Work/Life Balance Revisited 4 Years Later with Rebecca Fike

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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 Unger. 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 two hundred and fifty one. We think we may have gotten out of order. Airing in late May of twenty twenty two, Shoe here is going to going by people's blog names. Is going to be interviewing lag liv her bog name, so we're looking forward to that. But first we thought we'd catch people up a little bit of life updates. Sarah is now recording this. This is the first Best of Both Worlds episode that she has recorded in her new space. So how is the move? Yuh? The move was okay. I actually had to work during most of the move. It ended up being during my call week, and I can't tell if I feel guilty about that or slightly grateful that I missed a lot of it. We had a great moving team. We had them pack for us, and oh my goodness, Laura, they packed in like three hours, like our entire house. It is unbelievable how efficient these people are. And the move was done in like less than a full day as well. I mean, obviously they didn't have to drive it very far. It's literally a mile from one house to the other, but it was pretty efficient. And then our nanny was really really helpful, like while the kids were in school, she spent a lot of time helping unpack their stuff. And I feel like we've hit a little bit of an unpacking plateau because we've unpacked everything that we can unpack without going to Ikea and buying some additional shelving or like closet solutions, because this house is actually a bigger square footage but with less inherent storage space, so we're doing some like sort of fake built in in one room to account for that. We lost our office as well, so each kid now has their own room, but there's no dedicated office. However, there's so much open floor space that we're basically using half of like one of our living rooms as an office, which is actually really nice. I'm next to Josh again. We've done this in the past and had our desks like next to each other, and I don't know, I kind of missed it. It's nice, but we need like a wall of shelving to make things more functional. But yeah, I feel really settled. It's like not stressful anymore. I really like our house. Oh good, Well, that's exciting. I mean that's the positive outcome on a move. Obviously you want that to happen. Yeah, we reached sort of an unpacking plateau a couple weeks post move as well as like, you know, everything you need for day to day life is out of the boxes, so then you know the other stuff is not needed to happen. So, you know, occasionally we realize we don't have something, I need to go find it and then unpack a few more boxes. But we're also still waiting on some furniture, so until we get that, it's kind of holding pattern, holding pattern, which which is fine. I mean, maybe we don't really need a lot of the stuff that's still in the boxes, so just I mean some of the rooms look undone, because there's maybe easier to let go of some things if they've been hidden for a while. You might realize, oh, actually, I'm not as attached to this as I think. So that'll be an interesting You'll have to let us know. Yeah. Yeah, So you also mentioned that you're getting out of your book rut. Well, I guess the book wrut comes and goes. Who knows, by the time this airs there will be a new book rut. I hope not. I just feel like I was in a big life rut for a while this year, and the book rut mirrored the life rut, and now I feel like I'm coming out of both of those, which is really really nice. I am reading In a New York Minute by Kate Spencer, and it's so much fun, and I'm almost done with it, and I have my next book up. I'm kind of getting through my ooh, my next nonfiction read, Laura is going to be the Tranquility by Tuesday that you sent me, so I'm super excited for that. I have not started it yet because I'm working on finishing this one, which is our upcoming guest in a couple of weeks, So as soon as I get through that one, I'm super excited to read yours. Awesome. Awesome. So we were also, you know in our life updates, we're recording this in May, coming into summer. Pretty busy summer for you. Yeah, I guess I would just say, like, this is the first summer in a long time I don't feel like my brain has been like having to do COVID related calculations with everything. I mean, we did plenty, don't get me wrong, Like last year we went to the Keys and we did other things, but every time I did something, I was like, well, these people be comfortable with this, and like is it worth going xyz with masks? And you know, I we're pretty much knock on some wood. But back to like twenty nineteen lifestyle in South Florida, I totally understand. You know, COVID effects everybody differently, and there are still people that have symptoms from having COVID and it's still something that isn't gone. But it doesn't affect my day to day very much anymore. And for that, I recognize my privilege and I am very grateful for it because it's just really nice to be able to take my kids places and not think about that so much and have playdates and people over for dinner and plan trips and all that fun stuff. Sounds wonderful. Yeah yeah, I mean we did a lot of normal stuff last summer too, but you know, places you'd have to wear masks, and I think this summer that probably won't be the case. We may take a flying trip with Henry and that you know, currently they aren't masking on planes, and so you know, given that he can't keep it on, just like he doesn't keep his socks on, we can maybe take a family flying trip with a two year old, so that'll be that'll be kind of fun, although taking a two year old on a plane is never exactly fun. So a mixed bag there, But yeah, you know, looking forward to a good summer. Slowly getting