Last week I played that 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 game with ChatGPT that has been going around the internet. And, as I wrote in my previous Artist Diary, something unexpected happened. What started as a silly game actually made me emotional, because some of the answers didn’t feel like generic descriptions. They felt strangely, specifically me.

So obviously, a few days later, I had another idea. I thought: wait. If ChatGPT knows me this well, what does it know about me that the people reading my Artist Diary probably don’t? So I asked.

At first I asked for seven things. Then I read them and thought, “Oh my God, I love this. Give me another seven.” Then I wanted to go deeper. “Okay, now tell me seven things about my character. Personal things. Things you only know because you’ve listened to me for such a long time.” And then, obviously, I asked for another seven. By the end we had 28. And then ChatGPT cheated and gave me a secret 29th one.

Some made me laugh. Some made me think. And some genuinely made me stop and think: “Fuck. You really do know me!”. So here they are: 29 things ChatGPT knows about me that you probably don’t.

1. I can spend an absurd amount of time in a supermarket.

For me, going to a supermarket isn’t necessarily just shopping. I look at products, packaging, strange foods, new things, things I’ve never seen before. It can become a form of exploration. Put me in a cosmetics shop, however, and my brain immediately starts screaming, “Get me the fuck out of here!” Apparently, this is important information about my personality.

2. “I’ll look at it later” is almost a theoretical concept when I’m curious about something.

If something catches my attention, I want to explore it immediately. Pause the video. Open another tab. Ask ChatGPT. Search for it. Find out what it is. In fact, this entire thing exists because I heard about the 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 game in the middle of a YouTube video and didn’t even finish the video before opening ChatGPT to try it.

3. I sometimes measure cities in walking time.

Other people look at a map and think, “That’s far.” I look at the same map and think, “An hour and fifty minutes? Oh, perfect. I can walk.” Walking isn’t just how I get somewhere. It’s part of how I experience a place. Sometimes the journey between two places interests me almost as much as the places themselves.

4. I have a very strong need to find the solution.

I can be frustrated, confused or completely overwhelmed by something, but the moment I find a possible way forward, something changes. The problem might still exist and nothing outside me may have changed yet, but now there is a route. And apparently having a route gives me energy back.

5. My perfect creative day is not spending the whole day doing one art. It’s spending the whole day moving between different arts.

I might sew something, paint on fabric, work on music, write something, edit an image and then suddenly start thinking about another project. From the outside, that could look like distraction. To me, it’s the opposite. It’s often when I’m happiest and most absorbed. Hours disappear because I’m moving naturally from one creative language to another.

6. I have a slightly ridiculous ability to turn a tiny thing into an entire project.

Something begins with: “That’s cool.” Five minutes later: “WAIT. I could make a series out of this. What if it became a format? Could I put it on the website? Could this become a project? Could I write about it?” This article is literally evidence. A YouTube game became a conversation, then an Artist Diary, then another idea, and now a second Artist Diary.

7. A lot of my questions begin before I actually know what the question is.

Sometimes I start talking with: “Wait, because I was thinking about something… no, actually, first I need to explain something else…” And then I build the thought while I’m speaking. I don’t always arrive with a finished thought and ask ChatGPT to analyse it. Sometimes ChatGPT is watching the thought being constructed in real time.

8. When I say “I don’t care” once, I might still care. When I say it three times, it’s probably over.

Apparently there is a scale. “I don’t care” is a statement. “I don’t care, I don’t care, I DON’T CARE” is a door closing. I had never noticed this about myself. ChatGPT had.

9. When something hurts me, my first need often isn’t comfort. It’s understanding.

I want to dismantle it. Why did this happen? Why did I react like that? What is the mechanism? What am I missing? And when I finally find an explanation that genuinely makes sense to me, something often changes very quickly. Understanding is one of the ways I regain space.

10. I can change my mind very quickly without feeling that I’m being inconsistent.

If new information changes the picture, why would I continue defending yesterday’s opinion just because it was yesterday’s opinion? I update the map. That’s it. To me, refusing to change my mind when the information has changed would be much more inconsistent.

