I will miss my friend Steph

Steph was relentless. The best kind of relentless. Relentless in a way that made sure I committed to going on a LessEverything trip to Costa Rica. While we were zip lining, I was trying to take a selfie while I was all geared up to send to my kids back home. Anna saw me trying to capture everything and offered to snap a picture for me, and the next thing I knew Steph jumped into the picture and gave me a big ol' smooch.

It's a great memory.

For about a year after the last LessConf, I would hop on a video call once a month for a book club with Matt Stauffer and Steve. My recommendations were always genre books. Steve hated most of these and wasn't shy about telling us when that was the case. We had a blast talking about a bunch of different books, but the best part was before we started diving into literature. The best part is where we'd catch up and share what was new with us.

After a couple of calls, I realized I needed to be more prepared for this part than the book conversation. Steve would not let bullshit stand unchallenged. If I said I had an idea, Steve wanted to know about it. And then know why I wasn't working on turning it into something that made money. I'd have all kinds of "reasons" why, and Steve would cut through all of them.

Last year, we talked about her transition to Steph. She was happy, and we talked for a long time about the process, but also just caught up like we did in our book club. We talked about work, our families, books we'd been reading. It was a wonderful call.

In a small bit of time she changed the trajectory of my life in ways, I could never have predicted before we met at LessConf in 2011. I'm going to miss her.