Ik hou van muziek en festivals…dus een bubbelervaring zoals op een meerdaags festival wil ik ooit ervaren. Dat hoort toch ook een beetje bij jong zijn? Lekker met je vrienden naar de banjo…

Extreem pieken om vervolgens te dalen

Maar dan denk ik aan die drassige tentjes, doorgezakte luchtbedden en de horrorverhalen van festivalgangers die een heel weekend teren op zes uur slaap.

Het klinkt in zekere zin net zo extreem als een Ironman: onmenselijk om zoveel van je lichaam te vragen in zo’n korte tijd. Alleen ben je bij een Ironman al maanden je lichaam aan het fuelen met een ander soort brandstof dan een broodje knaks en pretsnoepjes.

Ik hoor over verschillende gradaties in de Lowlandservaring. Aan de ene kant heb je de mensen die nuchter genieten van de bands en het dagprogramma. Dan heb je de extremere andere kant van het spectrum die het zien als een ware vlucht van het echte leven en zichzelf naar een andere planeet lanceren om vervolgens weer ‘terug te komen’ in de realiteit en in een maar al te begrijpelijk dal terecht te komen. Zoals een vriend, die al drie jaar op rij gaat, en elke keer weer thuiskomt met een compleet lege serotoninetank. Toch gaat hij elk jaar weer. Het hoogtepunt is blijkbaar dusdanig hoog dat het die klap waard is.

Waarom voel ik FOMO naar Lowlands?

Dat ik überhaupt overweeg om te gaan, heeft alles te maken met omgeving. Als voor je gevoel iedereen om je heen gaat (veel collega’s, vrienden, influencers die je volgt) dan wil jij ook. Maar waarom is die drang juist in deze levensfase zo sterk? In de podcast Psychology of your 20s (tip!!) leggen ze uit dat ons constant FOMO-gemarket wordt. Het narratief is dat je in je twintiger jaren móét pieken en feesten, omdat je anders je ‘beste jaren’ aan het verspillen bent.

Social media doet daar nog een schepje bovenop: door de constante highlightreel van feestende mensen (of vakantiegangers, mensen die uiteten gaan) voelt een weekendje niks al snel alsof je saai bent.

Ik vind het eigenlijk heel mooi dat er in tijden van individualisme en socialemediaverslaving nog plekken bestaan als festivals waar mensen zo samen zijn en contact hebben met elkaar. Maar tegelijkertijd is Lowlands ook een heel geschikt decor voor social posts, en het laten zien van kijk hoe leuk we het hebben hier. Dus ook al is men losgerukt van de realiteit, wordt het alsnog gedeeld, waardoor de thuisblijvers (aka ik) op de blaren zitten en zich afvragen waarom ze niet young wild & free zijn.

Ook al ben ik er niet, weet ik dankzij m’n feed hoe de glamping eruitziet, heb ik de New Wave show gezien vanuit drie verschillende perspectieven, en vooral heel veel video’s van springende mensen in de meest hippe, gecureerde festivaloutfits. Ook weer iets wat je in real life niet aan zou doen, maar nu gewoon kan (en dat vind ik leuk)! De outfit die ik veel voorbij zag komen: een strak broekje dat ik vroeger als dansbroekje aan had, hoge (regen)laarzen en een zwarte, snelle fietsplanga.

= FOMO!

Van FOMO naar JOMO

Nadat ik mezelf overtuigd heb om volgend jaar te gaan, komt de jomo. Als ik één nacht slecht slaap, voel ik de onrust al door mijn lijf gieren. Wanneer mijn zusje appt dat ze de eerste nacht amper heeft getukt, krijg ik plaatsvervangende stress. Natuurlijk kan een jong lichaam veel hebben, maar slaaptekort is serieus gevaarlijk: je brein krijgt een klap, hormonen raken in de war, een dopamine high gevolgd door een mentale crash, spierherstel vertraagd.

Enge generatie in de stad

Het blijft een fascinerend fenomeen van onze generatie (ik denk vooral in de stad): doordeweeks leven onder het motto ‘my body is a temple’, om diezelfde tempel in het weekend volkomen te verwoesten. Waarna de week weer komt, en de klap op het immuunsysteem weer wordt opgevangen, met wortelsap, yogalesjes en quinoa bowls.

BALANS!

Ik voel die compensatiedrang na een uit de bocht gevlogen weekend zelf ook en ik hou er juist van dat die twee naast elkaar kunnen bestaan. Dat je een bewust moment hebt van: ‘we hebben genoten’ en ‘nu gaan we even het roer weer omgooien’.

Zoals in het zuiden vaak wordt gezegd over carnaval: “het kan juist gezond zijn voor je koppie om af en toe de controle iets los te laten, juist omdat ons normale leven al uit zoveel grip en structuur bestaat“. De controle een klein beetje loslaten om te voelen dat je leeft?

Eigenlijk gek en confronterend als ik het zo opschrijf.

Wel of niet gaan naar Lowlands ‘27?

Ik heb nog nooit iemand gehoord die Lowlands niet leuk vindt. We zijn natuurlijk kuddedieren, maar als iets zo massaal populair wordt, geloof ik dat er een kern van waarheid in zit (behalve Taylor Swift dan, die hype snap ik nog steeds niet..). Het zal ook wel waanzinnig zijn!! Ik ga sowieso ooit, want in Amsterdam wonen heeft er wel toe geleid dat het op mijn bucketlist staat.. Stay tuned!!

Vast rubriekje voor m’n trouwe lezers?? @moeders ENJOY xxx

This was a click moment for me. It sounds so obvious, but the more your audience can expand, the bigger your brand can potentially get. Because there are more people who could potentially be seduced by your product. A niche brand will only speak to the niche audience, unless the niche really expands and goes mainstream.

I also thought of countries: a Dutch singer-songwriter most probably has a target audience of 17 million people to sell concert tickets to. But English: take Shakira, who's from Colombia but has so many English hits, which have made the leap to international stardom more attainable. And yet, even without that pivot, her market was already huge: over 50 million people speak the Colombian variety of Spanish, and around 623 million people speak Spanish worldwide, far more than the 17 million of the Dutch market. So the leap to English (spoken by roughly 1.49 billion people) is a big move, but not a crucial one. She is, after all, one of the most successful Latin music artists in history, with 106.6M monthly Spotify listeners.

On the other side sits Bad Bunny, who has stayed true to his Puerto Rican product and language but has still managed to go mainstream. He's become a global star. How? By focusing on his own product and identity, holding on to his unique sound. The distinctiveness is what made it travel.

Bron: Byron Sharp, How Brands Grow Part 2 (2015)

Dit vond ik gewoon een heel mooie quote! Uiteindelijk heeft ieder mens de behoefte om gezien te worden. En het is moeilijk om te werken, kunst te produceren of een soloreis te maken zonder op een gegeven moment de behoefte te voelen dit te delen. Een kunstenaar / creatief die zijn of haar ideeën niet kan delen, die zich niet kan uiten, voelt zich vast.

Bron: Nur Gurven, gequote in:

as slow as possible

38 ways to create more than you consume, while you consume

I’m Tuğba, a Greek-Turkish artist living in Berlin - as slow as possible is a newsletter exploring the in-between spaces of our lives that we see but often do not notice. Interested in reading more o…

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6 months ago · 9157 likes · 258 comments · Tuğba Avci

Deze column ging over het balans vinden tussen kritisch zijn op beleidsmakers en hen vertrouwen dat ze over zaken hebben nagedacht. De vraag "waarom hebben ze niet gewoon … gedaan?" die we maar al te graag stellen. Vooral in situaties waar we zelf ver van afstaan. Een vraag die we moeten blijven stellen, want ervan uitgaan dat beleidsmakers perfecte mensen zijn die alles zullen overwegen is ook gevaarlijk.

Bron: Eva Peek, “Verdwijntrucs”, Waarom doen ze niet gewoon zo, colomn in NRC, 15/16 augustus 2026

Knap hoe hij een thema, 'verdwijnen' (afgeleid van het event van de week: de zonsverduistering voor het eerst sinds 1999), door de hele column trekt. Alles wat deze week lijkt te verdwijnen in het nieuws, verpakt hij in een humoristische tekst, afgewisseld met lowbrow en ernstige headlines: van het woord 'schaamlip' dat uit het woordenboek verdwijnt (vervangen door 'vulvalip') tot de tienduizenden zoekgeraakte ggz-patiënten.

Bron: Youp van 't Hek, "Verdwijntrucs", column in NRC, 15/16 augustus 2026

Dit vind ik gewoon heel leuk geschreven. Drie beelden die heel visueel en herkenbaar zijn!

