One of the greatest joys in finding and using Are.na over the last four years is the freedom to be myself: messy and ever-changing. I’ve spent my entire adolescent and adult life online, a time frame that has been synchronous with the boom of platforms that reward the pursuit of idealistic curation.

On Are.na, cyber moonflower has questioned this type of curation well saying:

While many of the channels I have been building on Are.na over time have had specific topics of research or consistent throughlines, I created the channel “Sonder” as a self-awareness and honesty practice.

In this channel, I connect the thing that resonates with me most, at least once per week. I also don’t delete or rearrange blocks in this channel, so that it serves as a time capsule for understanding my growth patterns and thinking over time.

The original intent was for “Sonder” to be non-performative and non-specific, a break from how I’ve been trained to use social platforms on the internet from a young age. Through those constraints, I’ve come to understand that the most deeply personal things are also the most universal. This attempt to catch fresh air has collected others along the way, eventually shaping the name for this channel, which was living nameless for quite some time prior.

Sonder, by definition, is “The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.”