more of the pieces set. An update is we still don't have that June trip planned. This is hopefully we will by the time this is airing. I'm getting a little antsy about it, but I am not in charge of that trip. So the antsiness is, are you sure it's not planned? But he's keeping it from you. I know a little planned. I know it's not planned, I just is not done and that was my optimistic I know, yeah, we'll see. There may be nothing left by the time. I guess there's a hotel somewhere in the world and Airbnb somewhere. We'll wind up somewhere. Who knows, all right, Well, excited to have lag Live back. That is not actually her name. Her name is Rebecca Rebecca Fight, and she will go by that, I'm sure during the interview, but in my mind she is lag Live because I have read her blog for probably a decade now and that's what she goes by on the blog. So exactly. Sorry, but she's a repeat guest. We have not had too many repeat guests, but she was one of our very first guests, and so you know, it's fun to bring people back some four plus years later and figure out how their lives are now. So we're looking forward to hearing from her. Well, I am so excited today to introduce Rebecca Fike, who is a repeat guest on this podcast. As you know, we had her back like four years ago, which is amazing, and she is now a partner at Vincent and Elkin. She's an attorney, and she's going to tell us all about how her journey has evolved since the last time she came on, and I'm mostly just going to let her talk. So welcome Rebecca. We're so excited to have you. Thank you, Sarah. I'm so excited to be here. So much has changed, Yes, a ton of things have changed. That is so true. Can you remind everybody the ages that your kids were when you were on I think it was either twenty seventeen or twenty eighteen, and then the ages that they are now. Sure, So in twenty seventeen, my oldest was ten and my son, my middle child, would have been seven, and my youngest was four. Okay, that's a mirror of my current setup. And so tell me, I guess, tell everybody about your career trajectory and the decisions you've made over the years, including your recent change, which is a really big deal for those of us who follow your blog very closely. Yeah, no, happy to so. As you mentioned in twenty seventeen, when we last talked, I was five years into what became a ten year stint at the government. I worked at the Securities and Exchange Commission in the Division of Enforcement in their Fort Worth regional office, and I went to the government when I actually just had two of mine what would become three kids. In twenty twelve, my kids were four and one, and I actually had been Cincent and Elkins as an associate but in the Austin office, and I got this incredible opportunity to go join the sec to you know, invest gate and prosecute my own cases. And it was just a phenomenal career opportunity that coincided with kind of a phenomenal opportunity on the personal side of having a little bit more of a predictable schedule, less travel, and just kind of more advanced notice of things, which when you have young children and childcare is kind of the greatest currency in life is notice so that you can plan. And so it was just this great chance that I left at it and we moved to Fort Worth. We ended up having a third baby, which was a delightful kind of not she wasn't a surprise, but our decision to have a third was a little bit of a surprise to both of us, particularly since we bought a through better house and gave away all of our baby stuff in our mood, and that was awesome. And I think I talked to you right in the middle of that chapter and it was just going one of the did you always assume that you were going to go back to big law eventually or is that another surprise for you? So it's a little bit of both. It's funny. When I first joined the SEC, I assumed I would go back to big law in you know, three to five to five years, that I would get this great experience, I would build this expertise for myself, and then I would go and market it to re enter private practice. And just between that kind of combination of my personal life of having another baby, of my husband starting a company and being a some coach and being fairly unavailable from two to seven pm every day and just really kind of meeting and thriving in that set schedule that I had, and then also just really liking the work at the SEC. And and you know, even at three to five years in, there's still so much to learn, so much to know, and feeling like I was just really kind of getting good and confident in what I was doing and getting to have more say in the cases that I was doing, and you know, more and more relationships within and outside the Commission, and I ended up just kind of settling in. So then now I would say, kind of is a surprise that I ended up I ended up leaving, So it's just one of those why you should you know, never never say never. I never fore closed future opportunities. Yeah, so kind of had an idea that things might not be permanent, but then you loved it and you did seem really really happy for a long time and the balance seemed pretty good. How is that different? Well, I guess I'm getting ahead of myself. So tell everybody how you kind of made the choice to make a transition back to a different, different setup. Yeah, so kind of like everything, there's there's multiple inputs that went into it, and you know, so it's kind of personal and kind of hard. But I will say that, you know, I had applied to get a promotion a couple of a couple of years ago. I didn't didn't get it, which wasn't a complete shock, but I was close. I did well, and I had kind of operated for the next several years under this assumption that I was going to work hard, build my you know, resume of cases, and try again. And so late last last year there was another opportunity to apply for a position. It's