Afterwork

How technology is not just disrupting jobs but identity, purpose and life itself.

Sep 08, 2025

Reality check

I’m five months into this writing thing. Twenty newsletters in, so it felt like a good moment to look back and ask myself: what the hell have I actually been doing?

Honestly, it started as a total experiment. A bold one for someone like me who usually has a color-coded plan for everything. No strategy this time, just showing up each week and writing whatever was stuck in my head. I have zero writing experience. It was meant to be nothing more than a tool to process this whole reinvention ride, to sort through the chaos in my brain and to digest the frankly ridiculous amount of content I inhaled over the past year.

But when I looked back and read through it all, I saw a pattern. Isn’t everything I write about work at its core? It is like the red thread tying all the pieces together.

My thinking went like this

Work is not just one topic but it’s the organizing principle of modern life. It shapes our day-to-day, our identities, our economies and even our sense of purpose. And right now, it’s being profoundly disrupted.

We’re living through one of humanity’s biggest shifts from the industrial age to the knowledge age. Technologies like AI, Web3, and XR are unraveling old models of work and unbundling the traditional job. In the short term, this could mean new paths for individuals (gig work, portfolio careers, fractional roles), more fluid ways of how companies organize (job sharing, async remote teams) and AI reshaping daily tasks.

In the long term, it might just remove the concept of working for a paycheck altogether. And that’s not about doing nothing but more about everything we finally get to do when the necessity of trading time for money no longer defines our lives. It opens up post-work thinking on purpose, identity and how societies might fund life after jobs.

The years ahead will be thrilling but will demand reinvention from all of us.

Patterns I noticed in conversations

The more I’ve talked with people about these shifts, the more I realized how widespread the unease is. Different backgrounds, different careers, same feelings bubbling up again and again. I keep hearing the same themes:

Overwhelm & lack of clarity: People sense disruption but don’t understand it. Something big is happening, but they can’t see the full picture or what it means for their lives.
Negativity & collapse-thinking: They fear collapse rather than believe in a positive vision. The loudest stories are about doom, while solutions and opportunity barely get a word in.
Fear of job loss: They worry about their own security. AI and automation feel less like tools for support or empowerment and more like threats to entire careers.
Distrust in systems: They distrust institutions to handle it. Business as usual looks broken, extractive and unable to meet the scale of change.
Lack of agency: They feel powerless to act or shape what’s coming. Old scripts no longer work and there is no confidence to build one’s own map.

Seeing these themes repeat was what pushed me to take this further. So here I was, finally mapping out a strategy for my Substack. Notion open, ChatGPT working overtime as my thought partner and my brain buzzing like it had just downed a double espresso.

What’s next: Afterwork

I’m launching Afterwork.

I called it Afterwork because that’s when people actually come together. It’s when the masks drop, the good conversations start and life outside of job titles takes over. But it also points to the bigger shift we’re in: if traditional employment is no longer the organizing principle of life, what comes after work?

This newsletter is my way of helping you navigate that shift with big ideas, fresh perspectives, educational bites and practical tools giving you confidence, agency and a positive vision.

What you’ll find here:

Big picture clarity on how AI, Web3, XR and new work models are reshaping not just jobs, but identity, purpose and society itself. This isn’t ‘future of work’ chatter but one of humanity’s biggest shifts in how we live, work and organize.
Mindset shifts: See disruption with more clarity and curiosity, replace fear and collapse-thinking with a positive vision full of opportunities and gain a stronger sense of agency and purpose in shaping your own path.
Educational bites
- Accessible explanations of emerging tech: AI, Web3, Crypto, XR and why it matters for your work and agency.
- Explorations of new work models: portfolio careers, fractional work, generalists, web3 and new organizational/leadership models.
- Post-labor thinking: Purpose, identity and how societies might fund life after jobs (post-labor economics).
Practical tools: Frameworks, prompts, mental models, tiny experiments and curated resources (books, podcasts, articles) to help you shape your own work and life in uncertain times.
Personal stories: Honest reflections from my own reinvention journey - remote work, start-ups, career pivots, portfolio career learnings, identity shifts, country hopping. Conversations with others walking off the default path.

I know, it’s a lot. But stick with me because this isn’t just about my experiments or your career choices. The future of work is tangled up with some of the biggest questions humanity faces.

Why this is bigger than work

While I do have a positive vision of the future, I know this transition won’t be easy. Careers, companies, even whole industries will be disrupted or automated away. Many people will have to reinvent themselves and that’s rarely a smooth ride. I care about making this shift easier to navigate because how we handle it matters not just for individuals, but for all of us.

When I quit my job, I thought my next chapter would be dedicated entirely to fighting climate change. And in many ways, it still is - in my personal life or through fractional work. But I’ve come to realize something else: if most of our attention is consumed by wage work and survival mode, we leave no space for contribution, reflection or the bigger questions. What is our purpose? How do we tackle the climate crisis? What does AI mean for humanity?

That’s why I believe work itself is the deeper lever. Wage work is overdue for a massive reframe to one that makes room for the full human experience: care, creativity, contribution and joy. Climate change remains urgent but unless we rethink work, we’ll never free up the attention or energy to face it.

I’ve come to believe that the current disruption of work accelerated by technology might be the deeper lever. By rethinking the very foundation of how we work, we open the possibility for more fulfilled lives as individuals and a better shot at tackling society’s biggest challenges.

Living the future of work

Looking back, my own red thread is clear: I’ve always been circling the future of work and emerging tech.

I started in big tech at Microsoft, back when offices started to look like playgrounds. There were slides between floors, no fixed desks, a barista making coffee. By 2017, I went fully remote working at a start-up. Back then, living and working abroad in Spain (pre-Covid) wasn’t nearly as common as it is now. Remote work wasn’t yet a lifestyle and the ‘best’ jobs were still back home in Germany.

Then in 2019, I landed in what felt like science fiction to many: a virtual reality start-up building a VR office for remote teams to work together. For four years, I was that odd girl at WeWork with giant VR glasses strapped to my face, looking like I was talking to myself while actually meeting clients in a virtual office. My team and I scribbled on VR whiteboards with BCG, ran agile sprints with German automakers and jumped through cookie-shaped auditoriums with Mondelez. Totally normal workday. By the time the metaverse hype exploded in 2021, I was already in deep. Not just working daily in VR, but also building a team and department fully remotely. And when AI arrived, we didn’t just talk about it, it literally showed up as a co-worker inside our virtual office. But that’s a story for another day.

Fast forward to 2024, and I quit to build a portfolio career using AI as my team of one: a mix of fractional roles, creative projects and experiments in purpose. On the side, I dove into Web3, fascinated by blockchain’s potential to reshape how humans coordinate and earn. DAOs, decentralized ownership, new work models - another puzzle piece added.

So yes, there’s a red thread. Future of work, emerging tech, reinvention. It’s the story I’ve been living and the one I’m here to write about to help you shape your own.