How It Works (and Why It Doesn’t)

A global magazine about what makes sense—and why so much doesn’t.

Part essay, part reporting, part lived experience.

Most writing about moving abroad, work, or politics assumes one of two things:

Either

1. You need instructions
   or

2. You need reassurance

This newsletter is for people who need neither.

It’s for people who’ve lost faith in scripts—career ladders, national myths, political identities, or the idea that there’s a correct way to live if you just find the right system.

I don’t offer hacks, optimism, or certainty.

I offer judgment—the kind you build when you stop outsourcing your thinking to institutions that no longer hold.

I write about:

• living abroad without romanticizing it

• politics without turning it into identity

• work without pretending it guarantees meaning

• cities, systems, and daily life as they actually function

Paid subscriptions support deeper work—the essays that don’t resolve cleanly, but help readers stay oriented when clarity is hard to come by.

This is a place to think clearly without deluding yourself.

If that’s useful, you’re in the right place.

How It Works is written from the ground, while the experience is still unfolding.

Founded and written by Rocco Pendola, a journalist and essayist based in Valencia, Spain, who has been using em dashes since 2005.