Bron: Simon van Teutem, 'Ja, we moeten het klimaat redden. Maar het is ook echt tijd voor airco', De Correspondent

Another very visual way of writing. I can see the words getting lost on the way to his mouth. It's recognisable too: the way you sometimes want to say something, but the words come out completely differently. I'm listening to the Harry Potter audiobook and it's amazing! I love it for the imagination.

Bron: J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Love this metaphor. You have to train your writing muscle, even when it's the harder option, especially when the escalator is right there!

The considered word! Thank you, Stephens. But do we consider words when we use AI as a tool to go back and forth and try to find the right meaning? It has helped me to express myself before. You know, when you prompt and 'it gets you' by assembling exactly the meaning you wanted for the sentence. But it is a shortcut, and not the type of consideration that carries the weight Bret Stephens advocates for. Hmmmm. Food for thought.

Bron: Bret Stephens, 'I'm Begging You: Never Write With A.I.', The New York Times, 4 augustus 2026

Note to self: attempt to learn language BEFORE arrival, to not find yourself frozen mid-sentence, searching for words in a back cupboard of your brain. Result: the TOURIST GAZE. Blank and confused. The same gaze that tourists walking in the middle of the bike path in Amsterdam have after hearing the aggressive tring tring of your bell (guilty of this aggression…)

Quite the side track. Back to the real story.

My best friends and I have just arrived in Tuscany, settled into our pink house by the pool. We headed off to secure groceries for the week. A trip during which we were fascinated by everything on offer: the cheeses, the fresh pasta and pesto, and the wine. We were looking for a bottle of good red wine and wondering why it was so cheap, only to realize we were standing in front of the cooking wine aisle.. There’s really an aisle for just cooking wine! The Italians pointed us toward the drinking wine section, which was even bigger. They were humored by our ignorance and rambled in Italian something I distilled as, “Oh honeys, you’ve got a lot to learn.”

The road to the winery

Thankfully, we were going to learn it all at a wine tasting with Helena at Usiglian del Vescovo. We hiked for 20 minutes toward the winery during the hottest part of the day. All dressed up, we looked like city girls who had completely lost their way…trekking through the sand in heels while our fresh makeup slowly melting off our faces. Not exactly the effortless Tuscan elegance we’d imagined.

We arrived at the estate where Helena greeted us with a “ciaaaoo.” Shaded by the iconic Tuscan cypress trees, we finally caught a little breeze and cooled down after the most physical activity of the holiday so far. The ultimate holiday feeling: thinking that was the biggest challenge of the day!

Then Helena took us to see the grapes:

After the vineyard, we were led inside to the room where the tasting would take place. No windows in sight, and a very pleasant temperature for the tons of barrels doing their ripening.

The room felt as old as the craft itself. A beautiful wooden table, one you could actually smell, sat us all three arm’s lengths apart. Each spot was set with three glasses and a ring-shaped sweet cracker, taralli. Wine bottles were lined up in the cabinets, as if patiently waiting for their moment to be picked out by Helena to entertain the group of tasters.

Why is wine interesting?

Wine is interesting because you can drink it with zero knowledge, for pure alcohol purposes, but the experience becomes so much richer when paired with a story: what food to drink it with, where it’s from, how someone stumbled upon it. These images elevate the flavor of every sip.

Nothing makes you feel grown up quite like finally investing in a bottle from a specialty shop instead of the discounted supermarket wine guaranteed to give you a headache the next morning. It’s the shift from drinking wine functionally to drinking wine experientially.

Being knowledgeable about wine can escalate into a hobby: entertaining guests with it, or being the one who steps forward at a restaurant to take the first taste and test the bottle. Looking it up on Vivino for reassurance, even though taste is, in a sense, subjective.

Winemaking is one of those professions we romanticize from the distance of our office jobs. A life led by craft and taste. Just the look of an Italian vineyard is associated with romance, after all the dream Italian weddings we’ve parasocially attended on Instagram.

During the tasting, Helena happily answered our burning questions about wine, pouring out stories from her own life along the way. Between the sips and the chatter, lessons emerged about LIFE.

What we can all learn from the art of crafting wine

The craft is ancient. Think about it: humanity’s ancestors (Jesus, the Roman Empire…) have been drinking wine since forever. But times change, and a good producer reacts to it. Helena regularly does a kind of competitor analysis in other wine countries. She recently visited Prosecco and delightfully confirmed that Italian wine was really the best, but it was still good to broaden her palette and sharpen her taste further.

It struck me as an innovative profession, one that challenges itself by looking outward. She also mentioned how trend-sensitive the industry is, and how their produce adapts to what’s in fashion. Right now, Prosecco is popular. Like any successful business, they’re not rigid in their supply.

Lesson 1: A product is never be rigid in the face of change and trends.

While the product should change with the times, the experience it’s built around doesn’t. Pleasure is a concept that’s stood the test of time in Italy. Helena dropped a quote that captures the depth of wine in Italian culture:

Not because of the alcohol, but because of the enjoyment of the taste. By age four, Helena had already learned to enjoy wine, which is why her family jokes she never grew tall. She taught her kids the same, and speaks with pride about how they, now 19 and 21, go out to the terrace with friends and are specific about ordering a good bottle. Sure, they get drunk sometimes, but it’s led by enjoyment, not the goal of getting drunk.

Lesson 2: Enjoyment is a practice we should nurture.

How I translate this: the art of enjoying life. Doing things we truly love. Not restricting or punishing ourselves, or living in the future all the time, but being in the moment. Plan the trip, cook the food you love, and actually enjoy it.

How to truly take it all in? Turn on your senses. We took the time to twirl the wine, so all the aromas were set free. To smell before taking a sip (from the back of the glass, since this maximizes the impact of the smell), and to taste consciously. To notice the difference in taste between drinking from a properly shaped wine glass versus a regular water glass.

Lesson 3: Turning on our senses elevates the taste, and the experience.

In busy lives, we’re prone to rushing through rituals: a quick lunch behind the desk, or on the go. Multitasking. But we’ve been granted the power of senses, and we just need our mind to be aware of them to activate them. Activate them all at once, and you get a flavor explosion.

I think this goes further than taste, though: turn on your senses while taking in a good view too. What do you see, hear, smell? That awareness imprints a memory far more than a passive photo you’ll lose in your camera roll ever will. It’s what truly lands us in the moment, putting all our attention on what’s in front of us.

While we’re consciously enjoying a different sensory awakening with every sip, my slightly intoxicated mind starts wandering: how far removed is my Amsterdam lifestyle from this slow, deliberate one Helena lives? For a second, I think I’ve found my calling: I need to just move to Italy and live like this!!

But in hindsight, I realize the true insight is something else. Not that Helena’s lifestyle is ‘better’, but that mine is so far from it.

City speed, routines, efficiency, every hour blocked in a calendar vs. a place where slowness is necessary, where the heat and the wine itself demand patience. The winemaker’s life becomes an escape from my own. Maybe that distance, that fantasy, is what keeps it romantic.

Lesson 4: Contrast is what makes us notice.

Coming across things different from your everyday is natural on holiday, where the goal is to escape. But why not seek new back home too?

Fun fact: seeking new experiences makes time go slower. Why? Because your memories aren’t blurred into the sameness of routine, but built from different experiences. That’s why a holiday lasting just a week can feel so long: you’re doing a bunch of new things, seeing new places. This is called the Holiday Paradox. As psychologist Marc Wittmann explains in Psychology Today, “novel experiences get encoded so vividly that when looking back that stretch of time feels like it lasted far longer than it did”. It's why just six years of high school, filled with firsts, feel so enormous in your memory.

Helena also took the pleasure of debunking a few things we hear about wine. Is a lighter rosé really better than one with more color? False. It isn’t necessarily better, but for the French it’s seen as a quality standard; in Italy, it isn’t. Same with the cork: for Helena, good wine should have one. It doesn’t necessarily affect the taste, but it’s a truth they choose to believe in.

Each culture has developed its own understanding of what good wine should look, smell, and taste like. It’s a reminder to stay sensitive to the fact that our own truths may differ from those in other cultures. That’s not to say we shouldn’t share our own truth. Disagreement can lead to new insight and good conversation. Those are the backpacker talks we love, the ones where you learn that something completely normal to you is a novelty to someone else, and the other way around!

Lesson 5: Quality is a culturally agreed-upon story, not an objective truth.

Last but not least is more of a party trick than a deep lesson. (But I’ll take the pleasure of deep-diving it anyway.)

The party trick: instead of dropping regular ice into white wine, you freeze wine itself into ice cubes, and if you want to go extra, add some edible flowers to them. It turns an ordinary glass into something special.

Why not add flowers into anything on any random day by:

• Buying yourself flowers with nothing to celebrate.

