Get Out of Your Rut!

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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 Hartunger. 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. This is episode one hundred and eighty nine, which is airing in mid March of twenty twenty one. We're calling this Get Out of Your Rut, though we will have a bit of a semantic discussion about what is a rut. To me, a rut is when you aren't excited about life, like it all feels ho hum and the same, which I know a lot of people have been suffering from over the past few months. I mean, certainly with COVID not going as many places, having fewer things available to us that might be novel or interesting, so it sort of limited our universes to more of these same old, same old, But we have a little announcement here of Sarah getting out of one particular run of the same old, same old. What big happened in your house recently? Well, you may remember for my twenty twenty one Goals episode that one of our big goals was for Genevieve to be potty trained. And I think I can safely say Genevieve is toilet trained. Yay, Okay, the past couple of weeks we've had like very minimal accidents. She's doing all modalities of toileting on her little potty, not in diapers. Obviously, nighttime is a separate thing. But I'm I don't really rush my kids in that area, and I don't expect her to fix that anytime soon. But that's no big deal to me. Was it? Actually? How long do you put them in diapers overnight? Though? I mean, oh, I don't think until they set they always wake up gey. I mean, yes, I'm very forgiving in that realm, and I don't think my kids would want any datail else discussed. No, no, big kids is are in diapers now. That's just in case anybody is thinking they are. No, no, no no, just Genevieve. But there may have been some extended timelines there, but everyone gets out of them eventually, as I have seen, and so I'm not worried about that for Genevieve, and I'm very happy that we can like not have to worry about changing diapers all day. Yeah. Was there was there anything that was sort of a moment of breakthrough or this was just gradually she was more willing to extend her being toilet trained at school to also being at home. Yeah, I think. I mean I feel like school mostly did it, but then she was in this mindset I think when she was just like, oh, well, at home, I used diapers and at school I used the potty, and I was like, once her teacher was kind of like, I think she's ready. I mean she was past three. To me, three is kind of like my cut off when I get a little more serious. And so I just took the diapers off at home and you know, let her have a couple of accidents to kind of like reinforce, like you just have to use your little potty, and she did very quickly. And we also had a reward where she would get one eminem for certain types of elimination and three for others, and that was very rewarding and motivating apparently. So there's still a few eminems left in the bag. I don't plan on buying a new bag, but I felt, you know, as much as controversial food bribes can be, this felt relatively minimal. And we're not the kind of house where chocolate is like forbidden in little kids, so you know, it was fine. It was that fine. I'd say, if it works, it works, and then the rest of your life, no one ever gives you eminems again for going to the bathroom. Sadly enough, that is true. But you can still get them on Halloween, so that's true. Well, I'm glad that she is. Did you have any time where is this the first time you're out of dark? Because you were, well, yes, no, I did. We had no diapers for a while. Cameron was right. It was about four he was three and like three quarters or something when she was born, so we did. We had like eight months with no diapers. He trained right at his third birthday. I remember that we were taking a trip to Disney World and our nanny's like, I'm gonna train Cameron, and it was like coming up in like three days and I'm like, don't train him now, we're gonna have like a disaster in Disney. And she actually did train him in like two days and he didn't have any accidents at Disney. So sometimes when they're ready, they're just ready. They're ready. Yeah, we've got a ways to go until then. But well, we had like, you know, a year two years off and then back on. And you know, between Ruth and Alex, we only had like six months off and so and then before that there was no time off because they were all stacked up on. We had like multiple kids and diapers at various points. But yeah, all good, all good, We'll get there eventually. But so, getting back to the idea of ruts, which is what this episode is about, this raised the question of the difference be between rut and routine because doing the same thing all the time also is the definition of routine, and sometimes routines and even rituals, which is an even more sort of positive connotation of the word, you know, ritual could also be rut in another light. So so Sarah, you were saying, you're maybe more on the line of it's okay to do the same thing all the time, I think it depends on one's personal tolerance or enjoyment of rituals. And I agree, like when you find that it's no longer serving you and you are wishing for more novelty because life just feels boring, then that crosses over into rut territory. Yet the same person could be doing the same behaviors and just be like I love this, I feel so good. I love doing this every morning, and