Mistakes, regrets, and uncertainty. Ep 58

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, 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 fifty eight. Today Sarah and I will be talking about our biggest mistakes or mistakes we've made over the years, both professionally and personally, and how we have recovered from those or at least learned from those in many cases. This episode is airing for the first time on September eleven, which we know for many of our American listeners is a day where we are also thinking back over time a lot, particularly to those days that very you know, momentous day seventeen years ago. So our thoughts are definitely going out to anyone for our listeners who were personally affected by that Sarah, Where were you on September eleven, two thousand and one. I was a senior in college at Williams, and I was actually I like, I'm sure everyone of our generation can give you, like very vivid imagery of exactly where you were when you found out. But I recall I had been in the lab while it was actually happening, and I was doing like surgeries on rats, believe it or not. And I came out and the street was like weirdly, like I heard this weird buzz, like it was very quiet that everyone was sort of hushly talking to each other, but I didn't like ask any random stranger, like what's going on? And then I got back to my little house where I was living, and everybody was crowded around the TV. So that's when I found out. So it was after actually both plans had already hit because I had been like cloister away in this basement lab while it was happening. Yeah, and I'm sure every one of our generation remembers like exact details. What about you? Yeah, So I mean I'm one year ahead of you in school, So I had just graduated that June, and so I was working in a year long internship at USA today, which at the time was in Arlington, Virginia, And so it's like subtly late start to work. Newspapers often start a little bit later. So I was on the subway there when somebody got on and said, what had happened? Like a plane had flown into into one of the towers. As well, that's doesn't sound good, you know, get to work and find out multiple hits in New York. And then the thing is, we're at the tut where you know what, it was, like the sixteenth floor or something of this tower in Arlington, Virginia, and all of a sudden, somebody comes through the hall. Yellen, you know, the Pentagon is on fire. So go to the window and look out, and indeed the Pentagon is on fire. And one of the men, whose wife you know, looked right by the pentagon, said she had just heard a huge plane flying over it. She called and told us that. So, yeah, we were putting out a paper with that going on. It was it was quite a day because they I mean, they kept trying to evacuate us, right like. So it wasn't just you know, like we're trying to put the news out. It was that the public safety officials in Northern Virginia had. We had no idea if there wasn't gonna be other planes coming into d C. And so we you know, they kept having us go down and trying to come back up. We try to get the rest of the paper out. But yeah, it was it was something. It was, you know, I'm sure we all do have these these memories of of exactly where we were were then and you know how it affected everything, you know so much. So yeah, we saw. We just acknowledged that day before we get into the rest of this episode. So one of the things that we've been both doing the summer is focusing on our reading lives. Sarah, your book club just just read something that was particularly meaty, wasn't it. Yeah, we're actually I'm actually hosting this one. Our book club is really so to refresh everyone. I'm in two book clubs, like a regular book club and a parenting book club. And this is the regular one and the regular one. The parenting one is very intimate. The regular one is quite large, and so you only get a chance to host perhaps once a year, maybe twice a year, no usually really once a year because we only meet like every other month, so that's even generous. I think I've been like a more frequent hoster than average anyway. So I am hosting American Marriage an American managed by Tyrie Tayari Jones, And wow, I am actually not totally through the book. I'm like seventy percent through. But the characters are so multi dimensional and there's so many sort of political themes to it. I think we're going to have a really amazing discussion. So I'm really glad I picked it. You know, I've seen a lot about that book various places. I don't think it's my kind of book. The accusation type book is not something I oh, yeah, some people do have problems with that. Yeah, the unjust accusation there is, but that's kind of part of the theme of the book, so I guess yeah. And I think there is a plot, isn't it. I mean, that's yeah, that is that is exactly the plot. But unpacking that and you know how that happens in the aftermath of that after math of that at least you're not well, yeah, I don't want to do any spoilers for anyone who might read it, but but it is. It is if you have a book club. I think it's a great pick for a book that's you know, going to lead. You're not just going to be like, oh I love that character. Oh that was so great, Like you're going to have some really interesting subjects to talk about. So so it's a maybe pick for a book