Work + Life: Then and Now with Corinne Hammons EP 444

00:00:09
Speaker 1: Hi.

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Speaker 2: I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

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Speaker 3: 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.

00:00:24
Speaker 2: 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.

00:00:33
Speaker 4: Term career goals.

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Speaker 2: We want you to get the most out of life.

00:00:41
Speaker 4: Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.

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Speaker 2: This episode is airing in early February of twenty twenty six. Sarah is going to be interviewing Kurn Hammonds, who is a best of both worlds listener. We always love having listeners on the show telling us how they manage work and life. Sarah, maybe you could tell us a little bit about Korinn.

00:00:58
Speaker 3: Yes, Korin is lovely and she is navigating some changes in her life lately that she thought would be really interesting for listeners to hear about, and we definitely agreed and decided to have her on the show. She has worked ten years as the CEO of a New York City charity and so she's lived that nonprofit life, but also tons of leadership responsibilities and running big teams, et cetera. But now her life looks a little bit different as her oldest is in college and her younger one is a senior.

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Speaker 1: So we're going to.

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Speaker 3: Chat today a little bit about like then and now, So some of the challenges that she faced when the kids were little versus some of the challenges she face now and what she's looking forward to in the years to come that are going to bring about some significant changes in her life.

00:01:39
Speaker 1: Rhythms.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I mean so yeah, young kids versus older kids. I mean, some of us just have all of them at the same time. But sir, what were your favorite parts of the young kid years versus some of the challenges of those Yeah.

00:01:53
Speaker 3: The favorite parts is man, it's just like there's something hormonal about like how soft and cute they are. It's just so lovely. And also the fact that I don't know as much as my kids love me today, nothing matches the total devotion look you get from a toddler or baby when you wake them up from a nap or they wake up, you hear them moving around, and then you go in there and their eyes are just like movey. It's just like, it's amazing. It's so pure and it's so fun. Don't worry, we'll talk about the hard parts in case anybody's already like this is very difficult and that is very rose colored glasses of you. But we still wanted to give credit to the rose colored part because it was so cute. What did you think was the most fun part?

00:02:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I mean babies are cute, although I just in general like kids like to watch kids figure out life, which than the older they are, the more they're figuring things out. And so certainly once they can talk, that is a major cool thing, especially when they're talking sort of funny at the beginning, but oh.

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Speaker 4: My gosh, I enjoy that.

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Speaker 2: But then seeing how they're interpreting the universe in this very new and naive way, it's just amazing.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, because they have so much like awe all day long about things that we consider it to be so normal. And you're right about the speech thing, and I encourage anyone listening to this with toddlers to record all of the toddler speech that you can, and also when they say funny things, to write them down and keep them for later, because you will love watching and looking back on that stuff later.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just hilarious.

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Speaker 3: But it's not all funny games.

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Speaker 4: They're challenging too. The constant vigilance.

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Speaker 2: I think that's the part that you and I both do not miss about the little kid years.

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Speaker 3: No, not at all, Like you literally do not get a break that feeling like if I do not supervise you every single second, you could die like that. It's a reality. And I mean that's maybe dramatizing things, but they could get hurt so easily. They can get into things so easily, and it just makes everything else very very challenging. So unless you have childcare, there's no adult conversations, there's no running down in your journal, there's no exercise unless they're in a stroller, and even then they might start crying halfway through your run and it has to end. And so yeah, I mean those years were really really hard.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Now your favorite part of the bigger kid years, I mean seeing who they become is real people.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I mean I feel like my kids are actually truly good company that I enjoy hanging out with now, and that is amazing and something that like, of course it's not coming, but not really until it was actually happening, I didn't know how much fun it. You could almost just feel like hanging out with a friend. I mean when I'm sitting around watching Dance Moms with nbel or something like that, and that's been so fun. And they're smart and they have interesting opinions. And then also it's just fun to watch them do things that you can't do, whether it's you know, sports or a topic that they've learned about that you don't know, and you're like, huh, you are your own person and in some ways you are better.

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Speaker 4: What about you? No, it's really cool.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I love having conversations with them, getting to hang out with them as real people. Yes, again, seeing them develop their own interests which are different than yours, and that's kind of exciting too.

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Speaker 4: They don't have to be the same people as you.

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Speaker 2: It's more exciting to have other people around instead of just little carbon copies of yourself. There's challenges too, I mean, I think we've both been spared some of the worst ones that anyone could have. But so far, I guess, yeah, that's so far.

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Speaker 3: My parenting career is young, and actually so as yours and somewhat well, yours is old and young.

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Speaker 4: That's true.

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Speaker 3: You've done a lot of it and you still have a lot to go. But it is true there are like I mean, I sort of hate the big kids, bigger problems because I do think it minimizes the like every moment on part which I think people just forget about, but like watching a kids struggle socially or feeling like some decision they're making is going to have really long term consequences and you don't know how to manage it. That that can be hard about bigger kids.

