Come with.
When I was small I used to love getting up on a Saturday morning, sneak downstairs in my pajamas and watch television. As the eldest of six, we turned this into a habit. Being careful not to wake our parents, we smuggled blankets, cereal bowls and cocoa into the living room and sat down to watch the kids programs at unearthly hours. Probably 6.00 am.
We loved watching the kids on Tabaluga TV playing a game where they had to figure out the path across the ice towards Arctos, the snowman-bully. The goal was: defeat him by reaching him. The rules were: one misstep allowed. The path was illuminated across the hexagonal floor tiles only for a few seconds. Neon pink. Then the kids had to watch, memorize and walk the exact same route once the lights went out. Step wrong, and you're off the path. Get it right and you win. Arctos looses. Simple concept, genuinely tricky under pressure.
If we shrink the world into this game and if our goal is to eliminate the Arctoses of 2026 with all our grownup gear + education stuffed in our recycled Kånken backpacks, how the fuck are we going to find the neon floor tiles? And to make things even more complicated in the globalization-edition where the ice is melting and the intersections are crowded, who is going to illuminate paths that are not lit long enough for us to memorize?
We’ve all been handed maps, instructions and guidelines that have prepped us for yesterday (yesteryear?). That is why everything feels slightly off. The world is moving at a different pace, we are half into the future, but not there yet, and our logical response is: d i s o r i e n t a t i o n.
We can’t see each other, the paths are icy. Nobody can coordinate this way. And if we stay uncoordinated we can’t move together. And if we don’t move together, we stay stuck. This is a concept called the spiral of silence. What this spiral isn’t acknowledging is the deeper silence, the more dangerous one. The silence inside us. We are not listening to ourselves anymore. We know what needs to be done. But most days this stays invisible to us. The compass we've been given has three needles. Are they even pointing in the same direction?
The problem is our gatekeeper’s babysitter.
There is more than one voice in my head (obviously) and I’ve been finding it harder and harder growing up to distinguish the conflicting advice they are giving me. It takes practice to know who is talking.
Say hello 👋 to the voices in my head.
01 This is my intuition. She knows what she wants, isn’t concerned in the logistics of how to get what she wants and is pure 1-2 words advice. She is energy condensed into light. When she appears I feel better than Christmas, Birthdays and Pavlova put together. You know this overwhelming feeling where you can simultaneously laugh and cry at the same time? The last time I felt her it was when she nudged me towards the word: Activity Book.
02 This is my intuitions gatekeeper. She is hard to fool, hard to manage and loves ice-cream. She sees the holes in the story, she spots unfairness from afar and is generally unhappy about the world right now. She gives it to me straight, while rejecting common logic. She calls on my bullshit, but can also throw a tantrum large enough to obscure what’s actually happening. She is aware that she hasn’t written the story she is standing in, but isn’t aware of where it begins and ends.
03 Last, but not least: my gatekeeper’s babysitter. She has been taught to write in pencil and has accepted that others hold the red pens. Altruism has been baked into her bones at 180° and she quietly believes that the world would be a different place if gender roles hadn’t been invented. She has read the copy of Good Grown-Ups that was handed to her on her 18th birthday and knows that you can’t go zero plastic in a society built around capitalism unless you go live in the woods. She has been on an extreme either-or diet.
Two of these voices belong to me. One was written into me. To orient myself I need to know which is which. My intuition is able to see a fluidity of possibilities that the more guarded versions of me can’t. She is: what if + what’s next. The reason I keep drifting towards what is is my gatekeeper’s babysitters fault. She is doing a job I never asked her to do. She has been keeping me safe. She has been feeding me little white lies. Yes. The rules aren’t real one misstep allowed.
We can make as many mistakes as we want. Misstep? Or stay stuck? We can find our way through the ice. If we’re lost, we can find ourselves again. And when we all start moving, we can orient ourselves around each other.
Time to stop the suppression from inside.
89% of people want meaningful change. We believe we’re alone in wanting it. The isolation is designed, and it is working. The world isn’t asking us to change. To be honest, this makes me want to change things even more.
In my very first newsletter my intuition already slipped in a sentence that was nudging me in the direction I was heading. I am catching up with her now, 8 newsletters later. In my first essay I talked about a promise I made to the kids I was teaching last year. That I’d create a school of thought for adults, one where they could learn what schools didn’t teach them growing up. The skills needed to change things.
And you are here now. That's the thing. You actually showed up.
I'm building a school for grown-ups done giving up. Because schools have a bad reputation, it's going to be a club. This club. The curriculum is real people changing real things. The content stays free, because change isn't something we want to pricetag. For those who need a map, the club funds Story Sessions. Community funded, free for members. The whole thing runs on €1/month. Which is bananas on purpose. All 3 voices agreed on that.
This morning at 6:00 I grabbed a blanket and made coffee and then signed up as its first founding member. My gatekeeper's babysitter insisted this was really lame, and that 53 active readers is actually quite embarrassing, but my intuition disagrees. 80% of you are reading this. We're only just getting started.
The path was always there. It's dangerous to follow the Good Grown-Up's Guidebook when building things that don't exist yet.
I've found my compass and I'm going to hand you the tools to find yours too. They are sitting in the world's very first Activity Book for Adults Done Giving Up.
Stay curious. Stay courageous.
Come with.
Written by a human. Unpolished. On purpose.