club. Yeah. Actually, is a good discussion going on it, Yes, And I enjoy it. I actually I do enjoy it, you know what. I kind of like books the unjust accusation doesn't bother me as much. And I like books where I'm like not sure which character I side with, Like I really enjoy that, and this is one of those. Well, certainly when you're your loyalty shift over time. That's actually something that's been in this book I've been reading in August, just David Foster Wallace, which is that is a thick book. It is a thick book. I was reading it on my kindle, so it it was thick, but it was, you know, on my phone, and I just finished it. I thought I had finished it a day or two ago. I had been reading the footnote so that anyone who's read it, you know, there's like three hundred four hundred footnotes and some of them have actual whole scenes in them, and so on the Kendle, I had the ability to you know, hit the highlighted footnote and go to that footnote, so that made it quite easy. I didn't have to flip back and forth. I just you know, hit the note. But for whatever reason, like six like long scenes are not hyperlinked, and I never figured it out because I'm pretty sure I clicked on every hyper linked footnote and somehow then I got to the footnotes and I realized that there were these whole scenes I had never read. So yeah, I don't know glitch with that or you know, I mean, it is possible I just missed them, but I don't think so. I don't think I would have missed all of them. So then I you know, was but the funny thing, as you know, I had, I was eighty eight percent in according to my kindle, and in my mind, I was like, well, I know the footnotes will be some of it, but maybe it'll be like two or three percent of it, And that seems about right that he needs another like seven percent eight percent of book to wrap up these loose threads that are still here. And I see we're you know, we're getting toward the end, but he's got to wrap up these things. And then eighty eight percent, all of a sudden, there's a bio of David Foster Wallach. It was over ended, abruptly ended. And you know, this is not a surprise to anyone who's read it or read any of the commentary on like sitting there, what just happened? And so of course I go and google, like what happened at the end of Infinitees? And of course there's all these pages what happened because everyone else finishes it and goes and googles what happened at the end of infinite Just wait? But is there a real answer of what happened? There is hinted at. So I went back and reread the first chapter, and there are a few things because the first chapter actually happens a year after the last chapter, and so you can see things that are written about there and then you know they were hinted about later. And there's certainly other scenes that once I read some of the commentary, I'm like, oh, yeah, I remember that happening, and now I see how that was linked. But some of this is very oblique. I mean, you wouldn't have necessarily known it. I mean, there's a whole want to read it now, there's whole things that are left up in the air like this. You know, this isn't really a spoiler alert because you kind of know this from the beginning with there's this wheelchair assassin gang that's okay, back to separatists and they're coming to this tennis academy and you're like, well, did they actually get there? Like, did they you know, get the person they were trying to get? And you create this assassin gang and then you don't know if they actually get the person they're trying to get. It is one of these things like that is a pretty big loose end not to tie up, but it's not tied up, and you can ponder why David Foster Wallace chose to do that. But you know, it's kind of fun to tackle a big book because I mean, a it solves the problem of what do I read next for like an entire month, which is you know, kind of a useful thing and get into it. You get to know the characters. You know, there's there's a lot of problems with the book. I think he gets away with some things because you're like, in your mind, you've had it build up. It's like, oh, he's this genius, this is such a huge, important book, and so you get away with things that, like I think other writers would not get away with, not because they would have written it any worse than he did, but just because of the packaging of it. And I felt the same way about that book Freedom, you know that came out a couple of years ago. No who is that by? Oh boy, why did I just blank? Totally Freedom? Very famous and no male. Which of course that's something that people have pointed out too, that it's often these male writers who it's like everyone's like, oh, they're a literary genius, and it's Jonathan Franson. Yes, I oh who? I usually like, actually, okay, interesting that is I was going to say, are you alluding to his gender? But there's parts, certainly to light. There's also parts that you're like, what on earth are you doing? But it's like, oh, he must be the genius that I just don't understand, or maybe it's just that it's experimental. Yeah, I feel like other people, you know, writing something like that, people be like, oh, that just doesn't work. But it's like, because you have in your mind that, oh, he's this literary genius. You give him more of a benefit of doubt, even for stuff that actually doesn't work or is just obtuse