December 24, 2024 • 44 mins
It's the annual "look back" episode, covering 2024 in review! Sarah and Laura share their 2024 highlights, lowlights, and do a detailed reviews of the goals they set one year ago (and shared on the show!). Find out how close they came to their stated goals (spoiler: nailed it in some areas, not so much in others), and stay tuned for next week when they share goals for 2025! Domains discussed included personal, work, relationships, and household.
In the Q&A, they answer a question about the role of house manager.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
and speaker.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
And I'm Sarah hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician,
writer and course creator. We are two working parents who
love our careers and our families.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about
how real women manage work, family, and time for fun.
From figuring out childcare to mapping out long.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Term career goals.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
We want you to get the most out of life.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
This episode is airing toward the end of December twenty
twenty four. This is going to be our annual year
and review episode. Sarah and I are going to be
reviewing twenty twenty four. It's been quite a year, of course, Sarah.
Where do you as.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Your review all this?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Like, what were you looking back on to think about
how twenty twenty four went for you?
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yeah? So, Actually, I mean the thing that helped me
the most was looking at our show notes from last
year as well as listening to our episode, which I
did on my run this morning. So that helped me
to kind of know what I set out to do
in terms of goals, and then I also went ahead
and went to my photos on my phone and scrolled
through to see the various travel and kind of highlights. Interestingly,
(01:29):
the Apple Photos app now pulls up trips and like
gives you these cute little vignette photos and like shows
where you've been. It's not perfect, like it did not
somehow know that I went to Philadelphia and that that
was a trip. I mean, that was like, that was legit.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
It was a trip.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Just because I saw Laura and had to record an
episode doesn't mean that it was you know, work or
something anyway. So it's not one hundred percent, but that
was a fun way to just kind of scroll through.
Oh yeah, that was really awesome in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah, certainly looking through photo highlights people put on Instagram obviously,
and look back through your recent posts there, just sort
of thinking back, looking at the calendar. I listen to
old episodes as well, look through our show notes for that.
But it's good to spend a little bit of time reflecting.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
On the end of the year, right.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
I Mean we can sometimes we obviously get excited about
setting our goals for the new year, but you know,
we want to take a little bit of time to
pause and reflect on what happened, what didn't happen, or
what went right what went wrong. I mean, that's the
whole thing with reflection.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Season, right, And when do you do that, Laura.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
I mean basically to do this episode.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Although you know, in the course of the year, I've
certainly as I had set goals and then check them
off or otherwise dealt with them, it was certainly in
the back of my mind that, oh, yes, this is
something I'm doing, And you know, you try to savor
things as they're happening too. I mean, some things that
happen in the course of the year aren't things that
are planned ahead of time, and they aren't goals that
you set for the year, and you want to enjoy
(03:00):
those as well as they're happening and leave space in
the course of the year for good things to happen.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Absolutely, I will say during Best Laid Plans Live was
the first time I formalized like kind of thinking through
the year and what had gone well and what had
gone poorly. The only difficulty is that it's in early November,
so the year just doesn't quite feel like finished yet.
But at the same time, I do think, just some
sort of formalized ritual where you're really either journaling or
(03:26):
thinking through it is just so helpful to me well.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
And the upside though of doing it in early November
as you reflect back on the year, is if there's
something you do still want to do, you have seven
weeks to do it. And a great many things can
in fact be accomplished in seven weeks, particularly if they
are or specific goals of like something you needed to
(03:50):
obtain or a short project you needed to do, or
anything like that. I mean, you know, it would be
quite doable to do many of those things before the
end of the year if it still mattered to you.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Yes, and we won't give any spoilers, but some of
us did complete things towards the end of the year.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yeah, exactly exactly. But that's we'll get there. We will
get there. So highlights, let's start with our highlights of
twenty twenty four. I mean, Sarah, what would you put
on a highlight reel of the year?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Yeah, there were a lot of highlights, and a lot
of them do kind of fit into the goals category
we're going to talk about. I mean, getting a little deep.
It can be really deeply satisfying to meet goals that
you've had for a long time, and thus I think
it makes sense that those would end up as highlights,
but kind of steering away from like the running and
the career accomplishment type stuff. I mean, we just had
(04:38):
some really wonderful, like family experiences, concerts. It was a
most amazing concert year with the kids as well. So
all of us went to Olivia Rodrigo together in August,
which was definitely a highlight and extremely memorable. Annabelle and
I saw Taylor Swift in October which was a highlight.
My husband and I saw Mitzki and Ben Fold. So
(04:58):
like just going to shows and like having that be
a regular, like fairly regular thing was awesome. Also just
celebrating things, so my parents had their fiftieth anniversary, my
husband had his fiftieth birthday. I felt like we did
our celebrations justice in twenty twenty four and that was wonderful.
We had one fantastic family trip and one okay family trip.
(05:22):
The wonderful one was in Montana going skiing, which I
mentioned on the last episode. That's one of our favorite
favorite things to do, so that was great. And then
the Seattle trip. The Olivia part was great, so that
was sort of a highlight. Lauren and I had a
lovely trip to Naples working and reflecting and best laid
plans live is always a highlight for me as well,
(05:42):
so that was tons of fun. And then I'll throw
in a random serendipitous one, which was that like three
hours before the event was scheduled to happen, I was like,
Simone Biles is here and we're gonna go see her,
and I took both girls like there was a surprise,
like they didn't really know we were going until right
before I took both girls and we we saw the
Goat Tour and it was super awesome. And just after
(06:04):
enjoying the Olympics, getting to see those gymnasts like actually
perform on a stage was it was awesome. So I
would say it belonged to my highlight reel.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yeah, yeah, well certainly if I'm thinking of experiences in
the course of the year, I mean going to Spain
over spring break with my two older boys. We had
a ton of fun there. I took Ruth to Paris
in May with a couple of friends of mine and
their daughters and we all saw Taylor Swift there, which
(06:33):
was I love Paris in springtime. I was standing to
watch the Taylor Swift concert was maybe less of a
highlight for reasons we can discuss later. But I saw
Olivia Rodrigo with Ruth as well, and that was excellent.
We had seats for that, So being able to sit
at age forty five is a bonus for a concert,
(06:54):
you know.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I had one like really good.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Nine mile run on the boardwalk this summer that I
would probably put on my highlight reel. I saw the
Northern Lights in Portland, Maine when I was there for
you know what was a work trip but was also
a fun trip as well, kind of like BLP Live.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
It's a combination of work and fun.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Just you know, like seeing some of the kid victories
over the course of the year and celebrating that with them.
I mean, in particular, we just had a really good
be vague here, but I have five children. I had
a really good parent teacher conference for one of my kids.
That has not always been our historic experience, but the
teacher was saying how wonderful this child was, and I
(07:33):
was excited about that. So yeah, there's been some real
wins in terms of that, there's also been some low lights.
I mean, Sarah, we don't want to be our all
social media polished up fague here. We like to keep
it at least somewhat real. What were some low lights
of the year for you?
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (07:54):
I added this category because I don't think we included
it last year. But it's not really fair to be
like I won this and this was awesome and like
nothing bad ever happens, because it does. That said, of course,
low lights have to be more vague because often they
involve other people, and no one wants their low lights
broadcast on a podcast, So we're gonna vague pod. But
just bear with us a little bit because I still
think it's important to include. So, first of all, multiple
(08:16):
people that are close to me are going through really crappy,
hard things, different things, and that's hard. It's hard to
know how to support people. It's just sad and things
are ongoing. So that's no Number one. Number two was
a low light slash maybe turned into a brighter kind
(08:37):
of silver lining, which is that we just had some
kid challenges. I will say, though, those we seem to
have got, like the humps were in twenty twenty four,
and they were real, and I think we're like making
a lot of headway on them. So in many ways,
I feel really good about having navigated that. And then finally,
you guys know, I you know, I still will never
(08:59):
really be able to give us specifics, but August and
September ward bad bad, bad bad, and just low point
mood wise, stress stuff going on. Didn't really get much
done during that time period, and then I felt like
it took me like a month to like recover from that.
And so yeah, this year was like kind of a
bit of a roller coaster where I feel like it
(09:21):
started hard, got better, then like a really low point,
and then like like ended on a high note for
the most part.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
For the most part. Yeah, yeah, well, I mean my
sort of low lights.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
I mean, it was kind of my year of chronic
pain that longtime listeners know. I had this back and
leg nerve pain episode in January that was really zero
fun whatsoever. I could not walk for about a week,
which is really a fun way to go through life.
(09:54):
But then, of course the recovery from that has been
long and fitfull and not straightforward. That the immediate nerve
pain stuff was calmed in about two weeks with steroids
and painkillers and stuff like that. But I was just
(10:15):
clearly like not in great shape for much of the
year with that, I mean, like unable to empty the
dishwasher without it being excessively painful. So something like going
to see Taylor Swift in Paris. You know, it was
wonderful to see Paris, but standing at a concert for
five hours was excruciating. And but you know, it's like
(10:38):
I had to, you know, live my life with that
because I didn't want to not live my life, or
something like going to Disney like five weeks after the
back pain episode. It was really a tough trip, and
so much about the trip was like could have been great.
