Mailbag: Keeping goals in mind, childcare while traveling, job transitions, kid dates, and more!

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. 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 term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. I am recording from the closet in my office. Many reasons for that. It's somewhat quiet in here, but not a whole lot of you soft stuff in here, so it may be a bit ecuey. I apologize for that. We're still working out with this move. It's complicated. Moving turns out to be really challenging, especially with seven people and lots of stuff and new systems. Anyway, it's you're you're gonna get to soon, Sarah. You're getting me so excited for it too. We'll put it off as long as possible. Although all of a sudden I was like, oh right, we have to pay mortgage and rent. That's a shame. So now I'm like, yeah, I mean we we sort of, I mean, we have some time here, but we're needing to We just need to start living in it, right, Like, at some point you need to just do it, even if everything's not perfect, because you sort of figure out more stuff that isn't you know that needs to be fixed by living here, and you know it's going to happen to happen eventually, so pull the band aid off and figure it out totally. Yeah, it'll fall into place. You'll like figure out what. Yeah, that is kind of an interesting challenge like what to do in which room kind of a thing, but holistically it will kind of it'll happen. It'll happen. It'll happen. So you know, how's the new year going for you? So far? Are you? I'm sure you're so charging forward on goals left and right. I did order a lot of pairs of shoes, so, I mean that's fun part of the resolutiones right, It's like I promised to upgrade my wardrobe. Hey, I know, I love how like I went for that one first. I was like, hey, I'm doing gold directed behavior by ordering multiple pairs of shoes. But you know what, I did really need new shoes. So I'll have to update you all later in a future episode about how that adventure goes. Sounds good well and how I started, Yeah, I've ye. How is Shakespeare? Yeah, I finished reading Twelfth Night. I'm sort of figuring out. So I read Warren Peace in twenty twenty one and read one chapter a day because there's three hundred and sixty one chapters, so that worked out very well. Like I knew exactly what I was supposed to be reading every day this year. I'm reading through all the works of Shakespeare, and I have a calendar, but the person who did it just said, like, okay, read Twelfth Night between January two and eight. Okay, Well that doesn't tell you how many you know what to read, like what sections to rea each day. So I'm sort of having to just figure that out. And I have already finished it on in January five when I'm recording this, or six January sixth when I'm recording this, but I feel like I missed a lot, So I think what I'm going to have to do the pace that i'm reading at is probably fine, but then I will devote a day or two into reading a commentarier so that I will be able to understand what I am reading, because especially when you're reading it as opposed to seeing it, I feel like you kind of miss it. Like I mean, a good Shakespearean actor knows like what the joke is right, and they will show you that that was supposed to be a joke through their actions or that there's some intrigue going on that you might have missed. So I don't know. I think it's good to read it, but I'm going to need the commentary or else I'm gonna have to listen to it as well or something. I don't know. I wonder if there's like a complete works of Shakespeare podcast could be could be and I could go listen to the Twelfth Night one and if not, that could be your next project project. Well I'm not really a Shakespearean X, but there are a great many out there. It's one of those areas that there's so many people who are studying, like you really never going to be, never going to be the top of that one. But I can read the Wikipedia articles, let's put it that way and figure out or the spark notes since so many people have had to take Shakespeare classes, there are a great many you know, cliff notes, spark notes, whatever study guides out there, and I'm sure they will explain it to me. So you have already ditched a planner from your stack them reading I know, and we're recording this and like that planner lasted like three days. It's fine. It was my wellness planner. I'm like, I cannot keep up with this, so it's cool. But the good news is I kind of repurposed now my hope Bunici has like more purposes like my main ones, so it works out well. I'll share a planner update on best laid plans maybe in February or so, so I can go into two more details for those that want to know. It's like living in the new house, Like eventually you have to just do it, and then you see as you are using it what is workable and what is not. And without doing that, you can't really plan in the abstract what it's gonna what everyone's everything's function is going to be exactly. And I gotta say I still have high hopes for twenty two. Obviously, as we're recording this, a lot of COVID and maybe maybe not. Maybe by the time this is it all everyone's already had it. That's super optimistic. So, yes, lots of COVID, but this year is going to be It's still a very promising year. Like, don't give up on twenty twenty two. I'm not giving up on twenty twenty two. I think it's going to be great. I'm excited me too, big potential. Well, we're doing a mailbag episode today and we have, you know, some questions that people sent on their blogs that primarily ones from our Patreon community, So just a shout out to that, and if people would like to join our wonderful Patreon community, please go there. Best of Both Worlds podcasts and you know, we do monthly online meetups. Those have been a ton of fun. In December we did one on are helping us set goals for the upcoming year. We have one coming up in late January, which we'll post more on our blogs about that. But you know, we just chat and have a good time. We post comment