August 2026

I'm writing this from a homely Jacobean-manor-turned-hotel in the West Country, covered in layers of green vines and circled by centenarian trees, on a rare weekend away. Everything is warm: the late afternoon sun, the mustard armchairs, the dark wooden panels along the walls. I'm three teas deep and have a few hours of quiet to think for the first time in many months. Over the summer my baby became a rambunctious toddler, barrelling around the house and narrating our lives in his own language. My family bought and moved into our first real home after crappy-rental-hopping for years. I've now been on the GitHub Next team for the better part of a year and feel settled. My husband and I both work full-time, so with a small child and a new house, one that is in fact a very old house, with broken doorknobs, peeling wallpaper, jammed windows, and rising damp that needs to be fixed, we acutely feel the lack of time these days. It's a stretch to meet everyone's basic needs and keep the dish…