As if last week wasn’t chaotic enough with the start of first grade, fourth grade, and seventh grade for our kids, my husband and I decided to paint my son’s bedroom. Walls, ceiling, the whole shebang. I wanted to hire someone to take the pain away, but my husband convinced me that most of the work was moving the furniture and we could DIY it. That’s how I found myself dripping with sweat and washing latex wall paint off my hands before rushing to pick up my kids at 12:20 pm last Thursday. The first week of school is always a short week of half days. As another mom put it, it was a “long short week” (shoutout Jen).

Summer schedule

My family had a fun summer: Iceland, Tahoe, summer camps, swimming, and lots of tennis. But also: kids squabbling, summer packets (our school assigns quite a bit of work), and trying to make sure daily screen time wasn’t too egregious. By August, most parents (this one included) are counting down the days before school starts.

One thing that contributed to my countdown was being responsible for all the camp drop offs and pickups. My husband commutes and gets to the office by 8 am; camps don’t start until 9 am. I breathed a sigh of relief once normal school programming resumed this week. Tuesday was the first time I found myself alone at 7 am, when my husband dropped the kids off at before school care. I made coffee, sat outside, and read my book in peace.

The chaos in my head

Is your inner state affected by your outer environment? I know mine is. In an attempt to claim some inner peace while my house is still a hot mess, I’m sharing five things on my mind this week.

1. Work

My biggest client right now is my old team, Google Registry. I’m helping them launch .eat, .fly, and .here this fall and that’s keeping me very busy, in a good way. Now that the kids are back in school, I’m really appreciating the ability to focus for longer stretches of time — I can actually finish some solid work before school pick up interrupts it.

2. House

The thing about organizing is that it often gets messier before it becomes orderly again. My biggest battle is letting go of things that hold sentimental value or feeling guilty about tossing things like plastic beads that could, in theory, be reused for another craft. I’m trying my best to donate and throw away as much as possible. Pro tip: clothes that can’t be donated can be dropped off for recycling at Zara.

3. Personal

I’m re-reading Andre Agassi’s biography, Open. I read it back in 2009, before I started playing tennis. When I found out it was ghostwritten by J. R. Moehringer, I had to check it out. Moehringer’s memoir, The Tender Bar, is one of my favorites and Open is a great read for anyone, regardless if you play the game.

4. Kids

Every year, I write my kids a birthday letter where I try to capture who they are at that age, with links to photos from their celebrations. This year was complicated — all three parties got pushed back after our backyard construction ran long, so we were throwing ‘birthday’ parties for kids whose actual birthdays were months in the rearview. I’m very, very behind (their birthdays were all in Q1), but I’m planning to get these letters out of my drafts soon.

5. Travel

We have plans to visit Pinnacles National Park with friends soon. I’m using AI to suggest hikes and activities suitable for our group of kids ranging from 1st to 7th grade. If you’ve been to Pinnacles recently or have favorite trail recommendations, drop me a rec!

My house might still be a work in progress, but even having a few hours of quiet focus back in my day feels like a small win. To my East Coast parent friends who don’t start the new school year until after Labor Day, godspeed.

Here’s to turning the page on summer and finding our rhythm again. How are you navigating your own seasonal reset — or are you stepping over rolled-up rugs like me? I’d love to hear in the comments!

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“If your spine is inflexibly stiff at 30, you are old; if it is completely flexible at 60, you are young.”

Joseph Pilates

I’ve been practicing Pilates since college. My first instructor was a bit kooky — I remember her telling our class that we should bark like a seal when we did the seal move. Somehow, she convinced a room of gullible college students to play along.

While living in San Francisco, I subscribed to Class Pass for a hot minute and would sign up for random fitness classes: capoeira, yoga, barre method, even pole dancing. Pilates was (and still is) my favorite.

A cat-alyst for Contrology

Developed by Joseph Pilates in the early 20th century and originally called Contrology, Pilates has recently experienced a massive global boom. While I’ve been hooked for over two decades, it seems the rest of the world is finally catching on. In the U.S., Pilates participation grew from 9.2 million to 12.9 million people between 2019 and 2025, marking an impressive 40% surge.

Its origins may surprise you. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Pilates was performing as a “living Greek statue” (doing choreographed, strength-based posing acts) in a circus. Due to his German citizenship, the British government classified him as an “enemy alien.” Pilates spent nearly four and a half years in an internment camp. It was during this period that he created his methods.

Initially, Pilates spent a year at a temporary camp in Lancaster, England. In September 1915, he was moved to Knockaloe Internment Camp on the Isle of Man. This was the largest British internment camp — at its peak, it housed over 23,000 men. As time went on in the internment camp, Pilates watched his fellow-prisoners sink into apathy and despair. Determined to stay healthy, Pilates had an aha-moment when he observed the stray cats roaming the yard. In a February 12, 1962 Sports Illustrated profile titled “Learning to be an Animal,” journalist Robert Wernick described how Pilates developed the core principles of Contrology while interned (as documented by the Knockaloe Visitor Centre):

“It was the cats which did it. For though they were nothing but skin and bones — even the most animal-loving prisoners could hardly spare them anything from their own pitiful rations when their own children were begging to be fed — they were lithe and springy and terribly efficient as they aimed for their prey. Why were the cats in such good shape, so bright-eyed, while the humans were growing every day paler, weaker, apathetic creatures ready to give up if they caught a cold or fell down and sprained an ankle? The answer came to Joe when he began carefully observing the cats and analyzing their motions for hours at a time. He saw them, when they had nothing else to do, stretching their legs out, stretching, stretching, keeping their muscles limber, alive. He began working out an orderly series of exercises to stretch the human muscles, all the human muscles. He began demonstrating these exercises to the dejected figures around him, and since they had nothing else to do, they began to do the exercises too. Awkwardly and timorously at first, but under his firm supervision they became more and more confident, more and more bouncy, like cats. They ended the war in better shape than when it started, and when the great influenza epidemic came sweeping over all the countries that had fought in the war, not one of them came down with it.”

When WWI ended, Pilates returned to Germany and emigrated to New York City, where he opened the first Pilates studio with his wife, Clara.

What is Pilates?

Pilates is a mind-body exercise that focuses on core stability, strength, flexibility, breathing, posture, alignment, and improving coordination and balance.

There is a certain flow to every classical Pilates class: a series of 34-50 structured, repetitive exercises. The exercises are either done on a mat or on the bed-like Reformer, which Joseph Pilates created to assist with the workout.

There are six core principles that govern every movement: centering, concentration, control, precision, breath, and flow. I can’t help but think about how control, concentration, and precision tie back to a cat’s purposeful strides — a starving cat still stalks its prey with complete focus and total economy of motion.

Pilates is such a different, focused way of exercising — sometimes the movements are very small and some moves that seem simple are quite complex because you need to isolate certain muscle groups, like the transverse abdominis. I always feel stretched out and an inch taller after my weekly class. Now you and I both know that the litheness one feels after a good Pilates class might be akin to what our feline friends feel after a good stretch.

Should you try Pilates?

If you have never done Pilates before, I encourage you to give it a try. I would look for a classical Pilates studio over a random gym class though. Although I occasionally enjoy the 20-person class my gym offers, a smaller group ensures you’re learning with proper form — something that isn’t possible when you’re three rows deep.

A skilled Pilates instructor like mine (shoutout Claudia) is able to tailor moves for every level. I’ve been practicing with my teacher for over ten years. I first found her while I was pregnant with my second child. Though she was initially worried about taking me on as a new student, I reassured her I had been exercising and doing Pilates throughout my pregnancy.

I credit Pilates for helping me have relatively easy births (strong core!) and good recoveries. With my third pregnancy, I took a reformer class the day before I gave birth.

Variety is the spice of life and studies show it’s healthy to mix up your workouts. Tennis, Kung Fu, swimming, running, strength training, and Pilates all offer me different benefits. Tell me, what are your favorite ways to exercise?

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But the companies submitting applications today aren’t just betting on what the web looks like in 2026. They’re making a bet on what the Internet will look like in an increasingly AI-driven world. And here’s the paradox: AI may make domains less important to people — and more important to machines.

How domains will matter less

The web is currently moving from navigation to delegation. As autonomous agents and LLM assistants take over navigation and task execution, everyday users will rarely type web addresses directly into a browser bar. Think about it: when was the last time you entered a website address directly into the URL bar vs. clicking on a link that came up in your search results? With the rise of AI, the URL bar will become even more abstracted than it is today.

More and more, people will start trusting AI agents to compare products, book travel, complete transactions, or retrieve information on their behalf. The question moves from “Which website should I visit?” to “Which source should my agent trust?” As people interact less directly with brands, the AI agent increasingly becomes the intermediary between the user and the source. While human front-end traffic may decline, back-end query volume from agents could increase dramatically, shifting value from consumer-facing experiences to the infrastructure that enables those interactions.

How domains will matter more

Machines will need to know who they’re talking to. The shift toward AI agent verification means that being able to verify the authenticity of a domain will matter more. In order for machines to avoid spoofing, confirming the source of information — and the authenticity of a destination — will become increasingly important. This is the root (pun intended) of why the Domain Name System (DNS) will always matter. The DNS provides a globally recognized, hierarchical naming system, with cryptographic mechanisms such as DNSSEC that can help machines validate DNS responses and data integrity. That makes domain identity potentially much more important in a world where machines, rather than humans, are deciding where to connect.

Imagine asking an AI agent to check on your flight status and to rebook you if necessary. Today, the agent may need to determine which of several sources is the airline’s official endpoint. In an AI-driven Internet, a controlled namespace under the airline’s own TLD could provide a much clearer signal about who controls that endpoint.

Why dotBrands could matter

A controlled namespace becomes an identity asset. Unlike other top-level domains, a dotBrand is a closed, controlled ecosystem. A dotBrand gives brands something increasingly valuable in an agent-driven Internet: a namespace they control from the root. That control gives brands a clearer identity layer for machine-to-machine interactions.

On an Internet saturated with deepfakes, automated phishing, and synthetic media, I predict the companies who already own or applied for their dotBrands this ICANN round could be securing something much more valuable than a marketing URL. Over the next decade, they could find themselves controlling an important identity layer for the agentic Internet.

Takeaways

Some of you may remember a time when you didn’t carry the Internet in your pocket, when hailing a cab meant standing on a curb instead of tapping a button, or when the thing you ordered didn’t show up the same day.

The biggest changes in technology often happen this way: what once required a visible human action eventually becomes an invisible background workflow.

The same thing is happening to the web.

We may be heading toward a world where humans visit fewer websites, type fewer URLs, and interact less directly with the Internet. But behind the scenes, our AI agents may be interacting with domains more than ever — checking sources, calling APIs, verifying identities, and completing transactions on our behalf. Domains may become less of a destination for humans and more of a trust anchor for machines.

As domain names evolve from consumer-facing marketing assets into trust infrastructure for machine-driven interactions, think about your own online routine. Have you noticed your day-to-day web behaviors changing as you rely more on AI?

