Communication is the bridge between us. It connects us, builds trust and creates understanding. To me, there’s nothing more important in the world right now than improving communication.

That passion has driven everything I’ve done in my professional life — from writing books to founding a copywriting firm to becoming an adjunct professor of communication. Now, when AI is generating so much of the communication we encounter online, I feel a new urgency to help individuals and organizations keep their writing skills fresh and their communication authentically human.

**About me**

To learn about hiring me as a trainer, writing coach or speaker, visit jessicamehring.com.

For my academic research and personal thoughts on the intersection of communication, humanity and trust, check out Trust Fall on Substack: jessicamehring.substack.com.

**About Horizon Peak Consulting**

Double the number of subscription seats. Thousands of webinar registrations. You look like a rockstar to your leadership team. If you're not seeing those kinds of results with your current marketing copy and content — we need to talk.

I founded Horizon Peak Consulting in 2013 to help B2B technology companies create higher performing, more human-friendly marketing and sales enablement assets. We offer conversion content writing, copywriting, messaging strategy and AIO strategy to help our clients achieve their most aggressive marketing and sales goals.

If you want rapid results and long-term trust from your audience, with zero robo-writing watering down your differentiation (see my posts on “the replicant effect” for my opinions on THAT nonsense), let’s talk: horizonpeakconsulting.com/contact

LONG LIVE THE EM-DASH!

Jessica Mehring

AI writing works best when you stop treating every draft like a blank slate. 

ChatGPT Projects let you build on what you’ve already done, so you spend less time repeating yourself and more time editing and refining your ideas.

Senior copywriter, executive ghostwriter and content strategist for enterprise tech | Author | Communications educator

Open article: How to use Projects in ChatGPT so you can stop repeating the same instructions by open.substack.com

How to use Projects in ChatGPT so you can stop repeating the same instructions

Ashley Amber Sava

Content, Editorial & Employee Communications Leader | Recovering Journalist | Storyteller | The Editor | Unpopular Opinion Podcast Host | Incurably Cheerful

There’s a moment in every LinkedIn scroll where you feel it—a slow, gnawing nausea. It creeps in with the motivational TED Talk masquerading as a post. You know the one: a guy in an ill-fitting blazer whisper-screaming about “unlocking potential." Keep scrolling. Enter the grind-bro. Eyes bloodshot. Skin like a haunted drumhead. He’s been awake since 2:47 a.m. for...reasons. His post reads like a deranged love letter to burnout culture, all caps yelling about “discipline."

And then, the fluff prophet/AI oracle. Their face is slack, mouth twitching as they whisper, “AI is going to disrupt everything,” like a doomsday preacher on a street corner with a cardboard sign. “We’re living through the next industrial revolution,” they declare, conveniently ignoring the fact that their entire strategy is pasting ChatGPT outputs into Canva templates.

The clap emojis pile up. The buzzwords snowball. And you sit there, wondering why we're applauding this nervous breakdown.

Welcome to my profile. I don’t do that here.

Here, you’ll find stories that make you laugh, flinch, maybe even even stop mid-scroll to reread. I write to jolt you awake—not to whisper sweet nothings about KPIs. My posts are jagged, human and unapologetically real. They’ll linger like a scar you can’t stop tracing. Because that’s what good writing does—it takes your attention hostage.

I’ve been called irreverent, abrasive, “not for everyone.” I take that as a compliment. My words are a protest against the beige corporate sludge clogging up this platform. I write for the people who hate white noise, and who crave a voice that’s sharp, raw and distinctly human. My content is for those who want something real, even if it stings. If that’s you, stick around. If it’s not, go back to clapping for the guy trying to sprint through his midlife crisis.

Here’s what to expect: Stories about the absurdity of modern work culture. Rants about the dumbest trends. Tactical advice wrapped in cynicism. And maybe, just maybe, a small dose of hope—wrapped in barbed wire, because I’m not a monster.

Because while this platform loves its safe, saccharine posts about “growth” and “hustle,” I’d rather talk about the messiness of actually trying to get there. The fumbles, the failures, the outright catastrophes. It’s not pretty, but it’s honest. And honesty’s in short supply these days.

If you’re tired of scrolling through LinkedIn posts that feel like a bad infomercial for someone’s personal brand, stick around. Let’s be human, even when the algorithm begs us not to be. 

And yes, I still use em dashes. Fight me.

Head Of Content

Your urgency is not my emergency (you left a pile of half-baked plans on my desk and now expect me to pole-vault through them naked.)

Your urgency is not my emergency (you planned poorly, I clean bodily fluids, metaphorically, off your deadlines.)

Your urgency is not my emergency (you dropped a blueprint of incompetence in my lap and I am now performing emergency brain surgery with a pencil.)

Urgency Vampire (n.): An irresponsible human that lets weeks rot in the dark while humming softly, then leap out with fangs bared, dripping panic and claiming it’s now your problem. 

You thought your inbox was safe. Silly human. The Urgency Vampire sees time as a buffet, and you are the main course. Tasks you thought were optional are now torches lighting your personal purgatory.  By the time they leave, you are answering emails with one eye sewn shut, gnawing on a conference room table like a cornered rodent and swearing allegiance to the first god that will answer.