I mean, our travel agent was wonderful. We had everything booked,
like the rides, the dinners at the places. The kids
(10:59):
were not perfectly well behaved. We'd thought it would be
great because we'd gone when Alex was the age, Henri
is and so, and you know, that had been a
great trip.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
But I don't know if it's like having one more
kid or it was like the weather.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
It was rainy a big chunk of the time, so
that was miserable. And then I was in a lot
of pain walking around the parks for you know, twelve
hours a day. So that was you know, stuff like
that was pretty low point, even though we had some
fun moments on that trip too. But I did manage
(11:32):
to run a half marathon in October.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
I have.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Like it just is a slow process. I do think
my back is doing better. I can empty the dishwasher now,
which is I don't know that I want to be
emptying the dishwasher, but I can at least do it,
and you know.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
So we'll see. Stay tuned on that.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Cautiously optimistic, but yeah, not a fun experience. Would not
want to wish that on anyone.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Sounds like you're definitely ending the year in a better
place with it than you started.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Yeah, yeah, I'd like to think so, and not through
anything that I could pinpoint of what it was.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
So that's I wish I could, because.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Then I would have done it earlier or would know
to do it again, you know.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
But well, life sometimes you just have to be patient.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
All right, Well, I'm wishing you the least pain containing
year possible in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
All right, We're going to take a quick ad break
and then we will be back to talk. About how
some of our goals played out.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Well, we are back.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
This is our twenty twenty four year in review episode,
so we talked about some of our highlights and our
low lights. But one of the things we always do
is we set our goals for the upcoming year, and
then we need to report back on how it went.
So using last year's goals episode as a guide, we're
going to talk through some of the categories. So, Sarah,
why don't we start with your personal goals and what
(13:14):
you managed to pull off?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Oh my god, I had a lot of these. I'm
gonna not delve deeply into all of them, but we
will start with running. I wanted to make it a
I wrote train with intent to BQ, continue to work
with coach, and I'm reading for my actual show notes
for last year. Would also like a new half marathon
and five kPr. Well, yay, I did all of that,
(13:36):
like all of it, five kPr, half marathon PR in
February of twenty twenty four. I did qualify for the
Boston Marathon running Bay Shore in May of twenty twenty four,
and I worked with the coach to do that. So
it was like, honestly, I feel very lucky I mentioned
last year or something like or I'll get injured and
none of it will happen, and I have to say, like,
this is I'm jinxing myself again. But like the longest
(13:58):
stretch of injury free running I may have had ever
and I don't know. I can't take any credit. I
have not been strength training, which I'll get to in
just a second. But I do think the shoe tech
is a lot better, and I think I'm better off
running not on hills, and I live in Florida, so
it's better than my old North Carolina running that was
all over the place. So yeah, super super happy with
(14:20):
my running year. I did have a goal to strength
train twice a week. I mean I did that for
like probably fifteen weeks out of the fifty two maybe,
so I would say no. I wanted to go to
a yoga class in person to try it out, and
I went once and I recognized it was nice, but
just like not efficient enough for my lifestyle, so not
(14:42):
something I wanted to continue. But that's okay, I would
say check, because my goal was.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
To do it once.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
I wanted to read every day and record the pages
read and then also challenge myself sometimes with like harder
nonfiction books. I did not do that at all. I mean,
I just read what it seemed good. I could read
some more academic like nonfiction, like there were a couple,
and I definitely read some literary fiction. I read pretty
(15:09):
steadily until I had all that stress in August and September,
and then I just fell off a cliff completely and
then I haven't really gotten back on yet, I guess.
But I did read forty books, so it's not like
I didn't read. And I do feel like I found
a method that I really like for recording the pages
I read, which is very simple, and I just like
(15:29):
put it on a monthly calendar, and I did it
for part of the year, so I wouldn't say I
met the goal that I did all year, but I
don't know. I kind of figured out the ritual that
works for me for that so partial win. I wanted
to update my wardrobe, did not do that at all.
Fail I wanted to get a many petty every month,
but I did note that it might not fit into
(15:51):
my budget, and same with massages, and that is correct.
They do not fit into my budget with the amount
of running shoes and racing shoes that I purchased, so
you know, I got manny petties, probably more than other years,
but it wasn't like a regular ritual. Actually, haven't gotten
a massage in many, many months. And I finally last
things where I wanted to use screens thoughtfully, way too
(16:13):
vague of a goal I should know better than that.
I will say I did okay with this overall. I
mean there were times of stress when I did kind
of just allow myself to fall into a black hole
specifically of Reddit use, which I've talked about. But I
was able to climb out of that black hole. And
I think I spent more of the year like not
doing any scrolling than doing it, so I would call
that a win. And then finally I wanted to keep
(16:34):
an experience journal and I did it for five months
and then was like, this is too repetitive, and I
stopped because I just record so much on my daily
pages of my home Innichi that I'm like, why am
I writing the same thing? So I do like journaling,
but I don't need like two places to put that stuff.
And I will say my word of the year was experience.
And even though I couldn't even come up with a word.
When we were revealing our words of the year at
(16:55):
Best Laid Plans Live, I was like, what did I pick?
I do feel like I like went all in on
experiences in twenty twenty four. There were very few experiences
that I or at least like things to go to
that I would have said no to. I pretty much
said yes to whatever. And I think I look at
my list, because I made a list of like twenty
four things and it's mostly filled out, Like I went
to movies, I went to music, I hosted people, I
(17:18):
tried some recipes. I have a cent. I had a
cent on my list, which is that I identified a
perfume that I like. So that's kind of fun anyway. Yeah,
so those were my personal goals. I'm sorry that was
a lot. I just talked for like four straight minutes.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Well, I just have a question about the I mean,
because you know, we do try to be sort of
careful as we are setting goals, and so you would
have known that you were spending on things that would
make the massages less likely with the allowance.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
So I'm curious why you then set that as a goal.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
I mean, I know what my allowance is. And I
guess I thought it would fit. I think I I mean,
this is like so ridiculous, but I honestly think my
biggest line item was I think I about like four
pairs of like close to three hundred dollars shoes. Oh
my god, I just like admitted that we're not talking
about like prod of heels. We're talking about like Nike
(18:08):
Alpha Fly and A six Meta speeds and yeah, because
they really do help you race faster and train faster,
and they add up. They added up to like a
lot of massages. So at the end of the day,
my budget didn't work, and I didn't We're really good
about like not overdrawing our allowances, so it just didn't fit.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Okay, But yeah, it was just curious because.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
I thought you knew you were going to be spending
money on shoes, so I think I knew how much.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
You didn't know how much.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Okay, But you're right. It actually wouldn't been really smart
since some of these do involve personal spending. I should
have like made a little budget in Google sheets or
Excel or something to be like what actually fits here.
Maybe I'll do that this year.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah, Okay, all right, good, Well A lot of experiences
for twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
So as my personal goals, I said I wanted to
listen to all the works of Bach and twenty twenty four,
and I have indeed done that. I ended the project
in late November. I listened to all one thousand and
eighty works in the original BWV category, which I think
(19:14):
is bach Vik Verschneititis or something. I'm not going to
ruin the German here, but there were works that are lost,
so there are more than one thousand and eighty.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
There's some of the thousand and eighty turn out to
not to be him.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
I mean we're talking sort of like nineteen hundred level
historical stuff.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
But it is the main catalog of his work.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
And I listened to all of it at a rate
of about thirty minutes a day over the course of
the year. It was an amazing project. I'm really glad
I did it. I so enjoyed it becoming more familiar
with my favorite composer's works. I certainly knew some of
the big ones, but I got to re listen to those.
I got to listen to the works that came before
(19:56):
the big works that I can hear him trying out themes.
I can picture like this cantata just being composed in
this church in Leipzig and just being debuted on a
Sunday morning, and then the next Sunday there's going to
be a different one. And a lot of this actually
happened in seventeen twenty four, a lot of the kantatas.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
That was a big Kantata year.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
So it was sort of funny to I wish I
had known that ahead of time, I would have maybe
matched up Sundays.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
But oh, well I didn't, And it's I forget now.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Is the seventeen twenty four was that before they did
the ten day shift with time?
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Oh gosh, no, that's gonna be at this question, I
feel like, yeah, you're the Well, there was.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Sometime in the seventeen hundreds where they had like moved
forward like ten days because or backwards, I forget what
it was that time had gotten away from the solar.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Maybe they didn't have leap years, and they got like.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Yeah, because they weren't doing the right combination of leap years,
and so it had to be reworked anyway. So it
probably didn't match up exactly with the Sundays. That but
that said, that was totally unrelated.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
It was fun. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
I also got to hear a few concerts of box
work in the course of the year. I am singing
in a box concert coming up later this month, and
I've been very carefully working through all the choral works
in that piece and it's been really great.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
So I'm excited about that. Yay hit that one.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
I had another goal of continuing regular strength training plus
do backstretches and exercises daily. And this is kind of
the randomness of life because I had been doing back
exercises and stretches for months before I had my back episode,
so who knows, Like it doesn't necessarily stop anything, but
I've continued to do regular strength training for another year.
(21:47):
I work out with a trainer once a week, and
I now am generally doing at least one more session
a week of repeating the exercises my trainer gave me,
maybe not quite as intense as he would have done,
but I at least do most of them.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
So yeah, yes, I did both of those.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Awesome. Well, it's been fun to see how much fun
that you have had with bach, Like who knew but
I love it for you. It was great.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Yeah, it was great. It was a great project, all right.