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Speaker 2: I think, Yeah, do you guys talk about the empty nest phase at all?

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Speaker 3: We do because we love to like fantasize. Well, not like the day in and day out, but it's more like, ooh, that's when we'll do that river cruise.

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Speaker 2: Always about to do a river cruise now, I mean you could, you could make it work.

00:06:02
Speaker 4: We could, but we probably won't.

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Speaker 3: I feel like we'll do it during the empty nestry. What about you guys?

00:06:09
Speaker 1: Yeah?

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Speaker 2: And I know if I'm going on a river cruise maybe someday, but my husband's gonna be like seventy when.

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Speaker 5: You're already ready for the river cruise, that's like the perfect it would be a totally different I don't know when you have your last kid pretty old, like the empty nest is going to more coincide with things like retirement, I think, which is gonna it's conflating changes at the same time.

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Speaker 3: Yes, I always find it interesting when I hear about people who have maybe one or two kids and they had them in their twenties, and it's true, their empty nest is long before retirement. And for me those two I think, well, I don't know what's going to happen with retirement, but they're a little bit more intertwined.

00:06:48
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, exactly. All right, Well, let's hear what Karin has to say.

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Speaker 3: Well, I am so excited to welcome to the podcast today. KARENN. Hammond's who is a mother of two ages seventeen and nine, team now and who has been working as the CEO of a New York City charity for many, many years. And we in this episode are going to talk a little bit about then and now, what is different, and how Karin is working on her next step. So welcome Kurin, Hi, Sarah, I'm so thrilled to be here. Thank you, so much for coming on. All right, So we're going to take a trip through memory lane before we go to the present. You have always had, or at least I think, while your kids were growing up, a pretty big job. Can you talk about how your career kind of grew when your kids were little, maybe kind of where things fell in terms of pregnancy, and then I would love to know a little bit about what life was like back then, like what were your logistic setups?

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Speaker 1: Oh, I love that.

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Speaker 6: I love that, and I had to think back to remember it. So that's a healthy thing. Nothing less forever, right. So I've worked in nonprofits most of my career, and in my twenties, before I was married and had kids, worked for years at a great nonprofit in New York City doing a variety of mid level work, and then had the opportunity to move out here to Long Island in New York, where my husband works, and took on a job that was more of a leadership role at a local nonprofit. So I wasn't the CEO, but I was an emerging leader over time. And right after I took that job, we got pregnant for the first time. I had a miscarriage, and then we had our two daughters.

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Speaker 3: Wow, okay, so you were kind of rising in the ranks as you were growing your family. And oh, I'm sorry that it didn't start on the easiest note, but I know we have lots of listeners who can relate very common I'm so happy that you were able to grow your family after that. So did you have any thoughts when you were, you know, growing your career and you had these babies fairly close together about two years apart, am I right?

00:08:45
Speaker 1: That's right?

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Speaker 3: Yes, did you have any thoughts about what that would mean for your career or even I don't know, did you because I get we get emails all the time doubts about your decision to go back to work.

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Speaker 6: I never stopped working. I had been working all the way through, and I just thought it was the only way we'd make our life work. My husband and I both work. We needed that to pay our mortgage and to.

00:09:06
Speaker 1: Have a life.

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Speaker 6: And it was just a day at a time. I would say, not only was not every day was easy. Many days were hard. But there was really no other particular choice or path that I saw. I'm sure there were other paths, but I didn't see that.

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Speaker 3: Nothing else made sense to you in that moment. Okay, great, well how did you set yourself up for success? What kind of childcare? Did you take us through? A walk down memory lane in terms of the logistics?

00:09:33
Speaker 1: Thanks Sarah, and this was fun to think about.

00:09:36
Speaker 6: So we have a wonderful daycare that is between my office at the time where I was working and our home. And they had the longest day care day. So I was able to drop the girls off at eight am and pick them up at six pm. And they started eleven weeks. So I ended nursing quicker than I'd wanted to. I decided pumping wouldn't work at work, and that's a whole other conversation. And so they had that long daycare day, but it allowed me to work in the office eight thirty to five thirty most days. I skipped lunch, but it was a pretty reasonably long day. That said, I still worried, you know, was I in the office enough, did I seem committed enough? But by the time I got to those two little girls at six pm, I was tired, they were tired, and it was time to go home. So that was our childcare arrangement until they were in elementary school.

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Speaker 3: It was a self limiting day. I guess I think our listeners would be interested in your pumping decision. Was it just like there was just no logistical way in the office where you were at at the time to make it work.