pretty hard to move up within our agency, especially in a regional office, there just aren't a lot of openings that come up very often, and so because of that, a lot of really great people want to apply for the same spot that comes up every couple of years. And so it was certainly never anything I was certain I would get, but I was excited about it, and I thought I worked pretty hard to get there. I applied, went through the process. My kids were at that point, my kids are now fourteen, eleven, and eight, and you know, they were excited. They were asking me about my interviews. They were asking me every day when I got home from school if I had heard the news. You know, we were all just kind of really excited about this. And then one afternoon I got the call and I didn't get it, and my youngest who's eight, was in my room. I was still working from home, in the corner of my bedroom, and my daughter was on my bed reading her book for school, and she just looked over at me, and I was crying and trying not to act like I was, and you know, it's you know, still having this very professional conversation on the phone, and you know, she just mouthed at me. You know, you didn't get it, and I shook my head and she put her book down and came and crawled in my lap and was, you know, giving me comfort on this you know, career, you know thing that had happened, and you know, it was just really hard. It wasn't that I didn't understand, because they are great people that I work with, but it was a moment of me kind of being forced to take a step back and think, Okay, what do I want next? Like clearly I was really excited about doing something a little bit different. It makes it hard to go back to what I've just I've been doing. Maybe I still want to do that, but I at least want to think about it and have that be an affirmative choice to stay in that role versus just the depault because I didn't get this this other one. And you know, my kids when they got home, Cora ran out to the front yard to warn the big kids that you know, mom didn't get the job, because they would burst it every day asking me. I mean, they all just really kind of rallied around me in a way that I'll admit a little part of me almost wish they hadn't known, because now they knew I didn't get it, but another part of me just thought, what a kind of amazing phase of life where you know, my kids can be my cheerleaders and be invested in this and you know, want this for me and and feel for me when it doesn't happen, and see that sometimes you try for something and it doesn't work and then they, you know, they got to see me be sad because I was. And then you know, they saw me start making a list of contacts and mentors and find a really old twenty eleven version of my resume and start you know, cleaning it up and updating it, and you know, working working hard to figure out what what my options were. I think that the fact that they got to see that whole process like that is so invaluable that you can't I can't imagine that they won't think of that, because everybody is going to go through times in their life when things don't work out according to plan, or perhaps like when they're going to the college process, they'll always be able to think like, hey, mom had this idea and we were so excited and it didn't work out, and look she pivoted and it was even better or different or just I think that's amazing. So I think they're super lucky to have gotten to kind of watch that, and so and so then kind of next steps were me thinking, okay, let's maybe look at private practice. Maybe this is a good time to you know, go back out, you know, into the market, to take up everything that I've learned and this incredible experience at this agency and you know, use it outside of the agency walls. And so, you know, that began this long process, you know, while I'm still working, I brought two more actions in this time between you know, not getting the job and trying to interview and working at night to do my resume, and you know, trying to have calls on the weekends and meet up with you know, other attorneys I knew for you know, breakfast or coffee on like a Saturday. It was just but it was kind of an exciting thing and that really helped, you know, move forward and feel like I was doing something. And honestly, when I first started talking to firms, I a little bit thought I would talk to them, I would hear them talk about what they loved about what they did, and I would think that is great for you. But I really am good, good where I am. I really wasn't thinking this would turn into like an earnest job search, but actually the more I talk to people, you know, who worked in this space, the more excited I got. I got really excited about the idea of being able to you know, market myself, to do business development, to reconnect with people and attorneys that I know from college, law school, my earlier stint at the firm, the defense accounsel I've worked with on the other side of my investigations over the last decade, and just you know, no one really wants to hear from you, and you're an enforcement attorney with the SEC. But you know, once you're looking to go back out, I got to reconnect with a lot of Los school classmates, and you know, it was just this like very exciting time and it got me realizing and we're telling my husband at one point that you know, wow, I've kind of reached that point where if something doesn't work out here, I'm going to be really static. And that was a little bit scary too, because it's, you know, it's a tough position to come out of the government. You don't have a book of a book of business. You have a lot of experience, but I'm too senior to be an associate, and I wanted a position as a partner. And you know, there's a lot that goes goes into that. A firm could love you, but you could still not be the right fit for their