No. 0002 // My Midnight Freakout List
And other things AI fixed for me.
We made it to issue No. 0002!
I am genuinely having so much fun on Substack, like, actually. (If you’re finding me for the first time this week — hi! — I’m a professional photographer, and I live in Sag Harbor. Read more about me in post No. 0001)
Today, let’s do photos first. Why not!?
And now: How I solve my midnight freakouts.
Everyone asks me this when they find out I’m a photographer: Do you hate AI? Does it freak you out? Don’t you just feel like the best to ignore AI with confidence? (Well, as a woman, please don’t ignore it, or women will be left out of the boardrooms determining our futures. Read more about this reality in my friend Patricia Assui Reed’s latest excellent post (here).
No, I’m not afraid. I’m not threatened. I’m not even annoyed.
The speed at which our culture is changing around us to be AI-native is genuinely jarring to me — I won’t pretend otherwise.
Over the last six months, I’ve turned my healthy curiosity about AI into a self-directed research project.
Here’s the part people don’t always know about me: every single one of my many hats sits on top of a head with ADHD.
And some essential adulting things were simply never attainable to me before.
Ways of organizing myself.
Ways to finish a task before I burn out on it, got frustrated, and turned that frustration inward.
Ways of feeling things too deeply and letting those feelings cloud my judgments and reactions. (Midnight freakout #1!)
After experimenting (a lot!) I have found a few totally rad AI tools, and honestly, things that felt impossible are now often within reach. That’s not a small thing. That’s a life-altering upgrade-thing.
Here are three ways I use AI every single day to feel more in control and capable of managing my busy life.
1. For me, procrastination is seldom laziness. It’s the feeling that a task requires more time than I have right now — and probably more than I’ll have later — which activates a very special flavor of ADHD stress spiral.
So I talk instead of typing.
I’m a fast typer, but that’s not the point. The point is, I can ramble into my phone while I’m watching my toddler, while I’m driving, at midnight when I’m spiraling about everything I didn’t finish. (Midnight freakout #2!)
Run-on sentences, bad grammar, total chaos — it doesn’t matter. I end up with something started. And something started is everything.
Dictation works for writing. It works for to-do lists. It especially works for the midnight freakout list, which is a real genre in my life. I’m not going to remember which undone thing needs to happen first. So, my Substack draft is due Wednesday, and I haven’t started. My camera kit needs to be packed for Thursday. I need to sweep the next four weeks of client bookings and confirm deposits and details. Summarize that into action items, add to calendar — done. I can sleep.
Dictation gets the thing out of my head and into a shape I can work with. That’s so helpful, so DIFFERENT. It’s a thrill. I used it to start writing THIS POST. At 3 a.m. while driving my baby back to sleep after a night terror, I opened my app and started just talking, by saying, “I want to write about how my AI fascination has changed my life, and I’m going to ramble on until a thesis forms.” My midnight freakout turned into a midnight productivity moment.
Once I get going, I talk in circles and tangents — but somewhere in the blah-blah, a real idea always surfaces.
2. This one is a pivot into my inner world, but it might be the most useful thing in my life right now.
I have a client who responded to my pricing as if I’d personally insulted them. I need to write back professionally. But I am, in fact, kind of insulted. So I brain-dump the situation — what happened, what I need to say, what I cannot say — and ask for a professional edit. What comes back has all the necessary information, but none of my feelings. I don’t sound pissed. I don’t sound like a pushover. I sound like someone running a business.
I’m realizing that I’ve wasted countless hours micromanaging my own emotional landscape in professional settings, without realizing it.
I am a chronic people-pleaser in writing. Left to my own devices, uncomfortable emails become a series of “so sorry, no worries, totally fine, I can wait” — even when I cannot wait and it is not fine. AI just… removes all of that. What’s left is an email that actually moves things forward. I get the booking I want at the rate I know I’m worth, or the clean exit I’m relieved by, without three days of emotional labor to get there.
3. Okay, this one is a little different, but stay with me.
I’m in the middle of a bathroom renovation, and it’s going too quickly for a designer to get involved. BUT! If I drop a photo of the empty room, the mirror I like, and the tile I like into an AI tool, I can see what it might look like together.
It’s not perfect. It’s not going to look like a spread in Architectural Digest. But I get to iterate. I get to be the creative in a moment where otherwise I’d just be guessing — or worse, deferring to someone else’s vision.
That part matters to me — a lot.