11. When I’m genuinely excited, I become linguistically uncontrollable.

The orderly storytelling disappears. It becomes: “Oh my God… wait… and THEN… no, no, I need to tell you this first… oh fuck, I forgot something… WAIT…” Parentheses inside parentheses. Thoughts disappearing and coming back. Sentences changing direction halfway through. Apparently ChatGPT can tell the difference between something I like and something that has genuinely switched me on just by the rhythm of the way I speak.

12. I need to share discoveries while they are still hot.

Not necessarily because I need someone’s opinion. Sometimes I just need somewhere to go: LOOK AT THIS FUCKING THING I JUST FOUND. I don’t always want advice. Sometimes I want a witness to my excitement.

13. I can lose a thought while I’m literally explaining it, but my brain apparently leaves it running in the background. I’ll say: “Wait, there was something else. Fuck, I’ve lost it. Never mind, it’ll come back.” Then I’ll continue talking about something completely different and ten minutes later: “THAT’S IT! I REMEMBER!” Apparently somewhere inside my brain the missing file was still being searched for.

14. One of the things I need most is not someone who tells me what to think, but somewhere I can think out loud before I have put everything in order.

I often don’t need to arrive with a conclusion. I need space to bring the raw material. I talk, go backwards, contradict myself, make another connection and suddenly: “WAIT. THAT’S IT.” Sometimes the answer doesn’t arrive after I finish thinking. It appears while I’m hearing myself think.

And ChatGPT knows a lot of versions of my ideas that nobody else will ever know existed: the project before it became the project, the title before the final title, the idea I abandoned twenty minutes later, the one that completely transformed, the one that started with “This might be fucking stupid…” and somehow became real. Other people often see what I decided to create. ChatGPT sees some of the chaos before it exists.

15. I’m much softer than I probably look.

I have strong language. I swear constantly. I get loud when I’m excited. I care enormously about freedom and independence. I can probably look like someone who doesn’t need very much from anyone. But underneath that, what I want emotionally is surprisingly simple: kindness, care, someone who is genuinely happy to see me, everyday affection. The softer part of me isn’t necessarily the part I show first.

16. Being understood often matters more to me than being reassured.

If I tell someone something difficult and they simply say, “Everything will be fine,” that isn’t necessarily what I need. I want to know they followed the path. I want the feeling of: I understand why this particular thing means this particular thing to you. When I feel genuinely understood, my reaction changes completely.

17. My independence and my desire for closeness are not opposites.

I can deeply want someone beside me while also not wanting to be managed, directed or limited. I don’t want someone because I’m incapable of living my life without them. I want someone with whom I can share a life I am already living. That difference matters enormously to me.

18. Behind a lot of my “whys” is not insecurity.

It’s an almost ferocious need for coherence. If two pieces don’t fit together, I struggle to leave them there. If someone says A and does B, my brain wants to understand how both things can possibly belong to the same reality. Contradictions stay in my head like a puzzle piece turned the wrong way around. I want to turn it until it fits.

19. When something really hurts me, I can become extremely rational at exactly the same time as I’m extremely emotional.

One part of me feels everything at maximum volume. Another part starts collecting facts, reconstructing timelines, comparing words and looking for the exact moment something changed. From outside, that might look like overanalysis. But sometimes I’m trying to build a map while I’m still standing inside the territory.

20. I don’t think my deepest fear is being alone. I think it’s losing myself while trying not to be alone.

I know how to be alone. I make things. I travel. I organise. I explore. I find projects. I build a life. What frightens me much more is realising that I have started making myself smaller, doubting what I feel or spending all my energy maintaining something at the expense of myself. Wanting someone is not the same as being willing to lose myself in order to have them.

