Agalia Tan

“It’s frustrating feeling like you are always waiting for someone to say yes”

To paraphrase Marx, we might hunt for jobs on LinkedIn in the morning, fish for compliments on Instagram in the afternoon, criticize each other on Twitter after dinner, and be as lascivious as we like on Tinder in the late evening, without letting any of these identities define us...  Nevertheless, something is lost in this fractionalization o... See more

If the work feels like a drag, you're doing it wrong

We say that the most powerful work operates through evoking visceral, emotional responses, yet we’ve been seemingly conditioned to believe that critiquing and evaluating is the professional necessary first step. But the fact is that we can’t truly feel an idea, we can’t truly live an idea if we’re standing on the outside and looking in being clever... See more

If we don’t know the creative intent, we shouldn’t speculate.

Forget everything we know and love about physical magazines. Forget their length. Forget their size. Forget their weekly or monthly publishing schedule. Forget all these qualities except for one: What it’s like to come to an end, and to take a deep breath.

What does a bookend — an edge — mean for narrative arc? Broadly, it helps define the shape of ... See more

I think it’s interesting how this happens—the way the highest functioning aspects of our machinery, however miraculous or unique, disappear into the background of our perception. I thought of this in a more personal context the other day, when a friend was feeling depressed about a lack of momentum in her career. She was plagued by memories of how ... See more