So how about work?
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Yeah's work, which, by the way, fun fact, I forgot
that category when I made the notes for last year
and you were like, what about work anyway? Okay, So
I wanted to work on office efficiency and like the
patient checkout for progress process process, thank you, and I
kind of did in that. I went a step further
(22:39):
worked with my front desk people, and now I don't
do anything. I just put in my instructions and count
on them to do everything. And so far there have
been no catastrophes, so that's it's wonderful. I have streamlined
the end of my visits quite a bit from the
old days of like printing everything out and running around,
and that's wonderful. I had Friday lunches on my goals
list because we were still kind of establishing the habit
(22:59):
of going out together with work colleagues, not out, but
to the cafetia in the hospital on Fridays, and definitely
that was like a regular thing. Wasn't every Friday, but
it was certainly most Fridays. At least someone sent a
tax saying lunch and then we would go I did
not plan any work social events. That was a fun
idea did not happen. And then for my kind of
(23:21):
creative work, I wanted to set up a new seasonal
planning series that I called Planning by Season. And yes,
I did that in twenty twenty four. It was really
really fun actually, in some ways like my favorite program
to do, because I actually get another participants really really
well because you see them all year long and you
get to be like, Okay, how is that work goal
going that you talked about two months ago? So that's
(23:42):
been a lot of fun and I would call that
a success. I wanted to reach out to podcasts that
do interviews where i'd be able to contribute. I may
have pitched like two podcasts in twenty twenty four. That's
not nearly enough. But it's hard. And I even mentioned
it my thing. It's like, h you can get rejected
or it's not even responded to. That's the most common,
by the way. I'm like, come on, just throw me up.
(24:04):
Oh we're so busy, thank you so much, blah blah blah. No,
So maybe I just need to get a thicker skin
and work on that. And I wanted to ruthlessly block
some non clinical days to do my own planning. I
fit in my planning. I did my seasonal planning. I
really need it, like I but it was more like, Okay,
(24:24):
I'm going to do it on Thursday on these two hours,
rather than having like a whole expansive block of time.
And I just I did a lot of work in
twenty twenty four, like a lot of creative work, a
lot of content, a lot of writing, a lot of stuff.
We'll talk about it and yeah, oh, I guess wait,
can I are we talking about like what we did? Yeah,
yess we are.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
But I didn't set it as a goalar That's why it's.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Like, oh no, but that's okay.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
I mean it happened, so I ended up I think
I actually did set it as a goal in our
midyear check in because I was like, I know, I've
talked about this on the podcast, but I wanted to
write a book proposal, and I wanted to write a
best laid plans book essentially, And it did end up happening.
I wrote my proposal, it got accepted. I am still
in the process of finalizing my contract, but I mean,
I'm planning on going forward with it, and I have
(25:10):
working with an editor already finished two thirds of the book,
I mean draft draft, so we're not like done done here,
and the tentative plan is it should be released in
early twenty twenty six and you'll hear more details on that.
But that is a really really big work thing that
came up, and therefore my plans to have lots of
blank space for rumination just didn't work out.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
But it's okay.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Well, exactly when great opportunities come, it's it's good to
seize them. So that was a definite highlight for you
because this is something you'd wanted to do for a
long time.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Yes, many many years. It was on my one hundred
dreams list. It's been kind of percolating around. It's been
one of those goals that I've wanted to move forward
but then kind of stalled out on many times. So
it's been incredibly exciting to see it actually come to fruition.
So yeah, I guess that was a very low key
little announcement, but that's not the official announcement because again
have to finalize some stuff. That's the pre announcement, So yay, yay, No.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
I love that I love. I can't wait to read
the book. Very excited, very excited about that. Yeah, my well,
I also had book related goals for my year. I
said I wanted to finish my proposal, get a contract,
and mostly write.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
A new book.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
And I did my new agent and I sold, We
got a it's great to put the announcement as a
two book deal at auction.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
In April, so that was exciting.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
I've written five out of eight chapters of my book,
which will also be out in early twenty twenty six,
so I guess I'll say that I've mostly written at
this point.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
So yay. I had put that I wanted to speak.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Somewhere internationally that did not wind up happening, and I,
you know, put this that I turned down actually a
few things, because it's not that can I go speak
to some group somewhere, is that I wanted to do
it as part of my commercial corporate speaking business. I
still think I will wind up doing this fairly soon,
(27:09):
but a lot of international speaking is also being done virtually,
like I will speak to the entire global group of
corporation because they can do that via zoom or by
broadcasting from their American headquarters.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
So it's an interesting time.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
I like to travel internationally, and so I thought that,
you know, this will be a way to do it,
and I will. But it's interesting to see how the
speaking business is sort of evolving over time. So we'll
keep stay tuned on that one. I wanted to keep
writing my sonnets. I guess I put this in my
work category, even though nobody is paying me for my poetry,
(27:51):
so maybe this is more of a personal one. But
I was writing in twenty twenty three. I also wrote
a sonnet a week at a pace of two lines
a day, so that comes out to fourteen lines a week,
yam pentameter with a certain rhyming scheme. I enjoyed doing
that in twenty twenty three, so I re upped for
twenty twenty four. I wrote fifty two more sonnets by
the end of the year. I guess when we're recording this,
(28:12):
I've probably written forty nine or something. But yeah, it's
been a lot of fun, and some are terrible, the
vast majority are middling, And then in the course of
a year of writing them, I get somewhere between five
and ten that I really like. But if you keep
cranking out five to ten poems you really like every year.
In a couple of years you will have a full
collection of poems that you really like. So hopefully I'll
(28:35):
do something with that eventually.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Oh, another book of poetry.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Another Well again, I doubt anyone's going.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
To commercially publish my experimental poetry. But the good news
of having built my platform writing about other things is
I can simply distribute it to a large variety of people,
possibly get more readers for my poetry than the vast
majority poetry books. But anyway, so the last one was
(29:04):
vander Hacks that I was saying, I wanted to start
my newsletter through substack. This was the cool thing all
the kids were doing in twenty twenty three is starting
a substack newsletter, And I figure, what why not? So
I started a daily short tip. It's come to a
system where I have three free posts a week and
(29:27):
two behind the paywall. I have about four hundred paying
subscribers right now, a little over four thousand total subscribers now.
So I've built that up and posted every day, and
you probably we will keep doing that over the course
of the ear It's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
I have enjoyed lots of them. I'm a paying subscriber.
I just renewed, by the way, excellent. They're great. I
mean I get inspiration from them, and I know you
really well, so I highly recommend vander Hacks excellent.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Well, we're going to take one more quick ad break
and then we'll be back with the last part of
our year in review. Well, we are back with our
twenty twenty four year interview episode. Something of an annual
(30:18):
tradition around here. In seven years of podcasting, you wind
up with a fair number of annual traditions, kind of
like going to see the Nutcracker or something like that. So, Sarah,
let's talk about your relationship goals and what happened there.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
I think I met a lot of them, but I
was not terribly specific about the amount of time I
wanted to spend, so it's a little bit hard to
gauge success. But I did want to carve out more
one and one time with each family member, and I
feel like I did with Annabelle, I think I did
with Genevieve Cameron somewhat. I mean, the kids' activities sometimes
(30:52):
do lend themselves to having one on one time because
as we split them up and two of them go
to gymnastics and one of them goes to soccer. Somebody's
getting to spend that time without one kid. So I
feel like maybe more last year than prior years, but
still could be a little bit more. I wanted to
do at least one date night a month with Josh.
I think we did hit that milestone. I wanted to
do two couples trips with him, and I did admit
(31:13):
they might both be marathons, and that did end up happening,
but turns out you can have lots of quality time
even when you're preparing to run a lot of miles.
And then I wanted to see my family in Philadelphia
at least three times, but after the episode aired, I
remember taking a last minute pivot and instead of going
to visit them in January because our January was getting
(31:33):
very full, I ended up going in late December. So
that was kind of like my I only visited in
the two times in twenty twenty four, but that last
trip was supposed to be January, so kind of counts.
Came in November, came in July, and then had come
at the end of twenty twenty three. Yeah, that was it.
From my relationship goals, they were kind of minimal compared
to the others, but I think I did pretty well.
(31:56):
Would give myself a B plus on the one on
one time.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Well, I'm always glad that you are resolving to come
to Philadelphia because that means I get to see So
we definitely saw Sarah several times in the course of
her coming to Philadelphia, which is always great. Yeah, So
my relationship goals for the years, I wanted to prioritize
teen time, I mean in older kids in general, and
putting that into my schedule. And I'd say that, yes,
(32:20):
I got a lot of good time with my older kids.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Obviously.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
I took the older two boys to Spain, as mentioned
in a highlight in Paris with Ruth also a highlight.
Great to do those things. I took Jasper to New
York City in June. That was one of his Christmas presents.
Michael took Sam diving on a trip that they went
for a couple of days in the spring, so they
got some time together. We did a lot of Starbucks runs,
(32:44):
a lot of driving kids around. I mean, I do
look for opportunities to sort of linger over dinner when
we are having family dinner or something close to family dinner.