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My love of swimming

I learned to swim relatively late in life. My dad enjoys swimming, but my mom claims she doesn’t know how to (despite somehow passing her college swim test). I didn’t take any proper lessons as a young child and distinctly remember being very worried I would not pass the required swim test at seventh grade sea camp in the Florida Keys. Luckily, I did ok and was given the green light to snorkel and do other fun water activities for the week. It was hands down the best school field trip ever (shoutout BBA). Funnily, my middle school friends and I all had crushes on a counselor named Bill and I’m now married to a Billy.

I’m sure my swim form isn’t proper, but I regularly swim 10 laps (breaststroke and backstroke) at our neighborhood pool every week. Feeling my body glide through the cool water always leaves me so refreshed. My favorite time of day to swim is in the evening, when the sun is low enough that I don’t need to worry about applying a ton of sunscreen.

The prettiest pool I ever did see

In October of 2017, my family and I explored Hearst Castle on our way home from visiting family in southern California. The Roman Pool has lived rent free in my head ever since then.

Built between 1927 and 1935 by architect Julia Morgan and artist Camille Solon, the Roman Pool is tiled from floor to ceiling with millions of cobalt blue, orange, and shimmering gold mosaic tiles. It’s surrounded by eight marble statues of Roman gods, goddesses, and heroes. Even better, the pool is directly underneath the estate’s outdoor tennis courts. Can you imagine playing tennis and then going for a swim in that pool? Talk about a dream.

Although I doubt I’ll ever shell out the hefty price tag to swim in the Roman Pool at Hearst Castle, I did enjoy swimming in the Secret Lagoon when we visited Iceland.

Young woman and the sea

For my older daughter’s belated movie night birthday party earlier this summer, she chose Young Woman and the Sea, which is based on the incredible true story of Trudy Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel. It was an inspiring family movie, but reading her real-life story afterwards was even better. As all movies do, this one took a few liberties to move the plot forward, but the real life Trudy was even more bad ass than the fictional one.

Tomorrow will mark 100 years since Ederle completed the 21-mile swim in 14 hours and 31 minutes on August 6, 1926, shattering the previous men’s record by over two hours. Perhaps my favorite detail about her historic feat? Her high-performance fuel of choice was fried chicken, tossed at her from a tugboat. That’s peak nutrition right there! 🍗

Did you know?

Here are three interesting facts about swimming pools:

1. The oldest known swimming pool is over 4,500 years old. Known as the “Great Bath” and built around 2,600 B.C. in what is modern-day Pakistan, this pool was made of finely fitted bricks and sealed with bitumen (a natural tar). It was likely used for religious rituals.

2. The world’s largest swimming pool covers over 19 acres. Located at the San Alfonso del Mar resort in Algarrobo, Chile, this massive man-made lagoon holds 66 million gallons of filtered ocean water. It’s so big that guests can actually sail small boats and kayak across it!

3. That classic “pool smell” isn’t what you think. A clean, well-balanced pool should have almost no chemical smell at all. That distinct smell is actually caused by chloramines, which form when free chlorine reacts with organic compounds like sweat, body oils, and urine. So if a pool smells heavily like chlorine, it’s not super clean; it’s just working very hard.

Last week, I was swimming laps while keeping an eye on my two younger kids eating their Otter Pops on the stairs. Although my nine-year-old has been water safe for years, my six-year-old is still taking lessons. She normally doesn’t stray far from the steps, so I was surprised when I looked up and found her next to me, all the way on the other side of the pool! It was a good reminder that even when progress feels slow, growth is often happening quietly in the background. Seeing her beam with pride after pushing her boundaries was amazing, even as it hit me how quickly they grow up.

Swimming doesn’t need to be about competition or perfect form — there’s something undeniably restorative about just getting in the water. As summer winds down, I’m holding onto that feeling (and making sure to squeeze in a few more evening swims before the season ends). In the wise words of Dory: “Just keep swimming!”

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This year, the year we all turned 45, our trip finally made it out of the group chat and we brought the whole circus along. Our group of 23 people spanned three generations and included nine children (ages 6-15) and five grandparents.

I’m sharing our favorite activities, unexpected things, and my tips for anyone traveling there.

Itinerary and favorite activities

For this trip, I did most of the planning, with AI being extremely helpful. This was how we spent a week:

Day 1, arrivals: Our group flew in from five different cities, all landing at Keflavík International Airport (KEF), rented cars, and drove straight to the Blue Lagoon. We easily spent two hours at the Blue Lagoon before visiting Costco (for snacks and fresh fruit), and walking around downtown Reykjavík. It was rainy and I wish we could have stayed out exploring Reykjavík longer, but the kids were tired.

Day 2, Golden Circle: Our hotel (Hotel Reykjavík Grand) comped my entire family breakfast because the curtains in my parents’ room wouldn’t close all the way. Free food (in a land of very expensive food) was a bonus! On our second day we explored Thingvellir National Park, enjoyed lunch at Vínstofa Friðheima, took in the blue waters at Brúarfoss, witnessed the Strokkur Geyser erupt several times, felt awed by Gullfoss Falls, and checked out the Kerið Crater. Dinner was a to-go reindeer burger (tasty, but $45 for one burger) and additional eats from a food hall right before they closed.

Day 3, transfer to South Coast: The group geared up for a long drive to reach

, the southernmost mainland village in Iceland. We stopped briefly at Urriðafoss, which was a relatively unimpressive waterfall (still gorgeous) compared to the others we saw, but it did offer some nice photo ops with the purple lupines that lined the walking path. Next was Seljalandsfoss, a huge waterfall you can walk behind — this was my oldest daughter’s favorite waterfall we visited. My family skipped Skógafoss (thinking we could see this later) because we needed to make it to a horseback riding excursion. My six-year-old loved our 30 minute ride on the black sand beaches of Vík. It was the only activity she repeatedly said she’d do again if she could. Icelandic horses are special because they are smaller in size, have a pure bloodline (isolated for over 1,000 years) that is protected by law, and have five natural gaits (most horses have three).

Day 4, fire and ice: When I asked my family what their top three favorite activities were, everyone had the Katla ice cave tour on their list. Everything about this tour was fun, from the super Jeep ride to the otherworldly trek across volcanic soil (we stopped at a spot where they filmed Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) to walking through the blue ice cave. I totally thought the cave was something humans had carved out, but when I looked this up after, it turns out it is a natural ice cave! Another activity that our group enjoyed was The Lava Show, where the presenter recreates a volcanic eruption by superheating real lava (up to 2000℉) and pouring it into the showroom. To top off this magical day, we also spotted puffins at Dyrhólaey cliffs and visited the basalt columns at Reynisfjara beach.

Day 5, glaciers: The next day, we journeyed eastward towards the glacier lagoon. Our first stop was Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon, which was an easy and beautiful hike along a moss-covered canyon with stunning views. After eating the grocery store sandwiches we had picked up the night before, half of our group hiked to a glacier and half of the group hiked to another waterfall, Svartifoss. Every waterfall we visited in Iceland was unique and this one stood out because of its jet-black hexagonal basalt columns. Our last stops of the day were Diamond Beach, which is famous for the crystal-clear icebergs that wash ashore from the nearby Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon, and an amphibian boat tour in the lagoon. The boat tour was really fun for our group and everyone got to hold and taste 1,000 year old ice.

Day 6, western return: My favorite hike of our trip was Múlagljúfur Canyon. In a land of endless, pristine beauty, this hike stood out. Our last group meal at Kjarr Restaurant & Bar in Kirkjubæjarklaustur was hands down the best meal of the trip. I’m still thinking about that rack of lamb. We made one final stop as a group for ice cream before one family headed to the airport and the rest of us split off for our final day.

Day 7, choose your own adventure: My family had a relaxing last day in Iceland. We started the morning with breakfast in the American Schoolbus Cafe in Hella. My youngest had really wanted to go on a school bus for some time (we don’t have school bus service for our school), and she was so happy! It was a really fun stop before we spent a morning at The Secret Lagoon, Iceland’s oldest natural pool and then explored the lava tunnel in Raufarhólshellir (one of my dad’s favorite activities). For dinner in Selfoss, we met up with our friends and watched the Egypt vs. Australia World Cup game on a big outdoor screen.

Day 8, departure: On our way back to the airport, we briefly stopped at The Bridge between Continents, a small footbridge spanning a rift between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. It was a fun last photo op!

5 unexpected things

1. Gigantic dandelions were everywhere. We saw them along so many walking paths, but the real jackpot was behind a food truck in Hella, where my kids made huge bouquets and I took slow-motion videos of them shaking all the fluff. So delightful and fun!

2. I never saw the sun set. We went to bed late — 11:30pm or later — and it was still light outside.

3. Losing a rental van key is a $1,030 mistake. That’s what it costs for a driver to bring a replacement across the island. (Luckily we found ours!)

4. Watching our kids become real friends was pure magic. All our kids have met before, but this was their first real trip together. On longer drives, we put all the little girls together in one van, the boys in another, the grandparents in a third — leaving us four moms to catch up in our own car. 🙌

5. Iceland is where astronauts train to walk on the moon. After returning home, I learned that nine of the twelve astronauts who walked on the moon — including Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin — trained in Iceland because its volcanic, treeless terrain mirrors the lunar surface (even NASA’s Artemis II crew trained there recently!). After our family’s recent trip to the Houston Space Center, I could really imagine what visiting the moon might feel like when I walked across that otherworldly landscape.

Tips

If you’re thinking of visiting Iceland, here are my tips:

• If renting a car, pay for the zero-deductible insurance. It was expensive — I think we paid around $2K for the van rental and the zero-deductible insurance for a week. However, Iceland’s weather is extremely unpredictable — it rained at some point daily and the winds can be really strong. Everyone in our group was glad they got maximum coverage (especially the car that got in a minor accident).

• Waterproof hiking shoes are a must. Between the rain and the waterfall hikes, I think comfy waterproof hiking shoes were a good buy. I was really happy with this pair for me and my older daughter, my husband loved this pair, and my younger kids stayed dry in these boots.* I suppose it’s possible to get by without hiking shoes — our group’s 15 year old hiked in slides and somehow went ice climbing in sneakers. All of our hikes were relatively short (our longest was a total of 2.4 miles out and back), but if you are planning on longer hikes, then I think hiking shoes are non-negotiable.

• Consider extending your trip to 10 days if you can. In retrospect, I wish we had one extra day in Reykjavík and maybe two extra days to explore either the north or the west. There’s so much to see in Iceland! One day, I’ll go back.

Iceland was a major bucket list destination. I’m so happy I got to experience this place with my loved ones. Exploring its black sand beaches, waterfalls, and glaciers with my family and friends was truly epic. For me, the best part was spending time with people I’ve known for decades (or my whole life, in the case of my parents!) and building memories with a whole new generation.

My friends and I are already plotting our next adventure! Tell me, what’s on your travel wish list?

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*I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase of the boots I linked above, at no extra cost to you.

