juliana ong

I miss the futile fantasizing and being the precise target demographic of Taylor Swift’s marketing efforts. I miss being on the floor, ready to nail-to-cross myself for love. The dull aftertaste of heartbreak lingering for days, often weeks. But then, you know, I look in the mirror, and I like what I see. I see that I’m protected and can think... See more

“I think a lot about those whose lives I find fascinating, and it’s often they who tried new and varied things on the way to figuring out what they were great at: Christopher Walken was a lion tamer, Mrs. Prada is a trained mime artist. Maybe my future iteration is something in the circus. We’ll see. Perhaps after this swim.”

HEARTBREAK is unpreventable; the natural outcome of caring for people and things over which we have no control…

Heartbreak begins the moment we are asked to let go but cannot, in other words, it colors and inhabits and magnifies each and every day; heartbreak is not a visitation, but a path that human beings follow through even the most average... See more

The decline of deviance is mainly a good thing. Our lives have gotten longer, safer, healthier, and richer. But the rise of mass prosperity and disappearance of everyday dangers has also made trivial risks seem terrifying. So as we tame every frontier of human life, we have to find a way to keep the good kinds of weirdness alive. We need new... See more

I often joke that I make life incredibly difficult for myself, and these days I do genuinely say this in good humour. But there was a time when I often wondered why I couldn't just be happier with less—doing less, having less, being less.

This is maybe the single most important core of human psychology - people want to reinforce narratives about themselves. If you’re marketing, don’t sell them a thing, sell them a self image that your thing happens to reinforce.

the only thing sadder than not being a rich kid is being a Disney adult

The authors link this to the so-called Tocqueville paradox, which suggests that social progress can, paradoxically, lead to greater frustration.