Could this newfound addiction to AI come back to haunt me? Absolutely. Probably in ways I can't see yet.
Keeping our voice in the room as women, our dignity for all human beings, and our care for the natural world while AI transforms everything is a conversation that needs to stay loud.
THAT AND right now, I’m a photographer with ADHD who is sleeping better, fighting with fewer emails, and actually excited about her bathroom.
I’m optimistic.
Four AI apps I actually use every single day because they make my life easier — linked below if you want to try any of them.
Wisprflow — My go-to texting dictation app. It gets loaded as a “keyboard” in your phone, and it makes dictating a text sound normal, not insane. Eliminates run-on sentences, slots events into order, uses proper title case and grammar, and I almost never have edits when I review it before pressing send. In fact, if you speak with proper “reading with expression”, Wispr will sense where to put your commas! Unbelievably helpful.
Granola — AI notepad for meetings. It runs in the background and returns a clean, thorough summary. Game changer for anyone whose notes normally look like a squirrel disco.
I’m great in the room, I love face time with a client, but I’m so “on” that the meeting often ends with me saying to myself afterward, “What did I say exactly?” This saves me by providing the info I need for a thoughtful follow-up.
Another time I used it was like a party trick — I tested how long it could record by using it at a full two-hour happy hour. I announced that I was using a new app at the start of the convo, and since AI is on everyone’s mind, people were so into it! Then I sent everyone the summary after. It recorded every part of the convos, minus all my lame jokes! What a win.
Chat GPT — Best for quick fact-finding — the kind of stuff you'd normally just Google. And their image generator does my absolute favorite "make this room have THIS tile floor…" bathroom renderings.
Claude — Yes, Claude, the buzzy favorite of Spring ‘26 (who my friend affectionately calls Clive, as though she’s made him HERS).
Claude is the AI I rely on the most. I use Claudey-Claude for email editing to improve professionalism, for dictating an idea and asking for my ramble to be formatted into a to-do list or draft, and for thinking through problems out loud by having the AI ask ME questions about the kind of answer I need. It’s also what I use to strip the emotional baggage out of a client email at 11 p.m. when I should be asleep.
This is how the midnight to-do list gets out of my head and into something actionable.
If you try any of these for the first time, I’d love to hear how it went! Send a message or post a comment, so others can see.
1. Body Doubling Session — Coming in June, an opportunity to feel supported and motivated to tackle your own tasks by doing so across from another rad person.
I’m hosting my first-ever community work session, which people call “body doubling,” and it’s a practice I find TRULY helpful for productive work.
90 minutes on Zoom: 10 min intro chat, 70 min heads-down work, 10 min closing chat. Theme: Attack the one mundane thing that’s been on your to-do list for weeks. Admin, research, insurance, whatever you’ve been avoiding. Bring it. Get it done.
Interested? Hit reply! I’ll tell you more.
2. Hamptons Family Photo Sessions — Book Now for Summer
Opening the calendar for July, August, and September weekend sessions. Spots drop on Memorial Day Monday — and there aren’t many. Mark it.
3. Small Business Branding Photos
I’m deep in it with my entrepreneurial clients right now — making genuinely iconic, first-of-its-kind work for their personal brands.
If this is you and you want something people actually remember, hit reply — I’d love to tell you more about how it works.
4. Guest Post
I was a guest writer this week on the Blue Balloon School Substack (songwriting school). I photographed brand photos for BBS and spent time with them, and I really got to know their business. Then, my own kid started lessons with a teacher there, and it went really well! I loved this interview; I got to write about my own life and history alongside the experience of photographing them. I’d love for you to read it!
Also, if you’re a Substack publisher, consider guest-writing for another creator — it’s a very rewarding creative collaboration! (thank you, Blue Balloon!)
How do you save your inspiration when you find it? I’m always curious how other people organize the stuff that moves them. Tell me below.
I keep a saved folder on Instagram specifically for accounts that stop me mid-scroll VISUALLY — the ones I want to return to, think about, extract energy from in the best possible way. This week I’m sharing six of them with you.
As I mentioned, I’m doing some fun renovation on my house, and I’m super into beautiful home inspo.
This was a long one — is anyone still here? Tap a heart if you made it this far. I have more to say, actually. There’s always more.
Until then, wishing you many cherry-blossom stomping moments around town. I like to kick them around like confetti.
hugs!!
Ana
I finally need to get on Claude, right? I am in a relationship with ChatGPT…
Yes to all of this! discovered granola recently, and my mind was blown!