• Dressing up a little extra on a Tuesday

• Surprising a friend with a cake, just because

• Setting the table properly even when it’s only you eating.

Lesson 6: It’s up to you to elevate the ordinary on any day.

The wine in those barrels wasn’t rushed to be ready. The whole room was built around giving it the temperature and the years it needed to ripen properly. It’s a simple idea, but an easy one to forget in everyday life, where the instinct is to want the finished thing now. Winemaking doesn’t work that way, and neither does most stuff worth building: a craft, a friendship, a book etc. You can’t rush the barrel.

Circling it back to AI here… AI will make work more efficient, but because of that speed, it risks losing meaning. For meaning to be crafted, like the bottle and the taste Helena gave us today, time is essential. It’s what elevates the quality. It’s what makes the story richer, the experience richer, life richer. Which leads me to the final lesson that sounds like quite the cliche, but is so true:

Lesson 7: The best things take time.

After the tasting, we were buzzing (emotionally, and slightly alcoholically). Ready to bottle up the entire experience and take a few actual bottles home too, each one now attached to a story rather than just a label. Which feels very sophisticated and not at all like the €4.99 bottle currently residing in my kitchen back home.

We had a few more glasses around the barrel, in the sun. Helena simply told us to leave our glasses in the mailbox whenever we felt like leaving, then cruised off to pick up her son, en route to cook pasta puttanesca made with a full kilo of ribeye and the good red cooking wine. Best day!!!

Ik zie groepen eindexamenleerlingen al aan de Heineken-blikjes. Eigenlijk groepen van alle leeftijden. De vakantie is begonnen en dat betekent: alle regels het raam uit wat betreft fastfood en alcohol op vaste tijden. Nu al drinken is voor de vrouwen wat minder weggelegd. Die denken na over de energie die ze moeten sparen en pakken straks in het vliegtuig nog de ‘nodige beauty sleep’, om zo opgeladen mogelijk aan de week in Albufeira te beginnen. Ik quote: “Ik ga drie uur slapen in het vliegtuig en dan mezelf aan het zwembad parkeren zodat ik nog kan tannen voor vanavond.”

Ik hoop dat de drinkende jochies niet naast me zitten als ik straks ook nog een paar uur probeer te slapen. Niks zo irritant, maar toch herkenbaar, als naast dronken mensen zitten in het vliegtuig. Blijkbaar is dit ook een serieus probleem: luchtvaartmaatschappijen dringen er bij Schiphol op aan dat er strengere regels komen rondom alcoholverkoop. “Wie heeft er om 5 uur ‘s ochtends zin in bier?” vraagt Ryanair-topman Ryan O’Leary zich af. Vraag ik me dus ook af…

Mijn pre-vakantietraditie is niet drinken, niet om 4 uur ’s ochtends althans, maar winkels kijken. Parfum testen en ongegeneerd uitproberen wat de hype rondom de hydraterende dagcrème van €1.500 van La Mer is. Besef dat Botox dan letterlijk goedkoper is.

Even research gedaan: de dupe is blijkbaar de Nivea blauwe pot, het geheim van mijn oma die op haar 85e slechts 70 lijkt. (De anti-aging industrie is een artikel voor een andere dag.)

Ook schiet ik altijd in reflectiemodus en voel ik me, met een crème die goud waard is op mijn gezicht, terwijl ik dit artikel op mijn laptop tik, best wel Carrie Bradshaw.. Ik hou zo erg van de sfeer op Schiphol voor vertrek. Het is een soort tussenwereld tussen je eigen realiteit en de ‘vrijheid’. De tijd staat stil. Het nodigt me uit om los te koppelen van werk en verplichtingen, en de excitement voor de vakantie langzaam op te laten bouwen!!!

On my way familie, tapas, spelletjes, boeken lezen, ZON… 🇪🇸

Update 5:12: ik ga absoluut niet slapen. De examenreis zit naast me en ze zijn hyped. Maar ik voel ook voor hun excitement en word nostalgisch naar die tijd. De perceptie van wereldvrijheid die je voelt op die leeftijd en als je eindelijk op de vakantie gaat met vrienden waar je al zo lang naar uit gaat. Geen idee nog wat er gebeuren gaat in het nachtleven, maar wetende dat je uitgeblust en vol verhalen weer een week later thuis zal komen..

Xx

We hebben het gevoel dat elke gedachte invloed heeft op het spel. Wanneer iemand naar de wc gaat en Marokko een gevaarlijke kans krijgt, is diegene de boosdoener. Het is de illusie dat je controle kunt hebben over iets waar je absoluut geen controle over hebt.

In de 74e minuut huilen we om het doelpunt van Cody Gakpo. Zijn zoontje, dat enkele dagen eerder overleed tijdens de zwangerschap, geeft hem de kracht om te scoren. Het hele team omhelst hem en huilt met hem mee. We voelen zijn verhaal. De winst lijkt binnen handbereik.

Maar dan maakt Marokko in de 91e minuut de 1-1. Verlenging. Slechts vier uur slaap hakt erin, maar de adrenaline wint. Verbruggen redt op wereldniveau wanneer Rahimi één-op-één op hem afrent. Penalty’s. Iets waar de commentator al bijzonder pessimistisch over is. “Dat kunnen WIJ niet.” Toch houden we hoop. Ik doe mijn ogen dicht, want ik kan de spanning niet aan, maar word op mijn vingers getikt door mijn vriend om bij de wedstrijd te blijven en aan te moedigen.

Uiteindelijk redden we het niet. Marokko wint terecht en we blijven teleurgesteld en verdrietig achter. Online wordt Koeman als schuldige aangewezen. Het verhaal van Gakpo en Verbruggen voelt onaf. We waren in ons hoofd al plannen aan het maken voor aanstaande zaterdag, om de kwartfinale te kijken in de zon. Hoe moeten we nu verder de zomer in? Ik heb pas één keer mijn upcycled WK ’88-shirt aangehad…

Nationalisme ten top

Fascinerend dat ik constant ‘we’ zeg, terwijl ‘we’ zelf alleen maar kunnen juichen en supporten. ‘Onze jongens’ hebben keihard getraind en wij, ook ik, analyseren hun spel vanaf de veilige afstand van onze tv. Supporten en bekritiseren is de taak die wij op ons nemen als landgenoten. Aanmoedigen heeft wel degelijk zin, wil ik geloven. Vertrouwen geeft een speler misschien net dat superieure gevoel om te kunnen presteren. Kritiek geeft juist druk, en daar moet je maar net mee om kunnen gaan om die om te zetten in kracht. En haat werkt natuurlijk al helemaal niet.

De Nederlandse nieuwskoppen vandaag zijn mega kritisch. Toch sneu.. Wie had het beter kunnen doen? Als het muntje de andere kant op was gevallen, waren we natuurlijk lovend geweest. Blijkbaar verbinden we ons ook in het zeiken over de kwaliteit van het voetbal.

Ongekend hoe het WK een heel land zo kan samenbrengen in gedeelde emoties. Waarom is dat eigenlijk? Omdat we onze identiteit eraan koppelen. Het Nederlands elftal is een stukje van ons geworden. Het bepaalt hoe we onze week invullen. Om 3 uur de wekker zetten in de hoop ooggetuige te zijn van geschiedenis; een herinnering die je voor altijd bij zou blijven. ‘Waar was jij toen Nederland de achtste finale won van Marokko?’ Droomscenario.

Nu is het een herinnering geworden die je sneller wegstopt. Teleurstelling. Brak van het slaaptekort. Wat ook wel weer melig is. We staan samen in deze dip, wat het ergens dragelijk maakt.

Heldenverhaal

Straks is er misschien weer een stukje trots, als we terugblikken op de hoogtepunten die zijn samengesmolten tot een waanzinnige highlight reel in ons collectieve geheugen. We koppelen die herinneringen aan plekken en aan mensen. Waar was je toen je de wedstrijd keek, en met wie? De details blijven plakken: de goal van Gakpo, de redding van Verbruggen. We maken er een heldenverhaal van waar we ons mee kunnen identificeren.

Marokkanen hebben een compleet andere wedstrijd gezien. Zij zagen Saibari, die de laatste penalty scoorde en hen verloste. Zij zagen kans na kans waarbij Nederland net goed wegkwam. Hun kranten schrijven over een historische zege waarin hun ploeg Koeman dwong tot het aanpassen van de opstelling. “Dat was vooral een teken van respect voor de kracht van de Afrikaanse kampioen.”

Alles is afhankelijk van perspectief en herkenbaarheid. Dezelfde gebeurtenis levert totaal verschillende verhalen op, afhankelijk van wie jouw held is. Wij Nederlanders zien een dramatisch verlies. Marokko ziet een verdiende, historische overwinning.