Often the little boys run off at some point. They
are very difficult to get to stay and the older
kids are pretty good dinner companions at this point, so
we often sit around and chatting, and I enjoy that.
(33:06):
I like to think my relationships with them are reasonably strong,
and I do not take that.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
For granted at all. I'm very glad for that.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Another goal was to celebrate my twentieth anniversary with Michael.
We celebrated our twentieth wedding anniversary in September, so what
we actually did is we took a trip together to
Bar Harbor, Maine and Acadia in October, sort of peak
leaf season. We ran the half marathon together then. It
was pretty good trip. I mean, the race itself was
(33:39):
not my favorite. I do not believe I will be
setting any running goals for twenty twenty five, but we did,
in fact take that trip to celebrate our anniversary, so
I guess I would count that as having done that.
I also wanted to just do more regular friends stuff,
which I guess is a pretty vague goal. Also that
(34:00):
I could travel to see people, and I think I
did pretty well on this most weeks I do something
friend related. I definitely saw some folks in person that
I enjoyed that I don't live near. I was glad
to see a handful of folks in the course of
the year and various trips. So yeah, I would say
that was a positive. I'd give myself a fairly good
(34:23):
grade on that one. And some of that was just
like things come up, like other people suggest trips, and
it was one reason to leave some space as you're
planning the year. Like a friend from college suggested the
Paris trip, and you know, then I got to spend
time with her, and you know, also spend time with
Ruth while I was there.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Some of our.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Listeners had to get together in New York City in
April that I went to and really enjoyed seeing them
and going to the Botanical Garden there and going out
to eat and all that good stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
You know.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
I got together with some friends and work friends in Portland,
Maine and October and enjoyed that, you know.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
So yeah, it was a good year.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
We did our Philadelphia meetup that year. This year, didn't
we In July twenty twenty three, Oh no, we just
went on a date together.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Yeah, yes, okay, we enjoyed that as well. We went
to a relationships one.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
No. I had a flashback to the photo that we
took all together, and I'm like, wasn't that from a
big party? You know, the party was a year before,
but that was the same restaurant. Yes, I like relationship highlight.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Yeah, we go to this Mexican place. And I'm always
up for going to this Mexican place with friends. So
glad we were able to do that too. That was
a definite highlight this summer of seeing you and Josh
and getting to do that. All right, Sarah, household goals.
Let's hear what you have there.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
I forced in there against your will, but that's okay,
all right. I wanted to establish a family reading routine. Nope,
didn't at all. I'm sad about that. Actually, that was
such a great goal. I may have to try it again.
I wanted to do more formal family meetings, and I
would say we did get like into a better root
of really reviewing what's coming in the week most Sundays
(36:03):
because I'd complete the board, the board on our the
bullet the like white board in our hallway and it's
right near the dinner table, and it's just like it
was a natural thing. So it kind of evolved that
we would talk about what was coming. And I feel
like we got it to a functional place, so that's great.
I wanted to complete our estate planning, and I had
that on my list for a million years and we
did finish it. Yay, okay, to be fair, like, I
(36:26):
think there's some other like to do items associated with
the planning, but I was reassured by our lawyer. He
said if we did nothing else from here on out,
we would still have our kids dealt with. We would
have avoid probate. Like everything's good, Like everything else is bonus.
So I will call it a check, a big win,
a struggle. This was really on my list for a
lot of years, but I found it emotionally fraught. I
(36:48):
found it really vague, and I'm just glad we were
able to make it happen. And you know, I thought
I had resolved to organize my home, but that's just
every single other year. I must have given myself a
break in twenty twenty four from that.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
So good because it's not yeah, that's I mean, not
setting goals is one way to achieve them, and I
set no household goals, and no goals are easy to hit.
Although I will say I've been enjoying my house this year.
You know, a lot of the projects we did over
the past few years have finished come to fruition. It's
(37:21):
been fun to see, like the yard, you know, we
decorated for Christmas this year. We got professional decorating with
the lights out in the yard. It has been enjoyable
seeing that I now have five Christmas trees in the house,
only two big ones. The others are smaller, but they
are all decorated, so I get into things like that.
(37:43):
It wasn't a goal, but it's been a highlight of
the year real quickly. Another highlight for us has been
our Patreon community. We have really enjoyed getting to know
the people who are part of that. We have great
discussions over on our site. If you're looking for sort
of an alternative to social media. We often have long
(38:05):
discussion threads there. We have monthly meetups, our annual goal setting,
our goal setting workshops. We've had a book club this year.
We've done a lot of things talking about like meal
planning or organization. Really enjoyed that. We will be posting
our curriculum for the upcoming year soon. But two things
(38:26):
that Sarah's indulging me that we will be doing is
in lieu.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Of sort of a regular book club.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
We were going to do a book club discussion of
one hundred and sixty eight Hours in May because that
will be the fifteen year anniversary of one hundred and
sixty eight Hours coming out. And we'll also do a
book club discussion of I Know How She Does It
in June because that will be the tenth anniversary of
that book coming out.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
So if you.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Happen to have read either of those books or we'd
like to and want to discuss that with me and Sarah,
we would welcome that. And of course, you know, our
December Annual Goals Workshop is a great way to test
out Sarah's course offerings.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Yes, it's been really fun. I do feel like our
Patreon has like gelled a lot this year. Like a
lot of people, I've just seen them frequently comment. I'm
sure there's some people who comment less, but then they
join in the conversation when they feel like it. Our
threads have been a lot of times instigated by people
being like, hey can you crowdsource I need gift ideas
for an eight year old boy, and then we put
(39:27):
it up there and we get so many awesome ideas
in this group, and yet it really does lack the
addictive qualities of social media, at least for me. So
if that is something you're thinking about, like, I don't
want to be doing as much of that. What could
I do instead? That feels more enriching, feels positive. This
is a great place, So we would love to have you. Yeah,
and I'm very excited to finalize our curriculum.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
I love the word parculum. All right.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
The question the question all right, we and this one
I think does come from someone who was in Patreon
so amazing. This person asked, what exactly is a house
manager and what's the difference between that and a nanny?
How would you go about finding one?
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Well, so this is if you think about what is
required to run a household, there are often a lot
of things like grocery shopping or organizing or taking returns back,
or meeting contractors, getting bids on things like especially if
(40:31):
you're doing any sort of home renovation projects, or you
have appliances that break, or you know, anything along those lines.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Are just general.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Upkeep of a space, and it takes a lot of time.
It takes a lot of work. And when people have
full time childcare, sometimes because that person is home during
the day, they may be able to handle some of it,
especially if you have kids who are in school for
any amount of hours. So a lot of times what
happens is like your youngest kid goes to preschool for
(41:06):
three days a week for four hours a day, and
so it's like you still need full time childcare because
that does not cover your work hours. But the person
has some time then that they could do various things,
and so often what people wind up doing is having
their nanny take on more of this house manager type role.
But if you are aging out of the time when
(41:27):
you even need childcare, along those lines, you could consider
hiring someone for a certain number of hours a week
to deal with these sorts of things. So maybe the
person works let's say Wednesdays and Fridays, and so you
always have them arranged to have contractors or deliveries or
anything like that happen on Wednesdays and Fridays, and then
they can do various things like resetting the house or
(41:49):
you know, noticing what you're out of and say, oh,
well the light bulb up there is out, I will
go fix it. Things like that that you would do
if you were focused on your home full time, but
because you are not focused on your home full time.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
You won't.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
And I mean this is the sort of thing that like,
I mean, people who are like stay at home moms
wind up doing and then when they feel that they
are not, like people like, well, your kids are in school,
like what are you actually doing? Like, there's still a
lot of work to be done, especially you know, for
people who have bigger families or bigger houses even you know,
or things like that.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
So yeah, that's what they would do. I would.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
As for finding people, I mean, I think it's just
a lot of networking, like anything else, asking other people.
You know, maybe somebody else has somebody who's working two
days a week and they'd like to work more, and
you know, then you could have them for two days
a week as well, or you know, you could post
on the various places like care dot com or anything
along those lines.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Probably a regular job board too, maybe like indeed or yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Oh yeah cool, certainly. Or there are agencies, I mean,
there's household staffing agencies. If you wanted to go that
route as well, same as you know with finding a nanny.
Obviously you can post somewhere like care dot com. You
can go through a large number of agencies that will
help you find people, and so it'd be very similar.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
I think one thing you mentioned that I didn't really
know about house managers with that you could have a
part time one. So that's really interesting, like the idea
that like, you know, you don't eat childcare anymore, but
you do, you have enough of those loose ends things
and maybe they just always do your grocery shopping as
well or something like that. But two days a week
or ten hours a week or something like that might
be achievable for a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yeah, yeah, and can certainly make life a little bit
more calm when your light bulbs aren't all out so well,
I guess this is we're even thinking Love of the Week,
but kind of a lot. This has been all Love
of the Week again, our year and their VEO home.
We love twenty twenty four mostly.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
Yes, we love twenty twenty four. We love our Patreon members,
we love our listeners. Thank you so much for anyone
who's followed our journey from the twenty seventeen beginning of
this podcast, but also welcome anyone who joined us new
in twenty twenty four. We're grateful for all of you.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Yeah, we can see that our listenership has gone up
a bit in twenty twenty four, so we're excited about
that to welcome new peace people to the community.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
So yeah, you are our love of the week.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Thanks for joining us, and we will be back next
week with more on making work and life fit together.
