Let me be clear about who I’m not talking about. Not the last-minute stuff. The fever at 5pm, the flight that gets delayed, or the week that just eats you alive. Believe me, I’m a mom now and things happen. And when they happen to me I want grace, so I also extend it. That’s not flaking, that’s just life. I mean the chronic ones. The people where it’s not the exception, it’s a pattern.

The last 20+ years have resulted in the rise of the frictionless flake.

Our parents’ generation wasn’t made of better people. It was just harder to bail. You made a plan on Tuesday for Saturday. If you wanted out, you had to call the house phone and hope someone was standing next to it, and explain to someone who was maybe already halfway out the door to come meet you. So mostly? You went. You made a plan and stuck to that plan. Breaking that plan was a whole thing.

With the rise of the little device we keep attached to us every second of the day (our phones), we ended up taking any hassle away. Two taps and you’re free, and you never even have to hear the disappointment on the other end. The friction that used to hold plans together no longer exists.

Now a plan is only as strong as how much you respect the person on the other end of it. Bailing is free, so when you show up it acts like a signal of how much someone matters to you.

Here’s my prediction. Reliability is about to be the most attractive thing a person can be. When everyone is flaky, when “we should hang out” never gets a follow-up, when “let me check and get back to you” is the default and the getting-back-to-you never comes… the person who says they’ll be there and is just there, on time, having actually shown up, is almost shocking. Rare enough to feel like a flex.

We get sold this idea on protecting our energy, which I’m aligned with thematically. Don’t over-commit, don’t over-give. But committing matters, because you can't be loosely available to everyone and actually there for anyone.

The people I trust most aren’t the most impressive ones, they’re the effort friends. The ones whose yes means yes. Who text “on my way” and are. Who ask how the job interview went without being reminded. Who check on you for no reason at all. Who remember the thing and follow up on the thing. It’s so basic it’s almost embarrassing to type out. But this is exactly what went rare, and rare is the whole fucking game.

And you only get to be that person by showing up. Being reliable is a form of love. It’s you telling someone they are worth it. And it makes you the person people can build something real with.

I've started to think that's the most impressive thing a person can be.

Dear Sloane,

You started daycare this week. And you did great! Why does that make me emotional to even write that?

You had no idea it was a “big day,” this past Monday. Which is the beauty of being six months old. It was just another morning, but this time in a new room, new smells, and more other little people like you.

You looked around for a second and thought, Huh, this is interesting. And then proceeded to put the toy that was in front of you into your mouth (like you’re doing with any possible thing you can get your hands on). They (the teachers) say we’re supposed to make goodbyes quick. Squeeze you tight, wave with a big smile, and leave. So I did, and you didn’t even flinch.

School started for most other kids this week, too. And there’s been a noticeable difference in the energy of our neighborhood with a fresh year on the horizon. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but there are more cars on the street for drop off and new signs in front yards of proud parents showing where their kids go to school. (That’ll be you and us someday.) There’s also that feeling in the air that summer is ending. So, I want to tell you what I want your summers to feel like.

I want your summers to be long. Long like time is when you’re little. When a single afternoon can hold about nine separate eras. Riding bikes with your friends, spraying each other with the hose in the backyard, grabbing ice cream treats from the freezer, jumping onto the couch snuggled up with your siblings. I want you outside until the light goes that gold color and then goes away, the cicadas getting loud and then louder, and someone (me) having to yell your name twice. I want you to lose entire days playing, laughing, being.

I want you to look forward to it so hard it aches. All of May, counting down. I want summer to feel like something that belongs to you. And then, I also want you to love going back to school.

I want the new school year to be filled with hope. A new backpack and picking out school supplies. The eagerness of finding out who your teacher is and which friends are going to be in your class. I want you to walk in on the first day thinking you could be anyone this year. I want you to believe that, all the way down.

And to hold onto that as long as you can.

Love,
Mom

“She just gets it.”

I’ve said this about people and you have too. It’s quite possibly the highest compliment you can pay a friend / coworker / person and somehow also the vaguest one. We never actually say what IT is. We just know if they have it. And we definitely know when someone doesn’t.

Some of the smartest people I’ve worked with can be exhausting. You have to spell out every step, manage how they’ll take it, follow up four times. Meanwhile the person who gets it isn’t always the most intelligent. They’ve got the other thing: extreme emotional intelligence. And this will carry you further than being the smartest person in the room ever will. (I don’t make the rules.)

Here’s the list:

1. They read the room.
You can watch them clock a shift in energy during a meeting before anything is said. They can read people well and know when it’s worth continuing with their agenda or if everyone’s mentally checked out. And they steer the room accordingly.

2. They follow up, and you never have to chase them.
That thing you mentioned at the end of a meeting three weeks ago? They remembered it, and they’re on it. Let me tell you, I do a lot of “just following up” and “just circling back!” and never have to do it with these people.

3. They just figure it out.
Ambiguous? Unstructured? Lack of direction? No problem. Give them something half-defined and they run with it. Instead of “so what exactly did you want me to do?” they come back with a first pass and something to react to. It’s what we sometimes call “high agency” (but in reality, it’s just not needing to be told twice).

4. They ask really good questions.
The kind that make you go huh, I actually hadn’t thought about that. And it’s not because they’re trying to look smart. They are inherently curious and want to understand the breadth of the project.

5. They listen.
You can tell this one easily. The thing they say next is a follow on to what you just said vs. just the thing they’ve been waiting to say.

6. They’re easy to confide in.
You feel comfortable and safe in their presence. If you bring them something messy or half-formed, they bring guidance, direction. And usually most people end up telling them more than they planned to (that’s not a coincidence).

7. They manage up without being told to.
They send the update before you start wondering where it is. They already know the thing their boss is going to worry about, and they’ve answered it before it gets asked. You get the vibe.

8. They own it when they drop the ball.
Here’s the thing: everyone drops the ball, but most people don’t want to admit it. And you will drop it, because everyone does. These people don’t try to fly under the radar and hope you don’t notice.

9. They know when it could've been five minutes.
They know the difference between a real conversation and a quick sync, and specifically when something needs to be a 5 min huddle vs a 30 minute meeting. Not filling time for the sake of time, but also leaving room to talk to you like a real person.

10. They don’t need the credit.
They’ll close the loop, shoutout your team, and move on to the next thing without needing their name as the headliner. Low ego can look like someone’s easygoing. It’s actually a massive flex. It takes real security to care more about the thing getting done than about being seen as the one doing it.

The reality is that none of this is on a resume or a performance review. There’s no easy way to show that they “made everyone around them better” or “always knew how to move the thing forward.”

Almost all of it comes down to paying attention. To people, to timing, to the underlying context behind what was said. You can start this today!

You don’t have to be the smartest one in the room, but you do have to get it.

“You left some chum in the water.”

My dad said this to me a few weeks ago and candidly, I had no idea what he meant. The only time I’ve ever thought about chum is Plankton scheming away in the Chum Bucket, down in Bikini Bottom. So, a great reference point to be working with.

Here’s what he meant, once he explained it. You say some small thing, whether that’s a topic you’re into, a place you just moved, a side hobby. You toss it out there with no plan attached, and wait to see what comes swimming.

I should tell you up front that this is not really how I do anything else.

