2026-05-11
Forty-five days
My wife scored higher than this. Forty-five days was all it took to break me. She had done five years. The essay that started Aule.
By Brennan McCloud
Read the essay →
From Brennan & Haley
Founder essays.
Long-form writing from inside the work. Episodic, not scheduled — published when there is something honest and load-bearing to say, not on a content calendar. The first essay is the one that started Aule. The rest land as the Charter cohort teaches us what is worth writing down.
Brennan writes most of them. Haley writes some. Where a Substack mirror exists, the mirror points back to getaule.com as the canonical home. If you want the essays in your inbox, completing the Mental Load Index puts you on the founder-essay list — the only list we run.
The library, in order
Chronological.
Most recent at the top. One essay is live; three more are staged for the next chapter of the Charter cohort. We will not publish a piece because the calendar says it is time. We will publish because there is something honest to say.
Coming soon
The work before the work
Why the doing was never the problem. A field note from inside the Charter cohort.
By Brennan McCloud
Coming soon
Coming soon
What I thought was helping
A reckoning with the partner who shows up after the deciding is already done. From Haley.
By Haley McCloud
Coming soon
Coming soon
Closed loops
The unit of work inside a household intelligence layer is not the task. It is the loop. Here is what closing one actually looks like.
By Brennan McCloud
Coming soon
The next step
Read the founding essay, then take the index.
The essays are the frame. The Mental Load Index is the diagnostic underneath it. If you are wondering whether the load you are carrying is normal, the index will tell you in five minutes. The number is the start of the conversation.