I love taking my walk at twelve ohse six, And you know whatever. People are have different rigidity levels about their routines. I would say, like I probably fall on the like a little bit more prone to like enjoying routine like I. So, for example, my husband loves to vary his running routes, like and he would love to say, oh, where did you run? I'm like the same path the same place always, Like why would I change it? Like I know it's safe, I know I'm not going to trip over the sidewalk, I know exactly where the dog's going to bark and that he's in a fence, so I don't have to worry, Like why would I make a change because I enjoy this run? So I think that's like just an example, where one person's happy ritual routine is another person's run. Also, I have a very high tolerance for like loops runs with like you know, like three loops of like you know, one point five miles or something, whereas my husband would like never want to do that. So I think that's like an interesting yardstick as to like your tolerance for repetition or maybe even your enjoyment of repetition for some people. Yeah, I'm not so big on because I feel like when I finished the first leap ony, my am, let's just be done. I don't want to do that same loop again. I've never gotten into track workouts like where I, you know, have to run around the same track ten times, like, well, I'd rather run with the treadmill the same Like I don't like the treadmill. I mean, I use it because I'm in Pennsylvania where it's snowing and spend snowing for the past three weeks. But you know, even so on once the ice has been cleared, I will get out on the roads, you know, and just be careful because I would prefer having the novelty of the scenery versus knowing I could get a certain amount at a certain pace, which is what I could do on the treadmill. To be fair, I like the scenery too. I just don't mind if it's the same and you don't feel after the first loop like I'm done, you know, like because that's a very easy out at that point. No, no, okay, probably that's okay. Well interesting, Yeah, I remember there was a question on it was that the Happiness Happier podcast several years ago with a I just remember because this woman talked about how she had had to switch from a one mile loop that she would walk because she meant to walk three miles and after the first loop every time she'd be like, eh, done, you know, I don't feel like walk again. So she had to go find a two point seven mile circumference lake. And then because once you were in, you were in, like there was no there was no point at one mile in where you could just like I'm back of the car. So you know, it was the importance of finding a conveniently sized lake. I think it was the key message of that episode. Well, you know, I would say that I like a little bit of novelty. Partently, it's also that with the kids when we're all at home all week in for instance, or for long stretches of time, the kids are just all on their devices or fighting. And I mean, it'd be fine if they were all on their devices like pleasantly, but that's not what happens. It's like two people were fighting and then somebody else is screaming about something. And whereas getting out and doing something at leaves gives the day a little bit of focus. And so try to introduce some novelty like that. You know, in our evenings, our weekday evenings, we you know, it's harder to do anything novel, but we have like gone outside in the evening for instance, or you know, people have activities on different nights, and so that can allow for a little bit of novelty, like running an errand they're going somewhere new during a kid's activity at night, just to shake things up a bit. So I guess if you like shaking things up a bit, then maybe you lean more toward that side. But point of this episode is if you are finding yourself in a rut and you would like to get out of it, what can you do? I mean, Sarah, have you ever felt yourself to be in a professional rut? Oh? Yeah, personally and professional. I mean, don't get me wrong, even though I like running roots, it's a spectrum, right, So maybe I like ritualization more than average, But it doesn't mean that at some point I don't want to just go crazy and do something different, for example, like take the family on vacation to completely change scenery and change schedules, or maybe like have a structured framework but then plug and play some more different experiences to take away the monotony. Like maybe I know what the weekend is going to look like, but you know what outing we go on could really really changed from week to week. Professionally, yes, I think when I was purely clinical and every day was very much the same and I was also seeing like a lot of very very similar cases, I was a little over it, and so I did look for a more variety in my career because it's sort of like I would like look at my schedule and just see the endless days back to back of like, you know, more of the same. And even though I really love my work, that didn't quite feel right, like there wasn't enough there for me. So I guess, yeah, that could be construed as a as a professional rut of sorts, and so you consciously tried to vary your practice some like to seek out specialties. I you know, got got very lucky and found GM. And I think I think, no matter what, I would have found something I don't like. You know, if those opportunities hadn't come up, I would have thought of something else. Like