When my kids are grown, I hope they will remember all the fun they had on these little weekend trips. Well, mostly fun. Two years ago, we all stopped for soft serve ice cream and my then-7-year-old kept on walking, unbeknownst to us. There was a moment of panic when we realized he was missing, but thankfully he was quickly found. This is a core memory for my son because he still brings it up every year and recounts how he thought it was “the end.” 😬

While that was a heart-stopping kind of adrenaline, it got me thinking about the good kind of thrills. This year, as the parents followed our children from ride to ride and watched their happy little faces flying by, one of the dads (shoutout Danny) posed the question,“When was the last time you felt really excited about something?” He shared that his father will get so excited about playing golf with his friends that he can’t sleep the night before, but our friend couldn’t recall the last time he experienced that feeling himself. I said that my husband and I were pretty excited to actually receive a second payment from a contractor we had to fire who owes us money. I was definitely excited to explore the waterfalls and glaciers in Iceland recently (more on that soon).

As I was thinking about the thrills that amusement park rides offer, it dawned on me that both roller coasters and — as I was surprised to learn recently — carousels were both originally designed for adults, not children.

“All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Designed for adults

The word “carousel” has its roots in the Italian word garosello and the Spanish carosella, both meaning “little war.” Back in the 12th century, Arabian and Turkish cavalry members developed a game on horseback to sharpen their combat skills. Riders would gallop in a circle, tossing clay balls filled with perfumed water. If you missed a catch, you would be doused in perfume and marked with “the scent of defeat.”

In the 17th century, French crusaders brought this game to Europe, where it evolved into a formal exhibition. To prepare young noblemen for tournaments and jousting, engineers built a device of wooden horses suspended by chains from a central, rotating wood pole that was turned by mules or servants. It was during this time that the ring game was developed, where the riders would practice using their lances to spear tiny metal rings hanging from overhead posts.

The Looff Carousel, which was delivered to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in 1911, is a certified National Historic Landmark. It’s considered to be one of the most famous “golden age” carousels left in the world and was carved by Charles I.D. Looff, a master Danish wood carver who also built Coney Island’s first carousel. It is one of fewer than 20 carousels in the world that still features a working ring dispenser.

If you’ve never experienced the ring game before, it is a must-try for older kids and adults. As the carousel spins, riders sitting on the outer row can stretch out and pluck a metal ring from a mechanical dispenser arm. They try to toss their rings into the mouth of a giant painted clown on the wall. If successful, flashing lights and ringing bells go off. I once worked with a creative director (shoutout Dice) who shared that he proposed to his wife on a carousel by pretending to grab a brass ring, but then presenting her with an engagement ring. Very romantic!

Another carousel that was built in 1911 and shares a National Historic Landmark designation is the Tilden Park Merry-Go-Round. Earlier this summer, my younger kids and I visited it for the first time.

The Tilden Park Merry-Go-Round was manufactured by the Herschell Spillman Company in North Tonawanda, New York. It journeyed around California before arriving at Tilden in 1948. While the average modern carousel rotates around 5 to 7 mph on the outer edge, the one in Tilden is twice as fast, clocking in at 11 to 12 mph on the outer edge — making it one of the fastest vintage carousels in the country. By comparison, the Looff Carousel is 7.5 to 8.5 mph.

As we were exiting the Tilden ride, I commented that it was faster than other carousels I’ve been on. That’s when the operator told me it was originally designed for adults. I always thought that carousels were for children and looked up the history when I returned home.

So how did the carousel transition from military drills to elite adult pastime to a children’s favorite?

The transition from military drills to adult entertainment happened in the late 1700s and early 1800s, when French royalty brought the carousels into their palace gardens for recreation. For a time, they were the ultimate status symbol for wealthy adults and allowed them to experience the thrill of riding without having to handle an unpredictable live horse.

Three key things happened during the Industrial Revolution. First, the rise of steam power and heavy machinery allowed platforms to spin faster, carry more weight, and operate continuously. In the 1860s, the English engineer Thomas Landwell added a steam engine to a carousel. Developers added gears that allowed horses to move up and down, mimicking real riding motion.

As cities grew, the newly emerging working class sought family-friendly entertainment. Streetcar companies built trolley parks at the end of their lines to boost weekend ridership when commuters weren’t taking the trains to work. And carousel operators recognized their steam-powered carousels could easily accommodate dozens of riders at a time and that they could charge cheap, single-cent admissions.

To maximize profits from visiting families, makers updated carousels to target children. While the earliest carousels featured aggressive, muscular warhorses, by the early 20th century, carvers began designing whimsical menangeries featuring lions, zebras, frogs, roosters, and other creatures. The Tilden carousel boasts two of the Herschell-Spillman frogs that are still in operation (there are only about 10 left).

Finding the excitement

This year, the older kids were all tall enough to ride the roller coasters and more thrilling rides. As the clock ticked towards the Boardwalk’s 10pm closing time, some of us parents found ourselves waiting for almost an hour as the line inched slowly forward for the Vertigo 360, a new ride that features a giant rotating gondola that swings higher and higher like a pendulum until it makes a full 360-degree rotation. Eventually our kids made it on. As I watched them scream in glee, I wished I had bought myself a ticket too!

In general, I try to find joy and magic in the every day, but my friend’s question really encouraged me to think more about this. Perhaps feeling excitement is a muscle, like creativity, where the more you practice it, the more you are able to access it.

It’s easy to slip into the role of spectator when you’re a parent. You’re on the sidelines, holding the water bottles and taking the photos. But there’s no reason to stop buying a ticket for yourself. Learning that carousels were first built for adults is a beautiful reminder that we don’t have to live vicariously through our kids. Maybe not every parent wants to be dizzy or feel their stomach drop, but next summer, I plan on joining the kids on some of the rides. Everyone, no matter what age they are, deserves to remember what it feels like to fly.

The answer is yes, I’m getting paid. On the last Friday in June, while I was floating in the Blue Lagoon in Iceland, my biggest invoice to date ($27K for 5 weeks of work) hit my bank account. That felt good.

I’m sharing this because I don’t think women really talk about money — how much you earn is a somewhat taboo subject, but I don’t think it should be. By law, California employers with 15 or more workers are required to post salary or hourly range in all job postings, which I think is a good thing. In all my years of working, I’ve only had one friend (male) ever ask me how much I was making and three people ask me how much I’m billing hourly now.

No ceiling, but also no floor

Getting paid when you’re working for yourself feels different than getting paid as an employee. I think this is because it’s not just about money in your bank account — your entire relationship with time, risk, and value has changed.

When you’re a salaried employee, things are steady and predictable. You can count on benefits like health insurance and a regular paycheck, regardless of how your work ebbs and flows. Growth is measured and structured, coming with raises and promotions. You are one component of a larger machine. As long as that machine continues to run and doesn’t decide you are no longer necessary, things are stable, status quo.

When you’re running your own business, you are the machine. Any work you do is because you brought it in. As a business owner, you are the sole driver of your financial destiny. There’s no ceiling, but there’s also no floor.

I currently have enough in the pipeline to carry me to the end of 2026 — for that, I’m grateful. But you better believe that there is part of me that is terrified the pipeline will dry up. Business development and outreach is always on my mind. As a business owner, even if you’re currently eating, you need to be actively scanning the horizon for your next meal.

Stability vs. autonomy

The decision of starting your own business vs. remaining on someone else’s payroll really comes down to what matters more — stability or autonomy.

Being able to own my time (and opting not to RTO) was a key reason I decided to take a package and leave Google last fall. Another factor was the realization that if I were to remain an employee, my livelihood would always be determined by corporate policies, restructurings, and someone else’s judgement of what my market value is. Every month, I see friends and colleagues post their stories on LinkedIn about layoffs. It’s clear that stability on someone else’s payroll is only an illusion of safety.

Starting my own business has not been without challenges, but it’s been both freeing and rewarding. There’s ultimate validation when you set your own rate and clients value your specific expertise, strategy, or execution enough to write a check to an entity you created.

Retain your value

After two decades working for other people, my new reality is having total control over where, when, and how much to work as well as what kind of work to say yes to (and what to turn down).

When I was figuring out my rates, I found this guide from Upworthy to be really helpful. Instead of trading hours for dollars, I’ve structured my contracts so that I’m on retainer. With my clients, I’ve done both monthly and weekly retainers, depending on the client’s needs. The beauty of a retainer is it allows you to plan ahead. As a type-A planner, I really like being able to look ahead and have a clear picture of what my weekly or monthly workload looks like.

When you are on retainer, if you finish your deliverables within the agreed upon time, you effectively increase your hourly rate. As long as your client is happy with your work, your efficiency belongs entirely to you.

“Earn with your mind, not your time.”

Naval Ravikant

That quote perfectly captures an industry acquaintance I chatted with when getting started, who shared that he only works about 20 hours a month, to the tune of $2,000/ hour. 🤯 For anyone curious, I’m nowhere near that!

Worth the Leap

I’ll always be grateful for the lessons I learned climbing the corporate ladder, but I’m glad I took the plunge and started something of my own. Applying that hard-earned expertise to help others navigate complex infrastructure is exactly what I love doing now.

If you are a company who has unlaunched top-level domains from the 2012 round or are applying for open or closed top-level domains in ICANN’s current round, I’m here to help. It’s never too early to start thinking about your launch strategy. Drop me a line at hi@beeveryth.ing for a free consultation.

While CEOs obsess over building their AI roadmaps, their middle management is currently sleepwalking through an infrastructure deadline that will determine whether those AI systems can actually be trusted. This isn’t a story about IT oversight. It’s a story about institutional failure: a generational strategic opportunity dying quietly in corporate middle management. The Internet is handing companies an answer to AI trust right at the start of the AI boom, but not every company will seize the opportunity.

In 2012, a handful of companies spent $185,000 each to buy something most of their competitors didn’t know was for sale: a piece of the Internet’s foundation. Google bought .google. Barclays bought .barclays. Nike bought .nike. These aren’t vanity URLs. They’re exclusive slices of Internet real estate where only the owning company can create websites. It’s a closed architecture that makes look-alike fraud structurally impossible. A fraudster can register barclays-secure-login.com in five minutes for $12. They can never buy a domain ending in .barclays.

The door is open again. For the first time in over a decade, ICANN — the nonprofit that governs the internet’s address system — is accepting applications for new top-level domains (the extension that comes after the dot in a web address). The window closes August 12.

Most companies will miss it — not because they considered it and declined, but because the decision never reached anyone qualified to make it. Domain management typically sits with IT or legal, treated as a utility rather than a strategic asset. The pitch, when it happens at all, lands on a mid-level manager’s desk and gets filed under “too expensive” or “too complex.” If it surfaces to the C-suite, it’s framed as a technical cost rather than a strategic asset — and it dies there. Executives who could act on this rare opportunity are either unaware or not understanding what’s at stake.

That framing is wrong, and the stakes of getting it wrong are growing. As AI agents increasingly act on the behalf of humans — booking flights, moving money, accessing medical records — the risk of domain fraud scales with them. With analysts tracking a massive 13-fold boom in autonomous machine-to-machine payments, we are fast approaching a world where your primary digital consumers aren't humans browsing websites, but software executing code. A human looks for a blue checkmark or a familiar logo; an autonomous AI agent looks for hard-coded, cryptographic proof of identity. The core value of a company owning its dotBrand — the industry term for a company-owned top-level domain — is control. In the AI era, dotBrands aren't a corporate branding exercise. They are consumer protection infrastructure.

