• Stop apologizing for being vulnerable.

• Stop apologizing for being honest.

• Stop apologizing for being human.

Instead, I want to say thank you.

Thank you for your vulnerability, honesty, and for being real.

It takes a lot of gumption to come on a social media platform and talk about your unemployment journey.

Especially while being exposed to and at the mercy of oh so much unsolicited advice from those who have absolutely no idea what long-term unemployment feels like.

At the end of the day, we’re all people and I really appreciate those who no longer care about being performative.

I am treating this process with as much empathy and humanity as I possibly can.

In my interviews, I act like a real person; I ask hard questions.

Because I’ve been through and seen it all. The toxic and hostile work environments of which I NEVER want to find myself in again.

So I’m being extremely picky while I can afford to. I know not everyone has that luxury. But companies need to understand this is a two-way street.

Candidates are expected to be prompt, polished, and perfect.

Meanwhile, recruiters and hiring managers can be 5-10 minutes late for an interview.

They can yawn, eat, take phone calls, or zone out while we’re speaking to them about our experience for the umpteenth time and why we’re over qualified for a job that’s been posted online for over three months.

Then, they can take days or even weeks to respond with an update, or sometimes never at all.

But they want someone to start “yesterday”.

Meanwhile, mortgages, rent, utility bills, car payments, childcare, medical bills don’t care about a bank account that hasn’t been replenished in four months, only that they want their money, sometimes with interest, or late fees.

Because charging people who don’t have money even more money on top of what they already owe makes all the sense in the world on a floating rock in the middle of a vast universe.

I swear, sometimes I’ll see a picture of our planet in space and wonder how it’s possible we’re all having to struggle to survive on such a beautiful planet. Why are we doing all this to ourselves?

The current job market is a brutal hellscape and psychological mind fuck. And it can go for weeks, months, or even over a year at a time.

So if you know someone who’s currently in this situation, check in on them, will ya? Because I can tell you with all confidence that they are not okay.

I’m a basic bitch: my favorite season is fall, my favorite color is purple, my favorite flower is the sunflower, and my favorite restaurant is Red Lobster. I love doing yoga and pilates, sometimes Zumba, I wear rose gold jewelry and Uggs with leggings, I love to bake, hike, garden, and watch true crime documentaries till my eyes bleed.

However, I am not a fan of the Pumpkin Spice Latte. I digress.

But do you know why I’m proud to say that I’m a boring white female who lives in the United States? Because I’m not a racist!

When I’m in a room full of just white people, it gets monotonous, okay? Where’s the diversity? The accents? The cool hair styles? The authentic jewelry and attire? Unless we’re acting like posers, you don’t see much of that.

But because I was raised with so much diversity around me, I know what I’m missing. Many, many, many others in this country have no idea, and it’s not only sad, but extremely damaging.

When I was in preschool, my best friend was a black girl named Jennifer. I loved her beautiful long braids and her happy giggle. We would go to our “tree house” every day during recess, which was just a climbing apparatus on the playground and we pretended it was our very own clubhouse.

I never, ever questioned why she looked different from me, or why we shouldn’t be friends because of it. That’s not how I was raised. I just remember her spirit and how much fun we had together in that short time in our lives.

After preschool I never saw her again because my family moved to a different area. But I still remember how special that friendship was and it’s what started my affinity towards black people. They’re some of the best friends I’ve made over the years and I feel safe around them.

Those out there who don’t see their magic are missing out!

Beyond that, I am so fortunate to have grown up in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the country: Rancho Peñasquitos, a suburb of San Diego, California. I lived in a cul-de-sac with 11 houses, 5 of the 11 homes were inhabited by Filipino families.

Another house was inhabited by a Middle Eastern family from Pakistan.

Every year, my street would throw a summer block party and they were epic! The food spread was one of the best parts, and I’m talking about spread!

The Filipino family across the street from my house were famous for bringing Lumpia, Pancit, and Chicken Adobo to the table.

The Pakistani family would bring homemade Chicken Karahi, spiced Biryani, and flatbreads like Naan and Paratha.

