I’m thinking of the time I was in the psych ward in Los Angeles. There was only one thing I wanted.
A pen.
I pleaded at the window of the counter of an attendant.
“No,” they told me. A Jamaican accent.
I could imagine why patients were restricted access to these invaluable… tools…
I don’t remember how I eventually came across one—just one. That’s all I needed.
Whether that was scouring the unit or any other kind of persuasion and negotiation skills with those working there.
But once I came across that pen, pressing it to one sheet of paper, I honored a sacred, sacred pact.
Experiences like desperately longing for a pen in the psych ward have led me to conclude a few things…
The pen is mightier than the sword. I believe this adage more than its counterpart, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”
As long as I have the ability to express myself in thoughts, words, and deeds—I should, I can, and I must. Not just for the world, but for myself.
We all suffer and experience pain. The repression of speech and freedoms through erasure, silencing and censorship (by many means) is one of the great pains to bear.
Finally, whether or not you agree with this statement, I believe human hands are among the most precious tools we have—
Human hands have built pyramids. Human hands have planted gardens. Human hands have held babies. Human hands have threaded fibers.
And finally, through art, through paint, through music, through language—we produce something more preciousthanany wish-fulfilling jewel.
Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.
—Carl Jung
Bamboo pen photo by Mona D. in Baguio City
God guard me from the thoughts men think
In the mind alone.
He that sings a lasting song
Thinks in a marrow bone.
—William Butler Yeats
"The King of the Great Clock Tower"
(As I first saw in Mabel Elsworth Todd's The Thinking Body)
This, my readers, is Equitable Wellness! 💌🪶A new and full moon publication sharing perspectives on equity-minded entrepreneurship as a licensed massage therapist, yoga instructor, and former journalist, turned holistic marketer and copywriter. My name is Shayna, welcome. Consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to support this work!
I practice drafting by hand and refrain from AI use in my writing. “A word in your brain contains within it every neural pattern it’s ever connected.”—Gabriel Wyner. I am physically hooked to the sacred neurobiology of connecting written words with speech, sensation, and my physical body. This is why I will continue to honor this ceremony and ritual. AI is a helpful tool for many things, including transcriptions of my podcast interviews and post-production features. But my choice is to allow the wiring of my nervous system to extend beyond my brain and through my fingertips, as would a guitarist, dancer, bodyworker, or artist. In addition, I have set my Substack to not have third-party AI-tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini train on my content. However, this does (sadly) affect discoverability. Please share my original work with your friends, and be understanding if I eventually decide to paywall certain material so that it is not indexed by Google and AI models. I recognize AI ethical considerations is a current discussion with long-term consequences, and I am open to many points of view.
“You must hate AI”
A friend / fellow freelancer caught a replay of a heartwarming talk I was invited to, where I shared on marketing oneself with integrity while letting go of the need to stand out.
And her take on the talk was that I hate AI 😂
Hate it?
Well, how to get started on this contemplation… as a writer? As an artist? As a human being?
Stolen land, stolen labor
Sound familiar?
If this is meant to conjure colonization, well…. 🙄
That’s intentional.
But I mean, how can I get down with the energy of using something built on… stolen labor?
That's a strong statement, and it's also a factual one.
Many of your favorite writers had their work stolen by huge tech companies, because those companies didn't feel like taking the time to approach writers and obtain consent — and they didn't want the "friction" of respecting copyright.
Again, I don't hate machine learning, and I think it has good uses.
But relying on tech that was built on copyrighted stolen material is ... problematic. Ethically, and also practically.
, one of my favorite liberatory voices, has no qualms with outright naming digital colonization.
One billionaire tweeted, "Delete all IP law."
Then another billionaire tweeted back, “I agree.”
This is not surprising. This is essentially a call for digital colonization. What is behind this call for billionaires currently, as well as Big Tech in general, is AI.
Big Tech and billionaires are trying to devise ways to freely take everyone's data, creations, and privacy without restriction, how they can use our voice to create AI voices and recognition, how they can take our likeness and biometrics, our books, writing, drawings, illustrations, photos, videos, performances, and the creations of artists everywhere.
They are calculating how they can take our work, digital identity, and eventually with all of that, take even the representation of us ourselves. They want this all without conversation, consent, or compensation.
Keeping up with the Joneses and tech broligarchs: “There’s no turning back”
If you don’t use AI, you’re leaving money on the table, is the general sentiment accosting me wherever I look. This sentiment warns consumers of what’s at stake for foregoing AI and sells them what they presumably need to be sold.
“There’s no going back,” writes Nikki Lam for Neil Patel. “If you’re not already integrating AI into your content production, you’re behind.”
AI is transforming SEO and content production—and if you’re not incorporating it into your strategy, you’re falling behind.
From automating technical audits to optimizing content at scale, AI tools are becoming essential for modern marketers.
But is it true that we’re not going back? Is it true that AI is here to stay, with nothing to be done about it? What if There Is No AI Revolution?
And okay, are we just to accept this as truth? That GPTs and AI tools are “just what we have to do” to support our families and keep up with the proverbial Joneses, billionaires and broligarchs?
