I looked forward to writing to y'all all week. Then I sat down to actually do it and became... a limp noodle.

Here's how I got here.

I'm on venlafaxine. Have been since April 2020, when my hot flashes, my untreated burnout, and what turned out to be undiagnosed ADHD all showed up to the same party. I went into that first post-lockdown televisit begging my doctor for something - anything - for the hot flashes. She started reading down her list of options, got to this one, and mentioned it also handles anxiety and depression. I burst into tears. She said, "Writing the script now." (Bless her.)

Fun fact about venlafaxine: skip a dose and it hands you brain zaps.

And I am NOTORIOUS for forgetting my meds. Especially since the ADHD diagnosis, because there's this glorious little window between doses where my natural hyperactive ideation kicks in and I float into my I-love-all-humans phase... and I let it ride. Sometimes too long. Then the zaps show up to collect.

What's a brain zap? When I tried to describe it to Smidge, he looked at me like I'd calmly reported pink elephants parading across the furniture in tutus and tights. Best I can do: it sounds like Pffffft - pfffft inside my skull. The first few times it stopped me cold - am I HEARING something? It doesn't hurt. But it always turns up holding hands with a total energy crash, like my inner Energizer Bunny finally admitted the battery's been fake this whole time.

So. That was today.

But here's the ridiculous part. This was a genuinely GOOD week.

Monday I felt like an actual AI guru. I got my little app, Toodle, to run. It's held together with duct tape and hope, and it needs a LOT of work, but the basic loop works... and watching a thing I built with my own two hands come alive is the exact moment AI stopped being scary and became my slightly unhinged familiar. (Hence the witch hat. More on that below.)

Then my coach Natalie and I had a conversation that snapped my whole business model into place. CLICK. Like the last Tetris piece. (Fractional and quietly doubting yourself? Holler at me. I'll send you her way.)

Two live events - Prompt Along: AI Improv with AI Snack Club, and Build the Thing You Keep Asking IT For - made the whole week feel a little bit magic.

And also. Smidge was out of town for work the entire week. I had the car. I had BIG plans to Do Things around the house and, you know, leave it.

I did neither. Not once. All week.

That probably should've been my sign.

What's landing now, in full limp-noodle clarity: I have GOT to stop listening to the voices. The ones screaming get it done NOW NOW NOW. The ones whispering I'm not worth my own pricing. The ones absolutely certain I can build the apps AND do the research AND write the stuffs AND launch a new Substack AND ship two more products, because they simply must exist in the world.

Those voices are liars.

The wise web of women I've built around me - my Wild Women Unbound, aka the F'ed-Off Corp Warriors - they tell the truth. Those are the voices I should be listening to. And I should stop saying yes to everything.

And honestly? I think Friday morning's conversation with a bankruptcy lawyer hit me harder than I let myself feel.

One more thing from this week, because it's the real frame.

My friend Nicole reads charts, and she handed me my astrological weather for the whole year. The short version? Saturn is a bitch. My running-on-fumes brain skimmed the entire thing and grabbed exactly one line out of it: stop saying yes to everything.

Which... fair. But that was tired-me snatching the footnote.

The actual headline: this week isn't some brand-new demand. It's the bill coming due on a yes I already said back in February. Months ago, the assignment was claim your position - say the thing only you can say. I did that part. Now the question has quietly shifted from can you say it to will you stand behind it out loud, with your name on it.

No charming my way past this one. (Believe me. I checked.)

And meanwhile, the biggest, luckiest planet of the bunch just rolled into my corner for the first time in twelve years. So I'm standing in the most wide-open stretch of my whole year and also feeling weirdly exposed and not entirely sure who I am anymore. Turns out that's just what the good part feels like from the inside. Nobody warned me.

Here's the piece that isn't only mine - the piece I actually want you to keep:

The louder the world asks you to stand up and be the one who knows, the louder that little "who am I to say this?" whisper gets. And it only ever shows up when you've walked toward a door you've never opened before.