Being a Sicilian originally from Long Island, NY, my mom would bring her Chopped Meat Lasagna with her famous Marinara Sauce that you could smell simmering from around the corner.

We all clamored for each other’s specialty recipes every year and the excitement was palpable.

Those were my absolute favorite times growing up. We’d all sit around a bonfire at the end of the street in the cul-de-sac circle, my dad would bring out his guitar and everyone would be singing songs, eating food, and playing games under our only street light until the wee hours of the morning.

I wouldn’t trade those memories for anything. And I didn’t know it at the time, but I was being enriched with so much culture. Learning how my neighbors celebrated different holidays and traditions was something in which I would always partake.

I also had all kinds of ethnicities in my classes growing up: Native American, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Taiwanese, Mexican, Brazilian, Indonesian, Ethiopian, Indian, Iranian, you name it.

My elementary school celebrated those cultures by teaching us about Chinese New Year, Hanukkah, Ramadan, Hinduism, Buddhism, and so many other holidays, beliefs, and traditions.

I remember a new Vietnamese student named Ellen who moved to the U.S. half way through my 4th grade year. One day for show-and-tell, she brought homemade bánh mì for the entire class. I’ll never forget the reveal during her presentation of lifting the cover of the steam basket. Any time I visit a Vietnamese restaurant, I think about that till this day.

My catholic church growing up was 70% Asian. I was the only white girl in one of my CCD classes at one point. Didn’t bother me one bit, I didn’t see them as brown, because I was hanging out with all my friends.

When I went to college at San Jose State University, my roommate Gloria, was originally born in Mexico and her family moved to Half Moon Bay. She would speak Spanish to her parents every night on our dorm room phone and having learned Spanish throughout all four years of high school, I was able to pick up so much more from her and we would try to have fluent conversations.

Her boyfriend at the time, Horacio, was always such a gentleman. He never came into our dorm room when he would pick Gloria up for their date nights when I was there even though I always told him it was okay. He didn’t want to make me feel uncomfortable and would just wait in the hall. Truth be told, we felt more safe when he was around, he was so hefty he could’ve been a bouncer or a bodyguard.

SJSU also had some of the best Mexican food on campus. There was this restaurant in the student union called Cactus Cafe, which had the most delicious corn chowder I’ve ever had in my life! I still think about it till this day.

In my line of work as a marketer, I have the pleasure of working with different people from all over the world, and I absolutely love it! Hearing their different accents, accommodating to their time zones, getting to see different cities in the background on Zoom calls, it really makes the world feel smaller.

I say all this to say, being cultured is ingrained in me and I wish there was more of this kind of awareness and appreciation in our country.

I never gave a second thought to how I was raised with so many different ethnicities all around me until the tRump administration and the rebirth of white supremacy and Christian nationalism.

I knew racism existed of course, but as far as I was concerned, it was a thing of the past. Now, racists have become more emboldened within the last 10 years and it’s absolutely terrifying!

I just can’t get into that headspace of when you see someone who’s black or brown and your first instinct is to treat them like shit? Or harm them? Call them names? Report them to ICE?

The saddest part is racism is taught. And it’s still trickling down through generations. And now with this corrupt and uninhibited regime at the helm, these idiots feel empowered.

I cannot believe how far we’ve regressed as a country. Two hundred years worth of progress unwound in just a decade by some fat, stupid, bloated, pathetic, demented narcissist, racist, adjudicated rapist, vindictive con man, and 34-time felon.

There is NOTHING redeemable about him and there is NOTHING redeemable about his followers!

tRump is not a man’s man. He has no idea what it’s like to be in the working class. He’s never had to do manual labor, go grocery shopping, hell I don’t think he’s ever driven a car!

And yet, MAGA loves him just because he hates who they hate. Racism is one hell of a drug!

I may be a boring and basic white female, but I’m a safe space. No matter who you are, where you come from, what your background is, I will befriend you and protect you, no questions asked.