threads, people can discuss topics there and we put out a call for questions, so a couple of great ones coming in from that, so well, go ahead and start Sarah, question number one, you go with this because you're better at this than me. How do you keep your yearly goals front of mind? And how do you get them done? Like is there a monthly planning and focusing on one goal, adding deadlines or set dates to your calendar? What do you do? I think for me, the key is not forgetting what my goals are and actually having kind of a set time when I know I am going to look at them. So one thing is that you can put them in multiple places, and I have done that. I have them in my to do list, which is an app that I'm using currently, and I also have them written down in my physical planner, so I have like two places where I'm going to see them. The other thing is that for me, I'm committed to making goals for like the week, the month, the quarter. I use quintiles, but you know what I'm saying, and every time I'm making at least monthly or quintile goals, so on that kind of a large scale, I am going to look at my yearly goals to be like what would make sense to like maybe throw in there now based on what we have going on, And so that way, I'm not just looking at them once in December and thinking like, well, now the year is going to go by. I hope I know remember to buy new shoes or whatever. But instead I have like, I'm going to keep seeing them and I'm going to keep reminding of myself what I wanted to do. And by the way, I'm not like rigid about goals. You've already heard I ditched a planner like if by March I'm like, actually, I don't want to do that anymore. Then. I also think giving yourself permission to be a little bit fluid with your goals is good because otherwise you may get tired of looking at a list of things you don't want to do anymore. Yeah, well that's one reason not to like carve them into some sort of motivational plaque that you're going to, you know, put on your wall very prominently. I think just on a nice piece of paper would be fine, or you know, on your home screen, on your computer or something you could, you know, put something there somewhere you will see, but something that could be changed, like maybe not tattooed to you, because yes, things could change if you have decided that you want to do X in early January and by March X sounds like not appealing at all, or life has changed in a way where X is just not going to happen and something else why is happening, and that's great, like totally cool, totally cool. So it's there to serve us, not to not to trap us. I mean one thing, I don't necessarily put mine somewhere, but the ones I tend to make are either daily, in which case it is very hard to forget. Like if you're doing something every day, like you tend not to forget that it's something you're doing. So reading Shakespeare is in fact something I am doing every day, or it's so like overarching that again I'm not going to forget. So, you know, making the new house my family's home over the course of the year, well, every day I'm doing something. So that's more of a mantra that I'm repeating. So when I get annoyed as I'm like waiting for the fridge and freezer to be installed even though we're already living here, you know, be like we're coming up with ways to make this house home. It's going to be great. And then you know, supporting the launch of Tranquility by Tuesday in the fall, my book. And so again it's like much of my work is focused on like, Okay, is this bringing people into my sphere? Is this, you know, encouraging people to get to know my work? Is this you know, introducing concepts to new people so they might be interested in these new habits that will help support their goals in life. And you know that's again it's just a mantra going through. So if those kind of goals, you may not need to put them anywhere. But if it's something that is for the future, like this is what I want to do in August, you might not remember that, so put it on your calendar for August, so you'll make sure that you know about that. And one other thing is that you might want to think about, like if you have a friend or a partner or somebody like Laura jokes that I like make her think about her goals when we do our podcast episodes in the middle of the year and the end of the year. So if you don't have a podcast co host, maybe there's somebody in your life who can serve that role. Find your Sarah. That's our that's our answer for that. One, all right, Question two? How do you find child care when traveling? So this listener in August is going to speaking of August goals, We'll be spending a week at a conference and bringing her new baby with her. Yay. So she's got big goals for the year, conferences and babies. She will need all day child care because she is going to be doing dinners, doing all the networking that didn't happen over the past two years with babies in COVID. So how does she find a nanny at the place where she doesn't live, and also does she potentially need two nanny's if it's going to be more than forty hours. She's renting an airbnb, so it won't be in a hotel. So Sarah, what do you got for her? Well, I'll share what I would probably do, and then also mention a note that we got from the Patreon as well. So if I were in this situation, well, actually, I just thought of another thing. If I have a nanny already, I would just fly her with me to the conference. So there's that. But this, you know, that would be too obvious, So probably that's not feasible for whatever reason, or maybe she's using daycare at home or something like that. But that is an option certainly if you have your own nanny. But what I would probably do if I didn't have a nanny and I was going to an away conference is I'd see if there was, like you know, there's there's multiple agencies. The one that I know of personally is called Babysitting Company because I've used them, but and they're not a sponsor. They don't care about me, and I haven't used them for a while to be fair, but they're in multiple cities and they