Mine's been loud all month. I'm opening the door anyway.

Come with?

Here's what I keep forgetting: the "who am I to say this?" voice gets loudest right when you're onto something.

You go to post the thing, or send the pitch, or put your actual opinion in the room with your actual name on it... and there it is. Right on cue. Who do you think you are.

That voice isn't proof you're not ready. It's the sound a door makes when you push on one you've never opened. It only ever shows up for the new rooms, never the old familiar ones. Nobody feels unqualified doing the thing they outgrew years ago.

And you don't get to wait until you feel like the authority. Nobody hands you that feeling up front. You say the thing out loud before you're sure, and the standing shows up after, built out of having said it.

So let the whisper tag along. It just doesn't get to drive.

Four this week. I couldn't cut one. And looking at them lined up... yeah, my subconscious clearly had a theme going.

Loving Past Me
A creator caught the lightbulb moment that loving yourself might mean caring for ALL of you - past you, present you, and the you who hasn't shown up yet. Not the version your old disappointments keep casting you as. Soft, true, and a solid gut-check on what self-care actually means.

Viral Clapback Giving Me Life
A German MP got heckled by a male colleague during her speech about violence against women. So she picked up a microphone, did some math about nerve endings out loud on the parliament floor, and left the man visibly reconsidering every choice that led him there. I need that gif of his face. I need that ENERGY in mixed company.

Flower Crowns FTW
I put down $4.95 a month to support an artist Nicole has christened "Flower Crown Father Christmas" - someone joyfully, unapologetically making the thing that lights them up. The byproduct of a person living that aligned? Incandescent, regenerating joy. I want more of those humans in the world, so if a frappuccino's worth a month keeps it coming... WORTH IT. Money where my mouth and my values both live.

10 Seconds of Rest
Full disclosure: I'm a cat-family kid who finds most dogs too loud, too much upkeep, and too... fragrant. This one? Tots adorbs. Ten seconds of a very good boy resting, which is my entire personality this week.

AI loves to answer in paragraphs. Big, tidy, useless paragraphs. You don't have to accept the shape it picks.

I'll ask it to help me plan a week and it writes me an essay. So I say: "Give me that as a table. Day, one task, time of day. Nothing else." Now it's something I can use instead of read.

You get to order the format, not just the content. A list. A table. Three bullets. "No intro, no summary, just the steps." It will hand you whatever shape you name. Most people never name one.

Now you. Ask for something you'd really use - a packing list, a week of dinners, the questions to ask at a doctor's appointment.

Take the first answer, then tell it the shape. "As a checklist." "As a table." "Five bullets, plain words, no preamble." Make it give you something you can do, not a paragraph you have to mine.

Too long, too dressed up? Trim it out loud. "Cut it in half." "Lose the headers." "Just the list." Keep shrinking it until it fits your real, busy life. The shape is yours to demand.

You've got a thing. The one you keep almost saying. You write the post and leave it in drafts "until it's ready." You type the pitch, then close the tab. You know exactly which one it is, because it makes your stomach drop a little... which is the same reason you haven't sent it.

This week's prompt will not help you feel ready. Nothing does. That's the whole trap. It just pries the first sentences out of you and onto a page, so you can go say the thing while the scared part is still mid-sentence about why you shouldn't.

I built it to cast the AI as your familiar. The witchy little companion who has heard your "who am I to say this?" voice a thousand times and is, frankly, bored of it. It's going to interview you, one question at a time, and it will not let you hide behind "I dunno." Then it hands you your opening lines. Ready to paste.

Here's your ROCO prompt. Copy and paste it into any AI:

What happens next
Put what it gives you somewhere a real person will see it. You've been carrying that thing around for weeks. This is you finally getting to set it down.

Three quick hits, every week. The Scoop: one AI word, decoded. The Skinny: one move you can steal today. The Lowdown: one tool, one honest verdict, from my own use. A word, a move, a verdict. In and out.

Vibe coding.