This also goes for those in the LGBTQ community. Because until this nightmare is over, and it soon will be after the midterms, marginalized people need to know who they can trust until we make racism shameful again and these idiots crawl back into their holes where they belong.

Do I have the what? Bandwidth? Am I some kind of internet modem all of a sudden? I told my husband about it later that day and we’ve been laughing about it ever since. That was in 2019.

Since then, I’ve been hearing phrases such as:

• Low-hanging fruit

• Move the needle

• Boil the ocean

• Circle back

• Unpack that for me

• Reinventing the wheel

• Are we in alignment?

• Building the plane while it’s flying

And I’m sure there is a whole mess of others I am missing. But my question is, when did all this start? And why? I’ve been in the corporate game for 20 years and just recently, it’s like this type of rhetoric is getting more and more prominent.

I had a boss once who spoke such fluent corporate jargon on our 1:1 calls I thought I was having a stroke. I couldn’t follow anything this person was saying. It was word salad. Saying absolutely nothing by saying a lot. It got us nowhere. I was like, “In English please.”

I recently came across an article released by NPR called, “Study links falling for corporate buzzwords with poor decision-making” and my favorite line reads, “If any of that reminds you of a recent company conference call or your LinkedIn feed, a recent study suggests this is more than just empty buzzwords. It concludes that people who really buy into corporate jargon might actually be worse at their jobs.”

Oh, I have receipts to prove that is true. I believe certain people in corporations hide behind these so-called buzzwords and phrases to prevent the fact that they have no idea what they’re doing and are just trying to establish authority. It’s all just empty speech. It’s all performative.

I never learned a thing from this person. I wasn’t inspired by them, wasn’t supported by them, more than anything, aside from the corporate jargon, was actually verbally abused by them.

So when this study came out and I started to become aware of the fact that it’s not just me wondering what the hell people are talking about, I breathed a sigh of relief.

I feel like in the last year or so it’s gotten more out of hand and I wish I knew why. Why are people grasping at straws to sound smart? Why can’t they just discuss the task at hand. We’re not meeting our numbers, what can be done about it? Simple.

We don’t need fancy talk, just say what you mean. We’re all smart, we’re all educated, and we have our jobs because we know our shit. We don’t need special jargon to prove otherwise.

Just get your job done and go home.

P.S. Do NOT get me started on acronyms! My god! That’s a whole other post for another day, but sometimes I feel like I’m communicating with a bunch of eye charts.

Here’s the video:

@uwvdh738Sen. Ruben Gallego just laid out a response to election interference that's sending shockwaves through Washington. If Trump tries to nationalize or rig the 2026 midterms, Gallego says the response shouldn't be symbolic... it should be total economic resistance. A nationwide general strike. No planes. No trains. No schools. No business as usual. This isn't about protest... it's about leverage. #DemocracyDefense #GeneralStrike #RubenGallego #Electionlntegrity #StopTheCoup

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This needs to go mega viral. Share it everywhere!!!

I could not support this more! If tRump insists on screwing with the November election, then it’s about time we show him who’s really in power!

Without us consumers, everything fails. We stop buying, we stop working, we stop all progress.

There are way more of us than there are in the oligarchy, so let’s get to work!

Let’s crash the stock market. Let’s crash the economy. Let’s bring the United States to a screeching halt!

I know it’s risky, but it’s the last hope we have left. This is our time to revolt.

If you’re a teacher, stay home.

If you’re a pilot, stay home.

If you’re a train engineer, stay home.

If you’re the captain of a container ship, stay home.

If you work in corporate, stay home.

If you work in retail, stay home.

If you work in fast food, stay home.

If you work in a grocery store, stay home.

If you work in healthcare, if you’re able, stay home.

Let’s burn the sonofabitch down!

If we stop everything in its tracks, our Toddler-in-Chief won’t even have a country to run. Take away all his power, bring the country to its knees.

We do this for as long as we have to. And I say we spread the word NOW! Let’s get loud about it!

Everyone needs to know about this warning, let’s head them off at the pass. This is our last shot. Because we know this a-hole is going to do EVERYTHING in his power to cheat. And no one in the government is stopping him.