or whatever. So but yeah, I'm glad I tackled infinite just and now I have to find my next big book. I guess maybe I'm going to be reading some short books. You could read a little. I read a little, teeny tiny book. So I'm right now I'm like in the opposite stage because I'm not going through books nearly as fast because you know, and that's more young kids, you know, children under two. Time is more limited and Convenience Store Woman was a recommendation on the Modern Missus Darcy podcast, whereas I get like nine exactly my book recommendation, and it took about like three days to read, and like it'd probably take you one day to read. And it's set in Japan, which always makes me happy because I like quirky Japanese things. It's by a woman named Sayaka Murata, and it's weird, but I recommend it, so the total opposite of what you just read. Basically, yes, all right, maybe I'll put that on the list next. H Well, we'll just go ahead and segue and yeah, the body of this episode, since it's just gonna be asked, we don't have a guest for this one. I guess we don't really have to have a dividing line between the intro and the regular stuff. So we're already talking this episode about mistakes we have made, various missteps or your path not taken, as the case may be, and know what we've done with that. So I guess we'll sort of kind of go back and forth. But I looked at this. You know, Sarah's got some slightly meaty ones at the beginning. You know you're you're MD PhD. Let's talk about that. Oh yeah, So anyway, if you know, I'm sure there is a very smattering of people that are longtime blog readers of mine, because I did have a blog throughout this sort of turning point in my life. But I entered Duke as an MD pH d student. I had, you know, that research that I mentioned doing during nine to eleven. I was pretty into it at the time. I was looking at like effects of early life stress on memory. I kind of was interested in neuroscience and kind of the interaction between hormones and behavior and the environment, and I thought, you know what, MDPHD seems like a great idea. And number one, it's paid for. I'm sure that's not supposed to be that much of an enticement, but my parents were wonderful in that they paid for my entire college education, which was not cheap, but that was definitely where where. So I was like, wow, you can go to school and have it completely paid for. Its The mdphd student programs are on a federal grant, and I liked the research, and I had decent scores and pretty good grades, so I felt like, you know what, it's a few extra years doing research. I'll have multiple options when I finished. You know, I might want to be a researcher. I might not, but I, you know, I'm interested in it enough to express my interest during these interviews, and I kind of, you know, knew that they would want to hear that I was excited about research, which I genuinely was at the time, and so I did go in that direction. I was fairly successful in interviews, and then when I got into Duke, I was like, all right, we're done, and I headed there and the first year was great. I loved my MDPHD cohort and really had no doubts about what I was doing. Second year at Duke was clinical, So I went into the wards thinking, Okay, this is my award's time, and it's going to be great because I'm going to go back to pH d Land after this, and you know then that was going to be about a four year journey and then head back to medicine. And at Duke the whole thing might have taken me six years. I might have taken probably more likely seven. Actually a lot of people do do five years. No, yeah, seven, So four years of research plus the three years of med school and because Duke has a condensed program anyway, But somewhere during I think at the end of my first research year, I was starting to ask different questions about what I wanted my life to look like. And you know, as a twenty two year old I was single, graduating college or I guess twenty one when I was applying, because it was during that fall of two thousand and one. Single really like was sort of being encouraged not to think about, you know, family planning, Like it was very antithetical to the Williams education to even like bring those topics up, so they didn't cross my mind. And it was almost like if someone were to mention that, I would be very indignant about it, like how dare you mention that I will be thirty by the time I or thirty five or thirty six by the time I'm practicing medicine? Right, So I really didn't go there. But med school started two thousand and two, I met my husband, who was then my boyfriend. I the wheels returning as to like, hmm, how old will I be at this time? How old will I be at this time? What do I want? I want a family. And at the same time as I was kind of figuring that out, my for the research itself was kind of dying out. I hated benchwork. I guess I liked it with the idea that like, oh, if you I like work, where you know when you put your work in, you're gonna get something out Like that is why like it's satisfying to me to see patients. It's like, oh, I'm gonna put the work in, I'm gonna see the patients. They're gonna be happy. Like you know, I'm sort of cranking out widgets. They're just more complex widgets. Right, But when you're doing research, you can like crank a widgets all day and then like someone else scoops