During my 18-year tenure at Google, I managed their corporate domains portfolio for six years. I interacted with dozens of other domain portfolio managers at Fortune 500 companies; all of us shared similar complaints about organizational silos. Back in 2012, the decision to apply for new top-level domains went all the way up to Larry Page, who told the team to “go big.” It often takes a “yes” from top leadership to move forward with a new idea, such as a dotBrand. As I’ve written about before, you can’t get what you don’t confidently ask for — but it requires leadership that is actually willing to listen.

When leadership fails to step in, the enterprise vulnerabilities scale rapidly. In 2023, Microsoft credential phishing campaigns stole login data from hundreds of thousands of users across dozens of countries — executed entirely through look-alike domains that mimicked legitimate Microsoft properties. DocuSign users have been targeted repeatedly by fraud rings that register convincing variations of docusign.com to intercept sensitive document signings. These attacks rely on one thing: the open architecture of the traditional web, where anyone can register a domain that looks almost exactly like yours. A closed namespace — where a company retains total, exclusive control over who can create web addresses — doesn’t just protect the brand. It protects every person who interacts with it.

We already have proof that this works. When I led the launch of .google at Google in 2016 — starting with blog.google and about.google — it wasn’t a marketing play. It was an architectural decision to consolidate the company’s core web presence into a verified, unfakeable ecosystem. Other global companies realized the same thing. Audi runs over 1,700 dealer sites on .audi, creating a unified global network while Amazon routes AI developers to partyrock.aws. These early adopters aren’t running experiments — they have established infrastructure core to each of their brands.

The counterargument, of course, is cost. An ICANN application runs $227,500, plus ongoing operational expenses. For a mid-sized enterprise, that’s a real hurdle. But for a global brand currently spending millions annually chasing cybersquatters, fighting domain fraud, and reactively buying up defensive URLs before every product launch, a dotBrand eventually pays for itself. It delivers something no legacy IT strategy can: an entire ecosystem that competitors can never touch and fraudsters can never fake.

Not every company needs to apply. But every executive team has a responsibility to make a deliberate, calculated decision before the August 12 deadline.

Right now, that decision is quietly dying in a siloed mid-level inbox, handled by someone who lacks the authority to view it as a generational tech shift. To fix it, leadership teams must wake up to the reality that secure infrastructure is no longer just an IT line item — it is the ultimate strategic asset for the AI era. Leaving it to chance isn’t just a failure of middle management; it’s a profound failure of C-suite imagination.

Christina Chiou Yeh is the founder of Be Every Thing LLC, specializing in domain strategy. She spent 18 years at Google leading strategy, marketing, and partnerships for more than 20 top-level domains, including .app and .google.

While some writers are actively scrubbing their writing of the em dash to avoid being accused of using AI, I stand firm in my love of the em dash. I write all my own content, but see AI as a helpful tool, great for reviewing my human-generated thoughts and offering suggestions that I may or may not use. I refuse to stop writing with the em dash just because our chatbot overlords are also using it.

“Asking a writer to give up the em dash is like asking a carpenter to give up the screwdriver.”

Lili Anolik

Why the em dash is the ultimate punctuation mark

Sometimes called the “Swiss Army knife” of punctuation, the em dash is the only mark that can sub in for a comma, a colon, or a parentheses. Depending on how it is used, it can connect a thought or give information a structural pop. It shifts the energy of a sentence by adding a pause.

The em dash is also rooted in typography, which the graphic designer in me appreciates. In traditional metal typesetting, the em dash was designed to be the exact width of the capital letter M in whatever typeface and point size was being used. Its shorter sibling, the en dash (–) is the width of a capital N.

The em dash, the en dash, and their shortest cousin, the hyphen, all serve distinct purposes. Here’s a quick primer on when to use each.

When to use the em dash (—)

The em dash is the longest dash. It can be used for adding emphasis, as an abrupt interruption or change of thought, to amplify information, or for a big reveal.

Here are some sentences I’ve written, using the em dash:

• The struggle was replaced by the high of flying down the mountain — a singular, almost weightless feeling. (Why you should do hard things)

• During my 18+ years at Google, I mostly had good managers — women and men — but ironically, it was a female executive who was the only person to ever make me cry at work. (Be a girl’s girl)

• As a parent, my job is to ensure the next generation develops its muscle of asking for what they want early — and to hope that by the time they enter the workforce, the system will have evolved to reward that drive. (Don’t ask, don’t get)

Some people use The Chicago Manual of Style which puts the dash close against the text—like this—but I prefer to use the AP Stylebook spacing — like this — on both sides.

When to use the en dash (–)

The shorter en dash is used to show ranges of time, numbers, or a direct connection between two things. Here is an example of where I used an en dash:

• From April 30 – August 12, 2026, a window opens where anyone with the desire and means can apply for their own piece of Internet real estate: a top-level domain (TLD). (ICANN, you can, we can all apply for new gTLDs)

When to use the hyphen (-)

Hyphens are used to join words together so they function as a single unit. Here’s one example:

• I don’t remember the last time I picked up my twelve-year-old, who is almost as tall as me. (Hiraeth)

Why did AI become so obsessed with the em dash?

I was curious why AI uses so many em dashes and learned that LLMs don’t naturally “feel” pacing. Since humans use em dashes to signal natural speech or tone, the AI overcompensates by tossing them in to mimic a conversational rhythm. Plus, all the LLMs were trained on human prose. Em dash usage was particularly popular in 19th century literature — Emily Dickinson used them so much they were called “Dickinson Dashes.” Particularly with Gothic and Romantic novels, the em dash was used to capture raw emotion, breathlessness, and the chaos of human thought.

“In every cloud, in every tree — filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by day — I am surrounded with her image!”

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

Professor Casey Fiesler, an information scientist, tech ethicist, and associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder has a short video where she breaks it down. One of her theories is that AI uses the em dash because it’s like a punctuation wildcard and maybe language models intentionally use em dashes for ambiguity resolution. The idea that an AI might be lazy with grammar is somewhat amusing. Fun fact: I worked with Prof. Casey when I led the .prof top-level domain launch program at Google (see casey.prof).

Final thoughts

If you’ve stayed with me until the end of this post, I hope you learned something new about the dashes you see.

If you’re a reader, don’t assume a robot wrote something just because it contains an em dash. And if you’re a writer, stand firm and don’t stop using this versatile punctuation mark. This quote beautifully sums up how I feel:

“To let AI reshape writing etiquette is to hand over authority that belongs to human authors and editors.”

John Geracitano

Don’t hand over the authority. Keep writing — and keep dashing.

1. In June, all of my children were “promoted” to the next grade. A group of Stanford d.school students I coached graduated from college.

2. Monday, I tested for purple fringe in Choy Li Fut Kung Fu.

3. Yesterday, I turned 45.

As all these milestones converge, spending some time reflecting and writing is the best way I know to hit pause, feel the weight of these moments, and see the shape of the horizon ahead.

Advancing in school

June is graduation season. My youngest daughter graduated from kindergarten, my son was “promoted” from 3rd to 4th grade, and my oldest was “promoted” from 6th to 7th grade.

At our school, they have a rank up ceremony, which I never attended in the past. In true tweenager fashion, my oldest told me not to bother coming because it’s, “just a bunch of kids moving seats.” I went anyway and was glad I did, especially because my son was recognized for 3rd grade as their VIP for the virtue of magnanimity. His teacher said he has, “a big heart and is generous, kind, and forgiving.” She also said, “he has a gentle soul, stays calm in most situations, and helps others do the same.” I am so proud. 🥹

My three children are all at such different stages of their academic journey. With my oldest graduating from 6th grade, it dawned on me that she’s at the midpoint of her K-12 education. Six years down, six to go. This also means we only have six years before she leaves the nest (hopefully for a college that she’ll thrive at).

It isn’t just my own kids who are transitioning between chapters. A few weeks ago, I wrapped up coaching a team of senior Product Design students (shoutout to Bennie, Cannon, and Michael) in their final weeks before they graduated from Stanford University. As much as college and their experiences at Stanford shaped them, I know that over the next two decades, the choices they make about where to work, who to love, and whether or not to have children will be even more defining. Those three are at the precipice of true adulthood, when the future is wide open and a forward shift is inevitable.

The end of every school year always seems to come around quicker than a parent expects — this year was no exception. I know that these golden years where all my children are living at home will fly by all too quickly.

Advancing in rank

On Monday, I passed my Kung Fu test and advanced to purple fringe, the last intermediate rank on my journey to black belt (hoping to achieve this by the time I turn 50). From purple, it’s blue, red, brown, and then black, so I need to level up each year.

My test took about an hour and covered the following:

1. Knowledge. Recite knowledge about the history of Choy Li Fut, its lineage, and the first four principles.

2. Forms. To date, I’ve learned eleven forms. On Monday, I demonstrated four hand forms: Tsop Pattern, Gau Sing Da (Nine Star Blocking), Sah Bau Jong (Wall Bag Dummy), Siu Sup Ji (Small Cross Pattern) and three weapon forms: Gum Gan (Golden Cudgel), Siu Mui Fa Gwun (Small Plum Blossom Staff), and Gum Lung Sin (Golden Dragon Fan).

3. Kick sequences. At every level, a student learns increasingly more difficult kick sequences and at every test, you demonstrate all of them.

4. Self defenses. This was the part of the test I was most nervous about because I don’t practice the self defenses as often as the forms. Similar to the kick sequences, you learn new self defenses at every level. I made my husband put me in choke holds and head locks over the weekend so I could run through some of the self defenses I was less familiar with. By this point, I’ve learned how to get out of wrist grabs, front head locks, side head locks, bear hugs, and more.

5. Falls and rolls. Part of our training is knowing how to properly fall and how to roll. For my test, I did front falls, side falls, back falls, side rolls, back rolls, and shoulder rolls.

6. Physical test. 25 palm push ups, 15 pike ups, 15 leopard fist push ups (on your first 2 knuckles, but at my level it’s ok to do these on my knees), 40 sit ups, and a minute and a half sei ping ma squat (thighs parallel to floor while balancing my bo staff).

   

   I’m happy to report I passed my test and advanced to purple fringe. Thank you to LoSi Evelina, Si Fu Andrew, and all the instructors (Sihing Mark, Sijeh Kaylin, Sijeh Emma, Sihing Ray) at Concord Kung Fu Academy — you all inspire me so much. My school’s motto is “Train Harder, Live Better!” ® and I really do believe this to be true. Kung Fu has pushed me to become stronger physically and mentally. As a bonus, it also introduced me to another community and new friends (shoutout Carina, Jigar, Jeff).

   Let’s advance together. Be Every Thing is a weekly newsletter for people trying to embrace all the different chapters, roles, and ranks of life. If my writing resonates, I’d love for you to subscribe.