business plan for where they're trying to grow the certain practice areas, and so there's a lot that's outside of your control. And that was that was a little bit scary again. But you know, at this point, we were all all in and I was updating the kids regularly at dinner on how mom's job job search was going. Oh my goodness, I want to hear more about the job search because we know it turned out really well. We're going to take a very quick ad break and we are going to be right back. Okay, we are back. So you are now at the point where you're excited about the possibility, but now you don't actually know like if it's going to work out, and you know you're hoping for the partner level because that's what makes sense. You're like a seasoned attorney at this point with an area of expertise, so that makes sense. So then what happened, So then I was it almost felt like dating. I've been dated since two thousand, but it felt a little bit like like that, because I'm like, when you're an associate coming out of law school and there's this very sort of set path for how you interview, when you go through on campus interviews and you do flybacks, like there's this very prescribed path, and you know when people are supposed to get in touch with you and tell you their decisions. Partner interviewing, I mean, it felt like what I remember from dating. It was just you know, as you would have this great conversation and you feel really good about it, and then you wouldn't hear for a few days and you start thinking, Okay, when do I remind them? I'm sure they're busy, they're practicing lawyers, not just you know, their jobs and just to hire people. But you know, I don't want to seem too eager. It was just it was such an interesting, uncomfortable growth opportunity for me to continually kind of risk annoying someone that you were, you know, interested in, but also wanted to make sure they knew you were, you know, very interested in going there. And it was just this very dramatic time. It felt that way Anyway, I had like a chart of when I had last you know, talked to various people. I felt like I was allowed to bother them again. And so as this pros went sort of naturally refine itself down to a couple of you know, potential options, and honestly, a little bit surprisingly to me, my old firm, very very quickly was my top choice. And not surprising because I didn't like them. I actually really liked working there a lot. I was one of the few people I knew at the government who genuinely had enjoyed private practice and had good, you know, thoughts and feelings about it. But I just I'm a different attorney now, I have a much more defined area of expertise. I you know, thought I might be somewhere else, but I just the interviews with Vincent Elkins just felt like home. I really enjoyed talking to the people, and I got really excited about building a practice there. Well, that is so exciting. And then since then things look to me, at least from the outside, like it's been kind of a whirlwind of different changes. So talk a little bit about that and what the timeline has been like for you, and I think maybe include a little bit about like your family and what the childcare setup was before, and maybe if that's changing, and tell everybody about your husband's career, because he it's a little different, and we didn't get into that in the intro. Yes, no, those there are all really good questions. So when I got to the point where I had, I had an offer from Vanny. I was hoping to get a good like two months off was my was my plan. I need to like get my life in order. I need to, you know, get everything set, get systems in place so that I can be this private practice lawyer who, by the way, has a job now in Dallas and I live in Fort Worth. And though they are called DFW, they are unless you're driving at like midnight, a solid hour plus apart, these are different space And so how do we make that work? As it turns out, Vinie really wanted me to start, and they had gave me very good reasons to start sooner, and I started two weeks after my last dayt THEFCC, So I had two weeks to kind of get my affairs in order and launch this new part of my career that I knew by choice would involve a lot of initial like travel and business development and conferences and speeches and just I jokingly call it like the tour of Rebecca right right now you have this you know audience when you first leave the government. I wanted to use it as much as I possibly could. And so it's funny. I have a really wonderful mentor. Her name is Tracy. She was a maartner at Beanie when I was there. She went to a different firm for a while, just hugely successful powerhouse lawyer with an amazing business business development and so I talked to her because you know, she has children. She actually worked in a different city for a while too, and she was like, tell me about your support, like what who who is helping you do this? What? What is your team? And I was like, oh, we had this great after school nannies their TCU students. They help out for a couple hours and drive the kids to activities. And she was like, yeah, what else. I was like, Oh no, that's it's it's fine, and she was just like clearly, very skeptical. And then we ended up meeting for dinner in Austin a week or two later and she was like, Rebecca, I have been thinking about you. Since we had that conversation, I am so stressed for you. She was like, this, you need more, And so she walked through kind of how her setup had worked. She had a husband who traveled and was busy, and she talked about this something I never heard of, called a house a house manager. It's not a position that I knew existed. And by the time she was done, I called James as I walked out of the restaurant, and I was like, I found the solution to all the problems I didn't know I had. And we are hiring a house manager. Can you