I am, by nature and by hobby, an optimizer (sigh). I built an automation that runs my marriage - a Sunday email that reads both our calendars and tells my husband what’s coming that week. I have a document that dictates the tone I use to email him (insane). I, like, A/B test my own life. If there’s a way to make something even slightly more efficient, I’ve already lost a weekend to it and enjoyed every minute (ridic).

So you’d think I’d handle people the way I handle everything else: with intent. Protect your energy, curate your circle, only spend time on the ones who “add value.” And I think that’s a big mistake. Because you can’t optimize people.

Someone I met this summer came from nothing I planned. I was on mat leave, sitting with a few girls I barely knew, going on about some topic I was into and one of them went “oh my gosh, you have to talk to X, I’ll connect you.” Fifteen minutes later I’m on a group text with a girl (woman? I never know) here in Austin. A couple weeks after that she came over while Sloane napped and we yapped for a solid 90 minutes about work, life, motherhood, all of it. I left more energized from the conversation, which can be rare.

And for every one of those, there are ten pieces of chum that got nothing back. You don’t get to choose what bites. Sometimes it’s sharks, but usually it’s nothing at all.

So this is the one corner of my life I'm leaving gloriously un-optimized. I'll keep saying too much to near-strangers and sometimes forgetting I did. Because most of it will drift off. But every so often something bites, and it's always better than anything I'd have thought to plan for.

I think (and talk) about the progression of the year constantly. The seasons and how the cadence shifts with sports, holidays, school year, and the weather.

Which is why I love the idea of a mid-year check-in. July 1, right in the thick of summer, feels like the natural time to stop and ask: where are you compared to what you expected? How are you feeling? How do you want to show up over the next six months… the same, or different?

July is also the month I go back to work after an incredible mat leave. Which means more change. So I wanted to take stock of what’s actually been making me feel good as a new mom heading back to a full-time job.

Disclaimer: you don’t need to do or buy any of this. I’m just documenting what’s working for me and what I like doing, because I love getting inspiration from other people. So here ya go.

Morning routine

I'm going to say the thing nobody wants to hear. I wake up with a 5 handle - 5:45am, to be exact. It sounds insane. But it's energized me for years (thank you, 4:15am wake-up calls for high school swimming), and it's how I thrive, especially with a baby.

• Red light. Full honesty: I only just brought this back out after a year in hibernation. We moved, it sat in a closet, and now I’m back on my game (just five minutes every morning) and I forgot how much I love it. Morning sunlight works just as well!

• Strength training. I’ve spent the last two years mostly strength training, and I can feel a striking difference mentally and physically. I started this program while pregnant because of how good the maternity version is, and I’ve stuck with it postpartum. Only needs free weights, a box or bench, and the occasional band, which is perfect for a home gym.

• Smoothie. I used to get the smoothie ick constantly, until I landed on ~three I rotate and started using this protein powder. Starting the day with 30g+ of protein, plus fiber and veggies, has been a game changer.

• Walking. Especially after a meal. It’s the best thing for digestion, and there’s nothing I love more than stepping constantly! Dog walks, baby walks, walks with friends. (It’s also proven that walking makes you more comfortable talking.)

• Uniform. I’ve decided I like wearing basically the same thing every day. I feel confident and put-together without being overdressed. So I invested in a few of my favorite button-downs and my new favorite pants.

Things for fun!

• Summer clean-out. Not sure everyone will call this fun, but an organized, clean space genuinely does wonders for how I focus and how much I enjoy myself. I spent a weekend organizing our home gym and laundry room (with this as my #1 gadget) and feel so much freer.

• Disposables. Shooting disposable cameras all summer has been so much fun, and there’s nothing better than getting the film back and forgetting half the photos I even took. Bringing back analog summers!

• Beni. Secondhand is my new favorite hobby, and Beni makes it all possible. It’s a marketplace for secondhand, so you search for what you want and it aggregates across all the secondhand sites. You can set up alerts and do reverse image searches. I’m committed to buying secondhand for the vast majority of things for the rest of the year : )

Night time routine

• Alarm clock. A good one is non-negotiable for me. Number one, so I don’t have to keep my phone in the room. Number two, because it plays soft, subtle music to wind down to every night.

• Bricked. I got a Brick a few months ago and it’s been a game changer for my mental health and how I spend my time. How I use it:

  • Bricked 1–5pm every afternoon, and 8:30pm onward (I have to UnBrick in the morning to use it at all).

  • Bricked 8:30pm Friday until 5pm Sunday. Absolutely fantastic!

• Reading. Loading up on memoirs, fantasy, and a few business reads. Always reminded how nice it is to wind down with my Kindle.

• Hue red lights. Bulbs you can put in any lamp - I switch on the red setting every night. Lowers my cortisol and is the best feeling for relaxing before bed.

• Tea. Obsessed with this brand, which has become my nightly ritual.

• CBD gummies. Back on my CBD grind, and these are a game changer for when you just need a little something to unwind.

Note!!! Some of these are affiliate links.

Our parental leave system is one of the biggest reasons men out-earn and out-rank women.

I’ve been wanting to talk about this for a while. But it’s a polarizing topic. So here goes.

I have a firm belief that men and women should get the same family leave, and be required to take all of it. Let me explain why.

First, to the moms: I see you. The time to process, to heal in body and mind, to bond with our babies, to watch the developmental moments, to find a rhythm in our new normal… it's paramount to our success. Personally and professionally.

And to the dads (I'm assuming a hetero setup here): you should get the time too. You may not have gone through birth, but you can do the chores, the diaper changes, the bottle washing, the grocery runs, and help your wife recover. On top of being with your baby.

Here's my proposal: you leave work at 38 weeks to "nest" if you're going full-term, or two weeks before your induction or scheduled C-section. Those last two weeks can be brutal. So this gives the family time to get everything in order before a life-changing event we've somehow normalized again and again. Then you go back after five months. Both parents, all of it, required.

Why so much time? If you've had a kid, you know how much it takes. The recovery and the constant feeding and the slow crawl toward a full night of sleep. The way the family dynamic shifts when there's more than one. Figuring out a new normal that is anything but normal. Learning to trust someone else with your baby. Getting to actually know them! Their quirks, their smiles, how they soothe themselves. Five months off (though I'd love more) feels right. And most working parents I talk to are ready to come back by then.

Why both parents? Because if only the mother leaves, the father comes back first. He "bounces back." He's around more, staffed on more, seen more. So he gets promoted first. When only the mother disappears, the father gets rewarded for staying in his chair.

Now, forcing people to take five months off is controlling. Like, who am I to tell a woman she can't go back early if she wants to? But let’s be honest about the choice we have now. A dad can take his leave or skip it, and skipping it moves him up. A mom takes hers and pays for it. When taking your leave costs you and skipping it pays, nobody really is choosing freely. By making both parents take the same time, the penalty for leaving goes away. Then we can talk about choice.

Do you know what it's like to be in your prime childbearing years and constantly doing the math? Which projects are worth starting and which people to get in front of before you go. Weighing a new job against how long you'd need to rebuild credibility before you could leave again. Timing your next baby around your career so you don't wreck either one. A man has never.

