Off The Grid: Leaving Social Media

A candid Q1 business recap covering book events, community book giveaways, and a cross-promotion program for indie creators. She talks about balancing grief and family loss with work. There is frank discussion of political stress and how it affects planning. Teasers for an upcoming summit and a new teaching course round out the conversation.

Hannah Cole, tax educator and founder of Sunlight Tax who helps self-employed creatives, joins to answer practical business tax questions. She explains when an LLC matters and when S‑Corp can help. Learn clear rules for quarterly estimated payments, whether to use QuickBooks, fixing back taxes, and what creative expenses are commonly deductible.

Aneisha Velazquez, bookkeeper and founder of Yellow Sky Business Services who supports neurodivergent online service providers, joins to talk finances for microbusinesses. She explains what bookkeeping actually is. She outlines neurodivergent-friendly systems, practical rhythms for receipts and reports, and using Profit First with bank buckets. She offers a pep talk about tax timing and when to bring in help.

Nic Antoinette, newsletter writer and essayist who explores collapse, systems, and community experiments. They chat about coping with a rocky Q1, grief showing up in daily rituals, reframing degrowth as right-sizing, money choices and microgrants, and setting boundaries around sharing and audience care. Short, candid, and unexpectedly warm.

Ayana Zaire Cotton, founder of Seeda School and author of the essay on transmuting AI shame, is a teacher of Erotic Engineering — a method for aligning desire with capacity. She explains why she paused using AI, explores the ecological and labor costs of current tools, and outlines practices for slowing down, reclaiming self-respect, and choosing technology that matches values.

JJ Lang, a high-level chess player and writer at the U.S. Chess Federation, joins for a nerdy, personal chat about AI. They trace chess tech from rule-based engines like Deep Blue to neural-net revolutions like AlphaZero. Short, accessible takes on how algorithms reshaped modern chess and why JJ chooses not to use generative AI in their work.

The conversation names three core sources of tension about AI and links them to familiar social media harms. It explores how AI’s efficiency conflicts with personal values and intensifies productivity pressures. The environmental and labor costs behind AI are highlighted. Listeners are offered harm-reduction steps and a suggestion to create a personal AI policy.

Casey Zabala, author, artist, and founder of Modern Witches who makes divinatory tools, joins to discuss AI and spirituality. They explore how chatbots reshape mystical practice. Conversations touch on AI’s impact on intuition and agency. They examine colonial power in tech, astrology linked to AI, and why AI is not a true oracle.

A practical walkthrough for crafting clear AI policies for creative businesses. Shortlists different policy types for personal use, collaborators, and communities. Defines assistive, generative, and agentic AI and outlines privacy, consent, and ownership concerns. Offers a spectrum of boundaries from abstention to unrestricted use and concrete tips for writing transparent, values-aligned rules.

Mel Mitchell-Jackson, adventure artist and craft tutor who helps people heal their relationships to art and tech. They recount early curiosity about chatbots, the seductive shortcut of AI, and moments it felt like addiction. They define AI sobriety as refusing cloud LLMs to protect creativity and labor. They also discuss local models, privacy risks, and reclaiming practice through slow, communal art.