It’s up to us!

Seriously. What is happening?

Why are some people no longer saying “an” before words that begin with a vowel sound? As in:

• an apple

• an excerpt

• an employee

• an ideal customer

Instead, I’m hearing things like:

• a employee

• a orientation

• a advancement

And before anyone says I’m being dramatic, I hear it everywhere.

On TV. On the news. On podcasts. At work. In casual conversation. During webinars. I literally just got out of a webinar where I heard it repeatedly, which is what prompted me to write this article.

The strangest part? It doesn’t seem to be a generational thing.

I’m hearing people of all ages do it.

Did I miss the memo that this rule is now optional? Because as far as I know, it isn’t.

And honestly, doesn’t it take more effort to say “a employee” than “an employee”? The words practically trip over each other.

My computer certainly doesn’t approve. It automatically corrected every example I typed while writing this.

So what’s going on?

Are we speaking faster than we’re thinking? Has conversational speech become so informal that we’re collectively dropping syllables whenever possible? Is this one of those subtle language shifts that sneaks up on us before anyone notices?

I genuinely don’t know.

What I do know is that hearing it makes my eye twitch.

The disappearing “an” got me thinking about something bigger.

It’s one thing when spoken language gets sloppy. Speech has always been messy. Most of us don’t speak the same way we write, nor should we.

Which brings me to one of my favorite college professors.

Professor Chamberlain taught both Grammar and Latin at my alma mater, University of California, San Diego. He was the kind of professor who made you excited to learn things that most people considered painfully boring.

I had him for multiple quarters as a small group of us worked our way through the Latin language program. Some of us also took Grammar with him, which is where my love of the written word really took off.

One day, he said something I’ll never forget:

“If we wrote the same way we spoke, we’d be horrified.”

That was 20 years ago.

And somehow, that observation feels even more relevant today than it did back then.

Professor Chamberlain wasn’t arguing that language shouldn’t evolve. Languages evolve constantly. New words appear. Old words disappear. Rules change over time.

What he was teaching us was the importance of precision.

Words matter.

The right word matters.

The right spelling matters.

The right punctuation matters.

Not because someone might grade you on it, but because language is how we communicate ideas to one another. The more precise we are, the better we understand each other.

Then I spend 5 minutes in a social media comment section and wonder if we’ve collectively given up.

The comment section is, in many ways, the purest expression of the human condition. No editors. No filters. No proofreading. Just thoughts launched directly into the void.

And all the rules seem to have been thrown out the window.

Every day, I see people confusing:

• less and fewer

• to, too, and two

• its and it’s

• they’re, there, and their

• lose and loose

• affect and effect

• allowed and aloud

• then and than

• you’re and your

• apart and a part

• accept and except

• ball and bawl

• would’ve and “would of”

• could’ve and “could of”

• should’ve and “should of”

And please, for the love of all things grammatical, it’s “piqued my interest.”

Not peaked.

Not peeked.

Piqued.

I know what some people are thinking.

“Who cares? You understood what they meant.”

Sure. Most of the time.

But I don’t think this is really about grammar.

I think it’s about whether we still value precision.

Whether we still believe details matter.

Whether we still care enough to choose the right word when the right word exists.

Twenty years ago, around the time Professor Chamberlain shared that quote, the movie Idiocracy was released.

At the time, it felt absurd.

Today, after reading enough comment sections, it occasionally feels less like satire and more like a cautionary tale.

Not because everyone is becoming less intelligent.

Far from it.

What concerns me is a growing cultural shrug toward expertise, learning, and accuracy. The attitude that details don’t matter; that trying to get things right somehow makes you a snob.

I reject that entirely.

There is nothing wrong with caring about words.

There is nothing wrong with valuing education.

There is nothing wrong with wanting people to know the difference between “your” and “you’re.”

Language is one of humanity’s greatest inventions. It allows us to share ideas, tell stories, preserve history, and connect with one another across generations.

That’s worth protecting.

So yes, I’ll continue wincing every time I hear someone say “a advancement.”

I’ll continue quietly correcting “would of” in my head.