Another thing. I was talking to a few men in their 60s, still working, who laughed at the idea that men need more than two weeks. That generation loves to say they went back the next day. I'm sorry you had to. It doesn't mean we do. Thirty years ago people didn't move as far. They stayed near where they grew up, so family was close, and family close by means help with the baby and the mother. That’s mostly gone now. We leave for college in other states, move to other cities, and settle down where we have no family and no village. The one the older generation got to lean on.

I go back to work next week after the best five-plus months of my life. I had a few weeks before my daughter came to nest, get the house ready, and brace myself. Then came the hard part: the intrusive thoughts, the trouble with feeding, the guilt over things only hormones can explain. And then the relief after I stopped breastfeeding, when day by day I started to feel like whoever I was becoming. Our little fam took two vacations, tried new restaurants, met more babies, hit the pool, golfed, walked A LOT, and spent so much time in our favorite place (our house). We went from meeting our girl at one day old to watching her roll over and smile at us when she wakes up. Like, how fucking amazing is that. All of it has me fired up to get back to work.

But am I anxious about the future? Absolutely. Do I have to think about what more kids would do to my career? The tradeoff of taking less time, because part of me already feels like I can't take the whole time again?

So, where does this leave us? Women who want careers keep fighting. Women who want kids also never stop watching the clock. And men keep climbing while we’re gone. Making both parents take the same leave won’t fix everything. But it is the first thing that would make the cost of leaving feel the same.

I just built an automation for how I communicate with my husband and how we run our weekly meeting.

But let me back up a second.

AI AI AI AI AI.

It’s really fucking overwhelming. Claude this. Chat that. “I quit my job and built 37 AI workflows and cash flow $250K per month.” Like, what?

The week after I gave birth, my company laid off 40% of the company related to AI. Coupled with the postpartum hormones, I was in a deep spiral about what the future held (and sometimes still am, but this article also made me feel better). That said, it’s not going away, so the next best thing is to figure out how to use it for leverage. To focus more creatively and strategically, with AI carrying the parts that don’t need me.

I’ve been on maternity leave the last five months (yes, I’m so grateful for it). And I’ve been experimenting a lot. Building, mostly around how to level up our personal life so we can actually live it instead of just managing it.

One thing I kept noticing stall out was decision-making. Something would land on one of our plates, but it needed a quick confirmation or buy-in from the other person before we could pull the trigger (flight times, a big-ticket purchase). Or it was an FYI that deserved better than a lost text thread (the breakdown of our dog’s pet insurance, the tl;dr on a utility-bill leak adjustment). Really exciting stuff, I know.

So I built us a better way to do it. Two parts.

Part one: how I actually talk to Cam.

I wrote a document about how I communicate with my own husband. I know how that sounds!

But really, I just opened up Claude and let it interview me. And it turned my rambling into a tidy little rulebook. A few of the questions:

• When I’m proposing something, how do I want to frame it? Lay out the options, say which one I’m leaning toward, and give him one clear thing to react to vs. a vague “thoughts?”

• What do I actually need his input on, versus what am I just telling him? A real decision, or anything for Sloane: input. Something I already handled: an FYI, no response required.

• When there’s a deadline, how do I set it? Say the actual date and build in a weekend, because that’s when he gets to his personal to-dos.

Then I made it correct me every time it got the tone wrong, until the file actually sounded like me. Here’s the doc (made by Claude):

Emails to Cam

Guidelines for assessing things and drafting emails to my husband, Cam.

• Recipient: Cameron Winders — xxxxxxxx@gmail.com

• From: Me (Tori)

• Purpose: Evaluating decisions/purchases/plans/house stuff and writing him emails so he can weigh in.

Voice & tone

Sound like me — dry humor, a little fun, self-aware. Not a memo.

• Dry, witty, real. My actual tone: conversational, occasional self-aware aside or parenthetical, a little humor. Think “smart friend texting,” not “assistant drafting.”

• Never formal or corporate. No “per my last,” “kindly,” “please advise,” stiff business phrasing.

• No pet names. Occasionally “camwin” when it’s playful/funny, but don’t lean on it — use sparingly.

• No emojis.

• Match the topic:

  • Logistics → more straightforward and to-the-point.

  • Fun / family stuff → more warmth.

• Voice reference: to match my tone, read my Substack (”Side Note”) folder

• Don’t be pushy, don’t over-explain, don’t over-qualify.

Length & format

• Length depends on the topic — short for simple things, longer when it’s a bigger decision worth walking through.

• Short intro (what this is / why I’m bringing it up), then the details.

• Bold the key ask — the decision, recommendation, and/or deadline should stand out so it’s not buried.

• Cam likes all the options written out so he can make an informed decision — lay them out clearly rather than just giving one answer.

What needs his buy-in vs. what’s an FYI

• Needs his buy-in FIRST:

  • Home decisions.

  • Anything for Sloane where I want us aligned on the approach.

• Can be an FYI / already-decided:

  • Things across the house where I’m just making the call.

  • Things I’ve already booked.

• $1,000+ — probably warrants an actual conversation, not just an email. Still helpful to prep the bullets ahead of time so we can talk through it efficiently.

• What to include (especially house stuff)

  For any purchase, project, or decision, include:

  • Price & budget fit — the cost, and how it compares to what we’d planned to spend. (Context: I usually splurge a bit more, Cam usually reins it in — so make the budget case honestly.)

  • Timing / lead time — shipping windows, install/delivery dates, when it needs deciding.

  • Options considered — the alternatives I looked at, written out, and why I’m leaning where I am.

  • Link or visual — a direct link or image so he can see it himself.

  Things we care most about

  • Sloane — furniture/decor tied to her health, school, and setting her up for success. Higher bar here.

  • Home quality — we care about doing things well, not just cheaply.

  • Travel — worth investing in.

  • Fun & novelty — we like leaning into more fun, new, and novel things. Frame these as the upside, not a frivolous splurge.

  Ongoing house projects (context to reference)

  • Office upstairs — making changes without it costing a ton.

  • Our room — new rug, new art, new picture frames.

  • Landscaping — done earlier this year (2026).

  Making recommendations & pushing for something

  • Lay out the options, but make my lean clear. Don’t hide the ball or dump a decision on him unframed.

  • When I’m pushing for something: lay out the rationale and the upside — why I want it and what we get out of it. Make the case, don’t pressure. It’s a shared call.

  The ask at the end

  • Always give him something to respond to, and always include a deadline / “need to know by.”

  • Factor in his schedule: Cam usually needs a weekend to get through personal to-dos, so build that buffer into deadlines.

  • Time-sensitive things: be clear and explicit about when he needs to decide by, and look for any way to make the decision easier for him (narrow the options, pull the key facts to the top, give a recommended default).

  • Type of ask depends on the situation:

    • Concrete yes/no when there’s a clear pick (”want me to order it?”).

    • Pick between options when it’s genuinely his choice.

    • FYI / just looping you in when no decision is needed — but say that’s what it is.

  Sign-off

  • -Tor

Now when I run something by him, it comes out clean. Here’s a real one of us deciding on a rug for our room:

Hey,

So the rug we originally wanted only comes in 8x10, which is going to feel small in our room. I found one I actually love more — the Block Art Shag Wool Rug from West Elm — and it comes in 9x12, which is the size we really need.

