Essays, observations and ideas to explore.
It is difficult to plan a different life when you cannot rely on the place where you will sleep. Even ordinary ambitions, getting to work on time, helping a child with homework, putting something…
Read article →A job can be open to everyone and still be beyond someone’s reach. If taking it requires childcare they cannot afford, or a journey they cannot pay for until the first wage arrives, the…
Read article →It is easier to tell someone to plan for the future when they know where they will sleep tonight. We tend to leave that condition unspoken, then wonder why advice about work, family or…
Read article →An old division of household work may need revisiting when the circumstances behind it have changed.
Read article →When paying for ordinary life becomes difficult, the future can shrink to the next bill. Decisions that once had some room around them become calculations: whether a journey is necessary, whether something broken can…
Read article →There is something peculiar about asking a person to plan a better future when getting through the week already requires all their ingenuity. We admire resourcefulness, quite reasonably. But admiration becomes a cheap substitute…
Read article →A new skill can enrich life without becoming a product, career or public demonstration of talent.
Read article →Someone who needs help should not have to depend on whether another person feels inspired that morning. There is a great deal of ordinary work contained in that uncomfortable thought: answering messages, keeping agreements,…
Read article →People can become very good at managing situations they should never have to manage. They learn when to speak, when to leave something alone, how much inconvenience a complaint might bring. From outside, that…
Read article →It is easy enough to defend someone whose account of the world resembles our own. The difficulty begins when the person being mistreated is someone we dislike, distrust, or believe has behaved badly. Sympathy…
Read article →A person who has survived sexual violence in war should not have to spend the rest of their life making that violence intelligible to everyone else. Yet even the language of justice can place…
Read article →There is a peculiar kind of exhaustion in asking for something ordinary and discovering that, before the conversation can begin, you must explain what sort of person you are. Then explain why the answer…
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