Pour all of our body of work (or that of a client) into a custom GPT, tell it to generate 70% of blog posts and emails and website copy and funnel strategy and sales pages and content and call it our own, resell it, and ‘nuff said? All in a day’s work?
Is it that the most successful businesses will be the ones to use AI most effectively (better, faster, stronger resource extraction)? Those who’ve spent the most time extensively training their language learning models and generative AI? Do we just accept the degenerative construct once again, as the “norm” and not the exception?
Business as usual, genocide as usual?
For a solopreneur, this leaves me with no desire to “stand out” in the industry and compete in a race to the hierarchical top, only to “stay ahead of the competition” or “fall behind” in an increasingly dehumanized world.
What could non-hierarchical leadership structures and non-traditional leadership look like instead (wink, Sol Alexandria)? How can we uphold a regenerative paradigm (wink, Karryn Olson), instead of perpetuating the cycles of profit at all costs, which we know and recognize all too well?
Human-centered business
What would it look like to create, encourage and maintain human-centered and community-serving work that puts humans first (in values, work, production, and end goals), over profit-driven approaches without regard for equity and collective liberation?
The truth of the matter is, I am turned off by AI-generated “writing” or content. The moment I smell it out, it is a lot less appealing to me to consume.
Not to mention consumer distrust when they smell it out too.
Maybe others love it and want more of it. But there is a big difference in reading something where I feel something and feel the energy of the words of a writer and their voice, than not.
I have a lot more excitement opening emails from writers and marketers who go at it old school and keep it fresh and interesting. And personal.
In general, I have a lot more anticipation for reading real writing.
Like original thought pieces where even typos get to exist, where the humanity behind it hasn’t been edited out.
I still haven’t leapt into the trend of making ChatGPT my bestie, my marketing assistant, my coach and therapist, my morning cup of coffee, my exciting new romantic relationship where we’re casually dating (if not heading into something more serious).
Call me old-fashioned.
Call me one of those cats paranoid of the Internet or television or no-sé-que…
I’d rather feed my coffee addiction than open endless browsers of ChatGPT 😬, much as I do have good friends whom I love and respect, who “can’t live without it” in business or life.
Driving off the climate cliff?
I honor voices like that of Karryn Olson, who compares AI to having the foot on the accelerator when driving toward the climate cliff.
“Like literally we're driving towards the climate cliff,” she shared with me recently. “And AI for me is, we're all putting our foot on the accelerator.”
She is not alone in expressing reservations about the ecological impact of AI, putting the planet at risk.
Personally, I try to avoid using AI as much as possible. I still read news about it, for work purposes. And if I can’t use regular Search or my brain, I may use it. But I can’t — and won’t — make AI my default. Not with so much at stake.
If one ChatGPT search is equivalent to some 10 Google searches (see Regina’s article for better statistics) and powering x amount of lightbulbs…. Sure, one could argue that people still use lightbulbs and Google searches. (Though let’s get on with Ecosia as the no-brainer for planting trees instead of data scraping with your search.)
But does that mean we should all be accelerating the resource extraction of nonrenewable energy and clean water, threatening living communities while plagiarizing work and stealing identities—just to save time, cut costs, and keep up with the Joneses? Just because a few billionaires say so, and “that’s just the way it is," we’re bound to live within an extractive imperialist construct?
There are many more environmentalist perspectives to consider. This is just the start of a conversation contemplating environmental justice.
If you still want GPT for your business, here are some products…
The basic technique of extensive AI prompting to get it to look and sound like you while selling your offers and generating content is like priming a cast-iron pan.
To prime it first, you just need to pour all of your brand into it and spend time cooking with it, letting all of that season your pan as the AI trains on your body of work.
Maybe feed it everything you’ve done up to now, or maybe go for prompts from the pros.
Prices start at $0 a month (“free” use of ChatGPT, in exchange for your data to train) to $20 a month for a subscription to bottomless OpenAI or creating your own custom business GPT, for instance.
But don’t take my word for it.
Here are some recent professional offerings worth considering if you want to follow the business trend of buying and selling proprietary AI-augmented workflows. Develop your own or get started on AI with these offers.
I’ve yet to watch the following free workshop on GPT for your business, but this is a brand I trust in the marketing + equity space:
Finally, the $27 AI Marketing Assistantthat “you can grab” for an extensive AI prompt library, developed by two 7-figure wellness entrepreneurs (that I admittedly don’t follow as closely as I had)
I’m still going minimalist or none at all re: AI for now
But I’m glad to have shed light with y’all on my sincere ick factors! And why I still don’t want to roast a s’more at an AI bonfire with a seven-foot s’more stick.
Call me crazy, or call me human.
Thanks for reading Equitable Wellness! This post is public so feel free to share it.
p.s. I recognize that this is a deep, sensitive, and nuanced conversation that can be polarizing and triggering. I respect the feelings this brings up and am grateful for your letting me raise the questions and give voice to that.
p.p.s. The day after I posted this blog to my website, I got contacted for content creation and copywriting work for a platform with clients from more than 140 countries... Because they found me through a ChatGPT search 😅🤦🏻♀️
Thanks for the mention, Shayna! :) I love how comprehensive and actionable this was!