Speaker 3 (44:11):
Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the
shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
And you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please
join us next time for more on making work and
life work together.
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
and speaker.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
And I'm Sarah hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician,
writer and course creator. We are two working parents who
love our careers and our families.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about
how real women manage work, family, and time for fun.
From figuring out childcare to mapping out long.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Term career goals.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
We want you to get the most out of life.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
This episode is airing toward the end of December twenty
twenty four. This is going to be our annual year
and review episode. Sarah and I are going to be
reviewing twenty twenty four. It's been quite a year, of course, Sarah.
Where do you as.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Your review all this?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Like, what were you looking back on to think about
how twenty twenty four went for you?
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yeah? So, Actually, I mean the thing that helped me
the most was looking at our show notes from last
year as well as listening to our episode, which I
did on my run this morning. So that helped me
to kind of know what I set out to do
in terms of goals, and then I also went ahead
and went to my photos on my phone and scrolled
through to see the various travel and kind of highlights. Interestingly,
(01:29):
the Apple Photos app now pulls up trips and like
gives you these cute little vignette photos and like shows
where you've been. It's not perfect, like it did not
somehow know that I went to Philadelphia and that that
was a trip. I mean, that was like, that was legit.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
It was a trip.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Just because I saw Laura and had to record an
episode doesn't mean that it was you know, work or
something anyway. So it's not one hundred percent, but that
was a fun way to just kind of scroll through.
Oh yeah, that was really awesome in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah, certainly looking through photo highlights people put on Instagram obviously,
and look back through your recent posts there, just sort
of thinking back, looking at the calendar. I listen to
old episodes as well, look through our show notes for that.
But it's good to spend a little bit of time reflecting.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
On the end of the year, right.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
I Mean we can sometimes we obviously get excited about
setting our goals for the new year, but you know,
we want to take a little bit of time to
pause and reflect on what happened, what didn't happen, or
what went right what went wrong. I mean, that's the
whole thing with reflection.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Season, right, And when do you do that, Laura.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
I mean basically to do this episode.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Although you know, in the course of the year, I've
certainly as I had set goals and then check them
off or otherwise dealt with them, it was certainly in
the back of my mind that, oh, yes, this is
something I'm doing, And you know, you try to savor
things as they're happening too. I mean, some things that
happen in the course of the year aren't things that
are planned ahead of time, and they aren't goals that
you set for the year, and you want to enjoy
(03:00):
those as well as they're happening and leave space in
the course of the year for good things to happen.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Absolutely, I will say during Best Laid Plans Live was
the first time I formalized like kind of thinking through
the year and what had gone well and what had
gone poorly. The only difficulty is that it's in early November,
so the year just doesn't quite feel like finished yet.
But at the same time, I do think, just some
sort of formalized ritual where you're really either journaling or
(03:26):
thinking through it is just so helpful to me well.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
And the upside though of doing it in early November
as you reflect back on the year, is if there's
something you do still want to do, you have seven
weeks to do it. And a great many things can
in fact be accomplished in seven weeks, particularly if they
are or specific goals of like something you needed to
(03:50):
obtain or a short project you needed to do, or
anything like that. I mean, you know, it would be
quite doable to do many of those things before the
end of the year if it still mattered to you.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Yes, and we won't give any spoilers, but some of
us did complete things towards the end of the year.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yeah, exactly exactly. But that's we'll get there. We will
get there. So highlights, let's start with our highlights of
twenty twenty four. I mean, Sarah, what would you put
on a highlight reel of the year?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Yeah, there were a lot of highlights, and a lot
of them do kind of fit into the goals category
we're going to talk about. I mean, getting a little deep.
It can be really deeply satisfying to meet goals that
you've had for a long time, and thus I think
it makes sense that those would end up as highlights,
but kind of steering away from like the running and
the career accomplishment type stuff. I mean, we just had
(04:38):
some really wonderful, like family experiences, concerts. It was a
most amazing concert year with the kids as well. So
all of us went to Olivia Rodrigo together in August,
which was definitely a highlight and extremely memorable. Annabelle and
I saw Taylor Swift in October which was a highlight.
My husband and I saw Mitzki and Ben Fold. So
(04:58):
like just going to shows and like having that be
a regular, like fairly regular thing was awesome. Also just
celebrating things, so my parents had their fiftieth anniversary, my
husband had his fiftieth birthday. I felt like we did
our celebrations justice in twenty twenty four and that was wonderful.
We had one fantastic family trip and one okay family trip.
(05:22):
The wonderful one was in Montana going skiing, which I
mentioned on the last episode. That's one of our favorite
favorite things to do, so that was great. And then
the Seattle trip. The Olivia part was great, so that
was sort of a highlight. Lauren and I had a
lovely trip to Naples working and reflecting and best laid
plans live is always a highlight for me as well,
(05:42):
so that was tons of fun. And then I'll throw
in a random serendipitous one, which was that like three
hours before the event was scheduled to happen, I was like,
Simone Biles is here and we're gonna go see her,
and I took both girls like there was a surprise,
like they didn't really know we were going until right
before I took both girls and we we saw the
Goat Tour and it was super awesome. And just after
(06:04):
enjoying the Olympics, getting to see those gymnasts like actually
perform on a stage was it was awesome. So I
would say it belonged to my highlight reel.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yeah, yeah, well certainly if I'm thinking of experiences in
the course of the year, I mean going to Spain
over spring break with my two older boys. We had
a ton of fun there. I took Ruth to Paris
in May with a couple of friends of mine and
their daughters and we all saw Taylor Swift there, which
(06:33):
was I love Paris in springtime. I was standing to
watch the Taylor Swift concert was maybe less of a
highlight for reasons we can discuss later. But I saw
Olivia Rodrigo with Ruth as well, and that was excellent.
We had seats for that, So being able to sit
at age forty five is a bonus for a concert,
(06:54):
you know.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I had one like really good.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Nine mile run on the boardwalk this summer that I
would probably put on my highlight reel. I saw the
Northern Lights in Portland, Maine when I was there for
you know what was a work trip but was also
a fun trip as well, kind of like BLP Live.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
It's a combination of work and fun.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Just you know, like seeing some of the kid victories
over the course of the year and celebrating that with them.
I mean, in particular, we just had a really good
be vague here, but I have five children. I had
a really good parent teacher conference for one of my kids.
That has not always been our historic experience, but the
teacher was saying how wonderful this child was, and I
(07:33):
was excited about that. So yeah, there's been some real
wins in terms of that, there's also been some low lights.
I mean, Sarah, we don't want to be our all
social media polished up fague here. We like to keep
it at least somewhat real. What were some low lights
of the year for you?
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (07:54):
I added this category because I don't think we included
it last year. But it's not really fair to be
like I won this and this was awesome and like
nothing bad ever happens, because it does. That said, of course,
low lights have to be more vague because often they
involve other people, and no one wants their low lights
broadcast on a podcast, So we're gonna vague pod. But
just bear with us a little bit because I still
think it's important to include. So, first of all, multiple
(08:16):
people that are close to me are going through really crappy,
hard things, different things, and that's hard. It's hard to
know how to support people. It's just sad and things
are ongoing. So that's no Number one. Number two was
a low light slash maybe turned into a brighter kind
(08:37):
of silver lining, which is that we just had some
kid challenges. I will say, though, those we seem to
have got, like the humps were in twenty twenty four,
and they were real, and I think we're like making
a lot of headway on them. So in many ways,
I feel really good about having navigated that. And then finally,
you guys know, I you know, I still will never
(08:59):
really be able to give us specifics, but August and
September ward bad bad, bad bad, and just low point
mood wise, stress stuff going on. Didn't really get much
done during that time period, and then I felt like
it took me like a month to like recover from that.
And so yeah, this year was like kind of a
bit of a roller coaster where I feel like it
(09:21):
started hard, got better, then like a really low point,
and then like like ended on a high note for
the most part.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
For the most part. Yeah, yeah, well, I mean my
sort of low lights.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
I mean, it was kind of my year of chronic
pain that longtime listeners know. I had this back and
leg nerve pain episode in January that was really zero
fun whatsoever. I could not walk for about a week,
which is really a fun way to go through life.
(09:54):
But then, of course the recovery from that has been
long and fitfull and not straightforward. That the immediate nerve
pain stuff was calmed in about two weeks with steroids
and painkillers and stuff like that. But I was just
(10:15):
clearly like not in great shape for much of the
year with that, I mean, like unable to empty the
dishwasher without it being excessively painful. So something like going
to see Taylor Swift in Paris. You know, it was
wonderful to see Paris, but standing at a concert for
five hours was excruciating. And but you know, it's like
(10:38):
I had to, you know, live my life with that
because I didn't want to not live my life, or
something like going to Disney like five weeks after the
back pain episode. It was really a tough trip, and
so much about the trip was like could have been great.