there, there was definitely going to have to be something to break up the monotony, to keep me interested and excited. And I think that's probably for people whose jobs are like very very similar day after day, because mine is not, which is funny when I'm saying all I love rituals, but maybe because I get enough excitement in my job that I I guess you'd have to find something else, because that would that could get really challenging. Yeah, And I've thought of that sometimes with different parts of medicine, because some people it's you have a certain procedure that you do, you know, however many times a day. I mean, if it's a fifteen minute procedure, you do it, you know, dozens of times a day. If it's an hour long one, you do it fewer, obviously, but you know there's still that you do the same thing over and over and obviously you're very good at it, but you know, it's kind of hard to get excited, perhaps about the tenth similar procedure for the day. I think sometimes, like with medicine, like the variations on the theme will be like, well now I'm doing out patient this day, and this day I'm doing some big case that's more complex, like I see with Josh, Like even though yes, of course, like his bread and butter is like doing bypasses and he could just do the same thing all day, I don't feel like his days are the same because some days are more clinics. Some days he might have, you know, other smaller percent. So maybe people are good about you know, we don't turn into widgets and factory workers. We're not like literally doing the exact same thing, and if you were, you'd probably find some way to spice things up. Spice things up. All right, Well, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back with ways to actually get yourself out of a rut. Well, welcome back. We've been talking about ruts. First, What is a rut versus a routine or even a ritual, which are all different ways of referring to doing the same thing over and over again. But Sarah had been talking about some of the ruts she'd been in. I've definitely been in professional ruts too. I think I feel more like I'm in one when I'm doing a lot of projects that I'm not that excited about, or I don't have one big project that I find very motivating. I love writing books, and if I'm not in a period of time where I am focused on a book, it comes very easy to feel like, eh, you know, I'm just doing whatever. And so I've tried to be conscious of that, to always be coming up with a book idea or have one that I am working toward. And if it's not, you know, one of my nonfiction time management titles, to be trying to write a novel or something like that. That would just make life a little bit more exciting. But just a few other ideas we came up with for getting out of your rut. One is to try a mini collaboration with someone. So Sarah and I obviously collaborate on this podcast the other but there are lots of quicker ways to do it, you know, in this social media era, you could just do a quick Facebook live or Instagram live chat with somebody that you know professionally or personally and let others listen in, you know, a Zoom discussion with a colleague where two of you maybe have expertise on a topic and invite your colleagues to come listen in, or if there's appropriate in your industry, maybe something more broadly that people might be able to listen into. But these are so easy to do right now because of nobody needing to be in the same place anyway. Like it'd be one thing to say, Okay, I'm bringing in three different speakers on a topic and we're going to have five hundred people in the auditorium listening, like that's a big deal. But putting those same three people on Zoom and then sending out, you know, an email to colleagues and saying, hey, if you want to join us too, is it's just so much easier. So, you know, you could get yourself a nice little professional shot in the arm by doing something like that. Yeah, and that makes me think, oh, go ahead, no, go ahead, keep going. I was gonna say, we need to do our Instagram. We should do an impromptu Instagram lage. Sometimes it'll be a fun experiment. It would all right, stay tuned. People just come up with a new a new collaboration idea. Another idea is to consciously reach out to more people because more people that you kind of put in your network and you sort of keep in touch with people come up with things or just let you know about stuff that's going on. My friend Molly Beck wrote a book called reach Out, which is about her method where she sends an email five times a week, one email per work day to somebody, either somebody she has met in the past, somebody a friend has suggested she gets to know, you know, somebody she met recently that she'd like to establish ties with, or just you know, someone out in the universe doing something randomly, which is how I became the target of Amali beck reach Out many years ago. But you know, now we know each other. It's great and that's what happens because she has just an incredible network. As you might imagine from sending out one email a day for like ten years. Not easy. You got to get in the habit of doing it, but it's not a huge investment of time per day. They won't all work out like most maybe people won't respond, you know, even people that write back by then nothing will come of it. But even if like one a week, did I mean, that would be like forty fifty people a year that you have more contact with. If only twenty of those you