I’m Not a Tech Person

I want to tell you something about myself before we go any further.

I write notes by hand. I bird watch. I cook for fun. I do DIY projects, love home decor and crafts. I take nature walks. I read a book a week. I don't watch much TV and I don't like sitting in one place for too long. I am, by almost every measure, an analog person living in a digital world.

Until Covid, I would have told you I was a full-blown extrovert. Social, outgoing, always moving. And then the world shut down and something unexpected happened: I thrived. Being home, being slow, being present… it turned out that was where I was happiest all along. I just hadn't stopped long enough to notice.

We set up a puzzle table. We started cooking together more. We built rest into our schedule on purpose. We went on a weekly hike. We stopped over-scheduling and started protecting the small moments - the ones that turn out to be the big moments when you look back. When the world opened back up we kept all of it. The puzzle is still on the table. The walks still happen. The slow weekend mornings with big breakfasts.

I tell you all of this because I want you to understand exactly who was sitting down to try AI for the first time. Not a tech person. Not an early adopter. Not someone who gets excited about new software (please). Just a mom who loves simple things and was trying very hard to protect them.

So why did I even try it?

Honestly? A trip.

We were planning a week in Yosemite with three generations: my teenagers, my husband, and my in-laws in their seventies. I had no idea if it would even work. What do you do in Yosemite when one person wants to hike ten miles and another needs a gentler pace? Where do you stay when you have completely different needs? What are the secret spots that make it worth it for everyone?

I typed my problem into Claude almost as an experiment. And what came back stopped me cold.

Options. Data. Considerations I hadn't thought of. Hidden gems. Itineraries broken down by age and ability. The entire trip laid out in a way that made everyone feel considered. In twenty minutes I had a bigger and better picture of what was possible than I could have assembled in hours of searching on my own.

And I sat there thinking - I love this. Not because it was tech. But because it was exactly how my brain wants to work. I love options. I love information. I love anticipating every scenario and planning for all of them. AI didn't change who I am. It just gave my planning brain a much bigger playground.

Here's what I want you to understand.

I didn't come to AI through technology. I came to it through wanting more time for the life I actually love. More time cooking with my family. More time on nature walks. More time sitting at the puzzle table doing nothing productive and feeling completely restored.

The mundane tasks of motherhood: the meal planning, the scheduling, the grocery lists, the birthday tracking, the home maintenance… those things are necessary but they are not the point. They are the overhead cost of the life you actually want. And for years I was paying that cost manually, slowly, in hours I didn't have (and quite frankly, in hours I didn’t want to give).

AI didn't pull me away from my simple life. It gave me more of it.

Incorporating AI into your home isn't about becoming a tech person. It isn't about screens replacing connection or automation replacing presence. It's about clearing enough of the mental overhead that you can actually show up for the moments that matter. The dinner table. The daily rehash. The DIY project. The holiday events.

You don't have to be a tech person. I'm not one either.

You just have to want your time back.

This isn't only for the analog moms.

If you're on the other end of the spectrum - if your home feels more chaotic than calm, if you're drowning in the mental load and can't find the surface, if you look around and feel behind on everything and ahead on nothing… this is for you too. Maybe more for you than anyone.

You don't need to already have it together to be here. You don't need a puzzle table or a slow weekend morning or a system already in place. You just need to want something different. I built systems because my ADHD required it, but what I found on the other side was a home that felt like a haven, a schedule that had breathing room, and a mental load that finally felt manageable.

That's not a personality type. That's a skill. And it's completely learnable.

You're not behind. You're just about to catch up.

That's why I built The Modern Mom Life.

For the analog moms. The bird watchers and the note writers and the from-scratch cooks. The moms who love simple things and are drowning in complicated ones. The ones who looked at AI and thought, “that's not for me,” and moved on.

And for the overwhelmed moms. The ones whose homes feel like chaos instead of haven. The ones who can't catch up, who have lost the joy somewhere under the laundry and the schedules and the mental load that never seems to end. The ones who feel like the duck above water, cool/calm/collected but are madly paddling below and wondering if there is more than this.

I'm waving you both over.

It's for you. I promise.

Subscribe to the newsletter and come figure this out with me. I genuinely cannot wait to show you what's possible.

- Leslie

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