Details:
- 9x12: $1,099
- Ships to the house, arrives in about 1–4 weeks
- Wool shag, block-art pattern in earthy tones (link below)

My vote: let's go with this one in the 9x12. It's a little more than the original, but the bigger size will actually fit the space and it'll get here before we'd want it down. Want me to order it?

He can say yes from his phone in a second!

Part two: the email that talks through the week.

Every Sunday at 9am, an automation reads both our calendars and drafts an email to Cam. A debrief of what we’ve each got that week, and anything we need to sort before it hits. Then at 10 we have a standing meeting to go through it: Stanley Weekly (a spin on what’s the plan, Stan lol).

I connected our two calendars, wrote out the rules for what actually counts as “needs prep,” and told it to run every Sunday and leave a draft in my inbox. Then I spent a week correcting it: no, the dog’s meds are always mine; yes, if our home address is on an invite it means we’re hosting; no, don’t sound the childcare alarm when the whole family’s coming on the trip.

The rules are what makes it all work. A few of them:

• A sitter’s needed whenever we’re both out and Sloane isn’t with us — anything we’re both on at 6pm or later, or things like a tee time we both have. Check if one’s already confirmed before flagging.

• Trips: assume the whole family is going unless the title says otherwise (I tag ours “[Whole Fam]”).

• If we’re traveling and the dog doesn’t have boarding confirmed, flag it.

Let me know if you want to see an example email that shows up. It’s prettttty dialed.

So much of the friction in a marriage isn’t the tasks, or the events, or the things themselves. It’s the communication around them. So no, I didn’t build 37 workflows or quit my job to sell you a course. I built a rug email and a Sunday debrief. Deeply unsexy and borderline embarrassing to be this excited about.

But it gave me back the one thing all that AI “noise” keeps promising. More room.

I’ve been shooting my shot a lot lately. And mostly hearing nothing back. It kinda sucks.

It’s all part of launching something. You make the thing, you pour months into said thing, and then the second it exists you expect everyone to love it too.

But a product is only so good as its go-to-market strategy, and how you find distribution. For Conversation Club, a lot of my friends have signed up (which has been wonderful + so fun to be supported). But it only goes so far. You need influential people with wide reach to share it.

So I’ve been reaching out writers and creators I admire, and who I think would love it. Some DMs, some emails. And basically offered to just mail the thing to them — like, can I please send you one, I really think you’d like it.

And most of the time? Get absolutely nothing back in return. Not even a no… just nothing. Which feels kinda worse(?)

I send the message and I see that it got read. And then I watch it sit there. And my brain, very unhelpfully, decides the silence means something about me. Like maybe the thing isn’t good. Maybe I’m not good…

Which is ridiculous, and I know it’s ridiculous. These people are busy. They probably get a hundred of these. It’s not personal. But it doesn’t really matter how many times I tell myself that, because rejection feels personal. Especially when the thing you’re putting out there is basically you.

That’s what makes it hard. Conversation Club isn’t some product I’m detached from. It’s my writing, my idea, the thing I’ve been obsessing over for. So when I get silence, it’s not just a business thing not landing. It kind of feels like me not landing.

And I want it to land! I want it in the hands of people I respect. I want it to reach further than the people who already know me. Wanting that and then hearing crickets is just deflating (not going to sugar coat it).

But then this week, something happened. One of my favorite New York Times authors, who my dad actually introduced me to, said yes.

That yes came from the same thing that’s also been giving me the silence. I think I’ve always treated “putting yourself out there” like it’s just the annoying part you have to get through. The reality is that it can really be a means to nothing. You have to be willing to do it anyway, knowing most of it won’t land, because the other option is to just not try. And call that safe.

Here’s what safe means. Not being cringey. Not feeling awkward. Not feeling uncomfortable. But also not growing, stretching, and learning. And this isn’t just for someone launching a business. It’s for everything — your passion project, your job, new friends you want to meet.

So I’m going to keep going! The awkward DMs. The dozens of cold emails. The can-I-mail-you-one that goes unanswered. I’m going to let it sting when it stings, because it does. But I’m not going to let it stop me.

And I’d rather send a hundred messages and feel a little foolish than send none and always wonder. So, shoot your shot. Send the thing. Ask the person.

And if you want to go analog this summer, put down your phone, and have a reason for better conversation, check out Conversation Club.

(see what I did there? ^)

Since having our baby girl earlier this year, I can’t stop thinking about that (and that the number with our dog is even less). That means 18 Junes, sunburns, and summer vacations before the kids are people with their own plans and group chats I’m not in (sigh). And the first few they won’t even remember (although it’s all about how we make them feel, right?).

What might look like a to-do list, is more of a list of what not to forget. To create more memories, more novelty, more of doing something different than the normal weekend routine. So here’s the list. And mostly I’m doing this to hear what you’re doing this summer + get inspired.

Wake surfing lessons. I’ve wanted to do this for years and keep filing it under “someday.” Last summer was the first time I even got up on the board, so this is the summer I actually get good.

Lemon poppyseed muffins. Summer nostalgia in a bite. One of my favorite bakery items, and I’m dying to have these one Sunday morning.

Baby days at the pool. I've already had a few of these, but I want to fit in as many as we can. Next year she'll be running all over the place, and I want to soak in our lil babe while she still can't walk.

Hole in one. Probably won’t happen (but low key almost did last week). And every summer needs one thing you’re chasing with no reasonable expectation of catching it.

Parent Trap in the backyard. My absolute favorite movie, and it gives all the summer-night, away-at-camp feels.

Tie dye party. I wanted this to happen last year, but the combination of moving, an international trip, and being pregnant made it too much. We did so many tie dye parties growing up - it would be so fun to bring back.

Take Kona swimming. Our doggie deserves a summer too! And watching Kona lose her mind over playing fetch in the water is one of my favorite things.

Read four books. It's not really about the number. I downloaded a ton onto my Kindle as my way to relax and unwind, and an excuse to not be on my phone. Reading more has been bringing me so much joy.

HAPPY ALMOST JULY!

I’ve always loved writing, which is why I started publishing on Substack. It felt like an outlet where I could share my musings without too much pressure.

Somewhere along the way, I started to get fatigued. Partly my own fault. But it also started to feel like people were just writing to grow, and the content got less and less authentic.

And don’t get me wrong, I still love it here. I love that I can read the thoughts of someone I admire and have it provoke something new in me. I’m not anti-internet, and I’m not going to do a bit where I pretend I’ve transcended my phone. (I haven’t.)

But I’ve felt pretty chronically online. And I’ve always tried to make sure my life offline is a whole lot better than my life online. A lot of that comes down to relationships.

So I decided to start something. Something that brings you in person. That builds community and drives more interesting conversation. That makes you feel a little nostalgic. Something you can hold in your hand.

It’s called the Conversation Club.

Join the club

So what is it?

I remember when something in the mail was actually for you. Not a bill, not a flyer for a mattress sale, not the random garbage you throw away before you’re even inside. Something a person decided to write to you for a reason. We mostly don’t have that anymore, and the mailbox has turned into where junk goes to die.

So I want to put something good back in it.

