Restless Natives in the Era of After: A Manifesto for the Minimalist and the Nomad
- Roy Sharples
- Jun 14
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 15
We were told to build lives like ledgers.
Assets, not moments. Safety, not meaning.
A reliable commute, a pension, three streaming subscriptions, and a quietly disintegrating sense of wonder.
And we obeyed—until we didn’t.
Now something quieter is rising.
Not rebellion. Not escape.
But a refusal to stay in a story that no longer fits.
We are not settlers.
We are restless natives—unhoused not by misfortune, but by intent.
Not seeking more, but seeking otherwise.
We move to remember what feeling is.
The modern nomad is not lost.
They’re tuned—to where meaning flickers, where presence sharpens.
They keep their world in a shoulder bag.
Not because they have nothing,
but because they have no interest in owning what doesn’t move them.
Their coordinates change, but their convictions don’t.
Their home?
Sometimes a rented room with a broken window and an honest breeze.
Sometimes a moment of deep laughter between strangers who will never meet again.
They don’t collect places.
They gather proof that they felt something real.
The machines took the tasks. We kept the ache.
Let the systems handle the checkboxes.
They write your reminders.
They track your steps.
They finish your sentences—and leave you lonelier than ever.
Let them optimise the grocery list.
We’ve taken back the parts that bruise:
Regret. Intuition. Grief.
The pause before saying what might unravel everything.
The tremor of presence that no metric can hold.
A neural net can fake heartbreak.
But it cannot stand inside it.
That’s our work.
The ache. The awe. The absurdity of still caring.
Style is our telepathy.
We’re no longer dressing to be seen.
We’re dressing to signal—to the ones who know.
A coat that fits like forgiveness.
Boots that survived more than one kind of winter.
A shirt with a stain that tells a story we’re not ready to explain.
The new wardrobe doesn’t perform. It remembers.
It doesn’t conform. It codes.
Because self-expression isn’t performance.
It’s precision.
We are not your demographics.
We won’t be boxed, sorted, or retargeted.
We shift. Reframe. Evolve—on purpose.
Our pronouns update. Our boundaries breathe.
Our truths contradict themselves. And that’s the point.
We are not a segment.
We are not a market.
We are not a data set.
We are the strange and sovereign in-between.
And we are just getting started.
We gather where maps give out.
Not in boardrooms or webinars or hotel lobbies with bad coffee.
We meet in repurposed greenhouses.
On rooftops held together by moss and intent.
In side streets, slow kitchens, long silences.
We assemble around signal, not schedule.
No business cards.
No elevator pitches.
Just people who’ve stopped pretending.
And when it’s time to part, we do.
No drama. No legacy. Just thanks.
After productivity: presence.
We’re unlearning urgency.
Not because we’ve given up,
but because we’ve finally arrived.
We no longer fill time.
We inhabit it.
We’ve stopped multitasking.
We’ve started noticing:
The sound of someone changing their mind.
The last peach of the season.
The elegance of a pause that says more than words.
We tend to what doesn’t scale.
To what waits, patiently, beneath the noise.
We are not here to settle.
We are not here to be efficient.
Or streamlined. Or flattened for ease of consumption.
We are here to interrupt.
To remember.
To mispronounce things beautifully.
To laugh—not because it’s funny, but because it’s true.
To cry at the wrong moment.
To dance very badly—and very deliberately.
We are restless natives of the Era of After.
We carry no flag. We wear no badge.
We walk with intent, and leave no trace but resonance.
And this is the truth:
We do not exist to produce.
We exist to awaken.
To carry fewer things and more meaning.
To ask better questions.
To stay soft in a world that keeps asking us to harden.
And to say, quietly, clearly, and without apology:
This life.
This breath.
This fleeting, flickering moment—
is more than enough.
Home Is Where The Art Is
Read the Book. Stoke the Fire.
by Roy Sharples
How to make the invisible visible by lighting the way into the future.
Founder of Unknown Origins.
Champion of originality in an age of imitation.
Attitude. Imagination. Execution.
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