00:10:33
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:10:34
Speaker 6: So my mom is a very natural person. She had natural childbirth and she breastfed as long as she could, and I just figured I would be the same way. Now. Of course, I had abodirls when I had my kids, and I enjoyed breastfeeding. I wouldn't say I was perfect at it, but I really enjoyed the closeness. But our this is granular. I don't know if the listeners care. But our restroom was sort of a common single restroom at the office that like thirty people shared, and it just didn't feel comfortable pumping. I had an office where I could close the door, but you know, that pump sounds like the end of the world is coming, And I think maybe I could have asked for accommodations, but I didn't think to do that, and so I just weaned the mouth before eleven weeks when they went to day Careen my kids are doing great having been bottle fed, so I don't come down on either side of that divide, except to say it was a little more of a hurried decision than probably based on my own upbringing.

00:11:27
Speaker 3: I think that's so fascinating, especially the way that you talk about it in a fairly not super emotional way of someone that like tortured myself to do it, and like, honestly hearing that, I'm like, oh, I gotta just sleet myself off the hook. And maybe there are some listeners right now who actually need to hear that you didn't do that. Yeah, and then it turned out fine. And then on the other side of that, I'm so mad for you that there was no good option of anywhere that you could go when you were doing a full day in the office and contributing, and it would have been nice for that to have been.

00:12:00
Speaker 6: Yeah, I probably could have either asked for or created electation room. I just either I wasn't in that headspace twenty years ago, or the world wasn't.

00:12:07
Speaker 1: I don't know totally.

00:12:08
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, I found that super interesting. I know they will too. Okay, so you had this daycare and then school age years were kind of been next up. Actually, I have one more daycare question. How did you handle all the illnesses you and your husband. I mean, maybe your kids are like the miracle magical children who do not get sick at daycare, but I kind of doubt it.

00:12:29
Speaker 1: No, they were not. They were sick all the time.

00:12:32
Speaker 6: We tried to be really good partners with the daycare in that so we really played by the rules in terms of not sending them when they were sick and also picking them up extremely promptly when they were sick, and we switched off between our two jobs calling in sick. For those reasons, I will say the only blessing was because my kids were close at age and they were both at the daycare. They usually got sick at the same time with the same thing, right, So it wasn't the double the illness. But I would say we were drawing straws. Neither of us were at a point in our career where we felt like calling in sick a lot, or even it always a great thing to do. Again, that was probably self imposed pressure. It was also pretty far before remote work for either of our fields, and so it wasn't that we kept a little one home who was napping with the fever and then we were no So those were some of our least favorite days, both seeing the kids suffering from being sick, and then also feel like we were letting down our I shouldn't speak for my husband, but I think it was similar, you know, letting down our employers.

00:13:28
Speaker 3: But it's beautiful that it sounds like you at least had a tag team, like it was not always assumed to be your responsibility or his.

00:13:35
Speaker 1: And I guess that's right.

00:13:35
Speaker 3: My guess is depending on the careers. You know, some careers it's much more higher stakes for one versus the other. But for you guys, it sounds like it was pretty similar.

00:13:43
Speaker 1: It was equally high stakes, right we made it work.

00:13:47
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's good.

00:13:48
Speaker 3: Equally high stakes, I think is much better than super super lopsided. Actually, so I have alaut that. All right, So now kids are going back to school, and I'm curious, what were your arrangements then and what did they think about you being a two working parent couple. Was that how most of their classmates were? Was that something different?

00:14:06
Speaker 1: Yep?

00:14:07
Speaker 6: So again fun to think back on this. So when they went to elementary school, they could take the bus in the morning, which allowed me to go into work a little earlier in the morning. Just for saving a stop. It didn't really change our morning routine. And then in the afternoon they could go to aftercare at school, so I still did that six pm pick up at the end of the day when we were all tired, but they had that cool, structured time at the end of the day. And then as they got a little bit older, we hired someone to come to our home who did watch them, did homework with them, did some lighthousekeeping, was a wonderful role model, taught them to bake and they had a great time. So those were sort of those elementary to middle school years. I have to say I often say to friends, my daughters have been great about me working and us working. I think it's taught them a lot of flexibility. They don't know anything different. I think I am a little bit of role model in how they think of themselves as women and the possibilities.

00:14:59
Speaker 1: For a lot of years, really till.

00:15:00
Speaker 6: The teenage years, they were excited to come to work with me once in a while when they could, or come to a work event. I will say there were moms at their school. They went to a small independent school.

00:15:10
Speaker 1: Moms at their.

00:15:10
Speaker 6: School who were able to go to pa meetings in the middle of the day and to my envy, maybe play tennis in the middle of the day. Just different lives, not better, not worse, just different lives. And I felt that sometimes they sort of looked at those mothers and wondered about me. But on the other hand, to be really fair about it, I think I was more envious than they were, so they noticed the differences, but I don't think they were deeply troubled by them. I will say, now they love going over to other people's houses and like learning about the mom and what her job is and how she spends her time.

