Tomer Rozenberg
@tomer-rozenberg.com
📤 18747
📥 184
📝 811
Founder of Agora Democracy, Redefined for the Digital Age
http://tryagora.org/
We've been asked why Agora is still a side project rather than a funded startup. The honest answer: this problem punishes haste. Every civic tech project that scaled fast hit the supply problem, officials who couldn't stay responsive, before the product was ready to handle it.
2 days ago
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The civic tech world has built an impressive set of tools. GovTrack. VoteSmart. OpenSecrets. Hundreds of transparency portals. If you want to know how your representative voted on anything in the last decade, you can find out in minutes.
5 days ago
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Verification is a constraint, not a gatekeeping choice. The goal isn't exclusion. It's honest weighting. A constituent's view on their school district's budget should land differently than the same view from someone three states away. That distinction is the product.
7 days ago
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A question we get often: how do you know a citizen is actually from the district? We use public voter registration data, address verification, and a few additional signals. Not perfect. But meaningfully better than "anyone with an account." The bar is constituent, not citizen.
9 days ago
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The form letter problem isn't limited to federal agencies. Any public comment system that accepts unconstrained input becomes a volume game. Organized groups win volume games. Individual constituents don't. The design has to make that impossible, not just harder.
11 days ago
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During the FCC's net neutrality comment period, the agency received millions of submissions. Most were identical. Individual citizens who wrote genuinely had no way to know if their comments registered at all. That's not a civic system. That's a lottery.
13 days ago
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NYC has 51 city council members, 65 state assembly members, 27 state senators, 26 members of Congress. Plus borough presidents, mayor, comptroller. Most constituents have zero interaction with them between elections. That's the civic gap, in numbers.
16 days ago
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Brigade tried to build civic social networking. Got traction. Didn't survive. The postmortem is worth reading carefully.
17 days ago
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The hardest design problem in civic participation isn't how to let citizens be heard. It's making being heard feel real. That means acknowledgment, reference, and follow-through. Not every input gets a custom reply. But every input deserves a structured one.
18 days ago
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What participation looks like from the citizen side: A council member posts about a proposed rezoning in your neighborhood. You see it. You weigh in through a structured mechanism. Your input is aggregated with other verified constituents from the district. You find out if it moved anything.
19 days ago
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An open comment section on a bill gives everyone an equal voice. A constituent in the district. An activist from another state. A bot. A coordinated campaign. All equally weighted, all equally visible. That's not participation. That's noise with a comment box.
20 days ago
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The official inbox problem isn't a staffing problem. You can hire more people to read more emails. What you can't do is turn a form letter into a constituent. The problem is upstream. It's a design problem.
20 days ago
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One official showed me their inbox. Thousands of emails. Most were identical form letters routed through advocacy organizations. A handful were real constituent stories. No way to separate them. They weren't ignoring constituents. They couldn't find them.
21 days ago
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Citizens can also initiate discussions on Agora. But they can't post at each other. That's the design distinction. Social media is citizens posting at citizens. Agora is citizens and officials in the same structured space, anchored to something governmental, something accountable.
23 days ago
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The question we hear most: if officials anchor the platform, don't they control the agenda? The weighting is the answer. Their post, their actual constituents respond, and the signal comes back as a read on their specific district, not a popularity contest. They can't curate who they hear from.
24 days ago
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Two years ago I started asking officials: what would useful constituent input actually look like to you? The answer was consistent: less volume, more signal. Fewer form letters, more real stories. A way to know who's actually from the district. That's the spec we're building to.
26 days ago
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Town halls work, technically. They happen in one room, at one time, and they're dominated by whoever is loudest and most available. A parent with two kids and a job has no realistic way to be part of that conversation. That's not democracy failing. That's infrastructure failing.
27 days ago
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The first question every official asks when I describe Agora: "Is this going to be another place I get yelled at?" The answer is no. That's actually the design, constituent signal, weighted by district. Structured input, not open comment. The signal-to-noise problem is the product.
28 days ago
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We're building Agora from outside the usual places. Different countries, different backgrounds, no political affiliations.
29 days ago
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A representative considering a vote next week can't afford a poll.The tool exists. The reach doesn't. That's the gap that has to be closed — not for one representative, but as infrastructure.
29 days ago
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There's a pattern in every civic tech postmortem I've read. A platform launches with good intentions. Gets traction from one political community. The other side stops trusting it. The first side doesn't need it, they already agree with each other. Partisanship isn't rhetorical. It's structural.
30 days ago
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Most civic disengagement isn't apathy. Spend time talking to people who actually tried to participate; they stopped because the channels didn't work. They wrote. They showed up. Nothing moved. That's not apathy. That's a rational response to broken infrastructure.
about 1 month ago
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reposted by
Tomer Rozenberg
Agora
about 1 month ago
1/ Voting was supposed to be the beginning of the conversation. For most of us, it's the end of one.