Every month you’ll get an envelope. Inside:

A letter. A short, honest essay from me on something made for you to think more about it. Read it with your coffee. It’s for you. (It’ll feel like most of my personal essays here on Substack.)

A conversation card. A few prompts that give you a reason to have the conversation. The kind that lets people get vulnerable. That create the moments you build stronger friendships on. You get to decide where it goes, but it’s for you and your people. That’s the part that makes this a club.

Why now

Four years ago I moved to a city where I didn’t know anyone. I’ve made really good friends since, some of my favorite people honestly. Now, I’m a mom and am in the stage of life where people are busy, traveling, and the reality is you don’t see your friends as often. So there still can be a sense of loneliness even when from the outside your life looks really full.

What I want right now, almost more than anything, is to be in rooms with interesting people having conversations that go somewhere. But sometimes those conversations don’t happen on their own. They need a spark. A question, a story, something that opens the door, and let’s someone willing to walk through it.

So that’s the bet I’m making! I’m mailing you the spark.

I’m opening up a small first group of founding members, and I’d genuinely love for you to be one of them.

Join the club

The baby industry has a chokehold on new parents. Anxious, vulnerable, willing to spend whatever it takes on the safest, least-toxic, best-looking products for their kids. The amount of stuff that gets suggested, encouraged, and filed under "must buy" has gotten out of control — so I thought I'd reflect on what I actually use almost every single day, or what's genuinely worth it, and why.

The “I have my hands back now” things

The Mabē carrier. I wear her constantly. Whether it’s through the late-afternoon fussiness, through the naps that only happen on a body, through every time I needed to do literally anything that required both hands. I’ll admit the reason I reach for this one instead of the others we have because it just really looks good. It’s basically the Artipoppe (which I’ve heard is still incredible) at a third of the price.

Babybjörn bouncer. The thing I was most skeptical of and now use the most. You set the baby down, she’s content, and suddenly you have two arms and a stretch of counter and the ability to make a sandwich while standing up. And when they get to around three months, adding the toy bar is incredible.

The getting-out-of-the-house stuff

I’ll be upfront that this is the splurge category, and yes, I have two strollers. I know how that sounds. But they do genuinely different jobs and I reach for both every week, so I’ve made my peace with it!

UppaBaby Cruz V3. Our neighborhood-walk stroller. Full-size, smooth ride, the kind you can push one-handed with a coffee in the other. We keep it in the garage and use it for every neighborhood or trail walk. This one doesn't convert into a double, and I went that route on purpose — I figured if we got to two kids I'd want a side-by-side double instead.

UppaBaby Minu V2. This one lives in the car. It's the lightweight version that folds down small, and it's what I grab for in-and-out errands and actual trips. When the priority is get it open and folded in ten seconds in a parking lot, this is the one. It's also come on every trip we've taken — very easy to gate-check.

The UppaBaby Aria V2 car seat. Lightweight to the point that carrying it doesn’t wreck your back, which is the entire selling point and it delivers. It’s also the thing that makes the two-stroller situation make sense — it clicks right onto the Cruz and snaps onto the Minu with an adapter, so the same sleeping baby goes from car to either stroller without waking up.

Do you need two strollers? Almost certainly not. But if you’re going the UppaBaby route anyway, the Cruz-for-walks, Minu-for-everything-else split is the one I’d recommend.

Note: People also LOVE the Doona. Both a car seat + a stroller, which makes things very easy. We decided not to go that route because there’s no storage in it and wanted our second stroller to be a true travel stroller.

All the feeding things

Dr. Brown’s bottles. Yes, there are more parts to wash than I would like. Every single one of them. But the anti-colic vent situation is real, and after trying a couple of others these are the ones we stuck with. This is the rare case where I’ll take the extra dishes.

The Momcozy washer and sterilizer. This is the unsung hero, and the thing I’d repurchase first if it broke tomorrow. It eats some counter space, which I resented for about a week but have not thought about since. Given how many parts the Dr. Brown’s bottles have (see above), this one basically paid for itself in saved sink time.

Philips Avent pacifiers. The caveat with any pacifier is that it’s entirely up to the baby — some take one shape and reject every other one on earth. Mine took this one. If yours does too, buy several, because they vanish into couch cushions at an alarming rate.

Copper Pearl burp cloths. The least interesting item on this list and one of the most used. They’re bigger than a normal burp cloth, actually absorbent, and the prints are cute enough that I don’t mind one being draped over my shoulder in every photo from this era. I have an absurd number of them! I’d get more.

SLEEP!!!!!

The Taking Cara Babies swaddle. I remember seeing fifteen different swaddles and having no idea what to get or why. My friend Claire swore by this one. I've since tried several others, and she was right..

The Hatch Rest. Sound machine and night light in one, and somewhere along the way it became a sleep cue! When it goes on, she knows what’s coming. I’m not sure if it’s the product or the routine doing the work, but I’m not going to mess with it to find out : )

The Hatch Rest Go. It’s small, it’s portable, and it has rescued more than one afternoon in a hotel room or a relative’s spare bedroom. If you already have the regular Rest and you travel at all, this is the one I’d add.

The one and only toy you need

The Lovevery Newborn Gift Set. I went in mildly cynical about the whole developmental-toy industrial complex, and then the tent happened.

The set comes with the Play Gym, and the gym comes with a cover that snaps over the top and turns it into a little high-contrast tent — black-and-white cards hanging down for a newborn to lie under and stare at. And she stares. You can also swap the cards out as her vision develops, so it keeps working long past the newborn stage.

Honestly, it’s worth it for the tent alone. The rest of the set is a generous bonus!

I know I said I was going to keep it tight, but here are the honorable mentions:

• Gathre Padded Play Mat — a splurge, but is amazing for placing around the house and playing

• My Brest Friend — best nursing pillow if that’s your thing

• Aden + Anais Swaddle Blankets — somehow you just always need blankets for something, and these are my favorite

• JUJUBE Diaper Bag — I love this one for traveling

• SlumberPod — I was skeptical of legitimately buying a tent, but this thing is incredible for traveling and keeping the blackout routine intact

• OXO Bath Tub Toy Bin — I love it because you can air the toys out easily

• Magnetic Me Onesies — best in the biz

So: a list of things to buy, in a post that opened by complaining about being handed lists of things to buy. I’m aware of the irony!!!

Note!!! Some of these are affiliate links.

Because it so perfectly describes our childhood. Best buds and Dairy Queen ice cream spoons. It’s important to note that it’s not a “good” photo. And when I say good photo, I mean it wasn’t posed, we didn’t pick out outfits, there’s not a backdrop. It’s July in Chicago, we’re probably a little sweaty, and whoever took it (Mom) definitely wasn’t trying to create a keepsake. But the second I look at it, I’m immediately back there. The particular kind of happiness that comes from being almost four years old, getting soft serve with your family, and having absolutely nothing else to think about. That photo itself isn’t impressive, but it’s the one I actually remember.

Lately I've been thinking that the photos that end up mattering most are rarely the ones “designed” to matter. It's not the Christmas card or the family portrait. It’s also not everyone lined up in front of something beautiful, looking directly at the camera. It’s the ones that are goofy and unguarded. Where a brother and sister have a spoon in their mouth both wearing overalls, and no one was even trying.

That’s what a childhood feels like, at least in hindsight.