And I’ll continue fighting the good fight for the written word.

Because maybe this isn’t really about grammar after all.

Maybe it’s about caring enough to communicate clearly.

And in a world that increasingly rewards speed over thoughtfulness, that’s a cause worth defending.

For many Americans, it’s a day on the calendar that arrives quietly between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. For others, it’s a celebration, a remembrance, and a reckoning all at once.

Juneteenth marks June 19, 1865, the day enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, finally learned they were free, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed.

I’ve been thinking about that gap lately.

Not just the gap between proclamation and reality, but all the gaps we live with as humans.

The gap between what is true and what we know.

The gap between what is promised and what is delivered.

The gap between freedom in theory and freedom in practice.

History often gets compressed into neat timelines and bullet points. We learn dates. We memorize events. We convince ourselves that progress moves in a straight line.

But Juneteenth reminds us that history is rarely that simple.

A declaration existed. Freedom had been proclaimed. Yet thousands of people remained enslaved because information, power, and justice did not travel equally.

There’s something profoundly human about that lesson.

Even now, in an age where information moves at the speed of a notification, we still struggle with unequal access to opportunity, education, healthcare, safety, and the ability to have our voices heard.

The more I learn about Juneteenth, the more I see it not only as a historical milestone but as a reminder that progress requires more than words. It requires action. It requires accountability. It requires people willing to carry difficult truths into the light.

It also reminds me of the importance of stories.

For generations, stories have preserved experiences that official records overlooked or ignored. Stories pass down resilience. They create empathy. They help us understand lives that are different from our own.

And maybe that’s one reason I find myself drawn to writing.

Writing is an act of witnessing.

Sometimes we write to celebrate. Sometimes we write to challenge. Sometimes we write simply to ensure that something, and someone, is remembered.

Juneteenth asks us to remember.

To remember the people whose freedom was delayed.

To remember the generations who fought for rights that should never have been denied.

To remember that progress has always depended on ordinary people refusing to accept injustice as inevitable.

Today, I’m spending less time asking what happened on June 19, 1865, and more time asking what responsibilities come with knowing that history.

What stories am I listening to?

What voices am I amplifying?

What truths am I willing to confront, even when they’re uncomfortable?

I don’t have perfect answers.

But I think that’s part of the point.

Commemoration isn’t just about looking backward. It’s about deciding what we carry forward.

So today, I’m choosing reflection over performative posting. Listening over assumptions. Learning over certainty.

And I’m grateful for the stories that continue to teach us who we’ve been, who we are, and who we still have the opportunity to become.

Happy Juneteenth.

A good leader hires people who are smarter than they are, and celebrates it. They recognize individual strengths, create opportunities for growth, and set clear, attainable goals. They remove roadblocks instead of creating them. They give credit loudly, give feedback constructively, and handle accountability fairly.

Good leaders build trust.

• They mentor.

• They communicate clearly.

• They show integrity when it’s easy, and more importantly when it’s hard.

• They empower their team members and set them up for future success.

Above all, they remember leadership is a responsibility, not a power trip.

A good leader doesn’t create fear, confusion, or competition inside their own team. They don’t play favorites, micromanage, take credit for others’ work, or make people feel unsafe for speaking up. They don’t weaponize vague direction, gossip about direct reports, or punish employees for not being mind readers.

And they certainly don’t intimidate, sabotage, or diminish the very people they hired to succeed.

And I know it’s been said thousands of times but it’s worth repeating: people don’t leave companies; they leave bad leadership.

We also need to normalize holding toxic or consistently underperforming leaders accountable instead of punishing the employees brave enough to come forward when something is amiss.

When multiple team members raise the same concerns, that’s not a culture problem. That’s a leadership failure.

Strong companies don’t just hire great talent.

They protect it. They support it. They validate it.

I know they say you attract what you put out there; “The Secret” and all that jazz. I do believe it’s true. I’ve been practicing the art of manifestation for years, and till this day, I’m convinced that’s how I met my husband. He’s exactly the soulmate I desired for years, in every way possible.