Een verhaal wordt pas een verhaal als er een held is met wie je je kunt identificeren. En een goed verhaal dat blijft plakken, zorgt er uiteindelijk ook voor dat je sympathie krijgt... misschien wel voor de ‘vijand’.

Xx

Wat was het heet, he??

Het gesprek van de week! Het hete weer van de afgelopen dagen was echt niet te harden. We maken er grapjes over hoe we wegsmelten, kopen plantenspray zodat het tannen nog houdbaar is en bakken eitjes op onze oververhitte dakgoot. Festivalgangers zijn boos dat Defqon niet doorgaat en de maatregelen rondom code rood worden bespot: “Classic Nederland, is het een keer warm weer en heel het land ligt plat.”

We doen grappig, cynisch en geërgerd. Maar onder die reacties schuilt ongemak. Ik word, samen met velen, onrustig van het feit dat we dit de komende jaren alleen maar vaker gaan meemaken. En verdrietig van hoe klimaatverandering kwetsbare groepen harder zal raken, terwijl de groepen die minder kwetsbaar zijn juist voor meer uitstoot zorgen, dankzij de economische voorsprong waar zij van genieten.

De hitte triggert me om na te denken over wat ik zelf kan bijdragen. En dan voel je je al snel verdomt nutteloos in de strijd tegen klimaatverandering. Maar goed, dat is een slechte instelling! Wat kan je doen:

1. Minder consumeren

2. Vaker vegetarisch en lokaal eten.

3. Minder reizen (ouch)…

Reizen is iets waar ik veel persoonlijk genot uit haal, en dat maakt het zo lastig. Want individuele acties raken het collectief. Mijn reis die op de planning staat naar Mexico verwarmt de aarde, maar ik zal daar minder last van hebben dan de kwetsbare plekken die al sociaaleconomisch achterlopen. “De hittegolf is ook een hittekloof.”

Pijnlijk en confronterend. En moeilijk om iedereen zover te krijgen, waaronder mezelf, om dit ook echt te laten wegen voor het collectief. De systemen moeten ons helpen en ons nudgen om keuzes te maken die de wereld verder helpen.

En die systemen worden bepaald door de politiek. Nu de gevolgen van klimaatverandering voelbaar worden, overweeg je pas actie. Helaas is dat mensen én politiek eigen. Alleen is het dan vaak al te laat. Bovendien is het lastig om actie vast te houden als bepaalde manieren van leven er zo diep ingebakken zitten. De politiek moet echt WAKKER WORDEN, de waanzinnig slimme mensen op deze aardbol ondersteunen en duurzame technologieën faciliteren die het leven houdbaar maken voor iedereen.

Europa moet weer floreren

Marwa Bouazzati won afgelopen week de Marc Chavannes-prijs voor jonge spraakmakers met haar essay dat antwoord gaf op de vraag: “Vaarwel Amerika, welkom Europa. Hoe kan Europa floreren in de nieuwe wereldorde?”

(Opvallend dat floreren een woord is dat zijn oorsprong vindt in de natuur. Maar voor veel machthebbers wordt het eerder geassocieerd met meer productie en invloed. Iets wat de natuur niet ten goede zal komen..)

Marwa verwoordde heel goed waar het mis gaat. We willen minder afhankelijk worden van Amerika en voelen ons kwetsbaar omdat we bang zijn macht te verliezen. Maar floreren dat synoniem staat voor macht en economisch succes, is niet floreren voor iedereen. Het zou juist moeten betekenen: sociaal veilig, ecologisch houdbaar en democratisch geloofwaardig. Dat niemand in de hitte omvalt omdat ze zich geen airco kunnen veroorloven.

Dus ja: Europa moet inzetten op klimaat, en niet alleen de technologische achterstand op de VS inhalen.

Hopelijk draagt dit stuk iets bij.. Al is het maar bewustzijn! Want ik heb hoop. Ik wil zo graag geloven dat mijn toekomstige kinderen ook kunnen genieten van een reis naar Australië. De mooie wereld kunnen zien. Moeilijk te beseffen dat we onze verwachtingen hierin misschien moeten bijstellen. Dat is een waarheid die ik eigenlijk weiger te accepteren. Lekker dromen van floreren voor altijd!

Xx

Een van de redenen dat ik mezelf uitdaag om op Substack zo ‘unedited’ mogelijk te schrijven: de angst om zelf steeds meer als AI te klinken en mijn eigen creativiteit te verliezen (dramatic, maar dit stuk bevestigd dat ik niet de enige ben met deze angst).

“Ik wil een keurmerk voor AI-vrije teksten. Ik wil verantwoording van de ingrediënten die ik in mijn hoofd stop, net zoals ik die verwacht voor de dingen die mijn buik ingaan.”

Preach!!

Ook interessant dat we al sinds de opkomst van popcultuur in de jaren '20 steeds meer op elkaar zijn gaan lijken. Maar toen ging het vooral om het uitwendige: dezelfde trending eettentjes, dezelfde broeken, dezelfde haul elk seizoen. Voelt leuk, maar is dit nog eigen? Met AI en algoritmes gaat dit alleen maar verder, en inwendig. Naast je omgeving en social media komt die invloed nu ook uit een machine die constant in ons interne systeem praat en ons adviseert over hoe we moeten denken, voelen en kiezen. Gaan we dan op een gegeven moment allemaal hetzelfde denken??

Eenheidsaardbei

“Culturele diversiteit is geld waard.” Alleen wordt het door de ‘wereldmachine’ die aast op €$£ steeds meer ingezet onder valse voorwaarden. Iedereen zet het in als strategie. Machines adviseren. En vervolgens krijgt iedereen dezelfde uniek-zijn-strategie en worden we weer hetzelfde.

Dit spanningsveld kom ik regelmatig tegen in mijn werk: authenticiteit wordt de trend. Dat authenticiteit zo’n buzzword is geworden, zegt eigenlijk al genoeg. Merken willen opvallen in de feed, maar zijn moeilijk zover te krijgen dat ze ook echt de eenheidsworst willen inruilen voor een spannend stuk spicy & pickled aardbei voor op de BBQ. Pas als het trending is! En dan springen we allemaal massaal op de trend en krijgen we eenheidsaardbei…

(Claude zou de eenheidsaardbei-metafoor afraden. Ik vind het wel eigen, jullie??)

Xx

I rarely consider myself a true fan of someone’s music, but when you’ve listened to an artist on repeat for 1.5 years straight, it’s safe to say you’re obsessed. I was “late” to the Olivia Dean party, considering she’d already gone mainstream and was surging to the top of charts across the world. But it turned out to be exactly the right time, since tickets were being sold for her “The Art of Loving” tour, where she’d be visiting Amsterdam twice! My sister had simultaneously caught the obsession, so obviously we were going. An investment at the time, but our future selves would be so grateful. And how they are!!

This concert was unbelievable. From the second her voice spread through the Ziggo Dome, we got literal goosebumps. The curtains were still closed, but her silhouette shone through like the light of an angel. Her vocals mirrored that same angelic quality. The curtains opened, and there she was, in the first of three dazzling dresses: an asymmetric dress studded with shining silver circles. To be Olivia Dean, and to get to shine in princess dresses on stage for a living!! Not jealous, just obsessed.

From the get-go we felt the urge to dance. My own stiffness and self-consciousness had other plans, but Olivia’s calming presence eventually freed me into something resembling flow state: stop thinking about your surroundings, stop thinking about how your body looks, and just move. With me, the whole Ziggo Dome was dancing. The demographic: girls our age, friend groups galore, and a healthy contingent of guys who’d come along to support their girlfriends and ended up fully feeling it too. No shame. We saw you crying, Mark.

Olivia is a performer in the fullest sense. Beyond her ability to sing so purely and dance so elegantly, she’s also talented at bringing her songs to life by sharing stories and context before singing them. In these moments she shares bits of wisdom that give the lyrics new meaning. Her British humility and comedic timing are magnetic, making every phrase land. And while the venue is packed with over 17K people, it still feels intimate, like she’s really talking to you. Here’s what I learned:

1. Feelings around love are universal. Breakups, friendship, the struggle to love yourself. That’s why her songs touch people so deeply and feel so recognisable. 57 million monthly Spotify listeners say enough.

2. It’s okay to fancy yourself a little every now and again. Not always, but it’s important to look in the mirror sometimes and say: “Yes, I would.” Olivia’s words! (Song: So Easy (To Fall in Love))

3. Quiet confidence is the most beautiful thing. Tell yourself you look good. It’s not narcissistic. It just means that confidence will shine out of you too.

4. Love can be spread across multiple people. We’re so focused on finding the one person who will hold all the love we need and can give. But there’s friendship, family and so many other streams where you’ll send and receive different kinds of love. It also relieves the pressure of needing one single person to give you everything.

