Hi Reader,

Some days I sit down to work and by the time I've opened everything I need...
I've lost the ability to focus on anything. 😂

My screen looks like a flea market exploded. I've got my client portal open, Canva, Squarespace, SEOSpace, image optimizers, stock photo sites, font libraries, Affinity —and that's before I've actually started anything. 🫠

We are DEEPLY buried in software overload. Remember when 'smart phones' came out & the phrase became kind of a meme: "there's an app for that?" I feel like we're right back there again now, but with apps for ANY device, and AI for that. I gotta admit; I don't love it.

Subscriptions have run amuck. There's people coming up with apps for everything, and that means even more subscriptions! 'Subscribe to Substack', subscribe to 50 different Chrome extensions that make our other subscribed tools work better or do everything we want them to do, so we can be more efficient with our time and money and days. There's even a streaming service for everything & everyone now.

Ugh, it's exhausting.

And with web-specific AI tools like Lovable promising to "simplify" the website build process, or do some of the work for us. Just without our context, our taste, and our expertise for not just the pretty face of the website, but how it works to maintain it, edit it, and actually use it in the real world... and also one with garbage SEO and accessibility that would make a compliance expert cry.

So no, we're not being replaced.
But we are being buried in the browser tabs of tools and their various subscriptions.

Which is exactly why I went deep on this recent post, because if we're going to use so many of these tools, we might as well be strategic about the main one we choose as the foundation of our online presence.

While writing that beast of a deep-dive, I kept getting distracted by the bigger picture of all of this, too.

• Whole department's getting laid off and replaced with AI.
• Elizabeth McCravy posting on IG that we're all giving the stink-eye to anything that looks AI-generated without a human voice behind it, even if it's not.
• Katie Steckly finding out someone used her likeness to make a fake AI video of 'her' on Fiverr, and only found out because a fan told her it existed.

And I want my damn em dash back! I want to use it the way I always have without people assuming AI wrote my shit. 😂 I want to be able to use AI to help with smaller things, without the creeping anxiety about what it's doing to our ability to trust... anything & recognize what's real vs not, or what it's doing to our environment with so many of us using it.

I don't have a tidy bow to put on any of that. But I'd bet my socks you're feeling it too —so I'm just saying it out loud so you know you're not the only one. 🥴

TEMPLATES

🖥️ Free Class: How to Build a Successful Squarespace Template Shop

When: TODAY, May 11, 2026 @ 9am PST / 12pm EST / 4pm GMT

Kate Scott is hosting a free live workshop where she’s sharing the details of how to set up your successful Squarespace template shop to give you more time, freedom and profit in your business.

Kate is a Squarespace legend who quit client work just nine months after launching her website template shop—and had her best month ever! To date, she’s taught 250+ web designers how to launch their own successful template shops inside her signature course Scale with Templates, and countless more through this free training.

A replay will be sent out to registrants afterward, but if you can make it live, you can get your questions answered during the Q&A part at the end!

✨ Save my FREE spot! (or get the replay after)

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SQUARESPACE Standout Squarespace® Vibe-Code Bootcamp Rache is doing an exclusive vibe-code bootcamp for her Standout Squarespace® students May 16 - June 16, inside the student community. Enroll in Standout Squarespace® to join the bootcamp & more! Only for current or renewing students! Enroll in Standout Squarespace®*

SYSTEMS Systems Over Stress® Ashley, lovingly dubbed the 'Airtable Guru' is opening her flagship done-with-you program again, which focuses on teaching you how to setup systems that help you scale your business without burning out as you grow. Ashley's doing a free class on May 12th @ 11am Pacific, on "3 Simple Ways to Automate Your Client Experience So Things Stop Slipping Through The Cracks". Save my free spot → 5/12

I've tinkered with, built custom websites on, and researched a LOT of different website platforms over the last 10 years. It's a deep dive into the best 7, myths busted, research shared, & FAQs to consider while you choose!

​Best Website Builders for 2026​ Find out now →

⏯️ Missed my last post? ​Why branding is important to a web designer, even if you DON'T offer branding services, –and of course, who to learn it from if you want to add it.

💯 Thoughts on AI content Elizabeth's IG post on our love/hate relationship with AI.

⏯️ Don't trust her... Katie Steckly's YT post about her experience finding AI-gen videos of her providing services on Fiverr that were not real & what she decided to do about it.

🧱 BlockBuilder A Club member shared this affordable lifetime-licensed tool with me & I used it to build the branded comparison chart in this recent blog post! It was WAY easier than the alternatives I'd been using before. But it also does a lot more than just style tables & spreadsheets. Check out BlockBuilder* here!

🌹 ACOTAR books 6&7 To get ready for the release of book 6 this fall, and book 7 over Christmas/New Years a few months later... I've been reading Sarah J. Maas' entire collected works the past 8+ months. So far, I've finished an entire re-read of TOG (Throne of Glass), and am now re-reading book 3 of ACOTAR (A Court of Thorns & Roses), with CC (Crescent City) up next. ​This reading guide will help you figure out where to start if you're new to the universe! A great way to do something JUST for fun that will suck you in. She's my favorite fiction writer! 😂😍

☀️ Testing out the Sun With so much happening all at once, all the time, I'm testing the option to deal with the overwhelm by planning my weeks & days in a different way: I'm trialing Sunsama*, which is a planner tool somewhere in between Asana/ClickUp and Motion, lightly using AI to block in the tasks I've told it I want to work on, but also bringing in tasks I've got from other places, like Notion or even my emails. With a daily shutdown ritual, and weekly planning, and focus timers that remind me to take breaks... so far it's really helping me get stuff done! Try it for 30-days with me* & see if it helps!

That's it for now, see ya next time!

Whether today is a celebration, a complicated one, or just a regular Sunday... I hope it's been a good one so far. 💐💛

Katelyn Web Designer & Educator ​Thrivin' on coffee, community, cursing & carefully laid plans!