I mean, our travel agent was wonderful. We had everything booked,
like the rides, the dinners at the places. The kids
(10:59):
were not perfectly well behaved. We'd thought it would be
great because we'd gone when Alex was the age, Henri
is and so, and you know, that had been a
great trip.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
But I don't know if it's like having one more
kid or it was like the weather.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
It was rainy a big chunk of the time, so
that was miserable. And then I was in a lot
of pain walking around the parks for you know, twelve
hours a day. So that was you know, stuff like
that was pretty low point, even though we had some
fun moments on that trip too. But I did manage
(11:32):
to run a half marathon in October.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
I have.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Like it just is a slow process. I do think
my back is doing better. I can empty the dishwasher now,
which is I don't know that I want to be
emptying the dishwasher, but I can at least do it,
and you know.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
So we'll see. Stay tuned on that.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Cautiously optimistic, but yeah, not a fun experience. Would not
want to wish that on anyone.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Sounds like you're definitely ending the year in a better
place with it than you started.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Yeah, yeah, I'd like to think so, and not through
anything that I could pinpoint of what it was.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
So that's I wish I could, because.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Then I would have done it earlier or would know
to do it again, you know.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
But well, life sometimes you just have to be patient.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
All right, Well, I'm wishing you the least pain containing
year possible in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
All right, We're going to take a quick ad break
and then we will be back to talk. About how
some of our goals played out.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Well, we are back.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
This is our twenty twenty four year in review episode,
so we talked about some of our highlights and our
low lights. But one of the things we always do
is we set our goals for the upcoming year, and
then we need to report back on how it went.
So using last year's goals episode as a guide, we're
going to talk through some of the categories. So, Sarah,
why don't we start with your personal goals and what
(13:14):
you managed to pull off?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Oh my god, I had a lot of these. I'm
gonna not delve deeply into all of them, but we
will start with running. I wanted to make it a
I wrote train with intent to BQ, continue to work
with coach, and I'm reading for my actual show notes
for last year. Would also like a new half marathon
and five kPr. Well, yay, I did all of that,
(13:36):
like all of it, five kPr, half marathon PR in
February of twenty twenty four. I did qualify for the
Boston Marathon running Bay Shore in May of twenty twenty four,
and I worked with the coach to do that. So
it was like, honestly, I feel very lucky I mentioned
last year or something like or I'll get injured and
none of it will happen, and I have to say, like,
this is I'm jinxing myself again. But like the longest
(13:58):
stretch of injury free running I may have had ever
and I don't know. I can't take any credit. I
have not been strength training, which I'll get to in
just a second. But I do think the shoe tech
is a lot better, and I think I'm better off
running not on hills, and I live in Florida, so
it's better than my old North Carolina running that was
all over the place. So yeah, super super happy with
(14:20):
my running year. I did have a goal to strength
train twice a week. I mean I did that for
like probably fifteen weeks out of the fifty two maybe,
so I would say no. I wanted to go to
a yoga class in person to try it out, and
I went once and I recognized it was nice, but
just like not efficient enough for my lifestyle, so not
(14:42):
something I wanted to continue. But that's okay, I would
say check, because my goal was.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
To do it once.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
I wanted to read every day and record the pages
read and then also challenge myself sometimes with like harder
nonfiction books. I did not do that at all. I mean,
I just read what it seemed good. I could read
some more academic like nonfiction, like there were a couple,
and I definitely read some literary fiction. I read pretty
(15:09):
steadily until I had all that stress in August and September,
and then I just fell off a cliff completely and
then I haven't really gotten back on yet, I guess.
But I did read forty books, so it's not like
I didn't read. And I do feel like I found
a method that I really like for recording the pages
I read, which is very simple, and I just like
(15:29):
put it on a monthly calendar, and I did it
for part of the year, so I wouldn't say I
met the goal that I did all year, but I
don't know. I kind of figured out the ritual that
works for me for that so partial win. I wanted
to update my wardrobe, did not do that at all.
Fail I wanted to get a many petty every month,
but I did note that it might not fit into
(15:51):
my budget, and same with massages, and that is correct.
They do not fit into my budget with the amount
of running shoes and racing shoes that I purchased, so
you know, I got manny petties, probably more than other years,
but it wasn't like a regular ritual. Actually, haven't gotten
a massage in many, many months. And I finally last
things where I wanted to use screens thoughtfully, way too
(16:13):
vague of a goal I should know better than that.
I will say I did okay with this overall. I
mean there were times of stress when I did kind
of just allow myself to fall into a black hole
specifically of Reddit use, which I've talked about. But I
was able to climb out of that black hole. And
I think I spent more of the year like not
doing any scrolling than doing it, so I would call
that a win. And then finally I wanted to keep
(16:34):
an experience journal and I did it for five months
and then was like, this is too repetitive, and I
stopped because I just record so much on my daily
pages of my home Innichi that I'm like, why am
I writing the same thing? So I do like journaling,
but I don't need like two places to put that stuff.
And I will say my word of the year was experience.
And even though I couldn't even come up with a word.
When we were revealing our words of the year at
(16:55):
Best Laid Plans Live, I was like, what did I pick?
I do feel like I like went all in on
experiences in twenty twenty four. There were very few experiences
that I or at least like things to go to
that I would have said no to. I pretty much
said yes to whatever. And I think I look at
my list, because I made a list of like twenty
four things and it's mostly filled out, Like I went
to movies, I went to music, I hosted people, I
(17:18):
tried some recipes. I have a cent. I had a
cent on my list, which is that I identified a
perfume that I like. So that's kind of fun anyway. Yeah,
so those were my personal goals. I'm sorry that was
a lot. I just talked for like four straight minutes.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Well, I just have a question about the I mean,
because you know, we do try to be sort of
careful as we are setting goals, and so you would
have known that you were spending on things that would
make the massages less likely with the allowance.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
So I'm curious why you then set that as a goal.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
I mean, I know what my allowance is. And I
guess I thought it would fit. I think I I mean,
this is like so ridiculous, but I honestly think my
biggest line item was I think I about like four
pairs of like close to three hundred dollars shoes. Oh
my god, I just like admitted that we're not talking
about like prod of heels. We're talking about like Nike
(18:08):
Alpha Fly and A six Meta speeds and yeah, because
they really do help you race faster and train faster,
and they add up. They added up to like a
lot of massages. So at the end of the day,
my budget didn't work, and I didn't We're really good
about like not overdrawing our allowances, so it just didn't fit.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Okay, But yeah, it was just curious because.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
I thought you knew you were going to be spending
money on shoes, so I think I knew how much.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
You didn't know how much.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Okay, But you're right. It actually wouldn't been really smart
since some of these do involve personal spending. I should
have like made a little budget in Google sheets or
Excel or something to be like what actually fits here.
Maybe I'll do that this year.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah, Okay, all right, good, Well A lot of experiences
for twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
So as my personal goals, I said I wanted to
listen to all the works of Bach and twenty twenty four,
and I have indeed done that. I ended the project
in late November. I listened to all one thousand and
eighty works in the original BWV category, which I think
(19:14):
is bach Vik Verschneititis or something. I'm not going to
ruin the German here, but there were works that are lost,
so there are more than one thousand and eighty.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
There's some of the thousand and eighty turn out to
not to be him.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
I mean we're talking sort of like nineteen hundred level
historical stuff.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
But it is the main catalog of his work.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
And I listened to all of it at a rate
of about thirty minutes a day over the course of
the year. It was an amazing project. I'm really glad
I did it. I so enjoyed it becoming more familiar
with my favorite composer's works. I certainly knew some of
the big ones, but I got to re listen to those.
I got to listen to the works that came before
(19:56):
the big works that I can hear him trying out themes.
I can picture like this cantata just being composed in
this church in Leipzig and just being debuted on a
Sunday morning, and then the next Sunday there's going to
be a different one. And a lot of this actually
happened in seventeen twenty four, a lot of the kantatas.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
That was a big Kantata year.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
So it was sort of funny to I wish I
had known that ahead of time, I would have maybe
matched up Sundays.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
But oh, well I didn't, And it's I forget now.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Is the seventeen twenty four was that before they did
the ten day shift with time?
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Oh gosh, no, that's gonna be at this question, I
feel like, yeah, you're the Well, there was.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Sometime in the seventeen hundreds where they had like moved
forward like ten days because or backwards, I forget what
it was that time had gotten away from the solar.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Maybe they didn't have leap years, and they got like.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Yeah, because they weren't doing the right combination of leap years,
and so it had to be reworked anyway. So it
probably didn't match up exactly with the Sundays. That but
that said, that was totally unrelated.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
It was fun. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
I also got to hear a few concerts of box
work in the course of the year. I am singing
in a box concert coming up later this month, and
I've been very carefully working through all the choral works
in that piece and it's been really great.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
So I'm excited about that. Yay hit that one.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
I had another goal of continuing regular strength training plus
do backstretches and exercises daily. And this is kind of
the randomness of life because I had been doing back
exercises and stretches for months before I had my back episode,
so who knows, Like it doesn't necessarily stop anything, but
I've continued to do regular strength training for another year.
(21:47):
I work out with a trainer once a week, and
I now am generally doing at least one more session
a week of repeating the exercises my trainer gave me,
maybe not quite as intense as he would have done,
but I at least do most of them.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
So yeah, yes, I did both of those.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Awesome. Well, it's been fun to see how much fun
that you have had with bach, Like who knew but
I love it for you. It was great.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Yeah, it was great. It was a great project, all right.
So how about work?