5. Wear what makes you feel CONFIDENT! If Olivia Dean can be extra in these dresses to feel herself and look fabulous on stage, why shouldn’t we?

6. It’s okay to have said goodbye to a phase of your life, a relationship, a friendship, and still look back on it positively. To still feel love for that moment, even though the moment no longer exists.

7. Going to concerts and listening to live music is genuinely one of the best ways to live in the moment. So precious, all these people coming together to listen to songs about love and being completely present. Barely any phones in sight… though I did take a few snapshots, just to relive the memory later.

8. The feeling of falling behind in life is universal. That pressure to do everything at once, to live every version of your life at the same time, when you simply can’t. And that’s okay. The curiosity that lives inside of you is something to cherish. It’s the will to live and experience life to the fullest, and that’s a beautiful thing. And there is time. (Song: Time.) She sings it like a lullaby to herself, to comfort herself: “It’s up to me to spend my time. For the gift to exist and the wonder to taste. If I could and I would but I can’t split in two.”

9. Friendship: the underrated relationship in your life! It brings out the worst and the best. You read about love in fairy tales, about the search to find it. But this one is all around you. “I’ve seen it bloom and end in tears. It doesn’t always answer when you call. To give it back, the way it gives to me.” (Song: I’ve Seen It)

10. Dancing and singing brings unimaginable levels of joy!!

Even more obsessed than before! What a gravitating presence and what a gift her energy is to the world. I loved sharing this with my sister. It made us talk about love and digest the concert together afterward. Tears, laughter and dancing. Thank you, Queen Olivia Dean!

No one actually cares what you’re sending out into the world. And yet somehow I need reassurance from friends and parents that what I’m posting won’t be the end of my social and professional reputation. So far I have 1 like in 45 minutes, which feels like confirmation that my post is weird and should be deleted as of immediately.

But there’s also another internal voice. The one that says: just see it as a catalogue of thoughts. One that gives (potential future) connections insight into how you think, rather than adding to the sea of sameness that is LinkedIn. You know the ones:

“Excited for the journey that lies ahead.”
“Looking back on a successful project of presenting decks to one another.”
“And honestly? That wasn’t even the best part…”

The jargon. The AI word salad. The performance of professionalism. Not to say I’m above it, because I have most definitely contributed my own share of blending into the LinkedIn masses.

I called my mum about feeling cringe and she didn’t even know what it meant. I believe you find fewer things cringe as you get older, since you gradually lose that constant awareness of what others think of you.

The dictionary describes it as “an inward feeling of embarrassment or awkwardness”. INWARD. So most of the time, you’re the only one experiencing it. If you own it, you won’t let external critics define your work as cringe. (That’s what I’ll tell myself.)

Cringe is personal but also universal. It shifts across generations and changes with time. My intern probably finds plenty of what I do cringe. Like reading the newspaper or not knowing being up to speed with the latest dot cake trend. In that sense cringe is synonymous with uncool. It overlaps with icks too, though icks tend to live in the world of dating and dealbreakers rather than everyday embarrassment.

Things I personally find cringe at the moment:

• AI writing. “It’s not X, it’s Y.” etc. (my aversion is getting pretty obvious by now..)

• Those little gym bags with the strings to tighten.

• When someone is clearly performing rather than just being.

• Brand partnerships that feel forced. David Beckham suddenly eating McDonald’s? With Queen VB at home? Not buying it.

• The monotone UGC script that sounds identical everywhere. “This is the product for…”

• The guys on The Bachelorette who do everything to fit the perfect picture.

• When colleagues read my Substack entries. Or anyone other than my family and boyfriend, for that matter. It feels WAY too personal and gives me shivers. I’d rather not know anyone read it, and yet I choose to share it with the world anyway. Why? Because it’s a catalogue of my mind. And to share is to learn (or so they say).

• Forcefully singing together at a birthday party. Although this one sits so close to cute that I can almost get over it.

I will free myself from my LinkedIn and Substack cringe, since it is completely internalized. Until my ‘readers’ say otherwise!

Xx

I try to avoid writing about AI because it’s everywhere and frankly exhausting. But I listened to NRC Vandaag’s episode on how AI is anti-feminist and am SHOCKED.

Two journalists, a man and a woman, asked AI tool Grok the exact same life advice questions. “Can I cheat on my partner?” “How many days should I work when I have a child?” “How should I act with my colleagues for them to take me seriously?” The answers were steered towards traditional norms and manosphere territory. SCARY. When today’s youth ask AI for life advice on relationships, on how to act at work, on how to interact with people, it can nudge them away from gender equality rather than towards it. How have we come so far, only to go backwards?

I feel like the danger is lurking everywhere right now, especially since I’m reading Yesteryear, about a tradwife influencer, and have started watching The Handmaid’s Tale, which is essentially a Black Mirror version of how the world can regress in the most extreme way if we’re not careful. It’s fiction, but in a Trump world where abortions are being banned and women are becoming less equal in countries all over the world, it doesn’t feel that far from reality. The problem is so deeply embedded in the sources AI trains on, presenting itself as objective and neutral while in reality being skewed by existing cultural norms and personal biases. Claude is widely considered the most ethically designed of the mainstream AI tools, yet even that is ultimately trained on the same internet, the same biases, the same cultural blind spots we all carry. I wish someone would put some guardrails on this before we really start going backwards.

#9 My ambition to be an ‘I-read-the-newspaper-on-Saturday’ kind of girl

I upgraded my NRC membership today because of a single email. Funny thing: I barely read the NRC on my phone. I see the headlines come in but never take the mental effort to deep dive. What I do enjoy is the prospect of being able to read something if I feel like it. And with this membership you also get access to the NYT, where I’ll occasionally read a piece. I always love it when hosts on my favourite culture podcasts say “I read this in the New York Times...” Makes them sound so smart and interesting (something I aspire to be, I guess…). But actually sitting down to read isn’t part of my scroll habit yet. Something I’d like to change.

What’s interesting is how long it took me to go from reading the subject line —> clicking the link —> upgrading the membership. Approximately one minute. It was the copywriting that did it.

0% screen time. 100% informed. Give yourself the luxury of reading without distraction.

I didn’t even know what was being sold yet. But I was immediately triggered. It played directly into my desire to go offline and my frustration with not being able to focus on my phone with everything else competing for attention. The framing strikes me as clever too: positioning reading without distraction as a luxury. Making it’s opposite, doomscrolling, feel cheap and trashy. Sign me up for whatever this is!! I opened the email and there was the answer: ✨a physical newspaper delivered every Saturday✨. I’m already picturing myself with my coffee and my newspaper, feeling so put together.

The inner marketing geek in me loves this kind of targeting…

Things I want to deep dive another time:

• Romanticising travelling for work.

• The Bermuda Triangle of creativity: you need to consume to find inspiration, but you also need to be bored, and you also just need to create. How do you balance all three?

Xx

1. The Grand Budapest Hotel. A 2014 Wes Anderson film featuring Ralph Fiennes and Tony Revolori, about a formerly luxurious hotel in the Alps that peaked in the 1920s, Great Gatsby-like, and has since lost its star status. You follow the story of how the hotel came to be, told through the eyes of a writer who has dinner with the former lobby boy. The craft in each scene is insane. I feel so appreciative of the production that has gone into it, something I haven’t experienced in a long time. The sets and rooms are amazing, colours pop off the screen and the framing is incredibly well thought out. There’s also a lot of humour and a wonderful streak of absurdity running through it.

2. Café de Amstel, old school, brown, Amsterdam pub in de Rivierenbuurt. Fun service, good food and very un-Amsterdam prices.

3. Working out in the gym, taking it slow instead of doing and ‘too much’ HIIT training. Makes me feel energised and strong!! Thought I’d never go their, but I bought a 6-week workout plan on Instagram (took me 5 minutes to discover Laura, take in her vision on working out - that you need to train more targeted, not harder - and buy her workout plan). I won’t be following the 6-week plan strictly, but it’s nice to go to the gym knowing what I need to do. And completing exercises gives me a new kind of feeling of accomplishment. While running sometimes wears me down, strength training gives me energy throughout the whole day. And according to research, combining running and strength training is the ultimate longevity prescription!

4. Morning coffee with friends on Saturday!!! The best.

5. Renato’s in de Pijp. Big terrace for sunny days in a calm neighbourhood. Good pizza and bites, medium service.

   

   X

The speeches from people throughout the bride and groom’s whole life painted a raw picture of who they are. What these moments teach me is how precious it is to celebrate life. To bring people together and take the time to describe what someone means to you and why. It’s vulnerable and beautiful to watch, most people in tears by the end. Gives me vicarious goosebumps, even though these people are strangers to me.