00:15:42
Speaker 1: And I think that's cool. That is so cool.

00:15:45
Speaker 3: We're going to take a quick break and we're going to go back, and then kids are going to get a little bit older. I'm loving this style, this memory lane. All right, we're back, And I actually what you were saying about the school and maybe whether they had different impressions of the mom staying home. I mean, I will say I have felt that myself sometimes I think it really depends on the school, yep. But man, I have advocated for like, let's make sure that if we're going to have meetings during the day, that there's at least a zoom recording to watch later for those of us that don't have that flexibility because we're working to pay the tuition for this very expent Okay, sorry, my.

00:16:29
Speaker 1: Chance to know.

00:16:30
Speaker 6: There are things I could have done to taking a lunch break and run over, But there were a couple of important meetings where I said, could we have an evening option something like that, and then sometimes with those I couldn't even make it, So I also didn't want to be accommodated for But yeah, I think it's well, that's my own bias. But maybe some school settings are set up for one parent with employment and one who works in the home, and I think that was in our life, so we all worked with it.

00:16:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think it is up to us to speak up sometimes, just make sure that we're not left out with that assumption, which is erroneous. I think in most contexts act right. Even if there are some women or some men who are not working, it's probably not the majority of most schools.

00:17:11
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think that's right. Yeah, I didn't run into that with the dad's good point.

00:17:15
Speaker 3: Right, all right, So now we're going into high school and those years were I mean, you talked about something like how you felt like there was like a slow detachment almost like that because they become busy. Can you talk a little bit about that.

00:17:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this has been fun.

00:17:32
Speaker 6: So COVID and high school, end of middle school, high school groundsided for them, and so that was sort of the end of our need for childcare. I worked remote a little more so I was a little more present in the house, which was fun for me, but just at a time when they were peeling away and starting to do their own thing. But I really loved that aspect as well. And then you know, it just felt like I think for many of us, it started to accelerate. My older daughter applied to college and left for college. She's sophomore now, and my younger daughter is a senior and she has a driver's license. And while I'm you know, and we'll talk about it thinking through like what will the empty ness be like next year, already she's gone in a lot of ways because she goes to school and work and goes to see your friends and does that all very independently. So life has accelerated in the changes.

00:18:17
Speaker 3: That is kind of nice that you it doesn't feel like ripping off a band aid suddenly, I think that would be worse in some ways versus like, Okay, we're just on this path and they'll be natural.

00:18:26
Speaker 1: Hoping about it a little now, but I'll take your advice on that well.

00:18:31
Speaker 3: And how would you say, as they've had increasing independence and maybe you've had some more flexibility, how has that impacted your career? Like have you been more excited to lean in on certain aspects? Has it been more like no, I'm more motivated to pursue personal stuff, Like has that felt any different?

00:18:45
Speaker 1: I love that? So for better for worse.

00:18:47
Speaker 6: I've always been like big into career, big into parenting. I wouldn't say I'm an overbearing parent. I'm definitely not a helicopter parent, but like it's been really important to me to do parenting right and by that for me, my own personal definition and is to like let my kids be who they're meant to be, and so just being supportive of that. So if I'm around in a late afternoon and someone comes home from an activity and wants to decompress over a snack, that's a really nice feeling. But I do see them less than I used to, So I don't think a lot has changed yet in terms of career and home except that, and I know we'll talk about this. I'm starting to think about what is my life rhythm going to look like with the empty nest.

00:19:28
Speaker 3: Yes, so I think it's time to go into the present and think about maybe the future a little bit, because take us to where things are right.

00:19:36
Speaker 1: Now, right right.

00:19:38
Speaker 6: So, my older daughter's at college, my younger daughter is a senior applying to colleges, and that means that you'll graduate in June and be off to college probably late summer. And so here my husband and I will be back to the first five years when we were married and it was just us, but so much more water under the bridge since then, and I think some things will happen naturally. Hopefully he and I will spend less time talking about kid logistics. My family knows that's one of my least favorite things to talk about and something we've spent a great deal of time talking about who's going to do what when, and so maybe we'll open up some space for that. And then, of course there's a tendency. I love to work, so I could work more, but I really want to think. Like Laura's been talking about the Golden Hours, how do I not just let the evening slip away?

00:20:28
Speaker 1: How can I structure it a little bit?

00:20:30
Speaker 6: And so one thing I've been thinking about is hobbies, which is something that has never been my thing and increasingly is becoming my thing.

00:20:38
Speaker 3: I can't tell if hobbies are trending or if I am just reaching the stage in my life where a lot of the creators I'm listening to have time for hobbies and so there's talking about them. Yeah, they are definitely.

00:20:47
Speaker 6: I don't know.