   Advancing in age

   As I think about my 45 trips around the sun, the number one feeling I have is gratitude. Life has been good to me and I thank God for blessing me in all the things that matter: family, friendships, health, and love. 🙏

   

Besides noticing more grey hairs recently, I don’t feel like a middle-aged woman, though that’s exactly what I am. We never know how long we have, but 45 is halfway to 90. This means if all goes well, I’m roughly halfway through my time here on Earth, give or take a few years. Crazy to think about.

The most special gift I received was a piece of jade that my Nai Nai (my dad’s mom, the chain-smoking grandma) had gifted my dad. It means ruyi (如意, pronounced roo-yee), an ancient Chinese concept and symbol literally meaning “as you wish” or “everything goes as desired.”

Last night was the first time I held this jade pendant and the first time I had heard this concept. Holding my Nai Nai’s jade, I realized that the things we mark over the years — grade promotions, Kung Fu ranks, and milestone birthdays — are all different ways of celebrating growth.

Sitting there with the people who made me, I thought about all the love I felt throughout the day as friends and family sent me their good wishes. I felt grateful for my husband, who cooked the perfect steak dinner and decorated our kitchen window before I woke up, making me feel so special. I marveled at each of my children, whose artwork are gifts I’ll treasure. Looking at my mom, I told her that I already have everything I desire. Truly, everything right now is ruyi — exactly as I wish.

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At the time though, I enjoyed running half marathons and had a beautiful route from my North Beach apartment down to the water and along Crissy Field. For 10-mile training runs, I would loop over the Golden Gate Bridge before returning home.

Besides taking a few Groupon lessons with a dreadlocked coach named Gregory, I had very little exposure to tennis before I met my husband. Even after my husband and I started dating in 2009, it would take another thirteen years before I really started playing. Those years flew by in a blur of career building and motherhood.

In 2022, when my oldest daughter was eight years old, I realized that my vision of playing tennis together as a family would not come true unless I gained skills I lacked. I signed up for tennis lessons and spent the next two years progressing from total newb to more advanced beginner classes before taking the plunge and joining a USTA women’s team in 2024.

Since learning how to play, I’ve discovered that tennis truly is the best. What other sport gives you a full-body workout, stimulates your mind, is shown in studies to enhance longevity, is fun to do with friends, and has the cutest outfits to boot?

“Open up your plans and, damn, you’re free”

Jason Mraz, I’m Yours

Last Tuesday, I unexpectedly gained a block of time back when one of my clients needed to reschedule. One of the best things about working for yourself is flexibility. I texted a friend (shoutout Valerie) and we played a 10-point tie break. She’s a self-rated 3.5 (I’m a C 2.5) so I felt pretty good about losing 9-11.

On the courts, I’ve lost more matches than I’ve won. There is nothing sweeter than a victory, but losing also feels ok because I know I’m gaining experience. How to read a ball, where to position yourself in singles vs. doubles, how to play not only your own game but also your opponent’s: all these skills come with more time on court. It helps that the tennis team I joined, Deuces Wild, is low pressure and everyone has fun regardless of how we do. Shoutout to Cara Mia, who is truly the best captain.

Tennis is the endless pursuit of perfection. My serve, my backhand, my net skills — there’s always something to work on. If none of my teammates or hitting partners are available, the wall has never failed me.

As I reflect on my tennis journey and strive to become better, I realized that true victory isn’t just found in the final score. It’s found in the community built both on and off the courts, the joy of chasing a ball under an open sky, and in the feeling of falling in love with a lifelong game. It’s found in seeing all my children progress in their tennis and knowing that my twelve-year-old will soon be able to beat me in a set.

In hindsight, I may have started later than I wished, but I know that there are many, many years of growth ahead. In life, most games start at Love-All, or zero. And maybe that’s the most profound thing I’ve learned from both tennis and leaving the corporate world: win or lose, be ready to accept whatever the next ball brings.

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Take last weekend for example. It was a back-to-back marathon from the jump. By Sunday night, I was ready to have the house to myself again. Here’s how it went down.

Friday, 10 am: the weekend marathon begins

Friday was our last day of school, with a 10 am pick up. Why have school for only two hours?! Give me a full day or no school at all. Another parent (shoutout Casey) organized paddle boating to celebrate the last day of school. It was my kids’ first time and everyone had fun. Post paddle boating and a Target run, the kids had tennis and kung fu classes.

Friday, 7 pm: tennis team party

After nine hours of kid activities and hustling everyone home, I went to my tennis team’s end-of-season party (shoutout Deuces Wild) at another player’s amazing home. The champagne was flowing and it felt good to spend time with each other off the courts. Plus, we did a clothing exchange and I came home with a fabulous dress and a brand-new (tags still on!) lavender sweater that my oldest and I can share. My twelve-year-old already has longer legs than me and will surely surpass me in height and size soon, so I’ll enjoy our ability to share clothes while it lasts.

Friday, 9:40 pm: cover band and dancing

The team party was still in full swing, but I ducked out to meet a mom friend (shoutout Carlin) at a Maroon 5 cover-band show to celebrate her birthday. They were really good and we were dancing until they played their encore. I drove a few of the ladies home and made it to bed by midnight.

Saturday, 10:45 am: left behind at the courts

There’s no sleeping in on Saturday because all three kids have back-to-back tennis lessons from 9 am - 10:30 am. While they’re in lessons, I practice with my husband, who is a much more skilled player than me. Due to the inability of my eldest to get ready in a timely manner, we often drive separately. This allows my husband to hustle the younger kids to the court so that we can start on time. Normally, driving separately is fine, but this week, we accidentally left our third child at the courts, each assuming the other parent had collected her.

The realization hit my husband after we already got home. I was in the shower when I heard him ask, “Is she with you?” followed by the rapid sounds of his footsteps when I confirmed she was not.

Before you call child services: she was safe with another parent and her friend, blissfully unaware, and climbing a tree. 😅

My husband had ambitiously invited his high school friends over to our house starting at 11 am, but he had to go pick up our kid and the food, so I barely had time to get out of the shower and put clothes on before guests started arriving. Despite the hectic start to our day, it was a fun afternoon of hanging out in our backyard. I think our guests left around 5:30 pm.

Saturday, 6:30 pm: baby bird

We arrived tardy to the next party for another friend’s birthday (shoutout Karri) at a local brewery. My son found a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest. Soon a crowd of kids gathered around, parents cautioned them not to touch it, and eventually someone scooped it up to take to our local wildlife rescue museum.

What struck me about the baby bird was the different reactions of the kids that bore witness. While most of them had the instinct to protect this tiny creature (as seen by the twigs they built around it), my kids shared that there was one child who called out, “Stab it!” Yikes!! Hopefully that kid’s parents can prevent him from becoming a psychopath.

Since it was Saturday night, we let the kids stay up until 11 pm for family movie night (Hoppers was surprisingly good).

Sunday, 1 pm: Lake Anza

On Sunday, we had a 6th to 7th grade class get-together at Lake Anza where the kids had fun swimming and playing Twister and adults competed in cornhole and chatted. Getting to Lake Anza took a good 40 minutes each way, so this took up most of our day. Sunshine, water splashing, the sounds of laughter, and perfect weather really made this excursion worth the long drive.

Sunday, 9:30pm: at the weekend marathon finish line

The house was a mess (thanks to the end of school explosion of half-used supplies). When we got all the kids to bed, my husband and I watched the second episode of the Rafael Nadal Netflix docuseries (highly recommend this for any tennis fan). The temptation to keep watching was definitely there, but we were responsible adults and went to bed.

Monday, 9 am: home alone

Come Monday, I breathed a sigh of relief once I dropped the kids at art camp and drank my latte in silence. The explosion of school supplies and report cards was still all over the dining table, but for the first time since Friday, the house was still.

Does anyone else quietly celebrate the start of the work week or is it just me? I know that future me will miss the chaos of these years, but present me needs a break after a marathon weekend.

If you find yourself doing a happy dance when you’re alone in your house again, let me know in the comments. 👇

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“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Maycember is behind us and summer is officially here! This is the latest I’ve posted on a Wednesday because today my six-year-old graduated from kindergarten. 🥹

We had a wonderful graduation ceremony where all the kids looked adorable in their red cap and gowns. When their kindergarten teacher started crying, a lot of parents teared up too (myself included). The weather was perfect for our class pool party and in the late afternoon, my younger two and I did some art outdoors.

We were inspired by the Invisible Things book that I gifted my daughter for graduation (I wrote a bit about one of the authors, Andy J.Pizza, in this post). Earlier in the week, my kindergartener had expressed that she was feeling a mixture of happy and sad about her upcoming graduation, but today she chose to capture love. She painted a warm fuzzy center that radiates outward and added a little smiling face in the center. I tried to paint the feeling of hiraeth with Crayola watercolor and my son copied the book’s illustration of dark matter as a little space man. The idea of trying to make the invisible visible was such a fun concept and I’d encourage anyone with kiddos in their life to give this a try. After all the craziness that comes with the last month of school, spending 45 minutes making art felt like the perfect pause.

Keeping this post short and sweet because this mama is tired! What are some of the intangible, invisible things you or your kids would try to make into art?

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*I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase of the book I linked above, at no extra cost to you.

Over the weekend, I traveled to Houston, TX and learned something unexpected: moon rocks, though appearing plain gray or brown to the naked eye, are actually breathtaking rainbows when they are cut into human-hair-thin slices and viewed through a petrographic (polarized light) microscope.

I learned this while watching The Moonwalkers: A Journey with Tom Hanks, a 50 minute immersive cinematic experience about the Apollo lunar missions. It’s a 270-degree visual feast on a five-stories tall screen that is the perfect blend of NASA footage, JFK’s speech, interviews with astronauts, and Hanks’ personal recollections of the wonder and awe he felt as a child watching the Apollo missions on television.

Earlier in the day, my family had taken a short tram ride to see the Saturn V rocket. The sheer scale of engineering on display is impressive: picture a rocket 363 feet long and 33 feet in diameter. One of the facts I read is that to move the Saturn V from the assembly building to the launch pad required a platform the size of a baseball diamond, inching forward at just one mile an hour.

Watching the movie after the experience of seeing the Saturn V rocket, I really felt this overwhelming sense of what humans can accomplish when we work together. It’s one thing to learn about the Apollo missions in a textbook and another to be standing in front of a massive artifact. The movie has a montage of some of the 400,000 people who worked on the Apollo mission and gave me more context and depth of meaning to what a “moonshot” means. I walked out of that theatre in Houston feeling more inspired than I ever felt from hearing the word used as corporate jargon.

If you have the opportunity to watch The Moonwalkers (it’s playing in other global locations), I highly recommend it. It’s epic, it’s awe-inspiring, and the whole family agreed that it was one of the highlights of our visit.

If you also think moon rocks are cool, I came across this virtual microscope, which is an interactive digital archive that allows you to zoom into actual Apollo-era samples (make sure to check the XPL box to view in color).

The Moon of Saba

While traveling to and around Houston, I was reading The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi. Set in a magical version of the 12th-century Indian Ocean, it is a historical fantasy novel about a retired, middle-aged mother and legendary pirate who gets pulled into a “one last job” scenario that involves supernatural threats as she tries to rescue a kidnapped girl.