So there is something to it. Something to putting vibes and wishes out to the universe, having designated crystals present that emit certain energies and protections.

I want to believe all that is true and is effective. But I also have doubts. Just like with anything. Even growing up Catholic, there were so many things I questioned, but the cop out was always “you gotta have faith.”

I want to have faith. I want to be positive. I want to be optimistic. But it’s difficult when I can’t ignore the schizophrenic tendencies of my brain when they take over. Those awful little voices that I can never seem to stifle. That self doubt that creeps on through no matter how strong of a barrier I’ve built with self-confidence, knowledge, strength, courage, passion. It still crashes through like the Kool-Aid Man. “OH YEAH!!”

Don’t come for me and say “you need meds”. I’m already way ahead of ya. A delicious daily dose of Lexapro and Wellbutrin. Am I calmer? Yes. Am I an abundance of hope and happiness? Not quite. But I know my qualms are situational and I try to rise above as much as I can.

I’m unemployed and battling an obstinate job market under tRump’s regime. It’s tough to remain a “cockeyed optimist” to be “immature and incurably green” at a time like this.

Oh how I long for the days of blind optimism while being a young college coed, to have the world at your fingertips. To be sold a bill of goods, wrapped up in a pretty little package: if we just mind our Ps and Qs, go to college, get that degree, you’ll be sitting pretty with a house, a spouse, two cars, two kids, a dog, a cat, and a retirement fund bursting at the seams by the time you’re ready to call it quits and leave the corporate world at the ripe old age of 65.

No, that’s a mere pipedream for someone my age, an elder millennial. Someone who grew up witnessing the Challenger explosion, the Oklahoma City bombing, Columbine, 9/11, the housing crisis, the pandemic, tRump, etc.

I can go on, but you get it. Unprecedented and uncertain times are the pillars of my generation. And what do we have to show for it? Crippling debt from student loans that acquire so much interest every year that they’ll never be paid off unless you’re lucky enough to win the lottery or win $1 million on a stupid gameshow.

The Boomer Generation, our parents, left us in a lurch. When I was growing up, we survived on one income. My dad worked as an engineer and my mom stayed at home; they owned a decent house in a very beautiful suburb of San Diego, CA, bought two brand new cars over the years, went on some nice vacations, and we always had plenty of food in the house, anything we wanted. We never went without.

Now, that same scenario is putting all of the Boomers’ kids in a hole. Inflation keeps skyrocketing, but do our salaries? Of course not! And when we’re asked during job interviews the “magic number” we’re looking for just to survive, hiring managers practically laugh in our faces because we live in a world where billionaires exist and think absolutely nothing of hoarding all the revenue and profits for themselves.

And what’s leftover for us? Just enough to keep the lights on. Just enough to keep us tired so we can’t fight back. We have no hope of retiring, so all we can look forward to is working a full shift so we can afford rent, food, to watch some TV, doom scroll, go to bed, and do it alllllll over again the next day until we die.

Does that sound pessimistic? No. Because it’s reality. We (society as a whole) have backed ourselves into quite a corner.

Whenever I see a picture of our galaxy, or many galaxies for that matter, and consider the insurmountable insignificance our planet has in this vast universe, I always think why? Why are we doing this to ourselves? This isn’t what life should be. We’re merely existing on a floating rock.

And then we die. That’s the reality. What happens beyond that? No one really knows. Sure, you ask billions of people what they think or believe will happen to us, but no one really has the answer. We can hope there’s life, energy, or even consciousness beyond our mortal being, but we won’t know until we’re literally dead.

And that’s a scary thing. Which is why it’s sad so many live for the afterlife instead of making the best of it now.

So, I say all this to say, why is it easier to be negative than positive? Look at our reality. Those of us who are paying attention, I mean really paying attention, it seems like we’re living in a backasswards timeline that only seems to get even more ridiculous by the day.

How does one stay optimistic? How does one have hope? The hope is us. We’re the ones in the trenches. We’re all we have. No one is coming to save us.

