With everything in the world being as it is right now, I’m not even tempted to apologize for how late this Skirts Awards post is. In fact, I'm reminded of a phrase that only rhymes in a Tennessee accent: “You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.” So please enjoy this list of things I loved (and loved to hate) in 2024.

Friends & Foes

Best BFF and drug dealer: Tyler (the drugs are Hershey's Eggs, the ones you can only get at Easter)

Best brother and Twitch emote artist: Adam, always

Best therapist, two years running: Ashley, even though she didn't compliment my brows this year

Best personal trainer and friendship bracelet maker: Grace, and not just because she kept her promise to never make me do a burpee (but omg, thank you for never making me do a burpee)

Best cult: 🦔 Skirts Cult 🦔

Best Idris Elba look-alike: the guy who works at the bagel shop by my gym (sheeeesh, bro)

Best boyfriend: listennnn, the Idris Elba guy is married, and I flunked the entire “are you ready for a relationship” test from my therapist so hard that we both fell off our chairs laughing

Home & Abroad

Best solo trip: taking myself to Charleston, SC, for a week to distract myself from the anniversary of my mom’s death and also to decide if I wanted to live there in the future (working on the blog post about this right now)

Best city for everyone trying to give you their number: Charleston, SC (?!)

Best new-to-me city I would, in fact, love to live in: Charleston, SC, babyyyy. It’s cute and walkable and has like a billion great restaurants and doesn't gloss over its own history. And yeah, the people there are obsessed with me, which doesn't hurt.

Best mini road trip: driving 250 miles to Knoxville, TN, for lunch with some of my dearest friends and then driving back the same day

Best city I’m currently living in: Cincinnati, OH

Best things about Cincinnati: a truly absurd number of cute coffee shops and bakeries, walkable downtowns in almost every suburb, that Idris Elba look-alike

Health & Wellness

Best article that changed how I view taking care of myself: This list of eight areas of self-care and how to practice them has been so valuable. I tend to have a very limited imagination for what constitutes self-care, but now, I use this list to help make sure I’m doing things for my physical body and for my environment and for my brain, etc. Working on a blog post about this, too, but in the meantime, I'm stealing the categories for this section of the Skirts Awards.

Best physical self-care investment: signing up for a gym membership and a personal trainer, both of which allowed me to finally make peace with exercise (spoiler alert: in 2025, I have two gym memberships and a personal trainer)

Best mental self-care investment: taking a UX design class, which sparked the realization that I can use caretaking and creativity to help people as my job 🤯

Best emotional self-care investment: healing and growing SO MUCH in therapy; I live for the sessions when Ashley tells me how proud she is (and same, I'm so proud)

Best environmental self-care investment: this pomegranate cedar room diffuser (pro tip: if you’re easily overwhelmed by smells like I am, limit the number of reeds you use—you're welcome)

Best financial self-care investment: therapy again, where we’re doing the very uncomfortable work of dealing with my emotional spending habits 😭

Best social self-care investment: online, the answer is definitely streaming because I've made so many new friends through this venture and reconnected with a bunch of friends from past lives; offline, the answer is "getting the heck out of the house every week and being open to new friendships” (gross!)

Best recreational self-care investment: deciding to clear out old screenshots in October, having a three-week mental breakdown over it, and getting heavily invested in Japanese stationery and Italian fountain pens and a community of planner nerds on YouTube

Best spiritual self-care investment: getting really intentional about the safe space I wanted to create for my Twitch community, so I can bring my whole-ass personality to stream (as someone who likes to talk passionately about deep things and big issues) in a way that encourages everyone else to show up with their whole-ass selves, too 💕 

Hobbies & Obsessions

Best planner to get you through the aforementioned Menty B: Hobonichi Cousin, which has plenty of room for journaling your angsty thoughts and planning your comeback in yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily spreads

Best pens: Sakura Pigma Micron (fineliner), Kaweco Sport (entry-level fountain pen), Leonardo x Stilo&Stile Momento Zero (fancy fountain pen), and Tombow Dual Brush Pen (in every color ever)

Best worst ink: Waterman Intense Black, which was such an intense light grey color that I actually considered having a second Menty B

Best other hobbies: reading (exceeded my yearly goal of 12 books and actually read 30!), learning French, curating hedgehog accounts on Instagram, and having a weekly solo date at Starbucks to do more reading

Entertainment

Best TV shows, which I will bully you into watching: Only Murders in the Building (which I am still calling "Murder Cuties") and Shrinking

Best movie watched in theaters: Dune: Part Two

Best new-to-me musical artist: Laufey (vocal jazz)

Best song with perfect lyrics for an AIM away message: “Wish You the Worst,” by Ryan Mack

Best books that I actually enjoyed: The Third Gilmore Girl (actually one of the best memoirs I've ever read) and Lessons in Chemistry (the book was so much better than the show)

Best YouTuber who made me laugh out loud: Caroline Winkler

Best YouTuber who also makes the best planner stickers: TheCoffeeMonsterzCo (to be fair, Helen also makes me laugh out loud)

Best YouTuber who shares stationery shit and is also a whole-ass vibe: Ammie Y’all (again with the belly laughs)

Best YouTuber who is now a friend because I love her content so much: OlaOh (everyone I like is very funny, okay)

Best Twitch collab partner: Chronogem, even if he did think I might someday play Minecraft, bless

Best sneaky link to my own Twitch channel: 🦔 Skirts Cult 🦔

---

Best previous editions of Skirts Awards: 2023, 2019, 2018, 2014, 2013, 2011