Ben Cuan

And here’s what I learned from all that: The ones who succeed are often simply the ones who try harder than everybody else. They wake up in the wee hours to write before their first meeting of the day; they turn down social invitations to practice their craft. They kill their darlings; they do the reading; none of this sounds easy because it’s not.

No, I think this will all end, as T.S Eliot said, with a whimper. People will simply lose interest and walk away. Because the internet now is boring . People spend all day scrolling because they are trying to find what isn’t there anymore. The authenticity, the genuinely human moments, the fun.

The dream was that communities would get very form-fit tools for their particular needs, rather than trying to adapt generic software to solve them.

These are just a few examples and I love that my work is amorphous and ever changing. It ebbs and flows as my life moves, priorities change, interests evolve, and desires and hopes and dreams become clear.

That’s the thing about portfolio careers. They help you construct a home for yourself so you stop looking for one in other places.

I know that having a healthy relationship with being obsessive about your work requires a baseline level of psychological safety.

these days, I feel like I’m always being houndedby the urgency of the present. I am happy, but I could be happier. My life is rich, but it could be richer. My weeks have gotten increasingly regimented, each day a tightly packed grid of rainbow-colored calendar blocks. I want to have and do it all. If I don’t spend my days well, what will become of... See more

Gaining agency is gaining the capacity to do something differently from, or in addition to, the events that simply happen to you.