Here’s an email template to fight back:

Subject: Containing the metastasizing emergency

Dear [Urgency Vampire’s name],

Thank you for forwarding the urgent matter. I see how it may have seemed benign from the cocoon of your week-long inaction, but it has now erupted into a full-scale hemorrhage in my domain. 

To prevent further outbreaks of spontaneous necrotic panic, future tasks must be communicated before the hour of self-immolation.

Procrastination is not a magical time machine. Delayed action cannot transmogrify into my emergency without formal ritual acknowledgment of its carnage. 

Responsibilities must be clearly delineated, so your black-molded, time-eating fungi do not infest my bloodstream again.

Failure to heed this warning may result in a polite but surgical dismemberment of your timeline in full view of leadership, HR and anyone else’s butt you are typically seen puckering up to. 

Following the white rabbit, 
The Human Who Refuses to Make Your Urgency My Emergency
#ThatAshleyAmber

Content Anarchist | Recovering Journalist with a Vendetta | Writing What You’re All Too Afraid to Say | Keeping Austin Weird | LinkedIn’s Resident Menace

Okay so apparently my family and I have been wasting our lives doing literally anything else because we are CLEARLY meant to be a full-time, unionized, overly dramatic, Disney-adjacent acting troupe.

We have range.
We have commitment.
We have a child who can cry on cue (because she’s a child).
And we have an adult man who can do “confused but protective” like he trained for it.

Let me know if you’re casting.
#ThatAshleyAmber

My intrusive thoughts lean in close enough that I can smell hot pennies and bad decisions, so I started naming them. Because if you don’t name them, they start running meetings.

Consider it pest control. This is me standing in my own skull with a clipboard and a cigarette, tagging wild animals before they maul the furniture.

Once you name something, it stops pretending it’s God.

Meet the residents.

The Meat Siren: Sings when you’re tired enough to confuse rest with disappearance. Her voice smells like rusted railings and old blood and relief. She never says “die.” She says “lie down.” Big difference. Legally...

The Exit Sign Flicker: A strobe light in your peripheral vision that suggests an escape hatch where there is only drywall and consequences.

The Wet Matchstick Choir: 30 identical voices rehearsing catastrophes that never ignite but never go out. They believe preparedness is a virtue.

The Highway Median Evangelist: Preaches impulsive salvation at 75 mph. Wants you to believe revelation happens fast and sideways. Keeps pamphlets made of static.

The Spicy Brain Bees: Tiny, furious, paprika-dusted thoughts that only activate when you lie down. The moment your head hits the pillow they unionize.

The “Do It For The Plot” Demon: Doesn’t care if the plot is a tragedy. Doesn’t care if you’re the body. Believes character development requires at least one irreversible mistake. Per quarter.

The Wet Concrete Urge: Heavy. Cold. Wants you to stay perfectly still until you harden into whatever this feeling is. 

The “I Could Ruin Everything In 3 Seconds” Button: Always warm. Always glowing. No safety cover. Just sitting there like it’s bored and waiting for you to brush past it with a sleeve.

And those are just the loud ones...

There’s also:

The Catastrophe Sommelier: Swirling potential disasters, sniffing, saying “ah yes, notes of humiliation, a bold aftertaste of unemployment.”

The Social Autopsy Intern: Replays every interaction frame-by-frame like it’s evidence in a murder trial where you are both suspect and corpse.

The Bathroom Mirror Prosecutor: Only speaks when you’re naked and vulnerable and legally unable to leave.

The Gas Stove Curiosity Committee: Asks questions it already knows the answers to and hates you for noticing.

The Funeral Daydream Concierge: Plans services you are not attending yet. Very detail-oriented. Weirdly polite.

The “Say Something Unhinged Aloud Right Now” Imp: Shows up in elevators. Weddings. Quiet rooms. Lives for timing.

I am not calm. I am outnumbered but literate.

Some people say “my anxiety is acting up.” I say, The Wet Matchstick Choir has booked another residency.

They can knock. They can scream. They can stage a full dress rehearsal of my demise.

But they don’t get the pen. 
 
If you’re haunted too, good. Start naming the ghosts.

Monsters hate paperwork.
#ThatAshleyAmber

Ideas are what committees cling to when they want credit without consequence, or when they’re terrified of choosing. 

Ideas are abundant. Anybody awake can generate them.

Levers? Fangs. Jawbones. Teeth in the neck of the system.

The world rewards levers pulled violently, purposefully and unapologetically.

Pick one. Pull it like you mean it. Pull it like you’re willing to be wrong in public.

Pull it like you’re done asking permission.

I know it seems like the people who win should be the ones with the best thoughts, but they’re really the ones with the most teeth.
#ThatAshleyAmber

taplio

The Battle

Jessica Mehring

Ashley Amber Sava

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreJessica Mehring's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreAshley Amber Sava's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Jessica Mehring

Ashley Amber Sava

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Jessica Mehring's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreAshley Amber Sava's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreJessica Mehring's LinkedIn Performance