I’ve been shooting with a real camera more seriously this past year — not professionally, but intentionally. And it took me a while to figure out what I actually wanted to photograph. I finally landed on portraits, specifically candid ones. Because of the feeling you have while taking the shots.

It happens when I’m photographing Sloane, or when I shot our friends and their one-year-old recently. It’s this awareness, almost a physical sensation, of knowing you’re in a moment that will never exist again. This exact version of her. This age, this size, the way she looks at something she doesn’t understand yet.

Cam and I talk about this a lot. How much of parenting, for us, is about how we make her feel. Not necessarily the milestones we document or the activities we do, but the feeling underneath all of it. Just, what did it feel like to grow up in our house?

Did it feel warm? Did it feel safe? Did it feel like you were deeply loved? I think that’s reallllly what I’m trying to photograph. Not evidence necessarily that something happened, but how it felt.

That’s probably why I’ve fallen so hard for shooting on a real camera. The iPhone turned photography into an infinite resource. We take thousands of photos because we can. Every meal, every walk, every mildly amusing thing our child does. I do it too. But abundance has this funny way of flattening significance. When everything gets documented, it can be hard to remember.

Shooting intentionally just feels different. You choose the frame, edit the image, spend a bit of time with it. And decide which photos are worth keeping (or deciding what mattered?).

The spoon photo did that for me. It reached across 27 years and handed me back a feeling. And I’m just trying to do the same for someone else.

I was looking at my LinkedIn the other day and felt this tiny little existential pang. Like: wait. Is that it?

There it all was. Head of Strategy & Ops. Previously this, before that, the one before that. A clean little stack of titles marching backward through time. Accurate enough and nicely optimized. My entire “professional” life reduced to a neat, searchable column.

And almost nothing like me. Because LinkedIn can hold a role and a company and a timeline. But it can’t really hold a person.

There’s nowhere to put the newsletter. The one place I get to think in public instead of translating every thought into a deliverable. No section for the photography. No box for the systems I built for new moms after becoming one myself. No heading for the club built for women who want more interesting conversations. No field for all the strange little parallel careers and identities and obsessions that somehow make up an actual life.

And the thing that gets me is how normal this has started to feel. We’ve all somehow agreed to flatten ourselves into one acceptable answer to “what do you do?” One thing we can say quickly at dinner parties without making anyone uncomfortable.

Especially women. I know so many women living these wildly expansive lives who still introduce themselves like they’re filing taxes.

“I work in finance.”
“I’m a stay at home mom.”
“I run operations.”

Meanwhile they’re also writing, mentoring, creating, investing, caregiving, organizing communities, making art, building side businesses, managing households, raising children, holding entire emotional infrastructures together with one hand while answering Slack messages with the other!

Literal entire ecosystems tucked behind one tiny sentence.

And I think part of the reason we do this is because women are still expected to package ambition very carefully. You can be accomplished, but preferably in a way that’s easy to summarize. Easy to understand and categorize. The second your life starts spilling across multiple things, it suddenly risks feeling indulgent. Or scattered. Or cringe.

The fuller version of yourself starts to feel like “too much.” So then we all start editing ourselves down into something more digestible. One title or one lane. One neat little professional identity. As if becoming multidimensional somehow weakens credibility instead of proving a life has actually been lived.

So yes, I built a website. Which honestly felt deeply embarrassing at first.

My own name as the URL? A homepage about me? It activated every internalized female alarm bell imaginable. I spent an unreasonable amount of time thinking: who exactly do you think you are.

Men build personal websites and it reads as expertise. Women do it and immediately start drafting disclaimers in their heads. Sigh.

The website wasn’t really about personal branding, despite how aggressively LinkedIn-coded that phrase has become. It was more about refusing the folder and the idea that a person should collapse themselves into the single most legible version for public consumption. I wanted one place where all of it could exist at the same time.

The strategist, writer, photographer, new mom, person building systems, and making art! Not separate identities competing with each other for legitimacy.

Tell me everything that you are : ) I want to know!

Three months old, and our first trip as three. And somehow, it worked?

Not in the way travel used to work.

There was no wandering into a 7 p.m. dinner reservation like civilized adults. No lingering over a bottle of wine without mentally calculating when she last ate, slept, or had a diaper change. No casually popping into places without first assessing whether there was enough room for a stroller, an elevator, and a corner where we could feed her without making it a whole production.

But it worked in this new, slightly clunkier way. At three months old, the world is mostly light and sound and movement. The rhythm of wheels on pavement with our voice above her. And the blur of trees and bikes and buildings passing overhead.

She slept through dinners, museums, slow canal-side walks where we weren’t really trying to get anywhere. She was fine. More than fine, actually! She was along for the ride in the most literal sense. Just this tiny little person folded into our life, making everything more complicated and somehow more meaningful at the exact same time.

Amsterdam helped. It was surprisingly doable with a stroller. Shops, museums, restaurants, sidewalks that mostly worked. We just kept going places, and after the first day, it started to feel almost normal.

Feeding her in a museum café. Pushing her down a quiet street while we looked into people’s windows like respectable tourists. Posting up at lunch with a stroller tucked beside the table. Walking slower than we normally would, but noticing more because of it. It was wholesome in a way I don’t think I would have fully appreciated before her.

And then there were the cobblestones. The charming, photogenic cobblestones that are significantly less charming when you are trying to maneuver a stroller over them while dodging approximately nine thousand bikes coming from every direction.

There was the humbling search for a changing table, which apparently required a level of creativity I did not previously possess and eventually resulted in changing her on the floor of a coffee shop. There was feeding her on the go, in public, because babies famously do not care about ambiance or timing.

There was the sheer amount of gear. The bottle logistics. The nap math. The question of whether the hotel crib would fit the SlumberPod, which is one of those sentences that would have meant absolutely nothing to me a year ago and now feels like a critical part of international diplomacy!

And then there was the flight home. Humbling!

It turns out when you are used to spending a transatlantic flight watching three movies, ordering a Diet Coke, and pretending you might be productive on your laptop, doing none of those things hits very differently.

But even then, somewhere between the bottle washing and bassinet negotiating and taking turns eating whatever airplane meal was placed in front of us, I kept thinking: we can still do this. Not exactly the way we used to… but we can still do this.

We can still travel. We can still have dinners in beautiful places. We can still wander, just with more gear. We can still find a version of ourselves that existed before her, even if that version now has a diaper bag, an earlier reservation, and a very strong opinion about hotel cribs.

She isn’t going to remember Amsterdam. I know that. She won’t remember the canal walks or the museum cafés or sleeping through dinner while we sat beside the water feeling impossibly lucky. But I will.

I’ll remember looking at Cam across the table and realizing that this is the new shape of our life. A little slower, a little more logistically insane, and a little less effortless.

But also fuller because she was there. And because for the first time, we got to see a place through the strange, tender lens of bringing her with us.

Dear Sloane,

I’m writing this a little late for Mother’s Day, which feels fitting in a way.

Because that is motherhood too, I’m learning. Being late to the thing because you were inside the thing. Feeding you. Holding you. Washing bottles. Reordering diapers. Letting you nap on me even though there are a hundred other things I could be doing.

This was my first Mother’s Day as your mom. Even typing that feels strange! Your mom.