know, turn into a solid thing in five years, that's like one hundred very tight connections in your network, which is just amazing. And the more people you sort of are in touch with, the more like like, hey, I heard of this really cool thing that's going on. You might want to be part of this, and that can be a great way to get out of your rut. We both talked about reading something and like during the work day, even do you do you do this? I mean you read all the time, but you know, I was in like a workday reading thing, but I've sort of replaced that with my workday walking, so I'm not doing it as much during the work day. But I think when you read something that's just really outside of your normal genre, that can help you get out of your rut in a very low key, low risk way. Or getting into something that's more like history about a time that you had like never known anything, it'll just feel like open up this door of knowledge. And I had a fun idea which was like you could like read a novel set in a time and then watch a documentary kind of on that same culture or time, and then maybe match like your next takeout night to that culture or time. And that seems so silly and low key, but it can be a way to make life more fun and memorable and kind of break out of a mini rut. Yeah, I mean in terms of like professionally and things you could do during the day and things that people aren't gonna necessarily look at you weird for doing. We subscribe to The Economist and there are a lot of random articles in there, but they're you know, interesting and well researched. And you know, if you've never pondered the political situation in say, Uganda, they will tell you about it and you will learn about it. And that's probably not something you are necessarily thinking about, unless you you know, have family in Uganda or something, but you know it will nudge your brain in slightly different directions and sometimes just doing that, you know, helps you think of things like not that you know your job has anything to do with the political situation in Uganda, but you just are thinking slightly differently. And it's the equivalent of like going outside for a walk, like you just have your brain in a different space and that can nudge you sort of a little bit out of you know, your rut. And you know, reading The Economist makes you look, you know, classy. I mean, I'm sure you could read People magazine and have the same thing happen, but people might feel a little more funny about that, like during the workday. Yes, that is probably true. That's so funny. We get the Atlantic Atlantic you have a lot of tangents. Tangents in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, which you know you could officially take a course too, especially now there are so many online offerings, you know, partly because everyone's doing those Zoom discussions or Facebook live things or whatever, and that allows you to see something like I mean, if you live in let's say Philadelphia, you are probably not going to do anything with I don't know, I'm making this up here, but like the San Francisco Orchestra is just like not on your radar screen. But if they have a lecture and then somebody playing a flute piece, you know, on Facebook Live, like you'd be able to watch that and learn something about that flute concerto that you didn't know before. I mean it probably won't because they won't have all of them together, But you know, flute solo, so you know about stuff like that, or just a mini course in something that is at least theoretically professionally related but not your day to day stuff. So coding, lots of people could benefit from learning a little bit of you know, technology skills, statistics. It's the rare business that you know doesn't use statistics in some way, shape or form, and I've found that it's the rare person who knows much about statistics. So that can be a really cool thing to expand your knowledge. On design, There's so much that's involved in good design, and so learning a little bit more about that might be something that would would be helpful professionally kind of nudge you out of that rut. But it's not the same thing you do every day, because you know, again, you don't want to do more of the same thing you do a small group. Sarah, did you ever start the professional book Club? No? No, yes, I know, well because I've sort of debated, like, are we at the point most of the providers are not vaccinated? Should we just do this in person out side versus zoom I don't know. We hadn't figured it out, so but it could stick, could definitely still happen. When you mentioned courses, though, I thought about like that, I'm doing this like wellness coaching thing because we're going to be launching a coaching program for our residents and just learning how to coach, which is actually a very different skill set than like being a physician. Has been really fun. Like I felt like I was in school and like learning a whole new thing, and that definitely was very rut breaking just because it was like a different part of my brain. So that's that's another kind of tangential. And I think learning about different like financial wellness can have not financial wellness, financial literacy, financial how businesses work. Like maybe you work on a different part of your company, but have you ever learned a little bit about the finance part of your company and how that works, Because a lot of times that can actually be useful in what