The only thing that will change is if more and more people start waking up and realizing we do have the power to make a difference, voice our opinions, vote, protest, show up.

We can do this. We can turn this around. We can improve our way of life. We can raise the morale of the world.

We just have to have faith. But this time, it’s faith in something tangible.

It was ChatGPT. They told me to check it out, play with it, see how I can streamline my job with the magic of Artificial Intelligence. At first I was confused, is this person really granting their team members permission to take shortcuts in their daily work?

It didn’t sit well with me at all. I considered it cheating. I was actually very surprised my superior would be the one who not only introduced me to it, but actually expected me to use it for my job.

But because I’m conscientious and recognized this is probably the wave of the future and the only way to keep up and be a valuable employee, I learned it.

Not only did I learn it, I embraced it. I was using it to help me flesh out editorial calendars, social media posting schedules, podcast outlines, creating metadata for our website. I realized it was a great tool for streamlining and saving time on the smaller details.

I found myself becoming a more confident prompt engineer, as I was educating this thing about our company, brand, voice, messaging, strengthening its knowledge along the way every time I used it.

However, there was one thing I absolutely refused to use it for: blogging. Even before AI slop became such a prominent term, as soon as I would edit a contributed piece written by an agency we hired to develop content, I knew it didn’t sound genuine. It sounded off, I couldn’t explain it. There was no feeling, no narrative, no heart. Just spewed facts on a page about one of our products.

I couldn’t decipher a tone or voice. Didn’t recognize our branding, even though I was just a couple weeks in trying to get the lay of the land, I knew it wasn’t written well enough to represent our company.

At that point, I brought my grievances to the team to let them know we shouldn’t renew their contract and they agreed. A couple months and about a dozen poorly written blogs later, we let their contract lapse.

From then on, I took over writing the blogs, especially our customer stories. I should also mention I took the liberty of rewriting their individual contributions prior to uploading them to our website and social media.

It was at that point we found our groove. Our blogs were beginning to get better traction according to our website’s analytics. I was having a blast getting our customers on a Zoom call or visiting them in person to have them tell their story about how our company and products were helping their businesses thrive.

I love nothing more than producing thought leadership content that demonstrates how an organization that I work for meets pain points and expectations for a top of funnel (TOFU) audience.

This is why AI just doesn’t cut it. Sure, I could upload my interview notes into the prompt and tell it to spit out some brilliant blog, but it would be lacking.

It would be lacking that human touch, the heart of the deliverable. It’s not something that should replace writing. I know companies are just jumping at the chance to save money and annihilate their content teams only to replace them with some robust robots, but that isn’t the answer.

Plus it’s looking like AI is costing more than saving more, but that’s another topic for another day.

AI is also making us extremely lazy. I’m finding myself not thinking as hard when I use ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot. And it’s scary. The brain is a muscle, and AI is causing atrophy. I can’t let that happen, and I certainly can’t let it interfere with something that has come so innately easy to me since I was in kindergarten.

All I can do is pick my battles. If I need AI for a random task or something that would actually save time, I’ll use it.

But I will never succumb to the pressure of letting a machine think for me; nothing could replace the brilliance of human creativity, try as they might.

Professionally, I work in content strategy, editorial, SaaS, healthcare tech, brand messaging, SEO, demand gen, AI prompting, and the increasingly fragile emotional ecosystem known as “modern marketing.”

Unofficially, I collect observations about the internet, audience psychology, bad copywriting, strange workplace dynamics, and the tiny moments where people accidentally reveal who they really are in Slack messages.

This Substack is where all of that goes.

Expect:

• sharp takes on marketing and content culture

• AI commentary from someone actually using the tools

• storytelling strategy and editorial breakdowns

• career pivots and creative survival tactics

• occasional media analysis

• deeply unnecessary overthinking about phrasing choices

• at least one pun I should probably be stopped from publishing

Some posts will be useful. Some will be mildly existential. Most will begin with me noticing something small and refusing to let it go for 1,200 words.

If you’ve ever rewritten a sentence 14 times because “the vibe was off,” you’ll probably feel at home here.

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