EverMore Edit: The Identity Café
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
Dear Readers,
During the Summer, my daughter and I write together using bizarre prompts that we make-up. The most recent one was: Write about a place with an unconventional menu.
It evolved into a cafe with a build-your-own-identity menu that folks visit on their 18th birthday. We follow a young woman whose parents pre-purchased a package for her to be compliant with their social standards. When she refuses, her options are to take out debt or watch ads to choose a different identity. Otherwise, she becomes a zombie.
As part of the terms and conditions, sides like fame or adoration cost extra, her identity cannot contain any contradictions, and she’ll need to pick an optimal career to pay her debt back. Should she want to change her identity later, it will come at the great personal cost of losing her social support and status. And of course, it will cost more the second go around, so she’ll likely go back into debt.
Our story descended into silliness as we’re following a principle from her writing instructor to treat all ideas kindly by inviting them in for a cup of tea.
But, I’m still thinking of it days later, because it didn’t feel that far-fetched.
Sure, there’s no cafe, but my parents handed me a blueprint for who they wanted me to be long before I was 18. I needed to be demure and intelligent but not always at once. I was expected to perform based on the role I was playing. Before speaking, I would calculate what version of myself was appropriate. If I miscalculated my dad would pinch the back of my neck to “reset” me.
Finding myself meant going from yearbook notes that said “u r nice” to “u r weird.” I tried on easy-bake identities, including the girl with the band tee, as a shortcut to expression.
Through experimenting with aesthetics, questioning the roles I played for others, naming my values, and embracing my evolving identity—I started to have a distinct sense of self.
Until I started to carve parts of myself away in the 2010s; mostly softening the contradictions that seemed to confuse more than humanize.
Those contradictions were all the things that made people say “u r weird.” And the times others praised my authenticity were always when my mask was the tightest; they were experiencing consistency.
I fell back to my identity repertoire, playing the role based on what was optimal for belonging.
So much of life is optimizing for what makes us the most safe or successful. It’s all for this unknowable future—good grades, the right major, the career ladder.
There’s a tragedy in optimizing your identity as if it’s as easy as choosing from a menu. There’s not really a final product, just the process of being ever-evolving.
That takes time, questions, experimentation, and not always playing the role others think you should. But it’s yours.
xoxo,
Courtney @ EverMore
p.s.
Building and using EverMore has brought me back to myself, nudging me to reflect on my identity and north star. There's no substitute for the reflection process, but we truly hope EverMore makes the nudging, learning, and growing part easier and more accessible.
Reflection of the Month
What part of your identity could never have been chosen from a menu?
The Obsession with Optimization Will Rot Us
I have always annoyed others by my insistence on mulling before making a decision, but even more so in the past few years when folks felt like ChatGPT already had the answer.
As a former Head of People, all of my decisions impacted people—they shouldn’t be easy. Grappling with the individual and collective consequences mattered, because for better or worse, I had to live with the aftermath of whatever I decided.
That’s not a comfortable place for a lot of people to be. Having agency to decide also means you get the accountability of that decision.
Technology has made it easier to optimize almost every part of our life—bodies, errands, minds. It’s come for decision-making too.
Imagine your workday—Waze plans your route, AI writes your emails, DoorDash recommends meals based on prior orders. Everything is designed around what you typically do, and every day can be predictable.
That's not so bad; it's even helpful. But what about when technology is making all your decisions?
When you’ve lost the ability to write any email? When a decision that you once had an intuition for has to be run through your AI first? When you no longer know enough to ask questions? When you’re not really responsible for any decision?
All those easy buttons add up. You no longer have to feel inner accountability or live with your decisions because you abandoned your agency. No agency may feel easier, but some things are worth doing and owning.
Right now it’s about optimization in a busy world, but you can't optimize your way out of being a person.
Decisions, creations, reflections—They should be hard. It should take wrestling with all the messy parts that come with life. AI can be a thought partner or pattern finder, but it doesn’t hold moral reasoning. The question isn't "can AI do this?" it's "what happens if I don't do this?"
So while it may feel good, safe, certain to abdicate your decision-making elsewhere, the snowball effect is there’s no need for you in your life anymore.
It’s okay to say “when”
I’m rewatching season two of Grey’s Anatomy with my daughter right now, and the little monologues that bookend each episode still speak to me, especially the episodes with say when and too much.
When I was a teen dining at Olive Garden (rare stuff) the server would tell me to “Say When” while grating parmesan cheese and, at the time, I truly thought there was no such thing as too much cheese.
You don’t say when because there’s always the possibility of more.
How is “more” a bad thing? But if we think about it in terms of money, technology, progress—at what point do we need to say when?
Too much of anything isn’t a neutral act. Too much love, too much info, too much fun, too much to ask, too much too soon, too much optimization, too much efficiency, too much outsourcing your own thinking.
If no one is saying when, we are drowning in parmesan cheese.
Not ready to say when?
Keep reading with these reflection forward playbooks and visions for the future.
When is enough, enough? Choose your own reflection adventure in Should I Stay or Should I Go.
Getting good feedback can be optimized, it just takes intention and our guide on the Death of Honesty: How to Elicit Good Feedback.
The utopian workplace doesn’t exist, or does it? Read how beanie babies inspired our vision for a community-based workplace.
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EverMore is building something that refuses to optimize the human parts out. It’s the classic, you have to slow down before you speed up. Sitting with the hard questions is key to taking ownership of your career.
Your story should unfold with you at the center; and companies are not set-up to do that. They will always seek to optimize their teams, growth, process.
Your career is one of the longest stories you’ll write, let it be in your own hands. EverMore can help.
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