you do because you have that kind of valuable perspective. But it's something that many of us kind of ignore. And yet a lot of times there are those kind of resources or people that you could learn from at your organization and that might actually kind of help you and be in interesting and teach you some new valuable skills. Yeah, but you could do you know, a small group professional kind of thing, like you know, a book club or accountability group, but just having you know, a small group of colleagues who wouldn't have to be in the same office as you now. I mean it could be you know from around your organization, or could be external to your organization too, but that you check in with once a month or so just to see what is going on in the world. And the more sort of eyes and ears you have out there, the more different places it can take your career as well. So those are all some ideas. Personal ruts. Are you feeling like you're in one at all? But no, you're feeling more happy with with routines as they are right now. I don't feel like we've been a terrible personal rut. I feel like we've been able to introduce enough novelty. But I know that may depend on the area in which you're lived and living in the activities in which you feel more constrained. I do feel like I'm ready for a vacation, like like a change of atmosphere maybe, so that maybe that's a little bit of a personal rut. Yeah, we've definitely been feeling somewhat in this and you know this even with a lot of effort on my part to make life a little bit more interesting. I mean, it's partly just winter and COVID working on it. I you know, suggest a formula for people as they plan their weeks, which of course our listeners are no doubt planning their weeks, but doing one big adventure, one little adventure, and maybe something whimsical. I've been thinking about adding that into the formula. The big adventure would be kind of like a half day weekend thing, three hours, four hours maybe or obviously you could do it on a Tuesday night. Most people don't, but you know, theoretically three hours on a Tuesday night would be possible. But that would be like your big adventure. Your little adventure could just be like an hour and then add something whimsical, which you know, we said, something offbeat and fun. This could be as you know, interesting, as like shaped pancakes for breakfast. We did your Valentine's Day, you know, heart shaped pancakes for breakfast, and then wound up, you know, walking through the giant heart at the Franklin Institute for Valentine's Day. But you know, whimsy could just be something like having a crazy pizza night. I mean a lot of it could be food based, just because that's something that's available to people now. Somebody even talked about trying to eat their breakfast with chopsticks. I guess they had some leftover from Chinese takeout night or something. You know, anything that's offbeat and silly can just make life a little bit more fun and interesting. And often the whimsical aspect is there even if you can't do anything else. I mean, you can paint your fingernails purple, even if there's almost nothing else that you can do. So you know, that's a that's a formula that I'm certainly trying. It's a lot harder now with COVID, but like this week, we're going potentially ice skating on the outdoor rink around here. We're doing a winter fest, which involves a ice slide somewhere. You know, just little things like that to try and take advantage of the season and you have a few more adventures in life. That sounds very fun. I think that I don't know if it takes away from the whimsy or the ret busting. But for me having something planned that's different again, like I feel like I then get to experience it doubly because I have, like that's something different to look forward to. So I'm kind of excited that it. Like I have my mommy day's plan and I don't even know we'll do, and I don't know how whimsical or exciting it will be, but just the fact that like there's something different on my calendar and I'm not working that day and I'm just going to focus on one kid. To me, that's that's like a nice way to break up personal rutness because that's going to be a very different day and memorable, even if we don't do that much, just because it's like designated as such. You know. Yeah, So what are some of the things that you've done? You had a list here, Oh, yes, Well, during the pandemic, I think that one thing that was I just found other things to really just myself with. Now, many of them tended to be sort of repetitive and ritualistic, because maybe that's what I'm drawn to. But for example, I did that whole eighty day Obsession workout program, which was like something very different, like a different style of exercise than I had done before, and I did feel like it got me out of a bit of a workout rut, like I was tired of like the same you know, same things, same videos, same things that I had been doing. So that was fun. You know, we do do takeout night every Saturday, so once again that's a ritual. But you can make that more fun by varying the cuisine or having a different person pick each time, or like elevating it and making it fancy once in a while and doing candles and you know, something else to just make it more special. I talked about my coaching class, and yeah, just like trying new things within a framework that you're already comfortable, that's my style of getting out of my rut. Well, because you