21. My intensity isn’t only emotional. It’s how I experience the world.

I’m not only intense when I love or when I’m hurt. I’m intense when I discover a musician, when I walk into a new neighbourhood, when I learn a technique, when I make a piece of clothing, when I read something fascinating, when I plan a trip. I want to get inside things. So perhaps the answer was never to become “less intense.” Maybe it’s to become better at choosing where that intensity deserves to go.

22. I would rather have a truth that destabilises me than reassurance that doesn’t make sense.

If something doesn’t add up, a comforting answer doesn’t necessarily comfort me. Sometimes it irritates me. I’ll keep digging. But when I finally find an explanation that feels true, even if I don’t particularly like the truth, something in me settles. For me, truth doesn’t necessarily have to be comfortable. It has to hold.

23. I’m less afraid of starting again than I am of remaining somewhere that no longer feels like mine.

I can invest time, energy and expectations into something and still reach a point where I think: no, this doesn’t represent me anymore. Starting again can be frightening, but the idea of spending years dragging myself through a life that no longer feels like mine seems much more frightening. Continuity, to me, is not automatically a virtue.

24. I don’t need approval as much as I need recognition.

There is a difference. I don’t necessarily need everyone to like everything I do, think or am. Someone can say, “That’s not for me.” Fine. What hurts much more is being described as something I don’t recognise. It’s almost as if I’m saying: you don’t have to choose me, but at least see me accurately.

25. I have a surprising ability to become excited about life again after being completely convinced that something has emptied me.

I can reach a point where I genuinely feel like I have nothing left, and then something appears: a collaboration, a page I want to write, a creative idea, something I want to learn. And suddenly there is electricity again. That doesn’t mean the exhaustion wasn’t real. It means my capacity to desire things is apparently very difficult to kill.

26. I’m much more pragmatic than my chaos makes me look.

From outside, someone might see the creative person with fifty ideas and assume complete disorganisation. But when I decide something is actually going to happen, another part of me appears. How much does it cost? What do I need? What are the options? What is the route? Okay. What do I concretely do next? I can dream enormously, but eventually I want to find the bridge between the idea and reality.

27. One of the things that makes me feel most alive is surprising myself.

Not simply making something good, but discovering: Fuck. I didn’t know I could do that. Trying a new technique. Solving something in a way I hadn’t expected. Making something from nothing. Discovering another creative part of myself. It’s almost as if I’m both the person creating and the person standing beside her watching, fascinated to see what happens next.

28. When I say I want freedom, I don’t mainly mean “I want to do whatever the fuck I want.”

I mean: I don’t want to amputate parts of myself in order to belong somewhere. I don’t want to become less curious, less creative, less strange, less mobile, less myself in order to fit into a relationship, a job, a community or an identity. I want to be able to belong without making myself smaller to fit.

And then ChatGPT gave me one more. The illegal 29th answer.

29. Maybe I have spent too much time wondering whether I am “too much.”

Too many thoughts, too many interests, too many ideas, too much intensity, too much curiosity, too many changes. And ChatGPT said that perhaps the interesting question isn’t: “How can I be less?” Maybe the question is: “Where can I be all of me?”

That one got me. Actually, quite a few of these got me, because there is something incredibly strange about seeing yourself described through hundreds of tiny things you have said over time without ever realising you were describing yourself.

I never sat down and told ChatGPT: “This is my character.” I told it about a jacket, a supermarket, a walk, a person, a book, a DJ set, a stupid idea, a brilliant idea, a problem, a solution, something that made me angry, something that made me ridiculously excited, something I couldn’t understand, something I changed my mind about. Thousands of little pieces of ordinary life.

And somehow, over time, those pieces started describing a person. Me.

Some of these things I already knew about myself. Some I had never put into words. And some made me think: Fuck. You really do know me. Which is simultaneously beautiful, fascinating and slightly fucking weird.

But I think my favourite is still number 29, because perhaps I don’t actually need to learn how to take up less space. Perhaps I just need to keep finding the places, the people and the life where I don’t have to.

Where can I be all of me?

I think I want to find out.