find a payroll company? And like, we need a CBA because we're doing this right and we're here, We're all in. And so that was the greatest bit of advice I've ever been given. So I'll pause there. I love it. I thought you were going to say a live in nanny, but a house manager sounds a lot better and more versatile. I guess, So tell me how did she well? First of all, I guess just to take one step back. So your husband, I guess he's planning to continue to work, and he is busy and he does travel, right, Like there might have been a time when he was more flexible maybe in my memory, but I feel like that is less so now. Yeah. No. So he's a basically a professional swimmer, which is not a thing I thought would still be true at his age of forty, and a swim coach, and he owns a swim products business, Fike Swim, where he designs like some suits and also swim you know, products and tools to use in training. So he travels for me. He qualified for the US Open last last year, which again is crazy at his age. Frankly, he's double the age of us that people are swimming against. He's going lifetime best. He does clinics. He does a lot of remote coaching, so it's here, but he's on the phone for like chunks of the day where he's talking someone through like their training schedule, looking at videos, talking about upcoming races, things like that. He runs a swim school that has like four hundred plus students at any given given session. He has several instructors who were for him, but there's a lot of scheduling involved, a lot of parent interaction and phone calls and yeah, so he is quite quite busy. She's a little bit what teed up this house manager does discussion because he was super supportive of me going back to Tate practice. He wanted me to be you know, fulfilled and do something that makes me happy. And he he was like, I will step in, I'll fill in the gaps. I'll decrease my coaching hours, like let you know, make make this work, which is wonderful, but I very quickly kind of realized. I was like, I don't want my new and exciting opportunity to be this burden for you to have it become something where our interactions are a lot of me texting you lists and being like is this done? Has this been done? Why hasn't this been done? I was like, I just I don't want this change, this next chapter to be that. And so plus he's still I'm really excite. Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt. He's still doing like really fun exciting things. Like it's not like I mean he's swimming in the Masters and like coaching elites and like he has his own like big deal thing going. So I totally get that, and it was nice of him to like want to do more, but in reality, he would be giving up something that was pretty freaking special, Like he also has a very unique elite skill set, no exactly something that he loves. And I was like, I just I don't want this positive for me to be a negative for you, whether you view it that way or not, that's what it's going to become. And I also know how you handle list making, and our approaches are different. I know that I cannot hand you a list and then I can mentally check it off. I need to still check up on that list and I don't want to. I don't want to do that. I don't want to make that our daily interaction. And so I went on care dot com and signed up for an account and typed in house manager and it's a thing, and found this amazing woman who I messed to see through my study door right right now, who had done this book before and had you know, ideas on how kind of she could help. And then we sat down together and I'll never forget we were in my kitchen table a week before I started work, and she was just like, what is most important to you? Like, what are your biggest fears about starting this job? And my first thing was family dinner together as a family every night. There is never TV, there are never phones. It is our time to sit together and talk and catch up, and it is sacred to me, and my job before allowed me to always get home and I'm the one who prett cooked, planned dinner. And I was like, I am really afraid of losing dinner. That is my biggest fear. And I need to know that dinners are done and that they will still be here and that I will be the one who comes home to dinner. But my husband coaches until seven, so I need this third party to make sure that dinner is there. And so, you know, we talked about that, and then we just talked about just the other things that I would do, especially working from home the last two years, that keep our house running. And let me tell you, I completely know and I couldn't until this job that most people cannot have this employee in their lives to do these things. But when I started writing down all the tasks that I do each week, you know, month, twice a year to keep our house running, it was like a twelve page long document. It is extraordinary the work that we as parents, and frankly specifically we often as moms and women do for our household. It is now we started thinking it would be a twenty hour week job. It quickly became thirty. It is a forty hour a week, full time professional job to run our house. And I just it just says so much about the unpaid work of women, about how much happens in the background, about you know, all these things and how we value them. But not one of those tasks requires me and who I am as a mother, a wife, and a person to do that. They are just like administrative ministerial logistical tests. I still am the one at dinner, I'm the one putting my kids to bed. I'm the one talking to them at the end of the day. Like all all the things that I think it matters that I do, I am still doing. And I can still offload forty hours a week of work that is done that just needs a person to do it. I feel like I need examples. Yeah, it's a whole document. Also, now read my blog like from start to finish, and she's