learned this, I mean you also learn like hand lettering. Right, so we know that you love your planners, you have your planner ritual, but now you're going to take that up a notch with your new Yeah. I did. I took like an online like skill share class, and I did learn some stuff even in like an one hour long class, like the things that I had kind of been doing wrong that I wanted to fix and I have seen a noticeable improvement, so I would love to do to do more of that. So that's a great example. Well, the idea of workout is something you can do to shake up your workout routine. I mean this helped with fitness in general, having somebody else's training plan. I mean, that's one of the reasons people loved CrossFit and going to the CrossFit gens is every day it was a different workout of the day, right, and you didn't know what it was going to be, and so it would be something that perhaps you hadn't necessarily done before because most of us aren't you given to leaping across tires or whatever else the crossfitters were doing. But that's one of the things that was so appealing about it, I think to people, and you know, Sarah and I are both doing that Many Happy Miles program, and it's partly just that our running is suggested then by someone else. Don't necessarily always do it. But there's a different workout than you might have guessed to do on any given day, and so that can bust a routine as well, a buster route bust a rut as well. Well. Yes, and even within that program, they're good about making each month kind of having different things and different goals so that they're even trying to rut bust within the framework of a year long program, which is which is cool. Yeah. A couple other things you can do is go revisit a hobby. I have been playing the piano at the new house before it becomes a construction zone. We bought the piano off the former resident there, and it was you know, it's just fun to go over there and play in an empty house. And you know, maybe you don't necessarily own an instrument, but here's an idea. So we are renting instruments for kids doing band, right, Like, there's all sorts of music rental companies just because a lot of people whose kids take a year of band, they're not going to commit to buying a whole instrument for that in case your kid, you know, plays the Alto sax for one year and never wants to do it again. But if you, for instance, did play the Alto sax in high school and then stopped, you could rent an Alto sax from one of those companies too, Like you don't actually have to go through a school to do it, and so you know, rent the instrument and you know, months to month and play it for a while and then have it and you know you can practice here and there. If that was something you enjoyed in the past, that might definitely shake up an evening routine. You can. Speaking of things that kids do, you could take a lesson with a kid as a way to kind of use that time that you might have just been sitting on the sidelines or in the car at something maybe a joint, you know, virtual chess lesson or something in person like ice skating or kind of surfing, if you're in a place where that's possible, but anything that you would both be beginners in with a kid who's say, you know, over eight years old, that there might be possibility for both of you to learn. So that can be a way to bust up the family rut as well. Oh yeah, I like that. I feel like Josh would be, especially our kids have done skateboard lessons and I don't think he normally participates, but that's mostly just for safety, but he would love to. Yes, that is true that as an adult you don't want to get injured, but you know, maybe we wouldn't get injured doing chess or voice lessons or something that you could also do with your kids. And they have done skateboarding practice together and I can see that they're both enjoying learning on their different levels. So there you go. It's possible. It's possible suggesting something just little like going to the library if you're somewhere where your library is open, or even if you're not, the one thing that might be challenging with, you know, getting delivery of your books or picking them up outside is it's kind of the randomness that is the fun here. But like going into the stacks, going into some completely different section than you would ever go to, and like pulling out a pretty looking book and just learning something that you never would have before can introduce an element of whimsy into your life. Making a list of one hundred dreams just because it gets your brain focused on thinking about things that might get you out of your rut, maybe even not so much now, but that you might want to do over the next year too. I realized that in the fall I would like to go see Falling Water the Frank Lloyd Wright House that is in Pennsylvania. I had thought about maybe we could go do it over spring break, and then I realized, you know what, I don't think that five children want to go visit architecture a spring break activity. So maybe I will do that myself in the fall, because the leaves are supposed to be really pretty around there too, So that's now on my list of one hundred dreams. But just generally going outside, you know, we taught we stopped around in the snow at night. The other night, my kids went outside in the dark and played hide and seek in the backyard with flashlights in the snow, and it just changes up an evening completely and can be something that's a