00:20:47
Speaker 3: If you listen to Sarah Powers and Megan Francis, who used to be the Mom Hour, have a power called Midlife Lady Leisure Pursuits.

00:20:55
Speaker 6: Oh I did listen to an episode of that. Absolutely, yeah, and it's.

00:20:59
Speaker 3: All about but that's super interesting. What well, Actually, let's also go back to your husband a little bit. So you had five years without kids and more than eighteen years with kids, right, I mean, we don't actually think about how this breaks down very often, but it is actually fascinating. So if you're listening to this right now, I want you to think how many years did I have without kids, and then how many did I have with and then how many will I have potentially after that. And it's actually very interesting because you think of parenthood as this thing that's most of your life, and then yet numbers wise those years that our kids are I mean to be fair, Laura, our kids are so spread out that for her forever now it might work out to almost most of her life. But like for me, I don't know. Eighteen plus six years is how long I'll have kids at home, So that's twenty four years. Hopefully I'm living longer than forty eight because that's pretty soon. So I mean, it is very interesting to think about. You know that you have all this time with your partner and actually more limited time with kids. Have you thought about what that will be like with the two of you and the ideas of things you might want to do together.

00:22:03
Speaker 1: It's so interesting.

00:22:04
Speaker 6: I've thought about it a little. He and I have talked about it a little, and my friends have brought it up a lot.

00:22:09
Speaker 1: I think it's a.

00:22:09
Speaker 6: Very hot topic in a lot of ways. So this is probably baked into a lot of long marriages. But my husband and I have a really solid friendship, so we enjoy doing things together. We've been playing a little pickleball together. We like just to sit down and watch a movie together, certainly chat about the day. So we really enjoy our time together a lot. And so I could see just more planned evenings, whether it's a dinner out or movies or just hanging out together. I think that'll be really nice. This is not my field of expertise, but a lot of people are like, is the honeymoon going to be back?

00:22:40
Speaker 1: And I don't know. I mean, who can even think about the honeymoon? Right? I think it's just more the next stage.

00:22:46
Speaker 3: I mean, it's kind of nice to me se time together. That's too funny. Well, one thing you mentioned specifically in terms of rituals that might look different with just your husband is family dinner. Yes, gimme, what was family dinner when they were younger? Did you have family dinner? Because we don't always. I mean, my kids are very busy and my husband's schedules crazy, so honestly, it's like Sunday family dinner for the most part.

00:23:07
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:23:07
Speaker 4: Yeah, But what was it like then?

00:23:08
Speaker 3: And how do you do you feel like you're going to evolve some version of that with your partner?

00:23:13
Speaker 6: So thanks for that question. I can't believe I didn't include this in the then part of the conversation because meals are like everything, right, so it's so interesting, and I think our childhoods impact our adult lives so much. But it was really important to my husband have family dinner every night. Like me, if it was up to me, I would have had couch dinner and just whatever was easiest after daycare pickup, and he always got home slightly before us started dinner, cooked a healthy dinner, and the four of us eight together, and so I would say six nights out of seven for most of the kids' lives we've had family dinner and that's been great for like the.

00:23:45
Speaker 1: Kid's palettes, but also them.

00:23:47
Speaker 6: I think having a comfortable place to talk and current events and vocab and all those unintended things that happened. So total credit to my husband. And then during COVID, we started, rather than grocery shopping, ordering a meal server. If I can mention Hello Fresh, that's been our meal service.

00:24:03
Speaker 3: Yes you can, because we have partnered with them and some of their other brands, so it's great.

00:24:08
Speaker 1: So I don't know the whole field, but that's worked for us.

00:24:11
Speaker 6: And we did round robin cooking, so each of the four of us would cook and the kids really became great cooks.

00:24:17
Speaker 1: And same thing the family dinner table.

00:24:19
Speaker 6: So the question is when it's just the two of us around the table, we'll be doing that every night.

00:24:25
Speaker 1: I don't know.

00:24:26
Speaker 6: When the kids have gone to Sleepway camp and stuff. I'm like, Okay, here are the restaurant reservations. You know we're going to pick up food. We're going to skip dinner that night. You know, more of my tendencies. But I hope we'll keep the spirit of that, even if it was for the girls, because that's been a nice thing that's been.

00:24:43
Speaker 1: Important to him.

00:24:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, I bet it's going to remain important. I mean, whether it's I don't think he's going to care. I don't know I'm projecting. I don't think he's going to care where the food comes from. But if he really craves that, like winding down, settling with his people that he loves, my guesses that's still going to include you. So I don't know, it sounds.

00:25:00
Speaker 6: It was you're very well, Well, we'll have to check back in two years and see if we're still having dinner.

