Controversial ChatGPT: How I Lost Everything and Started Over (Again)

In the beginning I rolled my eyes at ChatGPT.

It felt like another Silicon Valley promise: loud, shiny, and vaguely dystopian. I didn’t see the value. This year I decided to actually start using it and see what happens. Not for shortcuts, but to build my arsenal of tools. For the stuff that eats hours: structuring a Notion database, roughing in a content plan, translating a messy brain dump into a clean outline. Suddenly I had time back (like, a lot of time back) time to sketch, to design, to think.

And then I lost it all. Seriously… my heart was broken.

From skeptic to “oh… this is useful”

When I let ChatGPT into my workflow, I treated it like a virtual assistant with endless coffee:

• “Build me a content calendar with Sunday releases.”

• “Draft a skeleton for a blog post about X.”

• “Turn these scattered notes into a checklist.”

• “Build me a database to streamline the process of X”

None of this replaced design thinking. It just removed the friction around it. The admin fog lifted, the stress of how much time small task take. What remained was the work that matters: craft, ideas, and the part where I get to make something only I can make.

But is it “cheating”?

That question hangs over every creative conversation online: Is AI making us lazy? Is it “cheating”? I don’t buy it. Tools don’t erase taste, judgment, or originality. They don’t give you a point of view. They don’t decide when to push, when to break a rule, or when to leave white space on purpose. People do.

What AI can do is surface the obvious faster, so we can get to the interesting part sooner. If someone wants to use it as a shortcut to skip the thinking, that’s not ChatGPT’s fault. That’s the same old “fast and free” mindset dressed in a new interface. It is something we as a society have dealt with time and time again. More recently for example: the birth of the internet. Why are no boomers or Gen X' people speaking up? …that may be a topic for another day.

Media fear, creative reality

The media loves an apocalypse narrative. “Design is dead.” “Writers replaced.” Meanwhile, in the real world, clients still crave taste, strategy, and a steady hand. My tools haven’t changed: Adobe Creative Suite, my sketchbook, my iPad, the internet, and now ChatGPT, sitting neatly in the toolshed with the rest.

Here’s a spicy upside no one talks about: AI is a magnet for nightmare clients. If Canva + prompts can satisfy someone who doesn’t value expertise, excellent. Let them go there. I’m here for the people who want depth, collaboration, and outcomes that last longer than a trend cycle. I am here for people who value investment.

The hard lesson: backup or it didn’t happen

Now for the painful part. My original ChatGPT workspace was tied to a shared test account. It got terminated. In a blink of an eye I lost months of content, brand work, personal systems… the entire digital brain. No backup. Not even screenshots. As a designer and a tech user, I know better. Still, I let convenience outrun process.

Here’s what that deletion gave me, though: clarity. I don’t need the whole archive; I need the essential structure and the lessons learned. The rest was bloat disguised as “someday value.”

What I rebuilt—and how

I rebuilt my system with fewer moving parts and stronger guardrails:

1. Local-first capture. Anything important lives in my notes or Notion first, then gets shaped with AI, not the other way around.

2. Versioning by default. Weekly exports of key docs and calendars. I treat systems like design files: save early, save often.

3. Prompts library. My best prompts now live in a reusable doc—clear, scoped, and dated.

4. AI as a collaborator, not an author. It drafts; I decide. It proposes; I compose.

5. Boundaries = speed. If a task doesn’t move the creative needle, automate it. If it does, protect it.

The creative upside

Since August, ChatGPT has helped me reclaim hours I used to spend on sorting through brain dumps, outlines and building databases. That time is now going to sketching, educating, refining, and most importantly finishing. It hasn’t made me lazier; it’s made me more present with the parts of the process that actually require me.

And when the account disappeared, yes, I felt the gut-punch. But I also felt relief. A clean slate has momentum. It forced me to ask: what do I really need to carry forward? (That also has seemed to be as passive theme in my life for 2025.)

If you’re a creative wrestling with AI, try this:

• Define your “no-gos.” What will you never outsource to a machine? (For me: concept direction, typographic voice, and final polish.)

• Audit your friction. List the tasks that drain you but don’t define you. Automate those first.

• Save, save, save. Export regularly. Keep a simple naming convention. Future you will thank you.

• Build from a backbone. A handful of reusable prompts and templates beats a chaotic library of one-offs.

• Stay human on purpose. Process is faster now; taste still takes time. Make room for it.

Not the end, just a shift

I’m not worried about being replaced. Tools have been “replacing” us forever, until we use them to make something better. The internet didn’t end creativity; it changed the canvas. This is the same story with a new brush.

I’ll keep using ChatGPT alongside my sketchbook and software. I’ll keep backing up my work like a grown adult. And I’ll keep choosing the parts of the process that only I can do, the parts with my fingerprints on them.

Lesson learned (again): back up your stuff. Then get back to the work.