ABOUT THE ARCHIVIST
I’m Liana Meyer, the person behind The Opaline Outpost.
I’m a writer, researcher, communications strategist, and enthusiastic collector of questions about memory, technology, aging, storytelling, and what makes us human.
As my extremely serious headshot suggests, I have always become intensely interested in things. Some fascinations pass quickly. Others lead to Reddit threads, several open books, three different LLMs, and the conviction that I must Know. All. The. Things.
Lately, those trails have been converging around a young-adult science-fiction novel—and around a larger subject that keeps finding its way into nearly everything I create:
Lore.
The stories families repeat. The private language between friends. The memories we preserve, embellish, misunderstand, inherit, and reevaluate as we grow older.
My research was living everywhere: browser bookmarks, message threads, assorted devices, Obsidian folders, and somewhere adrift in all the whimsy.
The Opaline Outpost is my attempt to gather it into one place. Here you’ll find curated links, prompts, and opportunities around memory, technology, aging, storytelling, and what makes us human.
Before you explore, here are some of the fragments that shaped my own lore.
Loleta, California, 1983
Sometimes the plan does not survive the digging.
My parents bought eight acres that supposedly contained a natural spring. The plan was to use it to grow Christmas trees.
They built a house. They dug. Then they dug deeper. No water. That was the end of the Meyer Christmas-tree empire—but the beginning of a family story we are still telling.
Loleta, California, 1989
Sometimes one failed dream becomes a goat farm.
My parents eventually filled the property with Angora goats. My mother even began breeding them with Pygmy goats to create Pygoras. Something about the superior mohair. That is the official family lore, anyway.
Aptos, California, 1999
Sometimes photographs hold what time cannot.
My childhood friends and I attended four different high schools between us, but we kept finding our way back to one another. This is the last photograph I have with my friend Marion. She died years later, but I still dream about her. Sometimes I wake up briefly forgetting what happened.
Then I remember.
We miss you, Mel.
Los Angeles, California, 2006
Sometimes personal lore raises more questions than it answers.
To reach this underground warehouse party, we called an unknown number, waited at an intersection, and climbed into an unmarked van headed somewhere into the night. I do not remember how I got home.
But photographic evidence confirms that I drank water.
Pagudpud, Philippines, 2013
Sometimes lore belongs only to the people who were there.
No edits. Just joy—and several stories that have never left this trio of girlfriends.
Some memories become better because they are shared widely. Others remain precious because they are just for us.
Manila, Philippines, 2019
Sometimes your lore becomes public property.
I unexpectedly went viral in the Philippines after posting my reaction to the cleanup of Manila Bay: three million views, 35,000 shares, and my own hashtag.
Not everyone gets to be known briefly as The Admirable Liana Meyer.
I should probably add it to LinkedIn.
Manila, Philippines, 2019
Sometimes failure becomes the better story.
We showed up. We failed miserably, beautifully, and somewhat disastrously. Then we added a smiley face.
Cagayan de Oro, Philippines, 2020
Sometimes you bite off more than you can chew.
And sometimes—against all available evidence—you succeed in remarkable fashion.
Somewhere in the sea, Philippines, 2022
Sometimes grief sends you toward the water.
After losing my 17-year-old Chihuahua—the one who had been there for everything—I put on an enormous hat and spent the day on a tiny island near the equator.
There was little else to do except grieve, keep moving, and remain hydrated.
Cagayan de Oro, Philippines, 2022
Sometimes you need to visit your favorite tree.
No elaborate story. Just a place that became part of mine.
Trinidad, California, 1990
Sometimes you simply need to be cool, man.
Some truths require no additional research.
And that is really what I mean by lore.
It is not only legend, history, or grand family mythology. It is the failed water spring, the unmarked van, the private joke, the friend who still appears in dreams, and the tree you continue to think of as yours.
Lore is what happened—and what it meant.
Lore is our time together.
The Opaline Outpost is a place for gathering those stories, questions, connections, and strange little signals before they disappear. I’m glad you found your way here.
For the more official version of me, visit my LinkedIn profile.