There are days when I still don’t fully identify with it. Not because I don’t feel it — I feel it in every part of me. But because it’s still hard to believe that this is real. That I am someone’s mother. That I can look down and see this tiny person sleeping on my chest and somehow she came from me, belongs with me, and has completely rearranged my life.

Mother’s Day felt big this year. Like, Holy shit. I’m a mom.

And then, strangely, it also felt a little underwhelming. Which I feel slightly guilty admitting. You’re not old enough to know it’s Mother’s Day. You don’t know that I’m your mom in the way you will one day. You don’t know that the person holding you is also the person who thinks about your sleep, your bottles, your diapers, your future, your tiny fingernails, your entire life.

Right now, I’m just warmth. Food. A familiar smell. A face you’re starting to track across the room. And that’s probably the purest version of motherhood. Being everything before you’re recognized as anything.

Lately, you’re becoming more and more yourself. You coo like you’re trying to let us in on some little secret. You study our faces. You look around like the world is finally coming into focus, and I get to watch you realize you’re here.

There is something almost unbearable about that. Watching someone become a person in real time.

I also thought I was stretched before you. I thought I knew what it meant to be tired, to have no time, to love someone so much that their happiness could change your entire mood.

And then you came along and proved there is more space inside a person than they realize. More patience. More fear. More tenderness. More breaking points and softness and grit than I knew I had access to.

You made my world bigger and smaller at the same time. Bigger because suddenly everything matters more. Smaller because so much of what I need is now right in front of me.

You won’t remember anything from these early days. You won’t remember sleeping on my chest, or the way your dad and I stared at you like we had discovered a new planet. You won’t remember your first sounds or the first time you looked at us like you were starting to recognize we were yours.

But I will. I’ll remember for both of us.

And one day, when you’re older, I hope what you feel from me is simple and steady. That you are loved without condition. That you can be many things at once. That you can build a full life and still be surprised by how much fuller it can become.

For now, you are asleep on me. Your tiny body curled into mine. The world asking a million things of me, and for once, I don’t really care.

Because this is the thing. You are the thing.

And being your mom is the great, ordinary miracle of my life.

Love,
Mom

I’ve heard people talk about values my entire adult life.

“That just doesn’t align with my values.” Or “We have really different values.” Or, in the context of a relationship: “I was looking for someone who shares my values.”

And every time, I’d nod like I understood. But I don’t think I ever really sat down and figured out what mine were.

It’s one of those things that sounds like it should be obvious. Of course you know what you value! You’re a grown person. You make decisions every day based on what matters to you. But actually articulating the three or four words that sit underneath everything is different. It forces you to move from vague self-awareness to something that’s much more specific.

Cam (my husband) and I were doing a reflection exercise at the beginning of this year. Looking back at 2025, thinking about what we wanted 2026 to feel like. One of the prompts gave us a long list of values and asked us to narrow down to our top three. Individually first, and then as a family.

It was weirdly hard.

Not because I didn’t know what mattered to me, but because I’d never had to choose. Honesty matters. Growth matters. Authenticity matters. Compassion matters. So does joy and ambition and generosity and health and adventure and a million other things. But when you have to rank them, when you have to say this is mine more than that is, you have to stop thinking about what sounds right and start thinking about what’s actually true.

Here’s where I landed.

Reliability. I’m going to be honest, this is not a glamorous value. Nobody is putting “reliable” on a vision board. It doesn’t exactly scream main character energy. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it’s at the root of almost everything I care about. I want to be someone people can count on. Like reallllly count on. Not in a “let’s get coffee soon” way. In a real way. The friend who shows up when things are hard. The person who follows through. The one you call when you need someone to just be there, without making it about them.

It’s tied to how I think about loyalty and consistency and what it actually means to love people well. A lot of my sense of self comes from this. From knowing I’m someone who shows up. And when I think about the relationships in my life that mean the most to me, they’re the ones built on that same foundation.

Curiosity. This one felt obvious the second I saw it on the list. I’ve always been drawn to people who are interested, not just interesting. The ones who are learning something new or thinking about things differently or have a perspective I haven’t considered. I love a deep conversation. I love stretching into something I’m bad at. I love the feeling of realizing I know almost nothing about a topic and suddenly wanting to know everything.

Curiosity is the reason I travel, the reason I read the way I do, the reason I gravitate toward people who are different from me. It’s also what keeps me grounded. Because if you’re genuinely curious, you’re actually admitting you don’t have it all figured out. And there’s humility in that. I think curiosity leads to a fuller life because you’re not just optimizing the same set of experiences over and over again. You’re letting yourself be changed by new ones.

Discipline. This one has probably been with me the longest, even though I didn’t always have the word for it. I was a swimmer growing up. The kind of kid who got up before school for practice every single day. You learn something from that. You learn that repetition builds a kind of self-trust that motivation never could.

Now it looks different. Working out, eating well, writing. Following through on the things that matter to me, even when no one is watching. But the muscle is still the same.

When people hear discipline, I think they often hear rigidity. Or perfectionism. Or some joyless, optimized version of life where you never eat the cake and everything is tracked in an app. That’s not what it means to me.

To me, discipline is caring enough about something to protect it with your habits. It’s deciding in advance what matters so you don’t have to renegotiate with yourself every single day. The best version of discipline doesn’t feel restrictive, it feels like freedom.

Once you write down your values, you start seeing them everywhere.

You notice when they’re present. You notice when they’re missing. You start to understand why certain relationships feel grounding and others feel confusing. Why certain decisions feel aligned and others feel off, even if you can’t explain why.

And the funny thing is, your values aren’t universal. Even among people you love. Someone might value spontaneity where you value consistency. Someone might value independence where you value closeness. Someone might value achievement where you value peace.

Neither person is wrong. But if you don’t know whawt you value, you can end up building a life around things that only sound good in theory. So, that’s what this exercise gave me more than anything — language.

For the thing I knew but never really wrote down. For the patterns I kept repeating without realizing they were actually telling me something. And for the difference between what I admire and what actually feels like me.

Values are a filter, a mirror. A way of telling the truth to yourself.

I was six months pregnant with 47 tabs open, randomly saved Instagram videos, multiple screenshots from mom group texts, and a Google doc titled “baby stuff???”

That was my system. Multiple apps, scribbled notes, and anxiety.

I’ve talked before about the mental load. It’s not just doing the tasks. It’s holding everything in your head. The invisible admin that you can’t see from the outside. And with a baby (that you’re just trying to keep alive), it can feel completely and utterly overwhelming.

The pediatrician’s name. The newest sleep schedule. Which bottle she’s on now. Caregiving instructions that change every week. For most moms, the reality is that we’re responsible for maintaining the majority of this information — as much as we try to defy “social norms.” But somehow if their husband (assuming hetero relationship) knows the slightest detail about their own baby, he’s considered a hero.

It makes no sense. But I digress.

In our household, there needs to be shared ownership of this stuff. But the fragmentation of where it all lived was killing me. So I did what my brain does!

I built something.

It’s called the Mom Life Operating System (but hey, dads can use it too). It’s a Notion template that covers everything from pregnancy through the first few years — medical records, feeding, sleep, caregiving instructions, childcare logistics, all of it. One place that’s shareable with your partner. And the part that's genuinely changed how I use it: it's built to work with AI. Connects seamlessly with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini… literally whatever is your go to.