like, I just feel like I know, so that ended up being a really helpful tool. But things like all of the shopping, the meal prep, actually cooking or having it all ready so that you know, when I get home, I can just throw it in maintenance on the house, like vacuuming around the cat's litter box, like just stuff that drives me crazy if it's not done. Bathing the dog, making sure like her bedding gets cleaned every week because we have a bulldog and they need to be cleaned regularly. Laundry. The kids still do their own laundry, but ours now, like the adult laundry gets gets done. Trying to think doing all the returns. I'm a big online shopper and making sure all that gets back. Just making sure, like for example, I noticed a light bulb was out in our bathroom, and before I even mentioned it to her. The next day, I saw that when I turned it on the light bulb, she switched that out. You know, making sure that every bathroom has toilet paper. I mean, it's so mundane, but it is essential to the running of a house, and where I've seen it the most. I mean I see it every day obviously, but like when I go on go on a trip, and I've been traveling quite a bit, I come home and my house is just running. Like I get to be back and i get to sit on the couch and chat with the kids, and I'm not checking the toilet paper. I'm not making sure paper towels, you know, I'm not doing those things. I'm able to just like be with them. And that has just been I can't even imagine. I now understand why Tracy was so stressed for me. I can't imagine how this was going to work without that. I fully support that. Oh my goodness, that makes so much sense. And especially it sounds like your job is going to have some travel associated and like some fun things, and you want to be able to enjoy those things and not stress about whether or not everyone could cope. Is the household manager also, well, I guess your husband's able to cover a lot of like weekends or something if you did have to travel, But is that like part of her duties as well, So she's just Monday to Friday? We basically you know, I mean, maybe is an extraordinary circumstance, and if we gave her plenty of notice, I'm sure she'd be happy to help on a weekend. But the idea is it's Monday through Friday, and we still kept our app for school. You know, nanny is like driving the kids to soccer is not really her job now when our nanny can't make it and James in the pool and I'm in San Francisco, which happened the first week I had my job. Of course, she's happy to do that, and we had talked about all of that in advance, but generally, you know, her job really is it's kind of at her own hours, just getting the house run and you know, you know, ranging for things like we're getting our windows plane. I mean, just little things that just kind of all these things that need to happen, and it's I mean, it's amazing. And just knowing that another adult is here. I mean, every now and then there'll be someone delivering something or you know whatever, and I'm out of town, James at the pool. You know, we don't and I never had local family. I mean, so just kind of having this person who you can who knows your house and knows your teams and knows your children to kind of tap be like, oh, hey, this thing is happening, can you make sure that today you're around it too, or you know, whatever is has just been it's made it so see less on my family, Like it's reduced my own stress. But even if I was willing to take on all of that stress, and I mean I probably would. I am a more pleasant person. So when I can get home from work and I currently am an hour plus commute, I can be present and not be like why isn't that big up? Like why isn't that done? Why? Like why am I walking home to chaos? I don't handle that will? And I know that about myself, and my family knows that about me. Though it doesn't always encourage them to fix the chaos, but it you know, it's just made it very seamless for everyone for us to be the parents we want to be and be engaged in the way that we want to be when we are home. That is amazing. How about your kids? How have they reacted to your job change? Do you feel now it may be too early for you to know yet or maybe it's not like the reputation of big laws that you would be taking more work home, that there would be more stress, like more like, Okay, it's Saturday and a client needs you, you have to like drop everything. If that's been the case, Are your kids like kind of like just ready for you to do that and they understand it because they're at a certain age. Because I struggle with that a lot, like I hate basically work that bleeds around the edges of the work day because my kids are not mature enough to or at least they just have not learned to like deal with that yet. No, it definitely makes a big difference for age. I mean, i'd say there's two things there, Like one, I worked from home the last two years. The SEC's offices are still you know, closed, and so my work and life led completely into one another. And I also had a couple of really big, really demanding investigations and really no boundaries on my time, especially during COVID, so that that bleed of work into life really already happened. And what was kind of in the back of my mind as I looked at, you know, going by try to practice, I was like, I don't know that my hours would be any difference, Like there's only so many hours in the day, so you know that, I feel like I'd already had a little bit of training, and I did a lot of witness interviews med all these things from with me putting up a hand like outside the camera frame and being like, do not come more closer like silence? You know, I had all my post it notes. I mean, we already we had already been been doing this, and we did talk a lot about it. I mean I talked to them about, you know, what my job will be like, and that I'll have some