little bit different from the routine of you know, dinner, baths, bed that can kind of get old after a while. Kind of wish we had snow to chomp around in, but I don't think we've had icing. Right now. I can hear the ice on my window. It's just I think I might hear it. It's actually a very nice sound, that's what I'm hearing. It's a little like nice to hear if I don't have to shovel it. I love snow. I do love sew and partly snow can help with a winter rut too, in the sense that we don't have snow cover all year. I know some people are like in Minnesota, it snows in early December and then it doesn't leave until the beginning of April, and so the snow is not so exciting, But here it comes and goes, and so that makes it a little bit more like, Oh, well, we should take advantage of it here because we may only have, you know, three to four total weeks of snow cover in a winter, and so it's it's a chance to do something a little different when it is here. Yes, well, we are interested in you all sharing your thoughts about the spectrum of routine versus ruts and what has helped you get out of ruts and maybe what are some of the routines that you know are ruts but you don't care because you embrace them. We're totally curious, So please share in our show notes or on Laura's blog or on our Instagram. We would love to hear. Great. Well, let's take a lesson for a lesson a question from Anne who wrote to Sarah, so, do you want me to read it? And then you can answer first yes, Okay, you're good at a bridging and I'm not so good for it. I don't think that's true, but okay, So the just here is that Anne is a longtime blog reader and is thinking about having a third baby. She has a four year old and a two year old, so that is of course the time then when people start deciding are they going to go for number three or not. However, she is forty and so that puts a little bit of time pressure on this decisions. She needs to figure it out in the next year, she says. Her husband and her are both attorneys, very busy schedule. She's said that they might move closer to family to help out with the third kid, but she's also hung up on what the physical toll might be at her body with her advanced maternal age. As we all laugh at that phrase, we all feel young, but you know, we're reminded when we have babies. Maybe I'm not as young as we used to be. She said. Both of her children were breached, so she's had two sea sections. She's kind of anticipating that the third might wind up being a C section for their maybe even not for the same reason, but because she's had two before. The last recovery was pretty rough. She's gained a few pounds each time, she's worried about compounding that problem even more. Obviously, you know forty, there's more risks, So she's trying to make the decision. She wants to know Sarah's thoughts about it. She says her family and friends think we should just go for it and are dismissive of my concerns and a loving it will be fine sort of way. But any advice for how to go about thinking about this is much appreciated. Well, I always laugh because I feel like when I wanted to have three the people I or when I was like really thinking about it, but really I knew I wanted it. I always ask people who had three, and it's like, yeah, really, that's because I clearly wanted a certain answer. So I do feel like if you are emailing people with more than two kids about a third baby, you probably really want one in your heart. And my feeling is if you feel like you'd be missing out by saying no, then go for it, because that can be a regret that you might have later. And again, if you're like wanting this enough to be weighing the pros and consists carefully and sending emails to people like me and Laura, you probably really really do want it, I will say, and I think this is comforting to some that after I had three, and at least up until this point and probably hopefully forever, I have never wanted more, Like I really did want that third, but I feel very at peace and I'm like three is correct for our family, and like I have never had to wrestle with wanting four, so like because you might think, well, maybe I'll have three, but then like, is it ever gonna end? Am I always going to want another kid? And at least for me, the answer was no, I wanted a third, I don't want a fourth. Yeah, so you can you can definitely feel that way that you, you you know, felt a distinct difference going from two to three that after three are like, no, feel good, this is the right size? Yes, yes, yes, yes, well that's that's good to know. So maybe our listener will feel that way as as well. I agree with Sarah that, yeah, if you are reaching out to people with three kids about their decision, like, then probably it's because you do want the third. If you were, you know, really thinking trying to talk yourself out of it, you'd be reaching out to people with one who think that that's like the best thing ever, right, or two and like no, no, that's great, Like two is the perfect size because you know that very few people who have three kids are gonna be like worst decision ever. So you know clearly they're going to tell you that it was it was probably a great thing to happen. As for the weight thing, I mean, because you know this is if she's worried about the I mean, so obviously have I mean, I had a baby at age forty one, and yes, the recovery was you know, more challenging at age forty one than it was at age twenty eight, I can