00:25:06
Speaker 3: Yes, well, we're going to take another break and then we're going to talk more about the future and maybe also what you might have told your younger self. If anything, We'll see. All right, we are back, and you talked about how you know this year is going to be a lot of changes happening in twenty twenty six, So do you have any kind of goals for the year in terms of how you want to navigate this transition and how you're going to be purposeful about it.

00:25:42
Speaker 1: So I love that question.

00:25:44
Speaker 6: It's sort of a more complicated question than it seems on the surface. So I think I had mentioned that my twenty twenty five was a bit of a challenge. I turned fifty, so it was the time of transition. I lost my wonderful dad who was my person, and I had goals for twenty twenty five, like I always do. I set goals every year, and I just abandoned them. I couldn't even tell you what my twenty twenty five theme was totally different for me that I just lost them. So for twenty twenty six, a fresh start. I have a theme of healthy choices, and a lot of those twenty six for twenty six goals are around thinking through what life is going to be like, working family in the empty nest, and I think some of that is hobbies, some of that is figuring out with my husband the new logistics as we've talked about, and also making sure my younger daughter has a great launch to college.

00:26:32
Speaker 1: I don't want to hop over that.

00:26:33
Speaker 6: I want her to have a great graduation and prom and turning eighteen and all those things before she does.

00:26:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, so many. Well, first of all, I want to say I'm sorry for the loss of your father, and I'm so glad you just abandoned all goals when it didn't feel right, because we should never feel bad about that. Goals are for ourselves. And so if it's like this is not the year for this, then starting fresh sounds like it made so much sense. And that is a great reminder not to throw out the present, even though the future is excited and the transitions loom large. But you're right, there's going to be like so many amazing opportunities for memory and connection with your daughter that hasn't left yet.

00:27:10
Speaker 1: Fact.

00:27:10
Speaker 3: But then also I liked what you said about the purposefulness of designing this future rather than just sort of like, eh, we'll see what we fall into, because I think anytime we end up in defaults, we just end up with a lot of repetitive stuff. We're not trying new things. And that doesn't make sense because so many of the so many of the current rituals and things are probably built on circumstances that are just not going to exist anymore. So being thoughtful and experimenting and starting from scratch, like it makes a lot of sense.

00:27:39
Speaker 6: Yeah, really well said. And also to push myself to do the things that I haven't maybe done for myself. And that's a little bit of a trope with work in parenting, and I know there are people who work in parent and do things for themselves all the time. That hasn't been my gift. But I love to write. I just launched a sub stack. I am doing a hobby related to writing, and that's something that while it's public, it is still for me and is very good for my soul, and I think that's important as well.

00:28:06
Speaker 3: Are you able to share any of your other potential pursuits for twenty twenty six, Like are there friend trips or I don't know, like interesting exotic hobbies that would surprise listeners.

00:28:17
Speaker 1: Nothing exotic.

00:28:18
Speaker 6: I mean I have made a transition, like many of us, maybe post COVID from an inactive person I have a sedentary job to a more active person. So I do yoga and peloton, and I love pickleball, as I mentioned reading and writing the substack, So just different areas of possibilities that I want to take a look at for ideas.

00:28:38
Speaker 3: Reading, peloton, pickleball, substack. I mean like you're pretty well rounded there, Honestly, that's.

00:28:43
Speaker 1: A podcastic listening to all the podcasts.

00:28:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, and fun dinners with your husband, that's right. So let's say you were able to have a time machine and you have little twenty year ago you maybe not twenty year let's say eighteen, so you had you were pregnant, you.

00:29:00
Speaker 1: A one year old.

00:29:00
Speaker 3: I guess, wow, Well, would you tell yourself like anything you wished you had known? Or maybe is there anything constantly telling your younger colleagues, because for me, I can frame it much easier that way.

00:29:10
Speaker 1: Oh I like that.

00:29:11
Speaker 6: Yeah, But looking back, first of all, I just got a mental image of me pregnant with a one year old, which was me on the couch, lying down after work, trying to like run after a toddler. I don't know, but I think all the sayings like Gretchen Rubin says, the days are long, but the years are short. I really, in those moments, was going day by day, week by week, with the kids, with work, with childcare, even with dinners and food prep. The thought that I'd be at this end at some point. I mean, I've seen everybody else do it. I'm in a big, extended family. I know how time works, so I think I would have said, try to have fun and joy in the moments. Have had a lot of joyful moments, but I'm someone who tends to be serious. I tend to rush to the next thing. I never wished the time away. I adore my kids, but maybe to have been a little more present in those joyful moments that would have.

00:30:05
Speaker 1: Been a good thing.

00:30:05
Speaker 6: And I think I'm probably not the only one who goes through that.

00:30:09
Speaker 3: This might be as emotional as I've gotten in a podcast in a long time.

00:30:13
Speaker 1: Oh no, No, they're beautiful.