basically guarantee you if you need like care for XX amount of hours, they vetted the people and they'll send it to you. And they actually specialize in working out of like hotels and like on vacations and things like that. You're not always going to get somebody that you're like in love with, but you're going to get somebody who is safe. And you may pay a premium, but again it's short term, and hey, if it's for work, maybe it's even something you could expense, depending on, you know, what your work situation is. So that is my idea, and then I guess I can mention from the Patreon someone says, you know, some universities offer backup care as a benefit, so you never know, you might actually be able to get that kind of care through your actual benefits package. We actually have something like that in my healthcare system. I have never successfully used it because whenever I've had to find care, my kids are sick and nobody wants to come. But like, you know, this scenario, maybe it would work out. Yeah, we've done to you know one. Yeah, bring existing nanny with you is most obvious. Or if you have an extended family member who might be up for it, that is obviously an option as well. If this person did not have other children. I mean this is sort of a broad thing. If your spouse partner person is up for it and could either take the week off work again and because they want to see this new city, that could be a thing that they might be interested in doing. Like, so those are all options. We have used nanny agencies in different cities. My husband hired somebody in Seattle when he took one of our kids with him on a trip there. Person was amazing, like we really lucked out. Like people were coming up to him being like, where did you find her? Where did you find her, So the uh, you know, you could do that through a hotel if you were staying at a hotel, but they probably contract with the same agencies that you would find if you were googling. So just see who has really good reviews, like which agencies are like responsive and people have you know, had good experiences with them, and then call them up and say when you are they'll probably send you a person who has had background checks and ideally references for that person so that you can then call those two references for the person and you know, satisfy yourself that they will be a good match for you and for the kid for the week. And again if it's a week, it doesn't have to be a perfect match, like you know, but somebody who will be safe and good with your child for that what. I don't know that you'd need to for just one week. Now. Obviously, if you needed care for the evenings for like regularly for your job working more than forty hours a week, than yes you should look into hiring multiple caregivers. But if this is just a one week tempt stint, the person is probably going to be okay with whatever the number of hours are. Again, just keep in mind that you should probably agree on either a rate that accounts for that or if they are going to expect time and a half for over forty like that, you guys have sorted that out ahead of time and so there's no questions there. And just as a side for slightly older kids that people might consider doing this in the summer. For instance, if you have a conference in the summer and want to take a slightly older child with you, you you can always look into day camps that are in the place where you are going, Like, you don't have to be a resident of a place to send your kid to a day camp that is there. I know my brother took one child with him on a trip once and he attended a summer camp there for a week, so that was a good match for them. So yeah, you will be able to come up with something good. And you know, again, I add one more thing, since you are renting the airbnb, and since it's a new baby that you're taking with you as soon as because you're planning on breastfeeding, which means that you will be stopping by every few hours anyway, so you're going to have an automatic check in on the situation, which should also kind of ease your mind about hiring somebody that you don't know that well that you're going through an agency because you will be there every three or four hours. Anyway, Yes, all great options. We have to take a quick ad break and we will be right back with some more awesome questions. All right, Well, we are back doing a listener mail bag with many of these questions coming from our Patreon community. We'd love to have people come join us over there at Patreon Best of Both Worlds podcasts. All right, Sarah, this one also for you, since this is something you had suffered from for years. This listener has wants fun ideas when kids have non overlapping spring breaks. She is so disappointed because hers have spring breaks on two different, however consecutive weeks, so we can't travel at all unless it's a weekend trip. I'd still like to try and make it fun for them, and this person has some vacation days to burn, so with love ideas. Yes, we did have this issue for at least a couple of years, and it's really annoying. I mean, it's one of the reasons my kids are all at the same school now is because it made me so sad to have two separate spring breaks, different teacher workdays, different holidays, et cetera. But one thing that we did is we use that time to do mommy days. So I like, you know, it was a natural time that I could, you know, take one kid at a time and do things. So there is the idea that you could do shorter one on one trips in some ways that could be even more special, you know, with your kids, if they're picking the destination and having someone in one time with you. There's of course, lots of specialty camps in many areas, and I think you're in kind of a university setting, so I bet there's a number of activities you could enroll your kids in if you're just sort of looking for something to do, although that doesn't help you with your vacation days. And then Laura has a fun idea. Well, this might be slightly scandalous for many of us who are raised to believe that you could never