travel and here's why. And then you know, there'll be times that I need to answer a call because I'm this person's lawyer and I'm the one that they call, and I'm the one who tells them you know what's maybe gonna happen, or I'm giving advice and counseling them, and that's my job. And and it hasn't happened a lot. I mean, most of it is during working hours. I don't feel like yet they felt a big change, but they know that they could. But I mean, honestly, I worked every night and most weekends last year outs with the government, so it's not that much different, but it is for me anyway, a lot more fun. The baseline wasn't that low. Okay, well then that makes sense. Well we're going to do our Love of the week. But I have to ask you one thing, which is tell everybody about your next family vacation if you're able to talk about it, or if you're not, then maybe your last one, because that is one thing I love about your blog and just following your life is that you guys take the most aspirational, amazing vacations. So I'm curious what is next for you, guys. No, we're super excited about our next one. We are going to Iceland at the end of June for twelve days and driving all the way around it and doing lots of hiking and adventuring and wildlife watching and I don't even know it all else. It's going to be amazing. I'm so excited about it. I am literally going to like pencil it in for myself in about four years and I'll take notes on whatever you post. That's amazing, all right, Well, our love of the week. I cannot wait to hear what yours is. But I will take the heat off by giving you my fun one, which is that I am currently reading Emily Henry's People We Meet on Vacation, and it is just a delightful little summer read. I did not, not that I want to slander any writer, but I didn't love Beach Read, which was her big debut and maybe or maybe not debut, but like the book that everyone talked about a couple of summers ago. But I love people we meet on vacation, so I'm excited that I picked that one up and I recommend it for a light summer fun read Ooh well, that's good to know. Let's see my love this week. I just discovered these shoes called Birdies Bi r Dies, and they are One they're beautiful, but two they're basically slippers with real soles, and like shoes you could wear to work post COVID. Me does not wear heels ever, and generally my work uniform is jeans, a tank and a blazer and flats. So it's like all of whole new me and Birdie's are now I'm realizing going to be an essential part of that because they are so comfortable as Actually my doctor friend, my pedatrician friends, the one who told me that they're all that shoe wears. I ordered Birdies and they fell off my feet, but I could try another size. Are you allowed to wear like your law firm is casual enough that you can wear jeans? That is amazing. It is really nice. I know it's part of our kind of coming back to the office, but I do feel like once you let people jeans every day, it's really hard to pull that back well, and it's like a nice chic look when you have like a nice top on and cuge shoes and a blazer. Like I feel like that's that's more modern looking anyway than everything's still everyone's still onom all the time. So again it's that waste up. So that you've got your blazer on there, I feel like you're you're good. That is awesome. Well, this was a pleasure. I am so excited for everyone to get to hear your update. Remind everybody where they can follow along with your adventures. Yeah, so I hardly get to post much anymore, but I try to go for like maybe maybe once once a week. But lag liv l a g l i V means law life. I started it in two thousand and six and still barely anyway have kept it going. I know those of us who have old blogs have like weird names for them because that's what you did back then, and it's not our fault. That's all I have to say. Yes, awesome, Well, thank you so much. We'll have to have you on again in four years. We'll see bye. Well, that was great hearing from Rebecca Slash lag liv about life and how everything's going for her. So this question is about running. Slightly different topic here, but our listener is a Canadian teacher who is home on maternity leave during this school year, and she says, with it's her second child being home, you know, with the COVID on and off of schools, two babies. As much as us do, she says, it's hard to get motivated to exercise. She's heard from us how we love to run and how that helps us. So do we have any good tips on how to begin running and stick with it? She says she loves the idea of getting good at running because it's free, it's outside, time can be made a few days a week. It's also very flexible. Obviously I'm throwing that in, but it's not like you have to make a certain spin class at a certain time. She says. My problem isn't actually finding the time to run, it's getting motivated to do it and not give up when I don't feel like I'm very good at it and can barely run or ten seconds. So do we have any tips on how to get started running and stay motivated to stick with it? So, Sarah, how did your running journey go? My running journey was quite different from this listener because I got really hard into running during a time prior to having kids, and then kind of wanted to figure out how to bring that back into my life. But I feel like I was already highly motivated to do that, so it's a little bit different. But I will say like this, this listener has a three and a half year old and a nine and a half month old, and that is a hard period of time, and I just want to acknowledge that, like so much physical parenting during that time, a lot of exhaustion, potentially a lot of night wake ups. She may be still nursing. I don't know if she didn't mention that, but like, there's a lot of demands on your body, and I think I love the idea that you're interested in