you and you have literally nothing to show for it or something doesn't work. And I found that super frustrating to my personality type. So it just sort of became evident. Sorry, I'm like going off in a huge tantr, but this was my life's biggest mistake. It became apparent to me that this wasn't the direction I needed to go, and I started frantically figuring out, like, oh my god, can I go just go back to med school? And the answer was yes, you can go back to med school. You don't actually have to pay back the government. You do have to pay for your last year of med school, which I still finishing up my loans for that now, although we're close to the end. Yeah, and I ended up graduating in five years set of four, which actually left me one year out of sync with my husband, which did cause a little bit of complications in terms of matching. We couldn't do what's called couples matching. And but the truth is it all worked out really nicely in the end. We finished the same time. I'm very thankful not to have a research career. I do not particularly enjoy doing research, and so yeah, that was my big mistake. I mean, I don't think it was like I wouldn't call it wasted time in the sense that I'm sure you've learned a lot about the research process, and I mean it was, but I did. I took a good amount of way to it. I would say, like the times that it felt most like the mistake was Well, the funny thing is, in my fellowship, I was sort of forced to do research and I had nothing to do with the PhD. But it just is part of the training to become a pediatric endocrinologist. And I think because of my prior research background, I was heavily encouraged to a bench research and then ended up in a lab again, which I guess that was sort of a second mistake, because I was miserable, like I would count the hours like I hated it, and I would beg to do anything clinical. I'm like, oh, I'll cover the hospital, like I'll take extra call, like I didn't care anything to not be not be in the lab. So I mean, I don't know that wasn't even as much of a choice. That just that was just how it was. I guess that was my second mistake is agreeing to do bench work a second time when I knew it wasn't for me. Yeah. Yeah, although I'm looking at number two of your various Oh, I don't know, Like, you know, it's very easy to doubt yourself. I'm like, should I have gone to med school in the first place? I mean, I enjoy my job now mostly, but I definitely when we have people on our podcasts, it has actually like awakened party. I'm like, oh, I could have done that. I could have done that, and maybe that's maybe that's not fair. I mean, I have a I have a great job. It's really rewarding in many ways. There are certainly frustrations with it that I didn't anticipate when I went into it to begin with. And I also, I'm like really kind of sad about having call. I don't, as I've spoken, I don't want to be woken up to patient phone calls in the middle that night when I'm sixty. I just find it toxic. So I I don't know who knows and who knows what would you what will happen? I'm curious, like what, well, I mean it's so cliche, but my like my one of my I remember Gresham. We've been talking about like what did you love to do when you were little? And I love to write, and I love to write stories, and I love to write like I would have had a typewriter in my room and I would like spend hours doing it. I've you know, kept a blog for about a million years. I don't think I'm a terrible writer. I think I might have gone down that route, maybe more in the fiction side of things. But I think again that part of my personality that's like ooh, if you put a lot of work in and something fails, it really frustrates me. That might not have done well because I know you often have to fail a lot in writing before you succeed. There is that I don't know I could have done that. I think I would have been a great like corporate Josh hates when I say corporate pond, but like, I think I would have been great, like working for Google, like in marketing, like I get stuff done, like I could have done consulting, and I could have done a lot of things. And I didn't really consider any options. After quite a young age. I decided I was going to med school. It's a little bit in my upholder nature to be like, well, this is what I have to do to get there, and like why would I even look around and think about something else, because I got a path that works. Like and that's also a little bit we're getting very grutch and ruveny here, but little satisfice or too like, Okay, well this is pretty good. This is a good job. Like I don't think I necessarily question things. And you know what, I will give my parents props because they were always like, are you sure you wanted to go into medicine? You know your uncle he has to work with my uncle's and obig i n and like the only doctor in my family has to work really long hours and they're you know, it's really tiring. And they they were not parents. They were certainly proud when I chose that, but they did not push me into it at all. So I know it must be even harder in families where you know, the parents have very specific ideas of how they would like their children to succeed. They've been telling me since age two that you need to be a doctor. That's a slightly different, slightly different issue, but let's let's that was a lot, and