miss school for anything, But if the weeks are consecutive, you could take each kid out for an extra two days. Probably a lot of people are already doing this kind of thing. I've noticed that the attendance on the day before Christmas at our schools was before Christmas break was light. The day on the Friday before spring break also light Monday after spring break light. Clearly like people are doing it, but you could take each kid out for like two days, or if one child clearly needs to be in it more than others, you could do three days for one kid and one for the other, but then get a six day trip as a family somewhere and to do that time with the you know, since they are consecutive days. If you have vacation days to burn and maybe your spouse doesn't like and you want to travel for longer, like you could go somewhere with the first kid. Maybe all meet up somewhere over the weekend. Then your spouse could take Kid one home and you take Kid two somewhere for the second week. So that could work out as well too. I think if you're creative, you can still do some pretty fun things and travel, even if it's not quite that everyone gets to take the same week together. Knowing this person, they will do some very fun sureing very she likes to travel to great places. Well, they were good. They don't need our advice anyway, all right, question for tips for a successful transition to a new job. So this listener starts a new job in a couple of weeks and it's the first job change she has had in eight years. She doesn't feel like her last job transition went as smoothly as she would have liked, partly because she ended up having two children during her first three years at the old job, which you don't have to not do, by the way, Like, if you want to have your babies as soon as you start a new job, that is totally your call and a good company will deal with it. But she's just saying that being out for two maternity leaves very early in her new job made it a bit harder of a transition, so she wants to she is not planning to have multiple babies within her first few years on this job, so what can she do to make this transition a success? So our listener tip for this one, or our Patreon member tip, was to schedule brief one on one meetings either zoom or in person with each new teammate plus anyone else you'd be working closely with for just an intro meet and greet to like, share personal info, kind of get a little bit of a bond, going see what everybody's personality is. Like, I think that's a wonderful idea. I don't think I got to do that when I started my job, but now looking back, I'm like, I totally should have. I think that having some scheduled check ins, like if you have somebody that you report to, just saying like, hey, you know, I'm excited to make this job transition as successfully as possible, and part of that is making sure that I am doing for you guys, what you want. So let's meet weekly for a little while and talk about whether I'm meeting the goals of this position, and also think about what your job you really like and how you might be able to gradually expand them, because there's no time like in the beginning when you first accept a role where things are a little bit more plastic because it's not set in stone what you've always done. And so if you're like, ooh, I love writing this newsletter, I hope that I could, you know, expand it to a month. You know, I don't know I'm making something up, but like, this would be a great time to kind of start with that subtle career crafting to build in the elements that you like more of and less of maybe what you don't. Yeah, i'd also add, though, don't expect everything to be perfect day one. I mean we can we can put a little bit too much. I mean one of the books that was recommended on our Patriot, well recommended with a few caveats, was The First ninety Days with the Understanding That was written by a man who had not a whole lot of home responsibilities, but with some good advice in it. But the reason it's saying the first ninety days, it's not like the first nine hours, right, you don't have to make everything perfect on the first nine hours. The first few days you're just going to be listening. You're going to be meeting people. If you're going to an office, you're gonna be finding out where the ladies' rooms are. Like, I mean, this is what you were going to spend your first few days doing. And so just you know, have an open mind whatever anyone tells you. People all have their own agendas, their own histories, their own things. Nothing anyone tells you as necessarily the way it only has to be or the way it will always be. So you listen a lot, but also you know, may make sure you're flexible about what you think you're going to be doing and just you know, take a lot of notes and think about what you would like your days to look like and start trying to build some new habits that might make life sort of sustainable long term. Because when you again, as Sarah was saying, like things are more plastic at the beginning, and if you come in as the person who always does take a real lunch break, like, people aren't going to think it's weird when you suddenly, you know, aren't at your desk from twelve to twelve thirty. They'd be like, oh, yeah, she's at lunch and that's just all it will be, right as opposed to, you know, some weird thing that everyone now needs to figure out. Or if you always go for a ten minute walk at around three o'clock, you know, when you've got a break between meetings, you're just like, oh, you know, get some fresh era. It's helps me, you know, function for the rest of the day. Bed be like, oh, yeah, she's the person who does that, and it won't be weird when you start trying to do it. Why is she not at her desk? So yeah, those new habits can This can be a great time to start those things that will support you long term. Love it all right. Question number five is about kid dates. So this person wrote in, I'd like a more in depth discussion of kid dates that I've mentioned I think in my yearly Goals episode. I think I'd like to do