I struggle with commemorating accomplishments.

The hedonic treadmill of modernity makes it difficult for me to sit back, look at my current state of affairs, and think ”ah, yes, this is good, I have reached Accomplishment”. Every MRR milestone is the beginning of a new target; every promotion is the introduction of a new ladder. You buy a house and then you think about buying a larger house.

I am bad at this on a small scale: there are lots of little victories on a weekly basis that I don’t properly cherish. Inbox zero is the moment before a cluttered inbox, a new customer is a churn risk waiting to happen, and all that.

But my partner and I have made a deal with each other, which is to celebrate things we’re particularly proud of with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot.

Veuve is a very nice champagne. It is expensive, but not break-the-bank: at roughly $40 for a bottle, its cheaper (and more sweatpants-friendly) than two pairs of drinks out at a cocktail bar.

Here are the times that we’ve bought bottles of Veuve!

• 8/20/2019: We bought a house.
• 12/17/2019: We celebrated our first Christmas together as a couple.
• 7/1/2020: We worked together to rebuild Buttondown’s marketing presence, which doubled pageviews and conversions.
• 9/20/2020: "We celebrated our first successful week with Telly! (Also included: pizza and a viewing of The Awful Truth.)
• 12/24/2020: This bottle was popped for Christmas Eve in particular (we were trying to dry out for the past few days after a particularly boozy December, given the whole quarantine situation), but the real reason was to celebrate H's incredible heroics at work — compressing a nine-month website migration into a scant three weeks.
• 9/26/2021: "We got engaged. :)"
• 2/17/2022: We celebrated our last-ever night in our Seattle house. (Technically not our last night in Seattle — we spent that at a friend's place.) It felt extremely fitting to end our time in 819 NE 55th St the exact same way we started it: champagne, no furniture, and a large pizza.
• 12/13/2022: Haley celebrated a big raise and annual bonus; I celebrated making it past a particularly chaotic few weeks in Buttondown-land.
• 1/19/2023: Fresh off the heels of last month's big raise and annual bonus, Haley got promoted to Senior Director!