I want to hear them if your mistakes, because that was like probably more than anyone bargained for it, and I don't even know if they were truly mistake. No. Well, I mean, I don't think going med school is a mistake in the sense that you like practicing medicine, And yeah, you would not have been able to practice medicine without being a doctor, so in that sense. And I am not miserable my career, Do not get me wrong. They're a wonderful thing. And I also just I mean, listening to this, I don't think it's impossible that you can take the writing back up. I mean I think, I mean, I know that you have a great blog, You've got a great platform in terms of that and the podcast that if you do want to write something, you can certainly do so. And you know, maybe as time opens up, as your kids get a little bit older, you might start taking some of that extra time to start writing fiction. No, it's definitely on my mind. Yeah, so your your mistakes give me a meaty one to maybe think of something that can match that. Yeah. Well, so I've written a number of books, some of which you might have heard of, some of which you probably haven't. And there are reasons for this. Uh. You know, I started my career co authoring books and one interesting thing, you know, this can take a lot of time and then you know, nothing can come out, not much can come out of the book itself if if you don't get a whole lot of people reading it. And I actually had two in a row with this one was co authored. Uh, there's the book. I was matched. My agent matched me with the agent I had at the time with a client who's coming into the agency was a young doctor wanted to write a book called The Healthy Guide to Unhealthy Living, which is a great way. Yeah, it was. It's a wonderful topic. We got a you know, six figure advance on it, you know, multiple publishers building on it. Wrote this book and then, uh, for a variety of reasons, which I'm sure you know made great sense for his wife, he decided to go in a different direction with his career and then so he really couldn't promote the book, which from the publishing side though, people were just like furious and nothing happened with the book. I mean, this is a book that could have I think done very well, but didn't because you don't have the author behind it doing anything, and so the you know, publisher themselves didn't do anything with it. Uh so you know, I'd put quite a bit of effort into co authoring this with him to right, you know. So there's that. And then my next book was actually a solo book that you know. It's called grind Hopping Build a rewarding career without paying your dues. And you are right, I have not heard of it, and I thought I knew the entire loan and I thought I had read all of it. Well, So this book came out in two thousand and six and it literally sold like a thousand copies to okay, which is not very great. I mean maybe hope, hey, we could maybe get a spike in sales. And people are listening to this. You want to go buy the e book. It's it's available, so you could go buy the you have to you have to apart back suddenly like start getting more royalties from it because people have gone and bought the e book is about the rise of self employment among young people, and the idea is that, uh, you know, in the past, the ideas you you worked for a company for a long time and then eventually, if you had entrepreneurial aspirations, you'd go out on your own. But these days there's really no reason you can't do that yourself, like first, you can work for yourself first, because the tools to start a business are so much more available. And certainly, you know, I was writing this in the early two thousands, that was more of a you know, profound concept than I think that it is now there's this thing called the Internet. But also just that the bargain between companies and employees was changing, Like we it used to be that you might expect to work for someplace for a long time, but now you know that a company most employment contracts are at will, like it could end at any time, and so this has reflected Then people feel like, well, why should I pay my dues, you know, climbing up the corporate ladder to then be given opportunities. I want to learn things early on, and by running your own business you can do that. You learn all aspects of things, and there are ways to be mentored and to learn things even if you're not within a company. So that was what the book was about. A couple of things went wrong with it. First, I say the word grindhopping, you have no idea what that means, was hopping out of the grind right like, But I had to explain that every single time. I just well that I don't understand. Uh. The other issue is that we went through three sounds like it could be about coffee and beer. But yeah, we different editors. So it's pretty much it was an orphan project by the time it came out, and nobody cared about it. Also I had and then, I mean the mistake part is I had no idea how to promote a book in my mind, you know, I just hadn't learned all this. I hadn't really studied marketing, like the ways people do this. You know, you put out a book, people buy it, like, don't publishers themselves have ways of promoting books, and you know, sometimes they do, but often they don't and or they choose not to because there's other titles and they only have so many