Let me show you what I mean.

Check it out

When we got home from the hospital after Sloane was born, I uploaded her discharge paperwork and it pulled all of her birth details into the system automatically. Because who knows where any of those papers will be when we actually need them.

I voice note questions for the pediatrician on the way to our appointment (just talking into my phone in the car) and it adds a beautifully formatted section to her Medical Information page with organized questions by topic.

I typed up raw notes of Sloane's latest schedule and it turned them into a clean one-pager I can share with anyone watching her. Will be particularly useful with my mother-in-law visiting this weekend.

When I'm reaching out to a new babysitter, it pulls together a quick text based on the latest info across all her pages (schedule, feeding, what she needs) so they know what's needed before they even walk in the door.

It’s also helped me brainstorm age-appropriate activities, put together nanny interview questions, and build a scoring rubric based on the interviews. Stuff I would’ve spent an hour googling and cobbling together.

My husband has full access. He can update it, reference it, contribute to it. Which means I’m not the single point of failure for every piece of information about our daughter! And that alone has been massive.

The relief isn’t only about the organization. It’s about the things that stop living rent-free in your head because you know they’re written down somewhere. It’s the 2am moments where you’re not lying there trying to remember if you scheduled the thing or wrote down the thing or told someone the thing. So many things!

It kinda lets you get your brain back.

As we get older and have more to manage (house, life admin, kids) it can feel like we’re managing our lives instead of actually living them. This is trying to fix that. Everything in one place, shareable with your partner, with AI doing the heavy lifting so you don’t have to.

If you want to try it, it’s here. And you don’t need to know Notion — there’s a 5-minute setup video that walks you through everything.

And for my fellow moms: I see you.

I like being with interesting people.

Not “interesting” in a performative, hyper-articulated way. Just people where the conversation actually lands.

You leave feeling a little more like yourself.
You laugh.
You build on each other’s ideas.
You notice something you didn’t before.

That’s the bar.

I started writing on Substack for a similar reason I seek out those conversations. I genuinely like writing. I like sharing what I’m thinking about and seeing if it resonates. It’s a creative outlet for one of my fascinations (I’ve been trying to retire the word “passion,” which has been so overused it’s lost it’s meaning). And it lets me evolve how I think in public.

What I’m going for is honest, thought-provoking writing that makes someone stop and think I’ve felt that too. Some posts are more essay. Some are more framework. But the realization I keep coming back to is that I’m not one thing.

I don’t want to be one-dimensional online when I’m not one-dimensional in real life. I don't want to write about one topic forever, because what makes me me is the overlap of all the things I'm curious about.

Of course, I’ve thought about growth. It’s fun to have something to push against, and see if what you’re putting out there is actually connecting with people.

But pretty quickly, you run into the Substack playbook:

Niche down.
Pick a lane.
Write the same type of thing over and over.
Optimize your subject lines.
Gate the “good stuff.”

And to be fair, it works.

There are entire ecosystems of newsletters about growing newsletters. People making real money teaching other people how to make money on Substack by writing about making money on Substack.

It’s a little circular. And I get the appeal. I really do.

I genuinely considered it. Do I go all in? Niche down aggressively, push content harder, optimize everything. But something about it felt off.

The whole reason Side Note exists is because I wanted a space that could hold all the things I’m thinking about — not just the most marketable one. Career and identity and motherhood and the in-between moments that don’t have a specific category. The range is the reason.

So I’m intentionally not niching down. And I’m not trying to monetize this right now. Not because I think there’s anything wrong with making money from writing. But because the second I start optimizing for growth, the writing changes. And the writing is the thing I actually care about.

I’d rather have a smaller audience that reads something real than a bigger one that clicks on something engineered to perform.

I started this because I like interesting conversations. The kind that leave you feeling more like it mattered. And that’s what I want this to be!

I’ve been catching myself doing it again.

That thing where I keep telling myself that if only we had THAT, then we would be set.

“If we only we had X amount of money, I wouldn’t stress.”

“If we buy the house, I’ll feel settled.”

It’s not always about money (although, typically it is). It’s any future version of life I can project onto and decide that’s the one where things finally click. Where it all feels easier, fuller, more comfortable.

Where I can stop thinking about what’s next.

It’s subtle how it all happens, too.

When you’re in it (and I mean, fully in it), the chasing doesn’t even feel like chasing. It feels reasonable. Even responsible. Of course you want more money, more friends, a bigger house, a better job. And of course you want to keep improving your life. Hell, everyone else is doing it too!

But somewhere along the way, the target you set starts shifting, and shifting, and shifting without you realizing it.

What once felt like “more than enough” or even a “dream life” suddenly becomes baseline. Gradually and methodically, we’ve just adapted.

We’re not actually chasing more. We’re chasing the feeling we assume will come with more. We claim it’s stability, a sense of calm, security. The sense that things are handled. That we’ll finally be able to stop thinking about it so much.

But we’re never going to find that through accumulation. Because the second we get closer, our definition changes. We’re not chasing “enough,” we’re chasing “what’s next.”

And then there’s the comparison.

You simply can’t measure your life against your own expectations when you have a constant stream of other people’s lives in your pocket. Social media has recalibrated what normal looks like. You’re comparing your day-to-day to someone else’s highs. People you haven’t seen in years. People you don’t even actually know, Their best moments and purchases. Without context or their tradeoffs. Put simply, without the full picture.

And even though we know that. We can’t help but let it alter our baseline.

This is the part that gets uncomfortable. Most of us want it to be different. The peace and the presence and the contentment. But we optimize for progression. We’re reallllly good at building for a “better future.” We’re just not that good at living inside the one we already have.

There are moments that feel like enough.

A slow, early weekend morning. No urgency or anywhere to be. A newborn asleep on your chest. The sound of espresso grinding while your partner makes you a cappuccino. The window is cracked open, birds in the background.

A moment so complete you couldn’t wish for anything better.

But these moments don’t scale, or compound, or signal anything to anyone. So instead of treating these as foundational moments of life, we treat them as fleeting.

The famous philosopher Lao Tzu famously said, “He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.” It sounds obvious and even too simple. Knowing is one thing, remembering is another. Enough isn’t something you hit once and then keep forever. It’s something you have to keep noticing.

So here’s what I’m trying, in ways that actually feel doable:

1 // A simple daily reset
My friends and I use a gratitude app where we post one photo and three things from the day. They’re usually small, almost inconsequential moments, but that’s the point. It actually forces you to notice what made the day feel full. And as a bonus, you stay connected to your friends in a very real, everyday way.

2 // Consumption audit
Take a look at what you’re consuming: books, shows, social, newsletters. What consistently leaves you feeling drained or not enough? Unsubscribe, mute, delete. Not everything needs access to your attention.

3 // Call it out when it happens
When you notice a moment that feels like enough, don’t just let it pass. Sit in it for a second. Say it out loud to your partner, your friends, even just to yourself.

I don’t think the goal is to stop wanting more. Because that’s not realistic. And honestly, it’s part of what makes life interesting.

But there’s a difference between wanting more and believing you don’t have enough.