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Yeah's work, which, by the way, fun fact, I forgot
that category when I made the notes for last year
and you were like, what about work anyway? Okay, So
I wanted to work on office efficiency and like the
patient checkout for progress process process, thank you, and I
kind of did in that. I went a step further
(22:39):
worked with my front desk people, and now I don't
do anything. I just put in my instructions and count
on them to do everything. And so far there have
been no catastrophes, so that's it's wonderful. I have streamlined
the end of my visits quite a bit from the
old days of like printing everything out and running around,
and that's wonderful. I had Friday lunches on my goals
list because we were still kind of establishing the habit
(22:59):
of going out together with work colleagues, not out, but
to the cafetia in the hospital on Fridays, and definitely
that was like a regular thing. Wasn't every Friday, but
it was certainly most Fridays. At least someone sent a
tax saying lunch and then we would go I did
not plan any work social events. That was a fun
idea did not happen. And then for my kind of
(23:21):
creative work, I wanted to set up a new seasonal
planning series that I called Planning by Season. And yes,
I did that in twenty twenty four. It was really
really fun actually, in some ways like my favorite program
to do, because I actually get another participants really really
well because you see them all year long and you
get to be like, Okay, how is that work goal
going that you talked about two months ago? So that's
(23:42):
been a lot of fun and I would call that
a success. I wanted to reach out to podcasts that
do interviews where i'd be able to contribute. I may
have pitched like two podcasts in twenty twenty four. That's
not nearly enough. But it's hard. And I even mentioned
it my thing. It's like, h you can get rejected
or it's not even responded to. That's the most common,
by the way. I'm like, come on, just throw me up.
(24:04):
Oh we're so busy, thank you so much, blah blah blah. No,
So maybe I just need to get a thicker skin
and work on that. And I wanted to ruthlessly block
some non clinical days to do my own planning. I
fit in my planning. I did my seasonal planning. I
really need it, like I but it was more like, Okay,
(24:24):
I'm going to do it on Thursday on these two hours,
rather than having like a whole expansive block of time.
And I just I did a lot of work in
twenty twenty four, like a lot of creative work, a
lot of content, a lot of writing, a lot of stuff.
We'll talk about it and yeah, oh, I guess wait,
can I are we talking about like what we did? Yeah,
yess we are.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
But I didn't set it as a goalar That's why it's.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Like, oh no, but that's okay.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
I mean it happened, so I ended up I think
I actually did set it as a goal in our
midyear check in because I was like, I know, I've
talked about this on the podcast, but I wanted to
write a book proposal, and I wanted to write a
best laid plans book essentially, And it did end up happening.
I wrote my proposal, it got accepted. I am still
in the process of finalizing my contract, but I mean,
I'm planning on going forward with it, and I have
(25:10):
working with an editor already finished two thirds of the book,
I mean draft draft, so we're not like done done here,
and the tentative plan is it should be released in
early twenty twenty six and you'll hear more details on that.
But that is a really really big work thing that
came up, and therefore my plans to have lots of
blank space for rumination just didn't work out.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
But it's okay.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Well, exactly when great opportunities come, it's it's good to
seize them. So that was a definite highlight for you
because this is something you'd wanted to do for a
long time.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Yes, many many years. It was on my one hundred
dreams list. It's been kind of percolating around. It's been
one of those goals that I've wanted to move forward
but then kind of stalled out on many times. So
it's been incredibly exciting to see it actually come to fruition.
So yeah, I guess that was a very low key
little announcement, but that's not the official announcement because again
have to finalize some stuff. That's the pre announcement, So yay, yay, No.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
I love that I love. I can't wait to read
the book. Very excited, very excited about that. Yeah, my well,
I also had book related goals for my year. I
said I wanted to finish my proposal, get a contract,
and mostly write.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
A new book.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
And I did my new agent and I sold, We
got a it's great to put the announcement as a
two book deal at auction.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
In April, so that was exciting.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
I've written five out of eight chapters of my book,
which will also be out in early twenty twenty six,
so I guess I'll say that I've mostly written at
this point.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
So yay. I had put that I wanted to speak.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Somewhere internationally that did not wind up happening, and I,
you know, put this that I turned down actually a
few things, because it's not that can I go speak
to some group somewhere, is that I wanted to do
it as part of my commercial corporate speaking business. I
still think I will wind up doing this fairly soon,
(27:09):
but a lot of international speaking is also being done virtually,
like I will speak to the entire global group of
corporation because they can do that via zoom or by
broadcasting from their American headquarters.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
So it's an interesting time.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
I like to travel internationally, and so I thought that,
you know, this will be a way to do it,
and I will. But it's interesting to see how the
speaking business is sort of evolving over time. So we'll
keep stay tuned on that one. I wanted to keep
writing my sonnets. I guess I put this in my
work category, even though nobody is paying me for my poetry,
(27:51):
so maybe this is more of a personal one. But
I was writing in twenty twenty three. I also wrote
a sonnet a week at a pace of two lines
a day, so that comes out to fourteen lines a week,
yam pentameter with a certain rhyming scheme. I enjoyed doing
that in twenty twenty three, so I re upped for
twenty twenty four. I wrote fifty two more sonnets by
the end of the year. I guess when we're recording this,
(28:12):
I've probably written forty nine or something. But yeah, it's
been a lot of fun, and some are terrible, the
vast majority are middling, And then in the course of
a year of writing them, I get somewhere between five
and ten that I really like. But if you keep
cranking out five to ten poems you really like every year.
In a couple of years you will have a full
collection of poems that you really like. So hopefully I'll
(28:35):
do something with that eventually.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Oh, another book of poetry.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Another Well again, I doubt anyone's going.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
To commercially publish my experimental poetry. But the good news
of having built my platform writing about other things is
I can simply distribute it to a large variety of people,
possibly get more readers for my poetry than the vast
majority poetry books. But anyway, so the last one was
(29:04):
vander Hacks that I was saying, I wanted to start
my newsletter through substack. This was the cool thing all
the kids were doing in twenty twenty three is starting
a substack newsletter, And I figure, what why not? So
I started a daily short tip. It's come to a
system where I have three free posts a week and
(29:27):
two behind the paywall. I have about four hundred paying
subscribers right now, a little over four thousand total subscribers now.
So I've built that up and posted every day, and
you probably we will keep doing that over the course
of the ear It's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
I have enjoyed lots of them. I'm a paying subscriber.
I just renewed, by the way, excellent. They're great. I
mean I get inspiration from them, and I know you
really well, so I highly recommend vander Hacks excellent.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Well, we're going to take one more quick ad break
and then we'll be back with the last part of
our year in review. Well, we are back with our
twenty twenty four year interview episode. Something of an annual
(30:18):
tradition around here. In seven years of podcasting, you wind
up with a fair number of annual traditions, kind of
like going to see the Nutcracker or something like that. So, Sarah,
let's talk about your relationship goals and what happened there.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
I think I met a lot of them, but I
was not terribly specific about the amount of time I
wanted to spend, so it's a little bit hard to
gauge success. But I did want to carve out more
one and one time with each family member, and I
feel like I did with Annabelle, I think I did
with Genevieve Cameron somewhat. I mean, the kids' activities sometimes
(30:52):
do lend themselves to having one on one time because
as we split them up and two of them go
to gymnastics and one of them goes to soccer. Somebody's
getting to spend that time without one kid. So I
feel like maybe more last year than prior years, but
still could be a little bit more. I wanted to
do at least one date night a month with Josh.
I think we did hit that milestone. I wanted to
do two couples trips with him, and I did admit
(31:13):
they might both be marathons, and that did end up happening,
but turns out you can have lots of quality time
even when you're preparing to run a lot of miles.
And then I wanted to see my family in Philadelphia
at least three times, but after the episode aired, I
remember taking a last minute pivot and instead of going
to visit them in January because our January was getting
(31:33):
very full, I ended up going in late December. So
that was kind of like my I only visited in
the two times in twenty twenty four, but that last
trip was supposed to be January, so kind of counts.
Came in November, came in July, and then had come
at the end of twenty twenty three. Yeah, that was it.
From my relationship goals, they were kind of minimal compared
to the others, but I think I did pretty well.
(31:56):
Would give myself a B plus on the one on
one time.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Well, I'm always glad that you are resolving to come
to Philadelphia because that means I get to see So
we definitely saw Sarah several times in the course of
her coming to Philadelphia, which is always great. Yeah, So
my relationship goals for the years, I wanted to prioritize
teen time, I mean in older kids in general, and
putting that into my schedule. And I'd say that, yes,
(32:20):
I got a lot of good time with my older kids.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Obviously.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
I took the older two boys to Spain, as mentioned
in a highlight in Paris with Ruth also a highlight.
Great to do those things. I took Jasper to New
York City in June. That was one of his Christmas presents.
Michael took Sam diving on a trip that they went
for a couple of days in the spring, so they
got some time together. We did a lot of Starbucks runs,
(32:44):
a lot of driving kids around. I mean, I do
look for opportunities to sort of linger over dinner when
we are having family dinner or something close to family dinner.
Often the little boys run off at some point. They
are very difficult to get to stay and the older
kids are pretty good dinner companions at this point, so
we often sit around and chatting, and I enjoy that.
(33:06):
I like to think my relationships with them are reasonably strong,
and I do not take that.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
For granted at all. I'm very glad for that.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Another goal was to celebrate my twentieth anniversary with Michael.