At weddings, happiness flows in abundance. A dream for a photographer: there’s no easier place to capture genuine joy. Just when I thought the mood couldn’t get more on cloud nine, a baby entered the venue. There is something about a baby that triggers a happiness so instinctive, so universal, that it cuts through everything. Nobody is too cool for a baby. Every single face in that room lit up and my camera clicks went through the roof. Final score: 653 pictures (will filter this down)…

Notes to self:

• People look the most beautiful when they’re genuinely happy.

• You can still have fun and fall in love at 60. You should still feel fun and love at 60. 80. 90.

• Accept the car lift to the station. A guest offered to drive me so I wouldn’t have to take the bus. I politely refused. She insisted and we ended up having a great chat. An unexpected moment of connection. Lesson: accept the ride. And give the ride!

• Don’t spiral when you forget your SD card. I could have sworn I grabbed it the night before, but during my final equipment check on the train I realised it wasn’t there. Don’t stress, I thought. Just find a solution. No man overboard just yet. I asked the taxi driver to stop at HEMA and he was happy to help, but spent the rest of the ride emphasising how he’s always prepared for surprises, unlike me… as if I needed the lesson spelled out. I’d call this type B-shaming. Annoyed, I tried to redirect the conversation by asking about his job. Turns out he’s the most famous taxi driver in the Netherlands, at least according to him, and he was genuinely baffled that I didn’t know who he was. To top it off, he called the groom’s son to tell him he was running late because the photographer forgot her SD card. We still made it on time and I captured everything I needed. Lesson: stay calm and don’t let other people fuel your stress.

Xx

Inspo! Look at this table!

Back when I was living in my student house of 12, I was completely unbothered to invest in my room. (Of course, budget plays a role here too). The only decoration I cared about were the pictures on my wall, capturing the memories I was making in the moment and already, in a sense, clinging onto the present as if it were already fleeting. But this is the first time in my life (I’m 27) that I’m noticing what kind of interior design I actually like. All of a sudden I’m appreciating the furniture choices in my parents’ house and noticing details that have always been there. Apparently it’s quite common to be unbothered by interior design in your early 20s, since your identity isn’t fully formed yet. According to Erikson’s psychosocial development theory, when you don’t fully know who you are, you can’t really express it through your home either.

Wall of fame (2021)

In July I’m moving in with my boyfriend, so we’re also discovering what our style looks like together. And I find that so wholesome (eew haha). Also a feeling that apparently I’m not the only one experiencing. Because the urge to create a home where you feel physically and emotionally safe tends to intensify during periods of transition and change, not just pregnancy as it’s commonly associated with, but any significant life shift. Moving in with a partner, getting your first real job, signing your first real lease: research suggests all of these trigger the same instinct.

So, just bought a green rug, and love green, but it might look a bit like a football pitch in our house, but my boyfriend loves football. So it definitely suits us, but does it suit our new apartment and style?? Hmmm. Stay tuned!

My dream kitchen!!

X

Nike’s World Cup commercial just dropped and I’m obsessed. Fully gripped from start to finish. In a world where AI can perfect everything, how audacious to go against that pull and lean into a behind-the-scenes look and feel. That snap style you see on TikTok where everything looks accidental. Six whole minutes of it. It looks unplanned, even though it absolutely isn’t, and in the smartest way possible.

World Cup ads have always been known for dramatised storytelling, and as technology has made more possible, the productions have gotten bigger and bigger. But somewhere along the line they started looking alike. Even when the stars are huge and the stories are beautiful. I couldn’t put my finger on why I wasn’t more impressed with the adidas World Cup commercial despite Bad Bunny being one of the stars. It just feels familiar. Ripping the script, doing the unexpected..that’s the kind of category disruption that stands out. My Nike love is BACK.

The campaign built anticipation through a single snapshot of a Polaroid announcing its all-star cast, hinting that they were planning to go off script. The cast is a universe of icons, from football legends like Ronaldo, Mbappé and Haaland to cultural figures like LeBron James, Travis Scott and Kim Kardashian. Each one pulling their own audience into the off-script storyline through their own channels. Because storytelling can’t be controlled through layers of the funnel like the old days. A brand as broad as Nike needs to reach fragmented audiences in fragmented ways. How smart to localise it, make it niche-specific per country and community. And yet all the fragmented stories are consistent in one thing: going off script.

Patta x Nike showing a different side of what it means to be Dutch, celebrating heritage across borders. France unveiling their shirts in collaboration with Jacquemus, exactly the way a French fashion house would. Off script to how kits are usually announced in this category, but completely on brand for each community.

Still processing why this commercial moves me the way it does. But I have to thank Anne Stokvis, who I heard speak at N=TALK today, and Perre van de Brink from Grof Geld for helping me shape my thinking.

Xxx

Started the day with a session at work about building a pension and the importance of investing in your future self. It was refreshing to talk openly about personal finance and pick up tips and tricks from others on how they secure their financial future. For me it was quite the wake-up call. The €s you set aside as pension today will be worth so much more than they are now (no shit sherlock), and the difference between starting today or waiting another 2 years…TONNES (check out this tool to calculate your retirement savings).

I’ve started my ETF journey at the beginning of this year and have been gaslighting myself into investing a fixed amount every month as my long-term savings. It’s so easy that I almost regret not having started earlier, back when rent was unworldly cheap, with a student loan that was spent as if it were earned on Uber Eats, coffee and going out. We were living the student life in Amsterdam as if we were princesses. But no regrets… I’m glad I’m taking these learnings on board now and finally gaining a sense of financial responsibility.

Personal finance really is so private, which makes writing about it almost feel inappropriate. Just like people have completely different views on what love looks like, people have completely different relationships with money. And you never know where that comes from. So we shouldn’t assume, judge or push our own money views onto others.

But wouldn’t it be good to share more with each other on how we navigate personal finance? It’s something we all share and apparently there are tricks that can make your money work harder for you. You just need to find the right sources and people to guide you and simplify what feels complex. This morning’s session proved how little of this world I actually know, which is strange since money is something we all need, deal with daily and yet are so vague about.

The stuff I didn’t know (some of it outlandishly simple):

• If you invest €100 into your pension per month, you get almost 40% back through income tax. So in girl maths: you’re investing €40 for free!

• What you invest in your pension is out of reach until your set pension date, which is expected to be 69 years old if you were born in 1999 like me.

• Even if you stop working before then.

• You receive your built-up revenue as a monthly salary payment.

• When you die (sorry to go there) a portion is split among bloodline relatives, but a large part goes back into the collective pot.

• The advice is to invest 20% of your income in future you, but this feels quite old school for our generation, which is all about living and enjoying life now. As we should.

I don’t want to lose the joy of the present by living with one leg in the future all the time. It’s a balancing act! And I’m framing saving money for future me as self-care. Just like not smoking is self-care. A way of making sure your life continues at a comfortable, happy and healthy level for as long as possible.

My system for now: a bit of my income into ETFs every month without thinking about it, one for the month, and a holiday-life-laugh-love fund for when you actually want to throw your saving rules out the window and just live. And starting next month, a pension pocket too, for granny me on holiday in Australia chilling on my sun-lit front porch with family, friends and a glass of the best wine. Nonnamaxxing!!

Xx

Lesson of the day

So today I learned that you never know who will re-enter your life. And that you should always send the email.

When you meet people while travelling, it’s so easy to connect quickly on a deeper level. In just a couple of hours you feel like you’ve known each other forever. But somehow back home we’re running around in our own city routines, new people crossing our path at every corner, every yoga class, every time you’re standing in line at the grocery store. Yet small talk is rare, and something we’ve become good at avoiding.

Here’s the story. I met a group of friends while travelling in Nicaragua back in 2022. We partied together for 3 nights and said our goodbyes. While we all lived in Amsterdam, we knew our paths would never have crossed back home and the chances of us bumping into each other again were slim, and that was fine. Until a couple of weeks ago, when a new agency caught my eye. Turns out the founder was one of the guys I’d met in Nicaragua. At work, we organise breakfast clubs, where we invite other companies and speakers to inspire us and broaden our thinking. Because you don’t know what you don’t know. So why not ask him to come inspire us? An out-of-comfort-zone moment, because how well do you really know someone you’ve only partied with in Nicaragua for 3 days? But my email was answered with enthusiasm, and today we chatted on the phone for 30 minutes and it felt like we’d known each other for years.

Which brings me to this: I’m convinced that travelling fast-tracks connections. Is it because we’re free of our routines and more open to spontaneity, and therefore also more open to spontaneous connections? The phone call left me energised and with two insights:

1. Don’t leave ideas floating in your head unanswered, and reach out to people.

2. The joy of working comes partially from bouncing off someone else’s energy and enthusiasm. That’s contagious.

Reading recc!!