It was easily the best fiction I’ve read in a while and I could not put it down, finishing the story as we were driving home from the airport. To my delight, as I was browsing around for something to cure my book hangover, I saw that the second book was released on May 12. I’ve never clicked purchase so fast.

I won’t give the story away, but it involves a magical object called the Moon of Saba. While the magic in the book is fictional, the setting is rooted in a reality that seems otherworldly. Some of the novel takes place on an island called Socotra, which I had never heard of, but is a real place in Yemen.

“Blurrin’ the lines between real and the fake.”

Lana Del Rey, National Anthem

Socotra is often called the Galápagos of the Indian Ocean because of its unique ecological diversity and high endemism. Some stats of things only found on Socotra:

• 37% of its vascular plant species

• 95% of its land snails

• 90% of its reptiles

  

One of the plants found only on Socotra is Yemen’s national tree, the dragon’s blood tree. It looks like something from a Dr. Seuss book and “bleeds” a red color sap. In ancient Greece, Rome, and the Middle East, the sap was highly prized for use in medicine, cosmetics, and varnishes (including famous Stradivarius violin polishes). Today, it’s still used for skincare (the sap helps boost collagen production and has anti-inflammatory properties), pharmaceuticals and natural medicine (it is used in wound care and has astringent qualities), Traditional Chinese Medicine (to improve circulation and for treating cardiovascular diseases), and for crafts and woodworking (as a coloring agent). Both then and now, the resin is burned as incense for meditation and ritualistic magic.

If ever there was a tree to inspire legends, it would be the dragon’s blood tree. Based on what I could find online, there are four major legends across cultures:

1. Greco-Roman: According to this myth, which is part of the Twelve Labors of Hercules, Hercules was tasked with stealing golden apples from the Garden of the Hesperides. Guarding the apples was Ladon, a hundred-headed dragon that never slept. Hercules slew Ladon with a poisoned arrow and as the dragon spilled its red blood across the land, the first dragon’s blood trees sprouted. According to the myth, the tree’s twisted branches resemble the hundred necks of Ladon and cutting the tree lets you see its eternal blood, still flowing.

2. Arabic: Another tale is about two brothers, often identified as a dragon and an elephant, who battled to the death. The dragon bit the elephant to drink its blood, but the dying elephant fell on the dragon, crushing it. Their intermingled blood soaked the rocky earth and from this, the dragon’s blood trees grew. In historical texts, the resin harvested from the tree was referred to as cinnabar and later as dam al-akhawayn (translated to “the blood of the two brothers”) by Arab traders.

3. Indigenous Socotri: In local lore, the high plateaus where dragon’s blood trees grow are seen to be the domain of Jinns, or supernatural spirits. The trees were seen as living under the protection of these spirits and harvesting it required immense respect or else you would anger the island spirits.

4. Biblical & Islamic: Another local story believes Socotra to be the setting for the Garden of Eden and where Adam and Eve were exiled. According to this version, the very first Dragon’s Blood Tree sprouted from the exact patch where Abel’s blood was spilled by his brother Cain. Cain and Abel (Qabil and Habil in the Quran) are deeply foundational to both Christian and Islamic traditions.

Ultimately, moon rocks and dragon’s blood trees have one thing in common: they teach us the boundary between the ordinary and magical is often a matter of how close we are willing to look. Humans spin myths to explain things that astound us and we’ve built rockets that have reached what was once only possible in our imagination. Here’s to a summer of chasing our own moonshots, reading incredible books, and remembering that reality is often wilder than fiction.

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Over the years, I’ve shared my career journey with Stanford d.school students through a Design Formation class (formerly called Design Windows), where product design undergraduates can reach out to alumni to learn about our design journey. In case it is interesting to anyone out there, I am sharing my full career story here.

I’ve worked since high school. My first job was as a retail associate at Limited Too. I think it’s character building to experience an entry-level, minimum wage job. You quickly learn how hard it can be to make real money. In 1995, minimum wage in North Carolina was $4.25 (today it is still only $7.25). Before heading off to college, I also had stints as a hostess at Sagebrush Steakhouse and Saloon and as a Princeton Review tutor and proctor. Proctoring exams was the best gig: after passing out tests, you could crack open a book or do your own homework until time was up. Plus, it paid $30 an hour, a small fortune to a high school student.

In college, I continued the tutoring and proctoring work from time to time, but my main job was working the circulation desk at Stanford’s Green Library Media and Microfiche department. This was also a cushy job because microfiche isn’t really in high demand. Until students discovered they could check out DVDs for fun, I could mainly get paid to do my homework.

Other random ways I made money in college: psychology department test subject ($25 an hour) and stock photography model. In retrospect, it’s a good thing none of the random Craig’s List ads I answered turned out to be sketchy. A few years ago my best friend (shoutout Ann) texted me when she was doing an online government training and saw this stock photo of me on the phone.

Post Stanford, finding the perfect fit with a Product Design Engineering degree was a challenge. Product Design is a major unique to Stanford. At the time, most companies wanted to hire either an industrial designer or a mechanical engineer and my degree didn’t put me neatly in either box.

My first job was a Marketing Manager at IBM, where I had also interned over the summer one year. I appreciated the steady paycheck, but leading audience generation for developerWorks was not my passion. I tried to get back to my physical product design roots with a role launching the Oliso smart iron (shoutout Khaiersta) and as a product design assistant at RedEnvelope. Both of those companies had major leadership issues. I wrote about my terrible manager at RedEnvelope in this post.

Luckily for me, in 2007 I landed a dream job as a graphic designer at Google. Over the course of eighteen years, my role went through many evolutions, which I’ll do my best to summarize. If you want to know five lessons I learned along the way, I shared those here.

2007-2009: Graphic Designer

In 2007, I was hired as the first graphic designer to support Online Sales and Operations. I did everything from working with senior executives on their PowerPoint presentations to photographing our sales teams and laying out print collateral for them to take to client meetings. Never have I had as much fun pushing pixels as I did for Team FYI. Ah, the wide-eyed enthusiasm of youth.

2009-2011: Creative Lab

Around 2009, my team moved under the Creative Lab, which was based in New York. They knew how to party. Actually, all of Google did, back in the day before budget cuts.

Midway through 2009, my manager at the time (shoutout CB) recognized the team’s need for another project manager when someone left for business school. She saw that I was organized and asked if I wanted to split my time between project management and graphic design. This ended up being a great move that gave me new skills and paved the way for the next phase in my career, as a Product Marketing Manager.

Moving career ladders came with a substantial pay bump and some nice perks: I got to travel around the world. Side note: my (somewhat random) master’s degree in Spanish Literature (also at Stanford) helped me land assignments training our teams in Buenos Aires and São Paulo on the Google brand.

2012-2014: Domains Management and TLDs

Towards the end of 2012, my manager (shoutout Nick) asked me if I knew what DNS was. I thought it stood for “Do Not Schedule” because Googlers would often put blocks on their calendar to ensure no one scheduled meetings over their lunch, gym time, or massage (oh, the perks). But what I was really being asked to do was take over managing Google’s corporate domains portfolio and in this case, DNS means Domain Name System. If you have no idea what this is, I’ve got you covered.

What was pitched to me as a 20% project ended up becoming my full-time job for six years. Although it was trial by fire at the time (we’ll save that story for another day; let’s just say my predecessor left the company and I had to figure out a lot of things on my own), I learned so much about information architecture and managing a complex corporate domains portfolio. My role was new to both myself and my manager at the time (shoutout Chris) and I grew a lot by learning how to establish foundational processes, got really adept at telling people no, and also gained a bird’s eye view into everything the company was launching before it became public knowledge.

2012 is also when Google applied for its own top-level domains during ICANN’s first round. It was my pleasure to help launch .みんな, which is pronounced “minna” and means “everyone” in Japanese. Though niche, it holds a special place on the Internet because it is the world’s first open Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) in Japanese.

2014-2018: Domains Management and Brand Studio

In 2014, I went on my first maternity leave. Upon returning, my role moved to Brand Studio. With the change, I no longer worked on launching top-level domains, which was the most interesting part of my job. My new role primarily focused on managing Alphabet’s corporate domains portfolio, as well as a few special projects. The positives of being part of Brand Studio included reuniting with a favorite co-worker from my Creative Lab days (shoutout Jane) and working closely with Naming (shoutout Aubrie and Amanda). Naming and Domains are like peanut butter and jelly — they just make sense together.

Unfortunately, my new manager viewed domain management as a utility and lacked transparency when it came to performance reviews. Despite receiving strong ratings and a ton of peer bonuses, I felt stuck, with no clear path to promotion. Although I was starting to get bored managing the corporate domains portfolio, the job was easy.

And the portfolio management role also led me to one of the things I’m most proud of accomplishing during my time at Google: identifying the best first use case and launching .google. This is what I’m most known for in the domains industry because .google is a leader in the dotBrand space.

Eventually I got a new manager, who became one of my favorites during my time at Google. Anyone who has worked with Amanda knows she’s a legend. She’s most famous for naming Google’s parent company, Alphabet. Before my second maternity leave in 2017, we had a clear plan that I was excited to return to.

Change is constant. When I came back from leave, Amanda had departed and I once again had a new manager. This one didn’t advocate for my plans and it quickly became clear to me that I needed to make my own change.

2018-2025: Google Registry

The thing about having children that no one tells you: when you go back to work, you care more deeply about what you’re doing because all your hours away from your babies need to mean something.

Your network really is everything. I started having conversations with other managers about potential roles on their teams. In a meeting with someone I had briefly overlapped with during my first stint on Google Registry, I mentioned I was looking around. Matthew, who ended up being the best manager I had in my career, created a role that was perfect for me: leading product strategy, marketing, and partnerships for Google Registry. In this role, my team and I launched so many new homes on the Internet: .app, .page, .dev, .new, .day, .boo, .rsvp, .foo, .nexus, .mov, .zip, .dad, .phd, .esq, .prof, .ing, .channel.

Along the way, I became a manager, went on my third maternity leave, survived a global pandemic, and loved my team and our work.

So when do you know it’s time to leave a good thing?

Today

Mid-way through 2025, I stared at an email in my inbox. The subject: Voluntary Exit Package.

Google was calling all their employees back to the office three days a week. Either start commuting again or your role would be eliminated. If you chose to leave, they were offering a severance package.

When I weighed the decision, it came down to not wanting to comply with mandatory RTO and the desire to try something new. Both the company I grew up in and I had changed so much. I felt like it was time. With my family’s full support, I took the package and said my goodbye.

Now I’m a little over six-months out. I started my own business and life is good. I still get to work with my old team, who is now a client. I’m able to be more present in my kids’ lives and enjoy the fleeting moments of their childhoods.

Thanks for following along my journey! If this post was interesting to you, please let me know. ♥️

I’m writing this after attending my kindergartner’s “Muffins with Moms” celebration. All the kids filled out a sheet about their moms. I learned that my daughter loves me more than our bunny and that the best thing I cook are cookies. Unlike the kiddo who thinks his mom is 64, my daughter knows my age and also correctly guessed that when she’s at school, I do “things on the computer.” All the moms got to take home a potted spider plant, some which looked like they might survive better than others.