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For two years I've been asking elected officials what they'd actually want from a constituent platform. The answer is always some version of: not more messages. Better signal. We finally wrote down what we think that means.
about 1 month ago
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It is so good to be back on BlueSky. What did I missed?
about 1 month ago
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Sometimes strategy is just saying: “This doesn’t serve me anymore,” and walking away without making noise.
about 1 month ago
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What Goes Quiet When Life Gets Loud When the pace of your life changes suddenly and completely, the first thing you notice is what you lose. The coffee ritual. The morning writing. The specific silence of your apartment at 7am before anything has started. But the second thing you notice — and this…
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What Goes Quiet When Life Gets Loud
When the pace of your life changes suddenly and completely, the first thing you notice is what you lose. The coffee ritual. The morning writing. The specific silence of your apartment at 7am before anything has started. But the second thing you notice — and this one takes longer — is what goes quiet. And in that silence, some things become visible that your ordinary life had been too loud to show you.
https://tomer-rozenberg.com/what-goes-quiet-when-life-gets-loud/
3 months ago
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Staying Close When You’re Far Away There's a version of distance that's just geography. You're somewhere else, the people you love are somewhere else, and the gap is a manageable inconvenience. And then there's another kind of distance — the kind that comes when you're somewhere that asks…
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Staying Close When You’re Far Away
There's a version of distance that's just geography. You're somewhere else, the people you love are somewhere else, and the gap is a manageable inconvenience. And then there's another kind of distance — the kind that comes when you're somewhere that asks something significant of you. Not because you stop caring. Because the gap between what you're living and what the people you love are living becomes harder to bridge with a text message.
https://tomer-rozenberg.com/staying-close-when-youre-far-away/
3 months ago
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What Comes Back With You Interruptions end. That's the thing about them that's easy to forget while you're inside one. They feel permanent in the way that any all-consuming present tends to feel permanent. And then, one day, you return. I've been thinking about what that return looks like — not…
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What Comes Back With You
Interruptions end. That's the thing about them that's easy to forget while you're inside one. They feel permanent in the way that any all-consuming present tends to feel permanent. And then, one day, you return. I've been thinking about what that return looks like — not the logistics of it, but the interior version. What you carry back. What has shifted. What will look different from the person who left versus the person who's coming home.
https://tomer-rozenberg.com/what-comes-back-with-you/
3 months ago
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An Ode to My Bed My bed is extraordinary. I want to be precise about this, because "I have a comfortable bed" doesn't quite capture what I'm trying to say. What I have is a relationship. A carefully cultivated, mutually respectful arrangement built over years of shared mornings, late nights, and…
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An Ode to My Bed
My bed is extraordinary. I want to be precise about this, because "I have a comfortable bed" doesn't quite capture what I'm trying to say. What I have is a relationship. A carefully cultivated, mutually respectful arrangement built over years of shared mornings, late nights, and the quiet understanding that we are genuinely good for each other. I did not fully understand any of this until February 28th, when I packed a bag, reported for reserve duty, and was assigned sleeping arrangements that I can only describe as the philosophical opposite of everything my bed represents.
https://tomer-rozenberg.com/an-ode-to-my-bed/
3 months ago
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Why I’ve Been Gone Three weeks ago, I was called up for reserve duty. I'm a reservist in the Israeli Air Force. I've known this is part of my life since I was eighteen, and I've made a kind of peace with the fact that every so often, the calendar gets rearranged without being asked. You pack a…
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Why I’ve Been Gone
Three weeks ago, I was called up for reserve duty. I'm a reservist in the Israeli Air Force. I've known this is part of my life since I was eighteen, and I've made a kind of peace with the fact that every so often, the calendar gets rearranged without being asked. You pack a bag, you say the things you need to say to the people you need to say them to, and you go.
https://tomer-rozenberg.com/2026/03/28/why-ive-been-gone/
3 months ago
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The Long Wait Between Knowing and Doing I knew I needed to make a change about eight months before I made it. Not vaguely knew. Not a nagging suspicion in the back of my mind that I could easily dismiss. Clearly, articulately knew. I could have written you a convincing essay on why the change was…
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The Long Wait Between Knowing and Doing
I knew I needed to make a change about eight months before I made it. Not vaguely knew. Not a nagging suspicion in the back of my mind that I could easily dismiss. Clearly, articulately knew. I could have written you a convincing essay on why the change was right, why the current situation wasn't working, what the cost of staying was.