00:30:14
Speaker 3: That's so beautiful, and like I think probably true for many of us. You feel like you know you're in survival mode for so long, and then it's like you look back and you're like, wait, now it's going faster and faster. And to make sure that we are there and we're experiencing it and getting the joy out of it. That's there. Not every moment's joy like we know that.

00:30:31
Speaker 1: No, no, no no. But I have wonderful kids. Of course I'm biased.

00:30:36
Speaker 6: I've had a joyful parenting experience, and I have a great career that I love, and so when the big things are in place, I feel like the small things can follow.

00:30:46
Speaker 3: Love it.

00:30:47
Speaker 1: Well.

00:30:47
Speaker 3: You know, we always end our show with the love of the week. Do you have any loves of the week that you have for us?

00:30:55
Speaker 6: So, Sarah, speaking of the dinner table conversation, I actually took this one to the dinner table because I was choosing between two. But I'm going to surprise you and everyone by saying my love.

00:31:04
Speaker 1: Of the week is football.

00:31:07
Speaker 6: So my face watching NFL football. So as we are meeting, we're at the end of the regular football season. And I have never been a football fan.

00:31:18
Speaker 1: You know.

00:31:18
Speaker 6: I remember as a little kid in Maryland.

00:31:20
Speaker 1: When the Colts drove off in a truck in.

00:31:22
Speaker 6: The middle of the night. I've never liked football. I thought it was violin. I didn't understand it. And for the past couple of years I've participated in my nephew's fantasy league, and the first couple of years, I just didn't try very hard, and I thought, well, that's not fair to him. So this year I researched the players and watched some games, and I totally got into it. I think it's like a beautiful game of strategic chess. And I have become a football fanatic all of a sudden. This also means I don't have a team, so I'm watching every game with all the teams, so I got to really choose a team quickly or else there's going to be way too much football on in our house. But I'm loving football, and i'd broaden that to strategic games and sports.

00:32:00
Speaker 3: Well, I'm so impressed. I have to say, I do agree football is very complicated. And I was commenting to my husband. I'm like, these guys they have a reputation for like not being smart, but they have to be smart, and he's like, oh, yeah, they're very smart, because this is like, this is strategy, this is high level, this is like but my brain is not smart when it comes to like following that kind of motion, and I'm not sure I'm capable. But I'm very, very impressed, and I think that's going to be your other hobby like football. You can go to games.

00:32:27
Speaker 1: Somebody said I should go to the game. I'm like, why would I want to?

00:32:29
Speaker 3: You can pick you can pick a team, you can like know all the stats, Like, that's so cool.

00:32:35
Speaker 6: I comment, I'm a member of our patreon for this podcast, and I commented there that I'd asked AI, which I don't use a lot, like why do I love football all.

00:32:42
Speaker 1: Of a sudden?

00:32:43
Speaker 6: The only parallel is I started liking tomatoes when I was twenty one all of a sudden, So like, why do I? And AI told me it's because I'm in this period of transition, and you're open to more things during periods of transition. And Laura said in the Patreon that might have been confirmation bias. You know, I heard what I wanted to hear from AI, but I thought that was for a robot a rather clever explanation.

00:33:06
Speaker 3: Did AI mention Taylor Swift?

00:33:08
Speaker 1: It's a question.

00:33:12
Speaker 3: Because if I was going to get into football, that would probably be the main reason. That's amazing. Well, my love of the week is really not as fun, but I have been. My daughter got a pair of ug Ultra minis and I was like, those look comfortable. I'm getting them too, and I wear those things everywhere, and I realize my feet look like a thirteen year old and I even have them like in a kid's size because I have small feet. And they're just some great shoes. Like the teens and tweens know what they're doing with their footwear. They're so comfortable.

00:33:38
Speaker 1: And you're in Florida with your ugs on. I love that.

00:33:40
Speaker 3: Hey, we're having a cold snap. It's going to like forty somethings, so you know, forty dugs. Well, this has been such a pleasure. I love this conversation too. Thank you so much for coming on. Tell the listeners where they can find you, including your substack, which now I am very excited to check out.

00:33:56
Speaker 6: Oh thank you so my substack at which now has only three pos, but it is called Krin on people and it's under my name Krin Hammond's And I'm also on Instagram at former Corey fun Quich was my maiden name. So happy to be found, and I'm of course around on LinkedIn for my professional life.

00:34:13
Speaker 3: Amazing. Thank you so much for coming on.

00:34:15
Speaker 2: Thank you, Sarah, Well, that was great hearing from krin Hammond's about her life, how she manages everything, and what her ideas are for the empty nest phase. So today's question is coming in about somebody who's got sort of a challenging situation at work. She says, I'm currently in a very high level position in my field. It should be amazing given how hard I've worked to get there, but it is incredibly stressful and difficult, and she feels like she isn't getting to do most of what she loves about her work.