As parents, so often we don’t realize the last time we do something. I don’t remember the last time I picked up my twelve-year-old, who is almost as tall as me. And when did feet that I could hold in one hand grow big enough to borrow my shoes? I don’t remember when any of my children stopped laughing their baby laughs, which sounded different from their laughs now. With my youngest, I’m holding onto all the little moments and vestiges of childhood that I know are all too fleeting.

How much longer will it be before my six-year-old realizes it’s “guacamole” and not “brocamoli”? How many more bedtime snuggles before she’s too big to want me to lay next to her as she falls asleep?

Watching a child grow has been described as a series of “little goodbyes.” I recently learned a Welsh word, hiraeth (pronounced here-eyeth, with a rolled ‘r’). It’s one of those special untranslatable words and it signifies a profound sense of nostalgic longing or yearning for a home, person, or era that is lost, unreachable, or perhaps never existed. Many parents — but I think mothers especially — feel this for “previous versions” of their children.

“Making the decision to have a child — it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ”

Elizabeth Stone

I’ve written about having the awareness of how precious a moment is, even while being in it. Being fully present is a good thing. So is loving the person your child is becoming. But I think it’s also natural to sometimes miss the baby or toddler who now only exists in your memory and in old videos and photographs.

There is an adage that parenting doesn’t become easier, just harder in different ways. Concerns evolve from sleeping through the night to losing sleep over homework, from baby-proofing as they learn to walk to monitoring online usage as they get a cell phone.

In childhood, firsts and lasts come in equal measure. Every new milestone reached is a quiet departure of the person they were just the year before. The first day of school inevitably leads to the last day of kindergarten — which is right around the corner for us. The concept of hiraeth perfectly captures the emotional ache that comes from longing for an unreachable past, the yearning for something that is long gone. After all, doesn’t the past sometimes seem rosier when confronted with the complexities of the present?

Even though last Friday I was acutely aware that I had just attended my last classroom Mother’s Day celebration, I know that there will be many other celebrations to come. Here’s to all the parents out there — may you cherish the past and fully enjoy all the little moments of the present.

Last week, with The Devil Wears Prada 2 release, an interview of Meryl Streep sharing how she asked them to double her salary for the original movie made its rounds on the Internet. She said she read the script, knew it was going to be a hit, and wanted to see what would happen if she doubled her ask.

Two things struck me:

1. They immediately said, “Sure.”

2. Meryl said, “It took me this long to understand that I could do that!”

In 2006, Meryl Streep was already the most-nominated actor in Oscar history (with 2 wins and 13 nominations), a record she still holds today (3 wins, 21 nominations). She was 56 years old when they asked her to be in The Devil Wears Prada.

I don’t know how much she negotiated her other movie contracts, but from the video, it appears that asking to double her salary was a first-time occurrence and she was shocked when they said yes. This goes to show that even superstars like Meryl Streep aren’t always getting what they could be and underscores that you can and should always ask. Let’s not leave money on the table! You might not get what you ask for, but you won’t know unless you try.

Asking and not receiving

When Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In book came out in 2013, Google organized groups of women into “Lean In Circles.” The idea was that we’d meet regularly as a group to share career challenges (and wins) and get feedback from each other and our executive sponsor. Thirteen years later, all of us have left Google (shoutout Corrie, Priscilla, Aimee, Shawna, Julia, and Jessica), but we’re still in touch. We have a regular call every six weeks, usually over video, but occasionally in person. Whomever can join dials in. Although there have been many critiques of Lean In over the years, I’m grateful that it introduced me to a great group of women.

One of the major issues with Sandberg’s book is that she argues women simply need to “ask” for what they want and not to be held back by internal barriers (like lack of confidence or fear of being “bossy”). This premise has been proven to be untrue: a 2016 Women in the Workplace study by McKinsey & Co. and LeanIn.org itself found that women were negotiating as often as men, but they were still being promoted at lower rates. Further research in 2018 showed that women actually do ask for raises and promotions at similar rates to men, but are less likely to receive them. And a major study from UC Berkeley and Vanderbilt in 2023 found that women ask for raises and promotions at similar or higher rates than men.

The narrative that “women don’t ask” can no longer be used to explain the gender pay gap. While this may have been true in the early 2000s (most notably based on research by Linda Babcock) the dozens of studies over the last decade has shown this is no longer the case. Everything points to systemic bias and the issue being how the system responds when women do ask.

The 2025 Women in the Workplace report uncovered a new shift in career advancement trends. For the first time in the study’s eleven year history, they found a measurable “ambition gap” where women are less likely than men to say they want to be promoted (80% of women vs. 86% of men). The study points out that when women receive equal career support, the gap in ambition between men and women disappears entirely.

While having strong support in the form of sponsorship and manager advocacy would undoubtedly help women, I don’t think this is the only reason why there’s a notable ambition gap. The study also found that senior-level women experience more burnout than other employees, women are often penalized for working remotely while men are not, and corporate commitment to prioritizing diversity is trending down.

It’s easy to look at all the statistics alongside my LinkedIn feed, where every week I’m seeing senior leaders hang up their tenured badges, and feel a sense of fatigue. What gives me hope is that there’s a smaller, more personal battle to be won. As a parent, my job is to ensure the next generation develops its muscle of asking for what they want early — and to hope that by the time they enter the workforce, the system will have evolved to reward that drive.

Start them young

Last week, my six-year-old told me that she helped the after-care teacher pass out Gogurt to the “big” kids (the little kids had already eaten theirs) and that she had asked the teacher if she could have another one if there were extra. The teacher said “maybe” and then gave her another when there were leftovers. My daughter was beaming when she told me she got the second snack. I told her I was really proud of her for asking.

Truly, it brought me so much joy to know that my daughter already knows, from such a young age, to ask for what she wants. Over the weekend, in preparation for watching The Devil Wears Prada 2, my kids and I watched the first movie. Afterwards, I also showed all of them the clip of Meryl sharing how she asked to double her salary.

“Good for her!” my twelve-year-old exclaimed. I couldn’t agree more. Let us always ask for what we want and cheer on those who get it. My hope for my children is that they have Meryl’s confidence now, rather than having to wait until they’re 56. It seems that my six-year-old has already realized she can double the ask.

What’s something you’ve asked for recently? Let me know in the comments! 👇

Some of the most interesting domains on the Internet today were made possible because of the 2012 round. Shop.app (owned by Shopify) is a masterclass in seamless mobile integration. If you’re a Google Docs user and you haven’t experienced the magic of typing in “docs.new” I urge you to try it now. Another favorite of mine is lovable.dev. The company’s deliberate choice of using the .dev TLD is a signal to their core audience — developers and builders — that the platform is a high-performance, technical tool. These examples aren’t just domain names: they are short, memorable customer touchpoints.

Read on for a brief history lesson and a primer on what’s happening. I’m sharing:

• What the last round looked like at Google (which was a totally different company in 2012)

• Reflections on how much the Internet has changed over fourteen years

• What kinds of TLDs you can apply for

• A cost & refund breakdown

• My predictions for what’s sure to be a wild time for the Internet

What the 2012 round looked like at Google

In 2012, ICANN (the governing body of the Internet), ran its first program to expand generic TLDs. There were 1,930 applications and Google was one of the top applicants. As the story goes, when two employees (shoutout Jordyn and Steve) went to Larry Page and alerted him about the upcoming expansion, he told them to “go big.” Google ended up applying for 101 gTLDs.

I don’t think ICANN was fully prepared for the volume and complexity of applications it received and timelines between application and delegation were significantly underestimated. The first TLD Google was allocated was .みんな, which is pronounced “minna” and translates to “everyone” in Japanese. I worked with the Japan Marketing team (shoutout Kaori and Mai) to launch .みんな in 2014. It holds a special place on the Internet because it is the world’s first open Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) in Japanese. While most TLDs use Latin characters (e.g. the A-Z or “ASCII” set), .みんな uses the Hiragana script and allows for the entire domain name (both sides of the dot) to be in Japanese. Although .みんな remains niche, it was an important pioneer on the Internet because of its ability to allow a cohesive, single-language URL string for the end user.

14 years of change

So many things have happened on the Internet over the past 14 years. It’s pretty mind blowing to see how far we’ve come. In 2012, “cutting edge” was applying a grainy filter on a square photo of your lunch. Today, with some clear prompting, AI can create complex visuals, like this one showing how the Internet has evolved:

At Google during this period, I led the company to launch .google, managed the corporate domains portfolio for six years, and ultimately (re)joined Google Registry in 2018 to lead the business team. Until I left at the end of 2025, I was responsible for the marketing, product strategy, and partnerships for all our TLDs and led launches for .app, .page, .dev, .new, .day, .rsvp, .boo, .dad, .phd, .esq, .prof, .foo, .zip, .mov, .nexus, .ing, and .channel. It was exciting to bring these new online homes to the Internet. Even now, every single time I see one of Google Registry’s TLDs being used, I get a little thrill.

What can you apply for?

Similar to ICANN’s last round, there are different kinds of TLDs that applicants can consider. Here’s an overview on the types and their requirements:

1. dotBrand. These are for trademark holders who want to operate a closed TLD just for their brand (like .google). Owning a dotBrand allows companies to have ultimate digital sovereignty because they never have to worry about a third party registering a site under their proprietary extension. Requirement: you must have a registered trademark that matches the TLD string exactly.

2. Community-based. These are for clearly defined communities, such as a professional organization, specific hobby, or ethnic group (.eco, .gay, and .welsh are examples). Requirement: you must demonstrate you represent the community and have their endorsement.

3. Geographic. These represent specific locations, such as cities, states, or regions (e.g. .nyc, .london, or .quebec). Requirement: you must have explicit support or non-objection from the relevant government or public authority.

4. Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). These are for TLDs in non-Latin scripts (like .みんな). Requirement: There are technical and policy considerations for IDNs.

5. General/Standard. This is the catch-all category for “open” generic terms such as .app, .blog, or .shop. For these TLDs, the applicant can choose to add certain registration criteria and make it “restricted.”

For all would-be applicants and the curious, ICANN has published their Applicant Guidebook.

Financial snapshot

Applying for a TLD is not a simple registration. It’s a complex regulatory and technical filing and there are more costs than the application fee alone. Here’s a cost breakdown, all in USD:

1. Application fee: There is a $227K application fee per TLD. For dotBrand applicants, there is an additional $500 fee per TLD for ICANN to evaluate if the applicant meets specific criteria for a dotBrand TLD (primarily making sure the string matches a registered trademark). There are additional evaluation fees for geographic ($18-$25K) and community TLDs ($50-$80K).

2. ICANN fees: Once a TLD is delegated and live, ICANN charges a fixed annual fee to maintain the registry agreement. For each TLD, that is $25,800. There is also a $0.25 per transaction for domain renewals and registrations after you exceed a threshold of 50K domain transactions per quarter (unlikely for a dotBrand).

3. Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH): any dotBrand applicant must pay $155 per trademark per year to register their trademarks with the TMCH. This provides the applicant with the Signed Mark Data (SMD) file, which is a mandatory technical requirement to pass the dotBrand eligibility evaluation. Pro tip: For any dotBrand applicants, *now* is the time to get your trademark verified by the TMCH. This should be done before you submit your dotBrand application. Don’t let this step be a bottleneck!

