Somehow, We Made a Coloring Book
We started experimenting with AI as assistive technology for memory and executive function after brain injury. Somewhere along the way, Tony showed up.
One of the stranger things about Project TBI is that sometimes we start out trying to solve one problem and something completely different falls out the other side.
Lately, a lot of our experimenting has been around AI as assistive technology. Not AI as a novelty. Not AI as some magical answer to brain injury. Just practical stuff. Can it help hold onto an idea? Can it help me remember where I left off? Can it help organize something when my executive function decides it has had enough for the day? Can it help me come back tomorrow without starting from zero again?
And apparently, sometimes the answer is yes.
Because somewhere in the middle of all of that, we made a tortoise.
His name is Tony. Of course it is.
We had been talking about the simple things that help slow the brain down a little. Coloring. Gardening. Building something. Going outside. Listening to music. Doing one thing instead of trying to do fifteen things at once.
One drawing became another, and Tony started having his own little adventures. He baked things. Built things. Sat outside. Put on headphones when the world got too loud. And before I really knew what was happening, we had enough drawings that I looked at the whole thing and thought, “Well, shit. I think we made a book.”
That became Tony the Tortoise: Little steps. Big days.
Tony isn’t supposed to be “the brain injury tortoise.” He doesn’t have a diagnosis written across his shell, and he isn’t here to tell anybody how they’re supposed to recover. He just goes through his day. Some days he has energy. Some days are quieter. Sometimes he makes something. Sometimes he needs a break.
That’s pretty much the point.
We made a small free sampler with a few of the actual coloring pages from the book. No signup gymnastics. No sales funnel nonsense. If you want a few quiet minutes with Tony, print them out and color the damn tortoise.
Download the free Meet Tony coloring pack
If you like Tony, the full coloring book is available on Amazon. But if all you ever do is print these few pages and get ten quiet minutes out of them, that’s good enough for me.
This whole thing came out of experimenting with AI as assistive technology, and I think that’s the part I’m most interested in. Sometimes assistive technology helps you remember an appointment.
And sometimes, apparently, it helps you make a tortoise.