The lights are off. Again. And I'm sitting here, staring at this blank page – or, well, the glowing screen where a blank page *should* be. For my thesis proposal. My Capstone, they call it. And it's just… nothing. Absolutely nothing. I got the prompt, the whole spiel about "synthesizing diverse scholarly perspectives" and "articulating a cogent argument," and my brain just… flatlined. Like a goddamn ECG after a headshot. No pulse. No signal. I spent the whole damn semester, yeah, all of it, just feeding prompts into that generator. Asking it to outline this paper, then that one. "Outline a critical analysis of post-structuralist critiques of neoliberal education policy." Done. "Outline a comparative study of 19th-century British and French colonial discourse in Southeast Asia." Boom. Done. It was fast. Efficient. Like a well-oiled machine, better than any unit I ever saw in the field. And I told myself, "This is smart. This is working smarter, not harder. You're busy, man. You got bills, kids, a part-time job that’s eating your soul." The convenience. The speed. It was like a drug, a real godsend, letting me keep up with these younger kids who seem to just *get* it, who never had to clear an IED or watch their buddy bleed out. They just sit there, sipping their fancy coffees, and *write*. But now it's just me. And this blinking cursor. And I don’t even know where to start. Not even the intro. Not the thesis statement. Forget the bloody counter-arguments, the evidence, the logical flow. It’s like someone just wiped the hard drive clean. All those years, all those essays, all the practice… just gone. Replaced by a button press. A few keywords. And I don't feel… angry? Sad? Just… hollow. Like I'm looking at a reflection of myself in a muddy puddle after a firefight. And it's not even me anymore. Is this what they mean by losing your edge? Or is it just… the price of convenience? I don't know, man. I honestly don't know.