Tag: Essays

It’s a giant hairball made of old cables. It lives in every household, and it sits in a drawer somewhere. It’s made of old phone chargers, USB cables, a couple of obsolete adaptors, a few rubber bands, a hairpin for sure. I have it, you have it, everyone has it. In my case, it fills…

A hundred thousand sharp pieces to pick up. That’s what’s left of that Ikea plate. On top of that, a once delicious sandwich is now bleeding mayonnaise on the tiles, as the final act of a tragedy that started on the countertop and ended too early, on the floor. Any other day it would be…

When I was a kid, I used to live on a farm with my parents and grandparents. My grandfather worked the fields. Every day he left early in the morning only to come back when the sun was setting. My grandfather had lived through the hardness of World War II. He had to leave his…

When I was asked for the first time about my pronouns, I was confused. English is not my first language, so I thought this was one of those subtle things they don’t teach in school, just like the correct use of “actually” or “literally.” I am a white/cis/male. I grew up in Italy during the ‘80s…

<< Dead? What do you mean dead? >> Herbert was no more. A phone call broke the news, on a cold Sunday morning. Herbert and I went to high school together. We used to ride our bikes along the shoreline, and we spent long afternoons together at the arcades. After graduation, we drifted off. I…

Carmine Gallo is a three-time Wall Street Journal bestselling author, internationally popular keynote speaker, Harvard instructor, and leadership advisor for the world’s most admired brands. Carmine Gallo’s books have been translated into more than 40 languages. At the beginning of 2011, I was in San Francisco to speak at a tech conference, and after the…