Vulnerable moment incoming: Today is my 35th birthday. I had been feeling weird and bad about it even before my layoff, which — spoiler alert — exacerbated all of my fears and anxieties. The last few months of 2025 were really, really hard. In the words of an early mentor (herself quoting Mary Chapin Carpenter), “Sometimes you’re the windsheild, and sometimes you’re the bug.” Last year was giving splat. But time marches on, and life moves forward whether or not you choose to do the same. So I’m choosing to use the day of my birth for a bit of a rebirth. I launched a website. My first blog post is up; in it, I write about the aforementioned fears and anxieties, and how I’ve been able to reframe them. Check out the link in my bio. I posted on LinkedIn, even though I find that website to have a threatening aura. Please clap. And I took some new professional photos, because I don’t look like the person in most of my old ones — probably because I’m not the person in my old ones. Anyway, check it out, and happy birthday to me!