https://tomer-rozenberg.com/2026/03/02/the-long-wait-between-knowing-and-doing/
4 months ago
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The Story You Keep Telling About Yourself I've been saying the same thing about myself for about twelve years. It started as an observation. Something I noticed about my own tendencies, my own patterns, the way I was wired. Over time, it became a fact. And then, slowly, it became an explanation…
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The Story You Keep Telling About Yourself
I've been saying the same thing about myself for about twelve years. It started as an observation. Something I noticed about my own tendencies, my own patterns, the way I was wired. Over time, it became a fact. And then, slowly, it became an explanation for a surprising number of things in my life. Why I do certain things. Why I don't do others.
https://tomer-rozenberg.com/2026/02/23/the-story-you-keep-telling-about-yourself/
4 months ago
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How Much Courage It Takes I was at a networking event last week where everyone was talking about their ambitious plans. Starting companies. Writing books. Changing careers dramatically. Pursuing impressive goals that would make good stories. And I realized, standing there listening: I don't want…
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How Much Courage It Takes
I was at a networking event last week where everyone was talking about their ambitious plans. Starting companies. Writing books. Changing careers dramatically. Pursuing impressive goals that would make good stories. And I realized, standing there listening: I don't want any of that. I want a good job that challenges me but doesn't consume all my time. I want close friendships I actually maintain.
https://tomer-rozenberg.com/2026/02/21/how-much-courage-it-takes/
4 months ago
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What You Notice Now That You Couldn’t See Before A friend is making a decision I would have made five years ago. Actually, I did make this exact decision five years ago. And I can see exactly how it's going to play out for them. I can see the complications they're not anticipating. The pattern…
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What You Notice Now That You Couldn’t See Before
A friend is making a decision I would have made five years ago. Actually, I did make this exact decision five years ago. And I can see exactly how it's going to play out for them. I can see the complications they're not anticipating. The pattern they're repeating. The thing they're telling themselves that isn't quite true. The way this choice aligns with what they think they want but not with what they actually need.
https://tomer-rozenberg.com/2026/02/19/what-you-notice-now-that-you-couldnt-see-before/
4 months ago
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Advice That Sounds Wrong But Keeps Being Right A mentor told me something three years ago that I immediately dismissed as terrible advice. I was stressed about a project at work—too many moving parts, not enough time, feeling behind. And I asked her how to handle it. She said: "Stop trying so…
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Advice That Sounds Wrong But Keeps Being Right
A mentor told me something three years ago that I immediately dismissed as terrible advice. I was stressed about a project at work—too many moving parts, not enough time, feeling behind. And I asked her how to handle it. She said: "Stop trying so hard. Sometimes the solution is doing less, not more." I nodded politely and ignored her completely. Because that's obviously wrong.
https://tomer-rozenberg.com/2026/02/16/advice-that-sounds-wrong-but-keeps-being-right/
4 months ago
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Watching Someone Become a Stranger Slowly I texted a friend last week. Someone I used to talk to almost daily. We'd send each other random thoughts, share articles, make plans constantly. Genuinely close. Or at least, we were. I sent a message about something I thought they'd find interesting.…
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Watching Someone Become a Stranger Slowly
I texted a friend last week. Someone I used to talk to almost daily. We'd send each other random thoughts, share articles, make plans constantly. Genuinely close. Or at least, we were. I sent a message about something I thought they'd find interesting. They responded six hours later with "haha yeah" and nothing else. No follow-up question. No continuation of the conversation.
https://tomer-rozenberg.com/2026/02/14/watching-someone-become-a-stranger-slowly/
5 months ago
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Why Nobody Talks About the Second Year I remember my first year at the Ministry. Everyone warned me about it. "The first year is always the hardest," they said. "Just get through the first year and it gets easier." And they were right—the first year was hard. New systems to learn, new…
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Why Nobody Talks About the Second Year
I remember my first year at the Ministry. Everyone warned me about it. "The first year is always the hardest," they said. "Just get through the first year and it gets easier." And they were right—the first year was hard. New systems to learn, new relationships to build, figuring out how things actually work versus how they're supposed to work. Constantly feeling behind, constantly adjusting, constantly in that uncomfortable state of not quite knowing what I'm doing.
https://tomer-rozenberg.com/2026/02/12/why-nobody-talks-about-the-second-year/
5 months ago
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Version of Success You’re Not Supposed to Want Someone asked me last month what success looks like to me five years from now. It was a professional networking event, the kind of setting where you're supposed to have an impressive answer ready. So I gave the answer I'm supposed to give. The…
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Version of Success You’re Not Supposed to Want
Someone asked me last month what success looks like to me five years from now. It was a professional networking event, the kind of setting where you're supposed to have an impressive answer ready. So I gave the answer I'm supposed to give. The ambitious one. The one that sounds good when you say it out loud: "I want to be leading major innovation initiatives, speaking internationally, published extensively, recognized as a thought leader in my field."
