A few days before International Women’s Day, a colleague asked a timely ice-breaker question in one of our weekly standups.

I generally like to write about personal topics. But as I recently changed jobs, I wanted to take a step back and distill some of the key things I learned as a marketer on the Base team.

A question that stuck with me for days after the two times I’ve visited LA: should I move here?

A new Devocion opened in my neighborhood. It’s a gem in the midst of tall, sleek office buildings and generic grab-and-go spots that characterize Midtown East. It’s going to be the newest addition to my rotation of coffee shops that have an unlikely homey, cozy vibe in this vicinity.

I first started to read The Unbearable Lightness of Being in high school, at a time when I was starting to question my physical self, the nature of relationships, and whether a model existed for living that stretched beyond the typical “get a job, get married, have a couple of kids” framework.

I spent the final week of 2023 in Massachusetts, in a cozy home amid trees with my fiance’s parents, sister, and sister’s newborn. I thought I would spend this week buried in books. And while I read and wrote a fair amount, it didn’t come close to how much more “productive” I thought I would be.

I was lucky enough to attend Art Basel in 2023 for work. We set up a beautiful gallery filled with works by NFT artists, and in between ensuring the panel sessions were going well, I stood in front of the works rotating through the digital screens.

This year, big life events happened. My mom got sick. My best friend and my fiance’s sister had babies. This possibility of death and birth hit home one fundamental truth: that life as we know it can change at any moment.

I had fallen out of love for Istanbul the past few years. It had become synonymous with staying at my parents’ disordered house, witnessing the tensions, feeling too guilty to leave them in the already scarce time we had together, and too inconvenienced to bear the traffic to repeat experiences that I’d loved while living there. Listening to unsolicited opinions, feeling judgment, and accommodating schedules.