Natalie Audelo

After all, not to be corny, haven’t we all become selective autobiographers in the digital age as we curate our lives for our own audiences of any size—cutting away from the raw fabric of our lived experience to reveal the shape of the story we most want to tell, whether it’s on our own feeds or the world’s stage?

It is very tempting to believe that because you are twenty-something and struggling, the world is conspiring against you. But sometimes, the pain we feel in life is not from people holding us back, but our own inability to deal with their indifference.3 In other words: no one is out to get you. They just don’t care that much. This is both a little ... See more

Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

– William Fitzjames Oldham

I don’t have any answers because I don’t think there are any. But I’m fond of Margaret Wheatley’s framing of creating “islands of sanity,” which a kind reader reminded me of in the lovely comments of my last post. These islands are crucially not places of retreat, but rather of contribution — hyperlocal, small in scale, yet deeply meaningful. To re... See more

When we understand our consumer choices not as an expression of our uniqueness, but instead as a reflection of our demonstrated social preferences and aspirations, we end up learning even more about ourselves—and who we are trying to become. The bigger question is: What will it cost you?

As Janine explained, that is our design challenge—to realign ourselves with life’s genius. And there’s a word for that practice: biomimicry.

Life has gotten very chaotic incredibly quickly. It has become increasingly difficult to parse anything from the static. People started coping with this lack of meaning through a kind of ironic detachment (which is very much still around), but it has matured into a pervasive cultural apathy, a permeating numbness. This isn’t nihilism per se. (Even ... See more

Why would I care about the “way things are” if I’m actively trying to change that?