2024 Highlights

👩‍💻 Career

2024 brought plenty of change, work-wise:

• In February I wrapped up my time on the product team at Netlify, and will forever treasure my experiences with so many lovely humans. Seriously.
• In March I started a role as Staff Product Manager on the Styles team at Webflow! This was one of those it’s-like-it-was-made-for-me roles, and I’ve had so much fun over the year collaborating with folks who are passionate about CSS, design, and above all, doing great things for our customers.
• We as a team shipped lots of updates for style variables and native support of CSS properties in the visual builder.
• I got to speak about design systems with my close colleague and friend Garrett Berg at Webflow Conf in SF.
• I was part of a core team that brought GSAP on board to power Webflow Interactions.
• In November I moved into people management 😱 as a Group Product Manager at Webflow. Styles is still under my purview, along with some other areas of the website design and build workflow. We’re in the team-building phase right now, and super excited for our new Styles PM starting early next year…

🧶 Making

Sewing

This year I really hit my stride with sewing! I got over my intimidation with sewing clothes and have just sort of gone for it. Claire from Online likes to say “it’s just paper” when it comes to journaling—“it’s just fabric” seemed to help me early on.

What also has helped has been embracing sewing as a weekend-only hobby; sewing is a little too involved to set up and get into on a work night for me. I have really been cherishing “Sew Days” with my mom and my aunt, where we hop on FaceTime most Sundays and just sew together! It’s been a really nice way to connect from afar, and I always love parallel play.

I’ve learned so many new skills in sewing this year, and the exhilaration I feel when I accomplish something new could power a small city.

Projects I sewed:

• Creative Maker Supply Case
• Carolyn PJ bottoms
• Topstitch Essential Shirt
• Quilted Kobo Pouch
• Two Eucalypt Tanks
• And I just started sewing a t-shirt!

Knitting

• This year was mostly about socks! I knitted my first pair of I’m So Basic socks, which took 10 months to complete, whew.
• I attended Flock Fiber Fest with my friend Shana, and have really enjoyed this crafty part of our friendship that’s developed in the past year.
• I wrapped up the year by learning how to knit colorwork.

Drawing & journaling

• I filled two Sterling Ink B6 gridded notebooks with memories: words, drawings, sticky photos, stickers, ephemera, and plenty of fountain pen ink. The journaling habit is actually sticking pretty well in the last couple years. I love the B6 size, as it’s the same size as a paperback: this is the story of my life!
• I learned how to write blackletter calligraphy—as a lefty.
• In sketchbooking, I’ve been drawing on location and also learning to embrace my proclivities for limited palettes and/or graphic shapes.

Web

• Speaking of journaling, I made Melanie in Analog to document how I use my journals and stationery supplies.
• Lit Tapes documents songs referenced in books.

🧙🏻‍♀️ Side Quests

• Made pasta from scratch with my husband, Rahul, for our one-year anniversary
• Traveled to Palm Springs, Quebec, Oahu, SF a few times, and to visit family
• Poked around tidepools
• Saw an AURORA in my own dang neighborhood
• Finally watched the Syttende Mai parade in Seattle
• Spotted alligators and turtles and coyotes and hawks and spawning salmon and fish that looked like Gil from Finding Nemo
• Enjoyed food festivals with friends: Ballard Seafood Fest and Bite of Seattle
• Went on a couple hikes—more next year, please
• Saw an artist speak at Pottery Northwest
• Puttered around on a boat with coworkers
• Watched a Seattle Reign game ⚽
• Watched Jaws with my legs dangling in a friend’s hot tub
• Hosted a “Crafternoon” for my birthday, because you can do whatever you want in your mid-30s and no one can judge you, those are the rules
• Participated in readathons and hosted one of my own!

🍿 Watching

Movies

I watched 63 movies, but didn’t rate many above 4 stars:

• Abigail (2024)
• Inside Out 2 (2024)
• Kiki's Delivery Service (1989), a forever favorite
• Memento (2000)
• Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant (2023)

TV

This was a big year for rewatching TV. Lately, Rahul and I have been working our way through Friends, which he had never seen. In first watches, I particularly enjoyed “Shrinking”, and “True Detective: Night Country” has lived rent-free in my head all year.

🎵 Listening

• My 2024 playlist includes quite a bit of Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan (like the rest of the planet), Local Natives, and Bombay Bicycle Club. The boygenius girlies also dominate my Tidal “top” songs.
• I saw 7 artists play live this year. My favorite shows were Future Islands and Billie Eilish.

📚 Reading

I finished 53 books, which makes this my least prolific reading year since 2015. That’s still a lot of reading but feels like a notable downshift. Books I rated at least 4.5 stars:

• “Evidence-Guided” by Itamar Gilad
• “Feel-Good Productivity” by Ali Abdaal
• “A House with Good Bones” by T. Kingfisher
• “Hidden Pictures” by Jason Rekulak
• “How Far the Light Reaches” by Sabrina Imbler ⭐️
• “Meditations for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman ⭐️
• “Then She Was Gone” by Lisa Jewell
• “Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers” by Jesse Q. Sutanto
• “The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches” by Sangu Mandanna

2025

The part of me that sobbed on the U.S. Election Day wishes that 2024 would never end. I have some words that I am carrying with me:

Theme: “curiosity”

I’ve given a lot of thought to my core values over the past year, and lately have felt convicted that “curiosity” is my cornerstone value. So much good comes from curiosity:

• Learning, making, personal achievement (hello, fellow Enneagram 3s)
• A reverence for life and the natural world
• Patience and kindness for others, informed by what they want and need
• Patience and kindness towards myself
• Bravery and experimentation
• Playfulness, joy, and fun!

“It’s a great day to do some good and have some fun.”

À la Dr. Derek Shepherd—and inspired by my former colleague and friend Eric Lawrence, hi Eric!—this is a mantra I’d like to start my day with, for a couple reasons:

1. Anxiety is a lifelong journey for me, and I’d like to not forget that life is a gift that is meant to be enjoyed. I get to do work every that is aligned to my core personal mission, that is fun!
2. The next 4 years are going to be tough for many of us. On the other hand, community care should be joyful! Let support networks be a party that everyone wants to join. 🎉

Happy New Year, let’s have some fun!