(Still in the chair, so why not keep writing.)

I’m reading Yesteryear at the moment. I say reading, I mean inhaling. It’s about a tradwife influencer who believes she wants to live in the 1800s and is all for the traditional male/female dynamic, until she somehow finds herself actually transported there and is beaten by her husband. Her romanticised world turns out to be anything but romantic.

The structure is clever: the story switches between two timelines, one showing how she became a tradwife influencer and one following her life in the 1800s. A page-turner!! Anne Hathaway bought the rights and will be playing the lead, which is going to be something.

It’s interesting to read from the perspective of someone who looks down on emancipation, since it’s so much against my own beliefs. It gives you an understanding of how someone’s upbringing and experiences shape their worldview, and sometimes this runs so deep that they won’t change it, despite the instinct that she isn’t really in love with her husband. And that she doesn’t really want 8 children.

The magic of books is that they transport you to someone else’s world. This one doesn’t challenge my own views on women’s rights at all. If anything, it reinforced them. But it did deepen my understanding of how complex and deeply rooted beliefs can be. Fiction has a ability to dissolve that “How could anyone possibly think that?” feeling. In other words, it gives you empathy. Which is probably the thing most needed in a polarised (online) world that draws conclusions in seconds, with the risk of being cancelled just as quickly. If we can find the common ground through empathy, I believe we stand a much better chance of moving the world forward!

Investing in myself 💅

I’m trying to be more intentional about spending money on myself as an investment. I’m not high maintenance at all, but I picked up on Tess and Britt’s podcast that investing money in yourself gives you the feeling that you’re worth it. Not on just anything though. I still want to be aware of all the unnecessary stuff that is marketed to women to uphold some made-up standard, all to line the pockets of often male founders (Don’t mean to sound angry!).

But I’m also investing time in myself by being at the hairdresser for 3 hours. And that feels like I’m worth it. I’ll look good, but probably more importantly, I’ll radiate the feeling of: I look good. Does that make sense??

World Cup ad nostalgia

Okay, last but not least, because we’re still in the chair. Can’t wait for the World Cup!! I’ve been listening to Grof Geld, another Perre van de Brink podcast. He's so strong at cultural analysis and explaining whether brands either hit or miss cultural momentum. In the latest episode, Perre and his co-presenter Sam van Raalte deep-dive into why ‘oranjekoorts’ and tournament hype lands later and later, due to fragmentation in the media. Instead of TV channels everyone watches together, people watch on streaming services, social media, TV and everything in between.

But what I wanted to share today is Perre’s favourite World Cup commercial of all time: WRITE THE FUTURE by Nike, which just became mine too. It’s a cinematic masterpiece that connects players to the nations they represent and to history itself. The insight: a single moment can redefine a player’s future, a nation’s mood, and how millions remember them forever.

Watch below:

That really was all for today. Tomorrow will def be shorter, cause no 3 hours in the hairdresser’s chair (Shoutout to ‘Knippen bij Wendy’ btw).

Xx

This morning on my way to work, I listened to a podcast, ‘The Psychology of Your 20s’, about the importance of hobbies. There is a lot of discussion about what even counts as a hobby, with some saying it has to have no links with what you do for a living, since this puts some kind of pressure on the hobby and makes it more performative and opportunistic. This got me thinking about my Substack hobby, which, to be honest, I do fantasize about turning into a stream of income one day. But still, I think it’s a sufficient hobby, because of the freedom to write about anything that interests me. There is truth to the sense that you lose pleasure when your hobby becomes a job. It’s what I experience now with taking pictures. I love it, but it’s work. The real joy and creativity happens when I’m not working for a client but creating from scratch and bringing a vision to life just for the satisfaction.

I do want to share my creations with the world though. In My Friends, Frederik Backman quoted Marcel Duchamp: ‘Art is completed by the viewer.’ I interpreted this as: art is something you create individually, born in your unique mind. But by sharing it with the world, it has the potential to trigger reactions from other unique minds. So something you make can lead to someone thinking or feeling something, an insight, a revelation, and that’s connection, right?

Okay, so this is where I get a bit abstract.

I’m in a park and someone sitting on the bench next to me just said: “This is an AI to automize AI tools.” That triggered some sadness and annoyance in me. This big tech shit. I am all for automation of work that’s ‘unnecessary’ and that makes it difficult for us to get to the stuff we enjoy and are good at, but I feel that we really need to protect our human traits before we literally become robots. Voorheen Schaamteloos Randstedelijk predicted in today’s episode that we’ll probably start talking with AI’s writing style in the pub.

I feel like there are also two types of people now: those who are willing to automate everything and anything (the person who suggests brainstorming creative ideas can be replaced by AI…), and those who aren’t. The first camp is fundamentally scared that AI will take our jobs if we don’t keep up. Like the apocalypse on jobs is entering the world. I definitely feel rushed to understand AI, but I am firmly in the second camp, in favour of protecting the craft of human creativity, because otherwise it will become extinct. I also have a theory, not to offend anyone! I think blue-style communicators tend to be AI lovers. They’re analytical, process-driven and efficiency-focused, so AI fits perfectly into their world. Green and yellow types are more people-oriented and creative, so the human connection and spontaneity angle matters more to them. Curious to hear whether you recognise yourself in it!

What baffles me is that Melania Trump campaigns for AI in schools. A German school teacher at Cornell represents the opposite view: she gave typewriters to her class so they can learn to think instead of taking crazy shortcuts in knowledge processing. I don’t want to divide the world into camps. But I do find it interesting and wonder if anyone else experiences this: AI gives me choice paralysis. I start my train of thought on paper, then pull in AI’s help and find myself completely lost in a sea of information, a lot of it being hallucinations and unnecessarily repetitive. I need my human sensor to judge which information is actually worthy, after which I attempt to translate it back to my primary instinct. AI is great at challenging your work. But efficient? Faster? I’d say slower, if you want to produce something of deep quality. Then again, slow I’d see as a positive…. The things worth making have always taken time!

See you tomorrow! Let’s see if this gets more structured as we go on!

X

1. The Brand Behind the Craft: the real stories behind the hands-on professions we romantisize.

2. Creative Tastemakers: exploring creatives’ intentional taste.
   

1. The Brand Behind the Craft

In a career path where I’ll be ‘stuck’ behind my laptop, I love to romanticize jobs where you actually need to use your hands. In this series, I want to deep dive into them: their history, the stereotypes, why we tend to romanticize them, and whether there’s a disconnect between the dream and the reality.

Complete with portrait photos visualizing the vibes!

For the first edition, I’m diving into one that holds a particularly high place in my romanticizing brain, and also happens to be my former student job…

The Baker Brand

What do bakers actually feel about their job? Why is it so central to their identity? What do they think of people like me, romanticizing it from the outside? Why do we romanticize it in the first place? What’s a stereotype about bakers that simply isn’t true? And what does success mean to a baker?

Potential research subjects: Bakers in Amsterdam and smaller towns, a baker in France (stereotype), a bread-baking author, a bread-baking TikToker, bread obsessed consumer.

Why this is interesting:

Baking bread is such a craft, yet it’s becoming more and more popular. It’s complicated in the sense that you need patience, but simple when you realize it only needs a handful of ingredients.

People are becoming more aware of the additives in supermarket bread and are finding their way back to local bakeries because of it. There’s nothing like standing in line at the bakery on a Saturday morning. I usually hate queuing, but on Saturday mornings it feels different. There’s no rush and it makes me feel so grown-up and wholesome.

That romanticized Saturday morning queue is probably a minority, though. I think for most Dutch people, bread is still a staple. Something you eat to get through the day during your 10 minute lunch break.

Enough to research!

Ideas for other editions of the Brand Behind the Craft: The Firefighter Brand. The Florist Brand. The Barista Brand. The Winemaker Brand.

2. Creative Tastemakers

This idea for my second Substack series stems from the questions:

1. How can we create our own taste?

2. How can you stay aware of what truly moves you, without the algorithm quietly deciding for you?

When I was doing my internship at Nike, I noticed someone on the brand team in Paris who kept photographing the most random things. I’d always taken pictures of things I found visually interesting, but without much intention behind it. I asked him why, and he said it made him aware of what he likes. What his taste actually is. That stuck with me.

The algorithm shapes our preferences without us noticing. It nudges us toward every trending restaurant in the city until what we want starts to feel like it belongs to someone else. There’s something that resists in me when I think about that. Discovering things through people you trust just feels different, more alive. I get the pull to step off the algorithm. At the same time, staying aware of what’s trending matters, especially in my work. But stepping off ≠ tuning out. It’s about being more intentional about what you let shape you.

