✨ What's up in the (R)?

✨ What's up in the (R)? is global. Remote. Slightly feral. Quarterly-ish.

Half of 2026. Gone.

Poof.

So this week, no Expresso. Same crew, different hat.

No coffee cup. No "Last Sip." No body parts (you're welcome - we covered plenty of those already).

Just a mid-year breather. A look back at what we've been up to, and a longer think about what this little community is turning into.

Here's the honest version.

We're a ragtag bunch of ex-corporate rebels.

Some of us got spat out by the machine. Some of us walked. Either way we landed here, wanting more say over where our passion goes.

Whatever comes next, we just want it to be ours.

Built by us. Questionable design skills and all.

Less showcase. More clubhouse.

We're still figuring out what that means.

A handful of you wrote back. Properly. Paragraphs, not one-liners.

So instead of me telling you what this year was, here's what you told us.

One of you described yourself as a "lone wolf with a lot of empathy to give." Another came looking for other remote workers, plain and simple, after years of working solo.

Somebody alone in a house, hoping there's somebody else alone in a house. That's most of us.

When we asked what actually keeps people here, nobody mentioned features.

"Authentic people looking to first help others without direct commercial afterthought."

"Genuine, open and honest, and generous."

Different people, unprompted, landing on the same thing: nobody here is trying to sell you anything. You noticed. We noticed you noticing.

We asked what makes a space feel safe.

"I feel safe to recognize another face, a familiar name, and hear the invite from the host."

A familiar face. An invitation. Low bar, and somehow half the internet still trips over it.

And then one of you - back in May, with no clue any of this was coming - wrote the line this whole issue keeps circling.

"Even if the core team changes, if each new season of community leaders continues the same core direction, that's still great. There needs to be something strong and consistent year after year, even if new things come and go around that."

Yeah.

So. About what comes next.

More of this. That's the answer.

More rooms where you recognize a face. More sessions where nobody's selling you a funnel. More of the stuff you just told us you come here for.

Your head is loud. To-dos, half-thoughts, the worries on a loop, the eternal "I'll get to that." You carry all of it, all at once, and almost never set it down.

So Silvia and I built the thing we actually needed. You'll empty everything that's loud in your head into a dreamcatcher's web, then do the quiet work of sorting it: release what you can let go of, and choose the one to three things actually worth carrying into your day. Something you can see and move with your hands, not another journaling prompt. Clotilde designed the board, so it's a little beautiful too. Don't let the softness fool you. It works.

A reflective, creative reset, and a gentle act of rebellion against the pressure to always be more productive. Which, if you've read this far, is the entire point of this issue.

Come as you are, mess and all.

Half the year's behind us. The lights are up, everybody's stretching their legs, refilling something.

We don't know exactly what act two looks like yet. We've got ideas. Most of them involve you.

So go. Close the laptop. Touch some grass, hug a person, stare at a wall.

And if you've got a spare hour today - you know where we'll be.

— The (R) Generation Team 💻 🧡 🫶

PS: If you made it to the bottom of a newsletter that openly admitted it has no idea what it's doing - you're exactly our kind of people.

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☕️ (R)emote Expresso is published weekly for R Generation - a global community of remote professionals, designers, product people, facilitators, consultants, and freelancers who believe remote work should fit the human, not the other way around.