people working in publicity or what you know, whatever it is. So I had not you know, built up any of that. I could write about it for different places, but it turns out that you know, writing a column about this topic even in a place like USA today doesn't get that many people to buy a book. I didn't understand, like, you need your own people. You need like your email list, you need, you know, your own blog built up, you need a podcast for instance, where you can interact with people who care about your ideas. And uh so you know, it was it was went nowhere, which means that they didn't want a follow on book, like they didn't want my next book. I wanted to continue writing books, and so that particular publisher did not want my next book. I got the news that they did not want my next proposal, I cranked out, well it was actually yeah, well, while I was in the past, while I was in labor with Jasper, my oldest I like bother, I was checking my BlackBerry because I'm bored in between contractions, and that's when I got my news. I was like, that's that's awesome, so you know, and that was one that was it was. It was. It was another book that I never wound up writing, which is, oh my goodness, it is what it is. But so it took a long time to get a contract for one hundred and sixty eight hours because I was an author who had not sold books who had written a book but had not sold any which the good news is that I didn't get like a huge advance for that first book. And why it doesn't like I mean, that sounds like a bad thing, But what I've seen friends of mine have happened to them is if you get a really really huge advance for your first book and then you don't sell, like you will never get to write another book, and because you've just cost the company and nobody else will take a risk on you. And so that is the problem if you wish to write you people sometimes will write under pseudonyms for another book because of that. So you know, in my case, that wasn't the issue, you know, as small potatoes. So it took it took you know, a long time to get the contract with another publisher for what became one hundred and sixty eight hours. Even that, though I you know, you think I would have learned my lesson of like I need to spend so much time and effort on marketing the book, like as much as I do on writing the book. I just don't like if my brain does not work that way, which is why I so admire people like you know, Jessica Turner, who will be an upcoming guest. Yeah, and we actually had a request to have her on, like we already even to have that in the in the docation she worked professionally in marketing, then obviously she has this other side of being a book author and content you know, influencer or whatever. She but because she knows how marketing works, she has an instinct for it. That's that's just amazing. Like I think about one hundred and sixty eight hours I had you know, on my blog, had people like I said I was going to do some time makeovers for that book, and so you know, people wrote me, Like a fair number of people wrote me saying oh, I'd love to be included, and I talked to some of them, and I didn't include all of them. But like I never wrote those people who had emailed me to tell them that this book was out, like oh my god, easy sales, busy sales, and yet I just didn't think to do it, probably multiple sales, because they'd be like, look, I'm in this book. And even the people who weren't in the book, they were clearly interested enough in it to like, yeah, but this idea of like oh, yeah, you need to reach out to people like they won't just find you in the vast marketplace of everything, so, you know, one hundred and sixty eight hours. The good news is it's selling as many copies per week now as it's sold when it came out in twenty ten, so that's amazing. It's a perennial seller, which is great. So I'm happy with that get royalty checks every six months from it. But I'm very grateful that Portfolio, which is part of Penguin which is now Penguin Random House, did not give up on me like they thought there was. You know, they're willing to keep working with me, even though the next book, which some people I also may not you know, talk about another career sort of dead end. It's called All the Money in the World, and was a brief for and like, shall we position Laura as a personal finance expert? And the answer is no, we should not do that. We've already been asked to do a finances episode, and I think both of us are like, yeah, we might have to have a good guest for that one. If anybody wants to volunteer as a great personal finance expert to be a guest, then now is the time to let us know, because I don't think either of us necessarily want to be that well. But it's not that I don't understand money. It's just my perspective on it is different, and it's not one that translates broadly. I mean, the people who do well with this are showing you how to you know, save money on your car insurance and then you know, do frugal recipes, and you know, there's a huge market for that, there is, you know, my, I just don't see it that way. I mean, the first thing I think about, you know, like I'd often rather turn money into time, and but then the good thing is but see, I would have thought that your perspective would have been valued because it is. Yeah, but I guess, well, apparently not as a book. My