You may have noticed over the last few months that I have been writing in a different way. Gone are the cares of the LinkedIn algorithm, or the SEO of it all. Now, it seems I write about diners, water parks, or running.
I do try, at least sometimes, to put in a message or a lesson – mostly linked to whatever I am talking about, but mostly it’s just me talking about something I find interesting.
2026 was meant to be the year of authenticity. But I have since found out what authenticity actually means.
Authenticity reveals what people actually are underneath. For me, it’s revealed I like quirky, I value weird, and I crave experiences. For others, it means doubling down on war, shutting the doors for those in need, or threatening consequences for actions that never happened.
It’s all a bit strange.
Authenticity simply is
The word authenticity has been so thoroughly claimed by brands, that we forgot that authenticity can be dangerous.
Brands have spent a decade telling us to be authentic, but by that they meant: be relatable, be vulnerable in a safe and optimised way, post the behind-the-scenes content and don’t forget to show the bloopers. Authenticity as content strategy. Authenticity with a ring light.
What nobody mentioned is that when you actually let people be themselves, some of them turn out to be exactly who you hoped they weren’t.
Famous Last Words
I am about to say the famous words, this is not a political essay.
I am not qualified to write one of those, and frankly you didn’t come here for that. You came here because last week I wrote about a jar of moles.
But I do think there is something worth sitting with. The same force that freed me to write about water parks and weird museums is the same force doing other things in other hands to other lands. Authenticity is not inherently good. It is just honest. And honesty, it turns out, is neutral. And just like power, it reveals.
So what do you do with that?
I think I’ll keep going. I’ll keep writing about the diners and the specimens and the things that made my son stop and stare. Not because it changes anything large, but because the alternative is to go quiet, to self-edit back into something safer and blander, to let the algorithm win after all.
The jar is still in the window. That still matters.
The world is being very loudly “itself” right now. The best response I can manage is to be very loudly myself back.
Quirky. Weird. Craving experiences. Writing about it on the internet for anyone who wants to read it.
It’s all there is because it’s all I have.
With love.