https://tomer-rozenberg.com/2026/02/09/version-of-success-youre-not-supposed-to-want/
5 months ago
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The Routine You Keep Trying to Optimize Away I've tried six different morning routines in the past year. First it was the 5am CEO routine. Wake up before the sun, exercise, journal, meditate, plan the day. Be the most productive version of yourself before most people even wake up. I lasted two…
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The Routine You Keep Trying to Optimize Away
I've tried six different morning routines in the past year. First it was the 5am CEO routine. Wake up before the sun, exercise, journal, meditate, plan the day. Be the most productive version of yourself before most people even wake up. I lasted two weeks before I started hitting snooze and feeling guilty about it. Then it was the meditation-first routine.
https://tomer-rozenberg.com/2026/02/07/the-routine-you-keep-trying-to-optimize-away/
5 months ago
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The Money Conversation Nobody’s Having Honestly I was at dinner with friends last week when someone mentioned they'd gotten a raise. Good news, genuinely worth celebrating. And then the conversation shifted to salaries, apartment costs, how expensive everything's gotten. And everyone did this…
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The Money Conversation Nobody’s Having Honestly
I was at dinner with friends last week when someone mentioned they'd gotten a raise. Good news, genuinely worth celebrating. And then the conversation shifted to salaries, apartment costs, how expensive everything's gotten. And everyone did this weird dance. One friend immediately said "Oh, I don't really think about money that much. As long as I can pay my bills, I'm happy." Another jumped in with "Money's the only thing that matters—I'm just trying to maximize income." Someone else deflected entirely: "Can we talk about something else?
https://tomer-rozenberg.com/2026/02/05/the-money-conversation-nobodys-having-honestly/
5 months ago
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We spend so much of our twenties trying to prove we’re nothing like our parents that we forget they were once trying to figure it out too.
5 months ago
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The Thing Your Parents Were Right About That You Wish They Weren’t My mom told me something when I was twenty-two that I completely dismissed at the time. I was starting my career, full of ambition and energy, ready to prove myself. And she said, with that tone parents use when they're trying to…
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The Thing Your Parents Were Right About That You Wish They Weren’t
My mom told me something when I was twenty-two that I completely dismissed at the time. I was starting my career, full of ambition and energy, ready to prove myself. And she said, with that tone parents use when they're trying to warn you about something they learned the hard way: "You can't sustain yourself on ambition alone. Eventually you'll need more than work to make life feel worthwhile."
https://tomer-rozenberg.com/2026/02/02/the-thing-your-parents-were-right-about-that-you-wish-they-werent/
5 months ago
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Everyone knows the “star performers,” but every team has someone far more valuable: the quiet colleague who keeps everything moving while never asking for credit.
5 months ago
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The Colleague Everyone Underestimates There's someone in my department who doesn't attend many meetings. She's not on high-visibility projects. She doesn't position herself for promotions or make sure leadership knows about her contributions. In a room full of people talking about strategy and…
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The Colleague Everyone Underestimates
There's someone in my department who doesn't attend many meetings. She's not on high-visibility projects. She doesn't position herself for promotions or make sure leadership knows about her contributions. In a room full of people talking about strategy and innovation, she's usually the quiet one taking notes. If you looked at our org chart or read her job description, you wouldn't think she was particularly important.
https://tomer-rozenberg.com/2026/01/29/the-colleague-everyone-underestimates/
5 months ago
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🌟 A bus driver stopped early, waved, smiled, and it shifted the entire texture of an ordinary day.
5 months ago
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AI and the Joy of Creating Things You Couldn’t Create Before I don't know what AI is going to do to the job market. I don't know if it's going to be humanity's great salvation or our downfall. I don't have predictions about where this technology is heading or what it means for society. But here's…
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AI and the Joy of Creating Things You Couldn’t Create Before
I don't know what AI is going to do to the job market. I don't know if it's going to be humanity's great salvation or our downfall. I don't have predictions about where this technology is heading or what it means for society. But here's what I do know: AI is making it possible for regular people to create things they couldn't create before.
https://tomer-rozenberg.com/2026/01/19/ai-and-the-joy-of-creating-things-you-couldnt-create-before/
5 months ago
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Chasing ideas before they disappear, building things before they make sense. Momentum is underrated.
5 months ago
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Why We Dance When We Celebrate I was at a wedding last month, standing on the edge of the dance floor during the reception. The music was loud, the lights were flashing, and I was doing that thing where you're not quite dancing but also not quite standing still—that awkward half-movement people do…
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Why We Dance When We Celebrate
I was at a wedding last month, standing on the edge of the dance floor during the reception. The music was loud, the lights were flashing, and I was doing that thing where you're not quite dancing but also not quite standing still—that awkward half-movement people do when they're deciding whether to commit. And then I looked around and realized: everyone was dancing.
https://tomer-rozenberg.com/2026/01/17/why-we-dance-when-we-celebrate/
5 months ago
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Start. It won’t be perfect. But it will be real—and that’s more than most manage.
5 months ago
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