So, awk sort of works as a fancy grep:

    ps axjw | awk '(/zsh/ || /login/) && !(/awk/ || /direnv/)'

And you can easily add features like "print the first line unconditionally:

    ps axjw | awk 'NR == 1 {print} (/zsh/ || /login/) && !(/awk/ || /direnv/)'

IMO, awk is in a pretty uniquely sweet spot between grep and perl/ruby/python.

Thanks for the grep tip!

Unfortunately I've not put in the effort to learn awk past printing the n-th column of ls (my typical use) - the extra syntax required to properly 'quote' and {} things puts me off.