Careers, Motherhood, and Needlepoint

If you had told me a couple of years ago that I’d be working in tech and AI, raising a little girl, and running a needlepoint business on the side, I’m not sure I would have believed you.

And yet, here we are.

Recently, I started a new job in the tech/AI startup world. It’s exciting, fast-moving, and very different from spending an evening thinking about thread colors, canvas designs, and what I’m going to post on Tipsy Stitch Instagram. At the same time, I’m a mom. Which means no matter what happened during the workday, there’s another very important job waiting for me when I close my laptop.

And somewhere in between all of that lives The Tipsy Stitch.

I won’t pretend I’ve discovered the secret to “having it all.” Most days feel much more like constantly deciding which thing needs me most.

Some nights I have a great idea for Tipsy Stitch and absolutely no energy to execute it. Sometimes I’m answering emails after bedtime or squeezing business tasks into little pockets of the day. There are weeks when I feel incredibly productive and others when keeping up with the basics feels like enough.

Starting a new job has made that even more apparent. Working in tech and AI means learning constantly. Things move quickly. There’s always something new to understand, a problem to solve, or a skill to sharpen.

Then I switch gears and become Mom.

Then, when there’s time, I switch gears again and become the person behind Tipsy Stitch.

It’s a lot of hats.

The easiest thing would probably be to put the business on the back burner indefinitely. But I don’t want to.

I started The Tipsy Stitch during a completely different chapter of my life, and it became something that was mine creatively. I loved building the brand, designing things I actually wanted to stitch, connecting with other stitchers, and learning what it takes to turn an idea into a real business.

 

Now that I’m back in my career, I actually appreciate that creative outlet even more.

My day job challenges one side of my brain. Motherhood fills a completely different part of my life. And Tipsy Stitch gives me a place to make things simply because I think they’re fun, beautiful, funny, or worth stitching.

Becoming a mom changed my relationship with ambition more than I expected. I still care about my career. I still want to learn, grow, take on big challenges, and be good at what I do. I’m genuinely excited to be working in a space as interesting and rapidly evolving as AI.

But I’m also much more aware of my time.

Time with my daughter matters. Time with my family matters. And if I’m going to spend some of the remaining hours building a small business, I want it to be something I genuinely enjoy.

The Tipsy Stitch doesn’t have to become the biggest needlepoint company in the world for it to be worthwhile. It can grow slowly. It can change as my life changes. It can have really busy seasons and quieter ones. I’m learning that a business doesn’t always have to be moving at full speed to still be moving forward.

There’s also something a little ironic about spending my workdays around technology and AI and then coming home to a hobby that requires me to sit down with a painted canvas, a needle, and thread.

Maybe that’s exactly why I love it.

So much of life moves incredibly fast now. Needlepoint doesn’t.

You can’t really rush it. You make one stitch, then another, then another. Eventually, something beautiful exists that didn’t exist before.

And in this particular season of life, I think I need that.

I’m still learning what running The Tipsy Stitch looks like alongside a full-time career and motherhood.

It probably means being more intentional about what I say yes to. It means accepting that I won’t execute every idea the second I have it. It means occasionally choosing sleep over answering one more email. And it means reminding myself that slower growth is still growth.

But I’m excited about where all three parts of my life are headed.

I get to be a mom to my favorite little girl.

I get to build a career in an industry that is changing incredibly quickly.

And I get to keep building this funny little corner of the internet devoted to needlepoint, good design, and things worth stitching.

It may not always be perfectly balanced.

But right now, it feels very much like me.

And for this season, that’s enough.