Not an Update, Exactly
Small moments, a few photos, and where I’ve been lately
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Have you heard of The Odyssey Plan? It’s a life design exercise developed at Stanford1 to help people move beyond the paralysing belief that there's only one right path forward. Rather than forcing a single decision, the exercise invites you to create three distinct five-year life plans2 that encompass not just career trajectories but your entire life experience – relationships, health, personal growth, and everything else that matters to you. The first plan charts your current trajectory or the idea you've been developing; the second imagines what you would do if that first path suddenly disappeared or became impossible; and the third explores what you would pursue if money, social expectations, and image were no object, allowing your deepest curiosities and latent aspirations to surface without immediate judgment or commitment.
Each plan takes shape through a visual five-year timeline that maps both professional milestones and personal bucket list events, distilled into a six-word title that captures its essence, accompanied by three genuine questions this life might help you answer about yourself, and evaluated through a dashboard rating system that assesses your available resources, your genuine enthusiasm for the idea, your confidence in executing it, and its coherence with your core values. The power in this exercise lies in the divergent thinking it forces: most people have never seriously considered more than one version of their future, let alone three. It doesn’t matter what stage of life you’re in, you can still use it to find more clarity and intentionality in how you choose to spend your finite time on this place called earth.
In other news, have been at work on an essay about this curious, shimmering unreality of things; how the world seems, just now, to hover slightly out of reach. And yet, suddenly, it is the Easter bank holiday, and tomorrow we are off to Scotland, and it seemed better to fold that letter away for a while, to wait until next week – when you’re not wrapped up in travel plans and chocolate (or maybe that’s just me?).
LAST TIME /at hyperreality
Things I Can’t Quite Ignore Lately
A field guide to the strange psychological and cultural moment we’re living through
In last week’s letter, found myself thinking about overthinking, how it feels like a flaw, but is also a form of care, a signal that something matters. Also shared what I’d been reading – about relationships, memory, and all the ways connection shapes our lives; then wandered into interiors, spring style, and little obsessions, from velvet home cinemas to dappled fawn spots in place of leopard print. There was a moment for the everyday and the aspirational, from powder-room romance to Japanese suiting, and reflections on machines that never lose sleep over their choices. It was, as always, a reminder that imperfection, attention, and curiosity are what make our lives beautiful, and that there’s a human on the other side of your screen who is thinking, through all the messiness, about the very same things you are.
Below, for paid subscribers, a meandering wander through my thoughts and days – a series of snapshots from errands, meetings, and romantic trysts: spicy tequila cocktails in new wine bars, the faded pink edges of tulip petals, sunshine on skin at last, and more…