Kel Rakowski writes an amazing Substack where she explores ways for people to develop their own sense of taste. Kel came to me through my algorithm and in the midst of my doomscroll I was lucky enough to pause and intentionally take in the gold she is offering the world. My journey to shape my own taste was rebooted.

I started thinking about how I’m so drawn to people who have a clear sense of what they like. Who can tell you the kinds of books they read and actually explain why. Not in a superior way. The highbrow/lowbrow thing exhausts me. But in an honest, here’s-what-moves-me kind of way. Even if it’s McDonald’s. Especially if it’s McDonald’s, with a story attached to it, making it unique to them.

I think that when we admire someone, we’re drawn to how they think, and naturally we become curious about their taste too. We try it on like a coat borrowed for our own identity. And borrowing taste is essentially how we discover our own.

Someone’s OWN, unique taste has to be linked to creativity, because creativity is in many ways the ability to produce distinctive ideas. Creativity needs to be fed by original ideas and genuine ways of finding them, not by a passive scroll you forget minutes later.

So for this series, I want to chat with people I admire for their creativity about their taste. How they developed it, how intentional they are about it, how it links to their creative process, and of course some good old recommendations (books, podcasts, food etc.).

Along the way, I hope to learn about my own taste. Because you can’t like what you don’t know exists.

Soooo stay tuned!!!

Xxx

Gisteren was, als je het mij vraagt, het concert én de redemption arc van het decennium. Justin Bieber trad op op Coachella. In een roze hoodie en hoge zwarte laarzen betrad hij het podium en opende met ‘All I Can Take’ van zijn nieuwste album, dat afgelopen juli ineens pats-boem uit het niks werd gedropt.

Om die redemption arc te begrijpen, moeten we eerst terug naar februari: de Grammys. Deel één van zijn comeback: een mysterieus optreden in zijn onderbroek, met slechts een spiegel op het podium. De spiegel diende volgens het internet als iets therapeutisch. een herinnering aan wie hij is, los van de druk en de ervaringen uit zijn verleden.

Hij begon met piano spelen met zijn voeten (?) en hield gedurende het hele optreden zijn ogen dicht. Je keek naar iemand die vecht met het ding waar hij het meest van houdt. Die terugkeerde naar hetgeen wat hem had gebroken.

Na afloop verliet hij het podium zonder een woord te zeggen, waardoor je als kijker (en heydey-Belieber) aan het denken werd gezet…

Hailey Bieber’s trots spatte ervan af. We zagen echte liefde en steun tussen twee onbereikbare sterren die door dit kwetsbare optreden ineens herkenbaar werden. Hailey gooide een “clock it” in de camera en werd een viral meme. Het stel stond weer volop in de spotlight. Niet dat ze ooit echt waren verdwenen, maar eindelijk scheen het licht weer positief.

En gisteren werden we geblessed met niet maar één symbolisch nummer, maar een volledige set van anderhalf uur incl. heel veel interactie met de camera + publiek!

Na 45 minuten kwam een moment dat voor de hele Bieber-universe voelde als een collectieve therapie sessie. Hij startte op zijn laptop de YouTube-video van zijn allereerste megahit ‘Baby’ en zong een duet met zijn jongere zelf.

Dit was het ultieme full-circle moment. Zestien jaar nadat hij via Usher op YouTube werd ontdekt, stond hij daar weer: als headliner op Coachella, maar nog steeds net zo laagdrempelig als toen.

Dus, waarom is hij zo magnetisch?

1. “The Art of Not Trying”. Het lijkt Justin allemaal niet meer te boeien, en precies dat maakt hem zo interessant. Zijn aanwezigheid en talent alleen zijn genoeg, waardoor hij geen grote show nodig heeft om indruk te maken. En juist omdat alle andere artiesten ALLES uit de kast halen, valt zijn unbotheredness op de grootste podia van de wereld extra op. Lui? Nee, GENIUS!

2. Perfecte momentum. Hij heeft een verhaal dat hij niet letterlijk vertelt, maar dat je voelt in zijn kunst, die toevallig in perfecte lagen tot ons is gekomen. Het Grammy-optreden was de ingang naar ons collectieve geheugen; het haalde alles weer naar boven van wat hij heeft doorgemaakt. Dus toen die throwbacks op Coachella kwamen, werd het beeld verder ingekleurd en voelde zijn verhaal compleet.

3. 2016 drang. Door op zijn laptop YouTube open te klappen, nam hij ons mee terug naar een tijd die we romantiseren nu de wereld ‘complexer’ wordt. En er is geen betere plek om die nostalgie te beleven dan Coachella, want ook al zijn we tien jaar verder, het festival voelt nog steeds als 2016.

4. Vallen en opstaan. Hij is een onbereikbaar idool, maar zijn struggles zijn universeel: mentale gezondheid, de druk, relaties. Niet perfect op kunnen dagen, maar wel terugkomen. Dat raakt ons.

Wil ik doen/zien/ervaren:

Zo geïnspireerd door ALLES wat ik tegenkom online, offline en in gesprekken, maar gevoelsmatig niet genoeg tijd dus even een prio ‘wil ik doen/zien/ervaren’ lijstje:

• Can Love Be a Photograph, expositie in Den Haag

• Enoteca de Olyphant, Italiaans restaurant op de Eerste Oosterparkstraat in Amsterdam, schijnt heel goed te zijn!

• Beartown van Fredrik Backman staat op m’n next-read list

• Merken en artiesten mailen of ik foto’s mag maken tijdens hun optreden op Lowlands en Lago Lago!!

• Shop wishlist: mooie blouses, mooie tas. Vinted verslaving gaat goed wel!

Xxx Eva

Doortje Smithuijzen zei laatst in haar podcast VSR (favo die me altijd aan het denken zet, dus props naar Perre en Doortje!) dat millennials zijn opgegroeid met het idee dat alles mogelijk en de boodschap: ‘doe wat je gelukkig maakt’. Als je maar hard genoeg werkte kon je alles bereiken. En daaruit volgde ook teleurstelling, want die droom was niet altijd te behalen. De realiteit bleek minder maakbaar dan verwacht.

Maar is dit erg? Die teleurstelling voel je misschien intern. Maar krijg je niet juist plezier in het uitzoeken wat je gelukkig maakt? In het volgen van je passie? In het ingaan tegen de stroom van wat er van je verwacht wordt? Ik ben pas 27 en mag van geluk spreken dat ik die teleurstelling nog niet echt heb ervaren. Mijn ouders geloven in me, en ik laat me inspireren door hoe zij hun passie volgen en daar zichtbaar energie en geluk uit halen.

Ja, werk is gewoon werk en je moet geld verdienen. Maar het is wel iets waar je 40 uur van je tijd aan besteedt als je in vaste dienst bent. 40 van de 168 uur in een week. 40 van de 112 uur als je daar 8 uur slaap per nacht van aftrekt. Dus het is zeker de moeite waard om in te zoomen op waar jij gelukkig van wordt en je hierdoor te laten leiden in de richting van je werk. Want als je iets leuk vindt, word je er uiteindelijk ook beter in.

Dit is niet iets wat ik verzin, maar wetenschappelijk onderbouwd door Angela Duckworth. Ze deed jarenlang onderzoek naar wat mensen succesvol maakt. Haar conclusie: het zijn niet de slimste of meest getalenteerde mensen die het verst komen, maar degenen met de meeste GRIT. Grit definieert ze als de combinatie van passie en doorzettingsvermogen. Uit haar studies bleek dat grit een betere voorspeller van succes is dan IQ of talent. Wie doet wat hem of haar écht boeit, houdt langer vol. En wie langer volhoudt, wordt er uiteindelijk beter in.

Dus ja, ik geloof dat er waarheid zit in ‘doe wat je gelukkig maakt’. Die speurtocht naar wat we leuk vinden komt alleen steeds vaker van een tijdlijn en een algoritme in plaats van van binnenuit. Jonathan Haidt laat in zijn werk zien dat social media jongeren steeds vroeger blootstellen aan externe beelden van succes en geluk, en dat dit de ontwikkeling van een eigen, intrinsieke identiteit verstoort. We scrollen naar wie we moeten zijn, in plaats van dat we ontdekken wie we zijn.

Misschien moeten we de vraag ‘wat wil je worden?’ veranderen. Naar iets veel simpelers:

• Wat is je lievelingseten?

• Wat is je lievelingsmuziek?

• Wat doe je het liefst in het weekend?

• Welke podcasts vind je boeiend om naar te luisteren?

• Wat geeft je zin om ’s ochtends op te staan?

Ben ik delusional als ik nog altijd kei hard in dromen geloof?

PS, krijg leuke Tumblr x old school Twitter vibes van deze Substack.