this more this year and struggle to come up with things, especially with a young six year old that don't sound awful to me. The eleven year old is easier. There are museums, movies, and theater productions we'd both love. Also, the eleven year old is my mini me. What do you think, Laura. That's tough if one child is your mini me and one isn't. But they are their own people and their own wonderful people, and you have to get to know them as they are, and that you know, wishing that they were like you. It is just a waste of time and you know, not really helpful for anything. So one thing is it's helpful just to keep this in perspective, like if you are hoping to spend time with your kid, entering their world is really one of the best ways to do it. So you know, we're not talking huge amounts of time if you're going to do maybe one to two full days in the course of a year and maybe a handful of you know, two hour things, like even if it's something you don't love, like you can love spending time with your kid and seeing them excited and so keeping a sense of perspective if like they want you to play some video game that you're not really into, again, one hour is doing it with them will probably like make their day and isn't that much of a strain for you to do. But you can also you know, brainstorm with your kid, like what are things you like to do, and like make a list and you can be like, oh, that sounds really fun, let's do that. You don't have to be like oh on any of it, just be like, oh, you know the ones that sound fun, you know, get very excited about and probably they will get excited too. There's probably something in the list that they're gonna like. But again, the one thing I would keep in mind is that a six year old doesn't know what all is out there either, Like it's not like they're on Google looking for stuff, Like I don't know if they can even read or you know, write, so they're not aware of the universe of things that is out there. So you might need to think about your kid and what they might like and that what you would also find tolerable. And you can present those options to them and see if any of them sound good for your kid. And I'm sure if you put some thought into it, you will probably come up with something that you at least find okay. And even if it's only okay. Again, it's not an infinite amount of time. You don't have to do this every day for the rest of your life. You're doing it for a little bit of time to enter your kid's world. I will give you a few very low key options that I think can work for, like different ages where you might not have as many common things in common, So like going to a bookstore and each picking out a book that you like, Like yeah, maybe your kid's picking out a book that you're not excited about, but hey, you're each bookshopping and it's kind of fun. Just taking a walk, like going somewhere in nature like remember these, don't you know Laura does has done like trip days where she's gone to amusement parks and those are great too. But you can do this in a very low key way as well, if you want to. I have one with my four year old tonight. She's very excited. Our plan is probably gonna be to walk around the block and then bake something. She wants to make a cake. I'm trying to convince her to do cookies because I just think that would be a little bit easier. But I'm sure either way it's gonna involve chocolate and she'll be happy. You could do drawing or coloring. Personally, I find that pretty relaxing. That's pretty versatile, or like Cameron would probably prefer to build something together, so like at a giant Lego set that you two work on in increments. Perhaps, so I think thinking small and not necessarily feeling like the stakes have to be high, especially if you're going to do them fairly regularly. That's why we're I'm kind of aiming for monthly, but like something to do within the span of a couple hours that's low key, rather than like them looking forward to it all year but then having to wait a year for it to happen. Again. Very true, very true. All right, Well, this has been our mailbag episode, a short one this time. Again. I'm recording from my closet and running around with movers all over the place. So our love of the week, I mean, I gotta say mine is living only two miles from new to old house, a short move. I was just thinking if we had to have all this packed into a truck with no ability to go back to the old house, it would have been a lot more higher stress than this current situation where you know, I like, the movers were short one wardrobe box yesterday and so I'm like, wow, I'll just take that stuff over to the house, right Like, I'll just shove whatever you didn't fit in my car, bring it over, hang it up, like it's all good, no worries there. So it's just been it's high stress, yes, but there are some things that are lower stress because it's local. I have the funniest love of the week mine is Cameron's new haircut, because I feel like he went from like little kid to like cool, like middle I don't know, it was like it's a it was a crazy transformation just from a haircut. And every time I look at him, I'm like, oh my gosh, So what did he do? What what's the haircut? Like? What could you do? It like, well, historically he's always said had a buzz. Okay, that's like been his hair, but we let it grow out. And then the last time they just kind of trimmed it, but it just looked like a trimmed buzz. But then the last when he went the last time, they just like were able to like shape it a little bit more like it just looks like an older I'll have to share pictures, but it like changed the look of him so dramatically, like within a day, Like it's just yeah, it was really cool, dude, Yeah, exactly. It just gives me joy. It's my love is amazing. All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. This has been an all mailbag episode. We will be back next week with more on making work in life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore shoe Box on Instagram, 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.