Hi Reader,

When I fell in love with a woman four years ago, I decided it wouldn't change anything about who I was. I had been with men all my life, and now I was with a woman. End of story. Nobody's business who I sleep with.

That's the story I told myself until this year when my good friend Laura spoke about cultural aspects of queerness: how being queer shapes far more of us than our sexuality, and how many gay people go through very similar journeys without noticing.

As a side-story, I shared how since childhood I had been careful about how I interacted with female friends, careful that they wouldn't think I was romantically interested. She laughed: "This would never cross a straight girl's mind!"

Oops. It never crossed my mind that it wouldn't.

If I had been careful about that, without even knowing why, what else had I been careful about, censored away? I spent decades editing myself so smoothly that I mistook the edited version for the original.

This week is World Pride in Amsterdam, which is a wonderful reminder to embrace and celebrate our otherness. And, reflecting on all the podcast episodes so far, I even recognise how queerness, quirkiness, otherness help us to renounce the professional mask and façade. If belonging by default was never an option, it's been a life-long practice to find a different way of belonging.

🎤 Waiting for you on the Unprofessionalism podcast:

Rob and I ended up talking about what he calls the puppet version of ourselves: the polished professional we hold up in front of the room so that if the room says no, it only rejects the puppet, never us.

In 1996, Rob Evans walked into a room at Lufthansa to pitch to twenty German engineers, convinced he had no chance of winning the contract. His company was nearly broke, and his boss's parting advice had been "if you need money over there, sell something." So with nothing to lose, he put the puppet away and had fun instead. The engineers sent him into the hallway, called him back in, and knocked on the table: he was hired. When he asked why a great German airline would pick an American as their quality consultant, they admitted they would rather have chosen a German.

But he was the only candidate who had any fun.

What struck me most was Rob's distinction between two kinds of humour. Warm humour exposes us: if it's rejected, we are rejected. Sarcasm keeps us safely hidden behind a target. "Sarcasm is safe," he said. And so is professionalism: the safe and edited version of ourselves. The puppet.

🎧 Click here to listen to the interview

📥 Download my 1-page summary

​UP_030_Summary.pdf​

That's it from my side. I hope to see you next week!

And in the meantime: Happy Pride 🌈

Myriam