4. Technical infrastructure: Most companies are not running their own domain servers so anyone operating a TLD will likely need to contact a Registry Service Provider (RSP). The fee that most RSPs charge for onboarding and technical integration is $10-$50K. Annual maintenance fees vary widely depending on the provider and the complexity of the TLD. There is also a $4k annual fee for a Data Escrow provider.

5. Consulting costs: Most consultants who are offering application drafting and submissions are charging $25-$75K per application and upwards of $2K monthly for continued management.

6. Dispute resolution: For any applicant going for an “open” TLD, setting aside a contingency budget for potential string contention or legal challenges during the objection period is a good idea. This really ranges depending on how strategically important an open TLD is to a company so sky’s the limit here. To give you some idea, the most expensive auctions in round one were for .web ($135 million), .shop ($41,501,000), and .app ($25 million).

Applying for a TLD requires serious financial commitment, but can definitely be worth it. For all applicants, it’s important to note that you can’t object to someone’s application if you didn’t also apply for it.

There are also three windows where applicants can withdraw and receive partial refunds on their application fee:

• Window 1: 65% refund ($147,550) 10 days after String Confirmation Day

• Window 2: 35% refund ($79,450) from 11 days after String Confirmation Day

• Window 3: 20% refund ($45,400) from start of Evaluation to before Registry Agreement execution

In total, applicants should set aside somewhere between $350K-$500K for the first year (not including dispute resolution).

Predictions

In this upcoming round, I predict the following:

1. dotBrand expansion. I believe we’ll see considerable interest in dotBrands, from companies who missed out or didn’t exist in 2012 and from companies who already have some dotBrands and want additional ones. I will cover the top reasons any global company should consider applying in a separate post.

2. Fewer generics than round one. Although I think there will still be considerable interest from portfolio players and new investors in a space, I don’t know if we’ll see as many applications as the first round. I do think there will be a handful of hotly contended generics in the AI space. Companies with deep pockets will emerge as the winners.

3. More IDNs. Online chatter suggests a significant increase in applications from the Middle East and Asia using non-Latin scripts to capture the next billion internet users.

I’m very curious if the 2026 volume will be on par with 2012. All shall be revealed on Reveal Day (mid-October, 2026). If you are interested in talking strategy for dotBrands and open TLDs, drop me a line at hi@beeveryth.ing. I’d also love to hear your predictions in the comments. 👇

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👋 My name is Christina and I primarily write about the following things: starting a business after 18+ years at Google, domains, reflections on parenting, and other random things I find interesting enough to share. My hope is that my corner of the internet can inspire you to be everything you want to be. Thank you for reading!

In the 24 weeks since I’ve joined Substack, I’ve found it to be an excellent place to discover thought-provoking content. On Monday, I stumbled across Andy J. Pizza, an author, illustrator, and Creative Pep Talk podcast host who I hadn’t seen before. I just ordered his book, Invisible Things, as a kindergarten graduation gift for my youngest. Side note: he has the domain andyj.pizza, which is awesome. 🍕

I listened to Andy’s interview with scientist Daisy Fancourt where she argues that engaging in art is a missing 5th pillar of health. We all recognize exercise, diet, sleep, and stress management as important for health, but art rarely enters the discussion. Consuming art is one way to encourage new neurological pathways. Apparently there’s a thing in the UK called social prescribing where doctors there literally write a prescription for you to go to art classes, nature classes, volunteering, etc. I also learned that in the U.S., there’s a program called One Nation/One Project. It is a national arts and health initiative designed to “activate the power of the arts to repair the social fabric of our nation and heal our communities.” I have not encountered this in my community, but I love the idea.

Andy says, “You art what we eat,” meaning what you consume will be reflected in what you make. If you are only consuming short-form videos and social media, are you really giving your brain the creative fuel it needs? I know we’re all on our phones too much these days. Daisy calls screen-based arts engagement the “ultra-processed food of the arts world.” This is because the emotional, social, and cognitive health benefits of engaging with screen-based arts vs. non-screen based arts are lower in every way. Andy and Daisy offer some great practical tips on how to fit more art into your day, so I recommend giving this episode a listen. Their episode encouraged me to reflect on what I’ve consumed lately and what I’ve created.

Best things I’ve consumed

1. Live magic. Last Friday night, we surprised our kids by taking them to see the magician Justin Willman perform at the Paramount in Oakland. His show is so good: funny (I laughed so hard), surprising, and awe-inspiring. If he’s coming to a city near you, I highly recommend checking out the show. And if you can’t make it to a live performance, his Netflix series is enjoyable for the whole family.

2. Monterey Bay. We visited over spring break and the kids had the best time exploring the tide pools and seeing everything the aquarium had to offer: otter feeding, touch tanks, giant pacific octopus, and so many kinds of jellyfish.

3. Street murals. I love stumbling on a random street mural! The giant wolf in downtown Walnut Creek is a fun one.

4. Movies that made me feel (translation: I cried). I know movies are technically on a screen, but it’s a big screen. Movies can definitely be art.

Rental Family (2025). I hadn’t heard anything of this movie and had zero expectations. Would give it a 10/10.

Wonder (2017). This was a great family watch. Everyone loved it and the acting was amazing. It felt so real. My 6th grader’s class read the book and she said the book was even better than the movie (as is almost always the case).

Crazy Stupid Love (2011). This was a rewatch with my husband. I hadn’t seen this movie in at least 10 years and had forgotten how good it is.

What I’ve created

1. Flower arrangements. I love getting flowers from Trader Joe’s, putting together my own arrangements, and, when the occasion calls, gifting to friends.

2. Homemade birthday cake, sourdough bread, and egg salad. I’ve been baking a lot more this year. In February I baked a magic cake for my mom’s birthday and in March I made my best sourdough loaf yet and served it with homemade egg salad. Lots of yum!

3. Gratitude doodle. Yesterday, I spent 15 minutes thinking about all the things I’m grateful for and doing a little sketching. Please excuse the misspelling. 🙈

   

4. DIY shirt. I finally got around to making an Anthropologie shirt I saw last summer, which I did not want to spend $68 on. I have mixed feelings about Anthro (which used to be my happy place to walk around as a poor college student) now that I’ve gotten a behind-the-scenes glimpse of their corporate culture (I Should’ve Shoplifted More From Anthropologie).

I’m quite pleased with how my shirt turned out so I’m sharing what I did.

Materials*:

1. Athletic shirt. Here’s a link to the exact one I purchased for $12.

2. Cricut Joy. I received this as a gift in 2021 and it truly has been my DIY best friend for shirts, water bottles, homework folders, you name it.

3. Cricut Joy Smart Iron-On.

4. Weeding tool.

5. Cricut Design Space app, which is available for both Android and iOS. It’s free unless you want to purchase their designs.

6. Iron.

7. Parchment paper.

*I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through one of the Amazon links, at no extra cost to you.

Instructions:

1. Create design. To create my design, I used Adobe Illustrator. There are other online tools like Canva that are free. I chose a different font that I thought was more interesting than my reference photo. The font I used is called Linebacker Inline. After doing the type, I swapped in a tennis ball illustration for the O. I exported the image as a .png file (no background).

2. Use the Cricut Design Space app. First, upload your image to Google Drive. Using the Cricut Design Space app, navigate to your Google Photos/Drive folder and download your .png file. Size it down to fit your shirt.

3. Using your Cricut, print out the design. Make sure “mirror” is selected for the iron-on material. The iron-on material comes with a plastic backing; make sure the plastic side is loaded face down into the machine. The app will alert you when the design is done and you’ll also use the app to unload the material.

4. Weed. Using the weeder, remove all the extra material that you don’t want to iron onto your shirt.

5. Iron. Place your design on your shirt. Cover the plastic with parchment paper. Using the cotton/high setting, press the iron down for 30 seconds per section. Don’t move the iron back and forth or your vinyl will wrinkle!

6. Cool. Let your design cool completely before attempting to remove the plastic. If any part of your transfer did not stick to the shirt, repeat step 5 and let it cool down before trying again.

If anyone wants my actual design, send me a message!

May you find inspiration this week and joy in the little things.

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Here are six observations I’ve had since starting my own business.

1. Time feels different. I’ve lost count of the hours that have passed by in a blink. When you’re working for yourself, time feels different because it’s truly your own. When I’m doing work for a client, I’m enjoying every moment because this is what I’m choosing to do. When I’m writing, I often find myself in a flow state, which is a wonderful place to exist.

2. Have patience. Early on, one of the things I let go of is my desire to want everything to move quickly, according to my timeline. I’m a type-A planner who likes to make things happen, so the relative uncertainty of working for myself has been a bit of an adjustment. So far so good though.

3. Consistency is key. I have written about daily habits and am a big believer that consistency leads to results. Since starting my Substack 23 weeks ago, I’ve posted once a week, every week. I don’t necessarily have an end goal with my writing, but it feels good to be exercising my voice. Along with client content, I’ve written over 20,000 words over the past six months that I hope have been interesting, educational, or both. Do me a favor and give this post a ♥️ if you’ve been enjoying my writing. If you’re reading this on email, there’s a heart button at the top and bottom of the email.

   Like what you see? Let’s make it a regular thing.

4. Do things that bring you joy. One of the things I’ve been doing that has given my weeks meaning is coaching at Stanford d.school. I signed an official offer letter with my alma mater and have a fancy title of ‘adjunct lecturer’, but I’m doing this because I find joy in giving back to a community that shaped me into who I am today. It’s been so fun being back on campus. An unexpected bonus was getting to spend a special 12th birthday with my oldest daughter. She didn’t have school that day and came with me to see the students present their projects at their Mid-flight Design Expo. Afterwards, I showed her around campus and we had the best time eating and shopping on my old stomping grounds.

5. Experimentation is fun. I spent several days doing a deep dive into vibe coding across different platforms. Same prompt, very different outputs from Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, and Lovable. I created a fun domain search game that I’m excited to share more about soon.

6. It’s about agency. Not wanting to return to the office was a primary reason I left Google, but as I’ve found myself happily driving over an hour every week to be in-person at Stanford or going to San Francisco to catch up with a friend or colleague, I’ve come to the conclusion the being able to design how I spend my days is one of the best things about leaving corporate life.

Surprisingly, even though I have what some people may perceive as ultimate flexibility these days, my weeks are still very structured because of my children’s activities. Tennis, kung fu, piano, track, Scouts, homework and other things demand my physical presence and attention almost every afternoon. I’ve continued to prioritize my own tennis practice and strength training, but I’ve only finished five books this year and have not picked up the NYT games that my husband and I used to compete in daily.

They say it takes six months to truly settle into major life changes. I feel pretty used to my new reality (though I am eagerly waiting for my first client paycheck to hit my dwindling bank account). Whether you’ve started a business or faced a major change recently, I’d love to hear your stories of change in the comments.👇

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* An earlier version of this post said my friend Rich has been working for himself for over a decade, but he let me know it’s only been seven years!