We celebrated our twentieth wedding anniversary in September, so what
we actually did is we took a trip together to
Bar Harbor, Maine and Acadia in October, sort of peak
leaf season. We ran the half marathon together then. It
was pretty good trip. I mean, the race itself was
(33:39):
not my favorite. I do not believe I will be
setting any running goals for twenty twenty five, but we did,
in fact take that trip to celebrate our anniversary, so
I guess I would count that as having done that.
I also wanted to just do more regular friends stuff,
which I guess is a pretty vague goal. Also that
(34:00):
I could travel to see people, and I think I
did pretty well on this most weeks I do something
friend related. I definitely saw some folks in person that
I enjoyed that I don't live near. I was glad
to see a handful of folks in the course of
the year and various trips. So yeah, I would say
that was a positive. I'd give myself a fairly good
(34:23):
grade on that one. And some of that was just
like things come up, like other people suggest trips, and
it was one reason to leave some space as you're
planning the year. Like a friend from college suggested the
Paris trip, and you know, then I got to spend
time with her, and you know, also spend time with
Ruth while I was there.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Some of our.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Listeners had to get together in New York City in
April that I went to and really enjoyed seeing them
and going to the Botanical Garden there and going out
to eat and all that good stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
You know.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
I got together with some friends and work friends in Portland,
Maine and October and enjoyed that, you know.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
So yeah, it was a good year.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
We did our Philadelphia meetup that year. This year, didn't
we In July twenty twenty three, Oh no, we just
went on a date together.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Yeah, yes, okay, we enjoyed that as well. We went
to a relationships one.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
No. I had a flashback to the photo that we
took all together, and I'm like, wasn't that from a
big party? You know, the party was a year before,
but that was the same restaurant. Yes, I like relationship highlight.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Yeah, we go to this Mexican place. And I'm always
up for going to this Mexican place with friends. So
glad we were able to do that too. That was
a definite highlight this summer of seeing you and Josh
and getting to do that. All right, Sarah, household goals.
Let's hear what you have there.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
I forced in there against your will, but that's okay,
all right. I wanted to establish a family reading routine. Nope,
didn't at all. I'm sad about that. Actually, that was
such a great goal. I may have to try it again.
I wanted to do more formal family meetings, and I
would say we did get like into a better root
of really reviewing what's coming in the week most Sundays
(36:03):
because I'd complete the board, the board on our the
bullet the like white board in our hallway and it's
right near the dinner table, and it's just like it
was a natural thing. So it kind of evolved that
we would talk about what was coming. And I feel
like we got it to a functional place, so that's great.
I wanted to complete our estate planning, and I had
that on my list for a million years and we
did finish it. Yay, okay, to be fair, like, I
(36:26):
think there's some other like to do items associated with
the planning, but I was reassured by our lawyer. He
said if we did nothing else from here on out,
we would still have our kids dealt with. We would
have avoid probate. Like everything's good, Like everything else is bonus.
So I will call it a check, a big win,
a struggle. This was really on my list for a
lot of years, but I found it emotionally fraught. I
(36:48):
found it really vague, and I'm just glad we were
able to make it happen. And you know, I thought
I had resolved to organize my home, but that's just
every single other year. I must have given myself a
break in twenty twenty four from that.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
So good because it's not yeah, that's I mean, not
setting goals is one way to achieve them, and I
set no household goals, and no goals are easy to hit.
Although I will say I've been enjoying my house this year.
You know, a lot of the projects we did over
the past few years have finished come to fruition. It's
(37:21):
been fun to see, like the yard, you know, we
decorated for Christmas this year. We got professional decorating with
the lights out in the yard. It has been enjoyable
seeing that I now have five Christmas trees in the house,
only two big ones. The others are smaller, but they
are all decorated, so I get into things like that.
(37:43):
It wasn't a goal, but it's been a highlight of
the year real quickly. Another highlight for us has been
our Patreon community. We have really enjoyed getting to know
the people who are part of that. We have great
discussions over on our site. If you're looking for sort
of an alternative to social media. We often have long
(38:05):
discussion threads there. We have monthly meetups, our annual goal setting,
our goal setting workshops. We've had a book club this year.
We've done a lot of things talking about like meal
planning or organization. Really enjoyed that. We will be posting
our curriculum for the upcoming year soon. But two things
(38:26):
that Sarah's indulging me that we will be doing is
in lieu.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Of sort of a regular book club.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
We were going to do a book club discussion of
one hundred and sixty eight Hours in May because that
will be the fifteen year anniversary of one hundred and
sixty eight Hours coming out. And we'll also do a
book club discussion of I Know How She Does It
in June because that will be the tenth anniversary of
that book coming out.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
So if you.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Happen to have read either of those books or we'd
like to and want to discuss that with me and Sarah,
we would welcome that. And of course, you know, our
December Annual Goals Workshop is a great way to test
out Sarah's course offerings.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Yes, it's been really fun. I do feel like our
Patreon has like gelled a lot this year. Like a
lot of people, I've just seen them frequently comment. I'm
sure there's some people who comment less, but then they
join in the conversation when they feel like it. Our
threads have been a lot of times instigated by people
being like, hey can you crowdsource I need gift ideas
for an eight year old boy, and then we put
(39:27):
it up there and we get so many awesome ideas
in this group, and yet it really does lack the
addictive qualities of social media, at least for me. So
if that is something you're thinking about, like, I don't
want to be doing as much of that. What could
I do instead? That feels more enriching, feels positive. This
is a great place, So we would love to have you. Yeah,
and I'm very excited to finalize our curriculum.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
I love the word parculum. All right.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
The question the question all right, we and this one
I think does come from someone who was in Patreon
so amazing. This person asked, what exactly is a house
manager and what's the difference between that and a nanny?
How would you go about finding one?
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Well, so this is if you think about what is
required to run a household, there are often a lot
of things like grocery shopping or organizing or taking returns back,
or meeting contractors, getting bids on things like especially if
(40:31):
you're doing any sort of home renovation projects, or you
have appliances that break, or you know, anything along those lines.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Are just general.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Upkeep of a space, and it takes a lot of time.
It takes a lot of work. And when people have
full time childcare, sometimes because that person is home during
the day, they may be able to handle some of it,
especially if you have kids who are in school for
any amount of hours. So a lot of times what
happens is like your youngest kid goes to preschool for
(41:06):
three days a week for four hours a day, and
so it's like you still need full time childcare because
that does not cover your work hours. But the person
has some time then that they could do various things,
and so often what people wind up doing is having
their nanny take on more of this house manager type role.
But if you are aging out of the time when
(41:27):
you even need childcare, along those lines, you could consider
hiring someone for a certain number of hours a week
to deal with these sorts of things. So maybe the
person works let's say Wednesdays and Fridays, and so you
always have them arranged to have contractors or deliveries or
anything like that happen on Wednesdays and Fridays, and then
they can do various things like resetting the house or
(41:49):
you know, noticing what you're out of and say, oh,
well the light bulb up there is out, I will
go fix it. Things like that that you would do
if you were focused on your home full time, but
because you are not focused on your home full time.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
You won't.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
And I mean this is the sort of thing that like,
I mean, people who are like stay at home moms
wind up doing and then when they feel that they
are not, like people like, well, your kids are in school,
like what are you actually doing? Like, there's still a
lot of work to be done, especially you know, for
people who have bigger families or bigger houses even you know,
or things like that.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
So yeah, that's what they would do. I would.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
As for finding people, I mean, I think it's just
a lot of networking, like anything else, asking other people.
You know, maybe somebody else has somebody who's working two
days a week and they'd like to work more, and
you know, then you could have them for two days
a week as well, or you know, you could post
on the various places like care dot com or anything
along those lines.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Probably a regular job board too, maybe like indeed or yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Oh yeah cool, certainly. Or there are agencies, I mean,
there's household staffing agencies. If you wanted to go that
route as well, same as you know with finding a nanny.
Obviously you can post somewhere like care dot com. You
can go through a large number of agencies that will
help you find people, and so it'd be very similar.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
I think one thing you mentioned that I didn't really
know about house managers with that you could have a
part time one. So that's really interesting, like the idea
that like, you know, you don't eat childcare anymore, but
you do, you have enough of those loose ends things
and maybe they just always do your grocery shopping as
well or something like that. But two days a week
or ten hours a week or something like that might
be achievable for a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yeah, yeah, and can certainly make life a little bit
more calm when your light bulbs aren't all out so well,
I guess this is we're even thinking Love of the Week,
but kind of a lot. This has been all Love
of the Week again, our year and their VEO home.
We love twenty twenty four mostly.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
Yes, we love twenty twenty four. We love our Patreon members,
we love our listeners. Thank you so much for anyone
who's followed our journey from the twenty seventeen beginning of
this podcast, but also welcome anyone who joined us new
in twenty twenty four. We're grateful for all of you.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Yeah, we can see that our listenership has gone up
a bit in twenty twenty four, so we're excited about
that to welcome new peace people to the community.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
So yeah, you are our love of the week.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Thanks for joining us, and we will be back next
week with more on making work and life fit together.
Speaker 3 (44:11):
Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the
shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
And you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please
join us next time for more on making work and
life work together.
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