tell you that. And that was not you know, not dealing with the C section, which I'm sure is even even more so recovering from major surgery at any age. The one thing I would say is that the pregnancy and birth itself is a very short part of the timeline that the child will be in your life. So if that is your major concern, you can know that if you you know, got pregnant now a year from now, you would be on the other side of that, right, And sometimes that is helpful to say, Okay, well it's a year of that and then it will be this kid in my life, you know, for hopefully, you know, seventy years at that point. It's a very small part of it. I think you know this. The weight is I really wish people would not be as concerned as they are about you know, a few pounds here and there. She says, she runs and eats well, and so I think if you run and eat well, then you know, the fact that you were a few pounds over what your weight was at age twenty is really not you know, the end of the world. Though Sarah does swear by weight training right that that gets us back to our twenty something bodies. I hear from you, I think I don't know, but I don't know about twenty something. No, I don't think anything can do that. But I think I think weight training can be very effective in helping with body composition as people age, for many people, maybe not for all. But I also agree with Laura, like my heart hurts, like the idea that like pounds would would make the determination about like whether you want another person in your family, like no, no, I would. Yeah, I mean if it was a health complication, like I have friends who had like such dangerous pregnancy complications that literally it was life threatening, and I am happy that they don't think they want more because it's like a safety concern, that's different. But if it's more just like it was a pain in the butt, like I gained some weight, like hopefully, hopefully that wouldn't be too much of a deterrent. Yeah, yeah, I mean, neither of us have had C sections, so we can't really speak to a third recovery from one. And I know that, yes, three major surgeries can can be rough on your body. So maybe some of our listeners can can weigh in on that, or if they have advice for managing sea section recovery, we'd love to hear from you about that. But again, it's it's the whole pregnancy and birth and even the baby years or a limited part of it. And you know, I know we're all happy with having all our kids in our lives, although yes, as Sarah said, there has to be some stop to it. So I have not had, you know, a desire for ten. I can tell you that, so I don't think I'll keep you not going to keep going forever. And in fact, I felt very good with five. You know, I think at four I was thinking I was good with four, but it wasn't that we hadn't you know, closed the door on it. And then we're very happy we decided to have five. So Henry's been wonderful addition to our lives and I'm excited to see what he's going to grow up to be. And so, you know, one other thing we could tell this woman is I mean, given that she has a two year old, probably if she does want to get pregnant, she will because that that shop has clearly not closed up, you know, given that was recently open. But you never know for sure. So this can be one of those things where you could decide to try and you know, see what happens, because it might not, but you know obviously it might too. And so you know, sometimes we can leave ourselves open to things, and that's kind of a way of you know, being embracing what comes. Yes, that makes sense. Well, best of luck to this listener, and if you ever make a decision and want to follow up with us, we would love to know. Yeah, all right, So love of the week. So I mentioned the piano at the new house. I am having so much fun playing that I dug up many of my old piano books and went and played, you know, the various pieces that I learned in the past. I haven't learned anything new, but it's fun just to play stuff that I already know. I find that relaxing. It might be more complicated to learn new stuff, but the pieces I learned, like as a teenager, the muscle memory is crazily still kind of there. I must have practiced enough then that it's built in. So I've been enjoying doing that. So fun mine is DUELINGO. I just think it has been a fun pandemic past time I've been doing Spanish. I'm up to like one hundred and fifty days or something crazy like that. Although they let you use what's called a streak freeze. So I've had like a couple of streak freezes which i'm which I really enjoy because it's like I don't like the pressure of a streak, so this is the perfect amount of streaking for me. But no, it's a great app it's free. It definitely uses a portion of my brain that does not get exercise the sort of language grammar learning abilities, and so I don't think it's going to make me fluent, but I definitely know more Spanish now than I did before I started, So it's a great free resource. Yeah, and that is a good way to get out of your rut as well as learning a new language or you know, at least conversationally a few phrases in a new language. That's something that maybe would help with a professional rut too. Well. This has been best of both worlds. So we've been talking about ruts, how to get out of your rut or how to embrace it as the case maybe. And we'll be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox 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.