00:34:44
Speaker 4: The biggest problem, though, is.

00:34:45
Speaker 2: That she has been required to be full time in the office this year, which is a daily four hour round trip commute. When she took this job, the agreement was three days in the office, but she could not get that in writing.

00:34:59
Speaker 1: At the time.

00:35:00
Speaker 2: It was a bit of a gentleman's agreement, as they say, and then people were a little bit less gentlemanly than they could have. I'm exhausted. It is not great for my physical or mental health. I miss hanging out at home and being with family and friends. I've been looking around to see what else there is in my city, but my field is very specialized, so there's not a lot in my area. There's a great job I'd be competitive for, but if I got it, I would need to live away from home for at least two nights a week.

00:35:22
Speaker 4: So I feel so stuck.

00:35:24
Speaker 2: On the one hand, I love the mission of my work, and on the other I feel like I'm going to miss my family and real life.

00:35:30
Speaker 4: So what's your suggestion, Sarah.

00:35:34
Speaker 3: I really cannot envision a scenario where someone's commuting four hours a day and enjoying life.

00:35:42
Speaker 1: I can't.

00:35:43
Speaker 3: I can't wrap my head around it. I mean, maybe they exist, but I do not blame you for feeling miserable in your current situation. And it sounds like giving your job. It's not even like an easy job. You're like driving four hours and you have a stressful.

00:35:56
Speaker 4: Job on top of that. So I don't know.

00:36:00
Speaker 3: Laura always says, and I think she'll say in her answer to the job market is rarely optimized. So if you have this unique skill set, I just find it hard to believe that you are in the only situation that can work. I mean, if you could get another offer, any offer, then maybe you could leverage that back at your current company to be like, hey, could we go back to that gentleman's agreement, and how about make it two days a week or something like that, because they may not want to lose you.

00:36:26
Speaker 4: And I don't know.

00:36:26
Speaker 3: I'm always astounded by what people tell me they end up being offered when they're about to leave. It's usually more than you would think. So I do think that might be something to look into, ugh, Or is there a way that you can just take a job that's just far less optimized but remote or something like that, because I just, yeah, I think you do need an out.

00:36:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it does sound pretty terrible, and there is no harm in job hunting. Like ever, it's kind of everyone is wise to keep an eye out for what is there and to be actively working network because you never know when something will come up that you might wish to do more than what you are currently doing. I actually think that the two nights away from home sounds a lot better than two hours each way on the commute, because you would be able to use that time for getting extra sleep, for relaxing, for exercising, for calling friends like you could zoom with friends on those nights when you're away from home. Obviously, the childcare piece might be complicated, but you're a smart person, you can probably figure it out. Which with that, like, you could also figure that out now, because if you are having to drive two hours each way, why don't you just stay there like two nights a week, right, Like, can you get an apartment that is close to your workplace? Or I mean, have you even have like a friend who's in the area wants to like double up with you, you know, you rent an apartment together or something. You know, a colleague who knows what the situation is. But probably if you could find something that wasn't over the top expensive, that was relatively close to your work and then you stay there two nights a week, yes, it is more money out the door, but on the other hand, the improvement in your life could be huge because that would be at least eight hours a week that you're not commuting. And so if you're looking at a job where you'd be gone two nights a week, like just you could make that happen in your own current job. But whatever you wind up doing. What I really hate is this idea of being stuck. Because you aren't stuck.

00:38:25
Speaker 4: You aren't stuck. We're in a free market economy.

00:38:27
Speaker 2: There's a million things you could do even if it's not purely optimized for your skill set. You took this job at a moment when this job was offered in the place where you are or could reasonably move to.

00:38:38
Speaker 4: That doesn't mean that it is the only job out there.

00:38:41
Speaker 2: You know, as Sarah was saying, like you did not optimize on all dimensions. Clearly if you're driving two hours each way, so you can optimize a slightly different way and probably still find something that's much better in other ways on this. But you could think about I'm going to do this for two years and then I'm done, right, Like that would be something you say, like, this is only two more years and I will even quit without knowing what else I'm doing at the end of that. But if I give myself two years, I'm for sure going to find something right. So you might help with your mental state doing something like that as well.

00:39:13
Speaker 3: We really hope you get out of this job and we would love an update, so please keep us posted.

00:39:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, let us know, let us know. We'd like to hear what you do.

00:39:21
Speaker 1: Well.

00:39:22
Speaker 2: This has been best of both worlds Sarah's interviewing Coren Hammond's We will be back next week.

00:39:26
Speaker 4: With more on making work and life fit together.

00:39:30
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can.

00:39:38
Speaker 2: Find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.

00:39:42
Speaker 4: This has been the best of both worlds podcasts.

00:39:45
Speaker 2: Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.