here's the meta question: Can an AI analyze my raw voice well enough to help preserve it during the transformation?

The process

I pointed Claude at my journal directory[2] and asked it to identify patterns. Then compare those patterns to what's already on this site.

The result is a reference document - a catalog of my voice patterns with examples, transformation rules, and guidelines for AI collaboration.[3] A style guide, but for something harder to pin down than fonts and colors.

What it found

Some patterns I knew. Fragment punches. Self-questioning. The "Please." at the end of earnest requests. Others I didn't consciously recognize:

• Staccato rhythm - Short. Short. Longer flowing thought. Short.
• Profanity as punctuation - Not filler. Emphasis. ("This is all fucking insane but I have a mortgage.")
• Rhetorical escalation - Questions that answer themselves through absurdity.
• Call to action closers - "Figure it out." "Let's get to work."

The weird part

This post was written using that analysis. The AI knows what patterns to preserve, what to add, what to avoid. It's reading my journals, reading its own analysis of my journals, then writing in my voice based on that analysis.

Recursive mirror.

Does it work? You're reading the output. The ideas are mine - the phrasing is a collaboration. Not sure that's different from working with any editor who knows your style.[4]

What I got out of it

Beyond the obvious outputs (this post, the reference doc), the process surfaced project ideas I'd forgotten about. A debug-themed social deduction game. A "cynical originality checker" that shows you how unoriginal your ideas are. A keyboard-to-synth that turns typing patterns into melodies.

Five years of notes. Plenty of material. Some of it might actually become something.

Let's get to work.