running, but it seems like it's stressing you out because maybe you're asking too much of running right now. And I think one thing to do is kind of figure out like the minimum amount of exercise that would make you feel good right now, Like maybe twice a week for twenty minutes would be like a good starting bar, and also think a little bit about what your goals are, knowing that you should be gentle with yourself right now. I mean it's hard to have like a big time goal or body composition goal or something when your kids are that little, and just know that you might have more time for that later on. At least that was my experience. And then I think Laura and I both have the biggest tip, which is that you said you know you're going to run, and then it's like torture and you can't breathe. You're probably going too fast or you're trying to do too much too soon, And there is no shame in starting super slow. And even I as like somebody who did marathons, it was obsessed with like times and stuff during pregnancy and post pregnancy. I embrace run walking and that means like you might run for three minutes and walk for two minutes, and there's all different programs you can use to kind of ramp up slowly, and even during those running portions, Like, as I've said before, neither of us are probably going to be in the Olympics, So like it's okay if you just go like really slow or whatever feels comfortable, and work up to things really gradually so that it feels good and not like punishment. Yeah, it actually took me a few times to become a runner, like a few attempts to become a runner before I really stuck with it. And so I would say, you know, don't be discouraged if it does feel like it's taking some time to build the habit. I know a lot of people really swear by the couch to five k app per program. I don't know exactly what it is, but you could kind of do this on your own too, because the way it's structured is that you run and walk in combination, and then each time you get a little bit more running, and you know, you still have the breaks in between. So you know, you could think of doing a run for a minute, walk for two or three minutes, and then run for a minute and walk for two or three minutes. And that's one way to sort of ease yourself into it. And then over time you can make those running intervals a little bit longer, the walk breaks a little bit shorter, until you've built up to sort of a reasonable running base. And I would I would echo Sarah's thought here that a lot of times when people feel like they can't run, it's because they are running too fast. We have this idea of running that it's like sprinting, and if you're sprinting, you buy the nature of sprinting. Cannot do it for long because it's sprinting like that. A sprint is designed to be short when you're at that high a proportion of your aerobic capacity, whereas you know, most people who are running distance are running it. I don't know, it's like between sixty and eighty percent of the capacity. So it's a very much more comfortable sort of pace. So you know, do do your you know, thirty seconds minute of running at a slow comfortable pace than do your walk. Then do your slow comfortable pace, do your walk. And I think if you sort of set a goal to do that, maybe you know, like three times a week, you will in fact be able to run a mile two miles in a few months, you know, and get yourself up to the five cave the couch to five k. I mean they promised, and what it's like twelve weeks or something, so you know, it doesn't take that much time, but it does take some time to stick with it and to recognize that things are going to get better. As for the motivation, if you have the time, then you know, thinking about what makes it pleasant for you. Obviously, I like to run outside. I find the treadmill just you know, horrible depressing a lot of people do. Now. Of course, you're in Canada where it's cold for like eight months of the year, so that might you're probably gonna have to get your head around the treadmill. But you know what would make it more exciting? Can you watch a favorite television show while you're on the treadmill. Can you listen to a podcast while you're on the treadmill? Can you go to the gym at the same time as a friend and both of you like are running on the treadmill, And then during the times when you can run outside, that's in and of itself going to be more pleasant. But you can also think of ways to make that pleasant too, like again, having a friend join you for anything that's that's all you know longer, or trying to go to pretty places to run. All of those can make it, you know, feel more motivating than if it feels like some sort of thing you're just making yourself do. I like all of that. Yes, some people even like to like save a TV show or podcast, or they only let themselves do it. While they're running, so you be able to check yourself. The Oprah Winfree Show, I would I would go watch it at four o'clock when it came on in the When we lived in New York, our apartment building had a gym, and so I would go down to the gym at four o'clock and with the idea being that I would watch Oprah while running on the treadmill. Of course this was you know, it meant that it hopefully nobody else was there watching, because then the default if more than one person is there is like to put it on CNN. I'm like, I don't want to watch CNN. So Oma has universal appeal. Okay, I hope that everyone would have been cool with Oprah switching to Oprah from CNN. I don't know. I mean, I'm not a very aggressive gym member and like trying to make people change the stuff. But anyway, yes, that might help. And if you're in a home treadmill, obbys can put it on whatever you'd like. So this has been best of both worlds. Sarah was interviewing Rebecca Fike slash lag liv. We will 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.