The last newsletter I sent out was on April 15th. Six months. Whoa. Long-time readers won’t be surprised, but I apologize if you needed more from me during that time.

An unexpected opportunity

In May, I reached out to my friend Patrick about an issue with his company website. I used to host it for him and was still a WordPress admin. Little did I know how much that one email would impact the next six months.

I met Patrick at the very first Up To All Of Us event, a spinoff of Overlap run by Aaron Silvers and Megan Bowe. I was lucky enough to get an invite to that first one in 2012, and ended up going to all of them.

At a lovely resort in Sedona, I listened to this remarkable individual talk about solving conflict through financial transactions. I hope I still have the old recording somewhere. I think it was on an iPhone 3G.

Fourteen years later, Patrick replied to my email and said he might have some freelance work for me. I’ve been mostly underemployed since I went to graduate school in 2023, and especially since being laid off in July 2025. This opportunity was a bright light in an otherwise dismal job search.

When we spoke later in May, I learned he’d been doing financial counseling for recipients of his family’s foundation, Tunnel to Towers, which had grown enormously since I’d first heard about it. He asked if I wanted to help him work with these families. It was the first “hell yeah” I’d had in a while.

Six months later, I’m a Certified Personal Financial Counselor (CPFC; I’ve added more letters after my name in the last three years than in the previous forty, heh!) and working part-time with recipient families on their finances, home ownership, and more.

I didn’t expect to go this direction, and I’m so thankful for that conversation. I was burned out on technology, automation, AI, and atrocities around the world. These calls are direct action with meaningful, measurable results, and they came at just the right time.

Still building at Antidote

I continue to work as interim Deputy Director for Antidote, where we’re close to launching our first course on psychological manipulation. Working with Diane Benscoter has been fantastic. I can’t wait to share this course with the world and help people recognize manipulation and regain their agency.

Rethinking my tech stack

The thing I’m most focused on right now is my own tech and the tech I recommend to others. With the recent PHP vulnerability and my long-time promotion of and reliance on WordPress, I’ve been thinking about how we move forward in a world where bad actors use AI to hack, scrape, steal, and manipulate.

What I know so far:

• Ethical Methods and my personal site (briandusablon.com) will move off WordPress to plain HTML and CSS: no database, no plugins, no JavaScript, and very little to hack on the server.

• Drifter Life is leaving Ghost (my frustration with their lack of attention to accessibility continues). I’ll be trying Micro.blog and Buttondown.

• Before moving, I tested Micro.blog’s official themes for accessibility. None passed WCAG 2.2 AA in automated testing. Micro.blog lets you replace everything, though, so I’m working with Claude to build an accessible theme I’ll share with the community.

I’ll write up what I chose and why, including what I’d recommend for independents, small businesses, and nonprofits that want to be secure, private, and accessible on a budget.

What I’m learning from working with older adults

I’ve also been volunteering as a digital navigator at a senior apartment community here in Olympia. I knew things were bad, but this work shows me every week how much design decisions affect real people. Even the best-resourced design systems (*cough* Liquid Ass) skip established accessibility standards. I’ll share what I’m learning, in the hope it helps you design differently.

Into the dark

It’s fall in the Pacific Northwest, which means dark skies at 4pm. For some, it’s time to hibernate (or be a potato). For me, it’s a time to work in the cave and do the damn thing.

Jason Early, who helped me come up with Drifter Life and “positive imbalance,” suggested using this dark, wet season to crank out content: to record, write, and share. So that’s the plan! (If you like nature, travel, and life, I’d love it if you subscribed to Drifter Life too.)

I also have room for coaching folks this winter. If you or someone you know could use a coach or help with accessible and ethical tech or communications, book a free call.

I’d love to hear from you: what you’re learning, working on, or struggling with. Just reply to this email. No AI here, just me checking my inbox.

I wish you all nothing but peace, love, and hope on this U.S. Election Day. Be well, be kind, and carry on. ☮️❤️