You describe what you want in plain English - "build me a little tracker with three buttons that does this" - and the AI writes the actual code. You never see the code. You talk, it builds, you say "no, make that part blue," it fixes it.

That's how Toodle got made this week. I didn't learn to code. I described, it built, I bossed it around. Building by vibes and sentences instead of syntax.

Everything AI writes for you sounds like a robot in a blazer until you do this.

Paste in a few things you've actually written - old emails, a post, whatever sounds like you. Then tell it: "Study how I write. Match my voice from now on."

The next thing comes back in your rhythm instead of brochure-speak. It's the difference between "I'm thrilled to announce" and however you actually talk. Thirty seconds, and everything after sounds like a person.

This week: Littlebird. I used it to write the issue you're reading.

It quietly captures your whole week - what you did, read, and wrestled with - then hands it back later. On a three-spoon day when I couldn't reconstruct Tuesday if you paid me, that's the difference between a newsletter and a blank page.

The catch: it scrambles who-did-what. It'll cheerfully report that I did the thing my friend did, or hand my win to someone else entirely. So you read it twice and fix the names.

Verdict: brilliant, with an asterisk. Let it remember your week for you. Just don't let it tell you whose week it was.

I'm aware. I wrote an entire opener about listening to the wise women who keep telling me to stop saying yes to everything... and then I looked at my own calendar. Character development is not linear, y'all.

Anyway. Here's where you can find me this week, in order:

Girl Tech HQ: AI Doesn't Care That You Can't Code
Wednesday, July 15 | 4:00-4:30 PM CDT | Free, 30 minutes
The whole talk is one idea: the thing between you and AI was never skill. It was fear. And fear is a much easier problem to solve. You'll need to join the Girl Tech HQ community to watch (also free), and honestly, a room full of women building things is half the reason to show up. There's a swag bag too. I dropped a free prompt kit inside, your pick of any of mine.
[Join here]

Em & Deb: Shoot the Sh!t (LIVE on LinkedIn)
Thursday, July 16 | 11:00-11:30 AM CDT
The job market is weird, so Emily Worden and I are going live for 30 minutes to say so out loud. No polished webinar. No 53-slide deck. No pretending any of this is normal. Just two humans talking job searching, AI, LinkedIn, visibility, and finding a little joy while everything feels like a lot. Bring your questions and your "what the hell is happening?" It's a teaser for Summer School, our workshop series for job seekers gearing up for the September Surge.
[RSVP here]

Mostly Human: AI Office Hours
Thursday, July 16 | 12:30-1:30 PM CDT | Zoom
One hour, wide open, for you to bring whatever you're stuck on so we can sort it out live. Come for five minutes or the whole sixty. Here's the honest part: hardly anyone's signed up, and this cozy, free, just-for-the-newsletter version probably isn't coming back in this shape. I'm moving to a bigger monthly session next, and it won't be ours alone. So if you've been sitting on a real question for me, this is the room to bring it to.
[RSVP on Luma]

AI for Real People: How to use AI without losing your voice, values, or sanity
Friday, July 17 | 9:00-10:00 AM CDT (3:00 PM BST / 4:00 PM CEST for my UK and EU folx) | Free
A hands-on hour on using AI as an actual thinking partner without losing your voice, your judgment, or your sanity. Bring a real piece of work and we'll run the whole workflow live, together. You'll need to join the community to attend (free, quick). This one's timed kindly for the other side of the Atlantic for once.
[Join here]

Today went sideways. Big plans this morning, flat on my back by afternoon.

But I built a thing that actually runs this week, and I'm choosing to stay amazed by that instead of counting up everything I didn't get to.

The hard stuff is still here. I'm still tired. I told you the truth about all of it anyway... and you're still here, which is the part that gets me.

Go be horizontal. I'm right behind you.

💜

Take care of yourself, take care of each other,

Deb

P.S. Tried this week's familiar prompt and it got weird on you? Something else got you stuck? Hit reply. That inbox is me. Always has been.