my, I'm happy with my current time management book sales. You will note that none of mine have been like a number one New York Times bestseller, And you know, part of that is that there's also certain narratives people do like, which is that you are you know, so so busy in this crazy, crazy world. And I will not remember write that, so we'll see. Am I always I'm always the counter counter argument, which is limits your market to agree. But anyway, All the Money I mean, I'm going on for a long time on this too. No, but it's super interesting, I think, I mean, I think for us, those are all of our other points, and we will give some of them are like little although interesting, but it's the career stuff, and it is so hard to know. It's like, well, it all turned out okay, you know, so was it a mistake or not? It's so hard to Yeah, I mean, so All the Money in the World also has not sold very well. I mean sold more than hopping, but it did not sell particularly well or fast. But in between finishing that manuscript and incoming out, I had decided to write a short ebook in coffee shop at night while my I don't know was escaping the household of three small children once a week or so, I wrote a small e book called What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast and it you know portfolios, that's another big portfolio. Was then willing to publish it, and we decided to have it come out a few months after All the Money in the World and that that one really did sell. So that did hit like Amazon's official bestseller list. It was number one for audiobooks on iTunes, and it was just like experiencing that was so different from the previous books that I was just like, oh, well, that's what it feels like to write a book that people know what you want to read. So I know what my niche is now, and so I spend time management ever since, and I think it's done awesomely from my perspective. I mean, I love your thank you. I appreciate that. All right, another light, Well, here's like a back in time one. Ready. You know, I've had my blog forever and I should have switched it to word Press at some point. Could do so much more flexibility. Should I have gone to med school? No, much smaller, But you know, I think content wise, like I think I still have something to offer, but I know people don't find it, and I know it looks like a super old website and what WordPress would have enabled me to more easily like outsourced and facelift it. And at every juncture, I was like, well, I have readers, so I don't want to lose them by like moving it. And now it's like how many years later, I don't even know, seventeen thirteen, whatever, how many or however many years I've been fourteen years writing this blog and it's still a blogger or blog spot, which is like the grandfather's blog site. And oh well, anyway, maybe I'll move it. But you could change that. I mean, you can still have the shoe box dot com and you just have to Yeah, I could migrate it. I may lose comments, which would be really sad because I have Like then you just hire somebody. It's hard to pay them enough that they won't like they will manually transfer them if they need to. I need to actually do it. I need to just suck it up and do it. And then, on that same note, even tho it's supposed to be alternating, don't you wish we started this in like twenty fifteen. I know, as soon as we met each other, like so we went for a run together in the summer of twenty fourteen. Oh yees, you're pregnant right and run. It would have been great if we had been like, as we were running, hey, I have this idea. There's this new thing. I should have been like, I'm really into podcast. We should start one together, but would not because it's true the people that got in on the early phases. I mean, now it's just I don't want to say the market, but the listeners are much more fragmented because there's so many good options. But you know, oh wow, well we'd be at three and a half million downloads by now instead of like three hundred fifty that I mean, you know, at least we started in twenty seventeen. There's that proverb. I'm sure people have seen this in all over Instagram, but that you know, the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago and the second best time is now, right, so you know that is what it is. I think we should Nope, that's exactly true. How about vacations. Did you take any vacations that were mistakes? Yeah? I can think of yeah, I know you Okay, I'll go with mine real quick. Here. We rented a beach house for two weeks that summer of twenty fourteen, I Ocean Grove, where we always go. I thought I had arranged it carefully so that our nanny at the time and my husband would trade off so I would always have another adult there with me. And you know, we had the three kids seven there were seven, four and two at the time, and I was pregnant with Alex and then our nanny at the time decided she wanted to move on to a different job, and so she was interviewing for jobs, and so it would be sort of last minute that she'd then get an interview and so would be able to come out. My husband also is like moving around stuff, and so then he couldn't be there. I you know, said he would be there like Friday, over the weekend and Monday, and and then he'd like have stuff on on Monday or Friday. You know. It was just it was you were in a beach house alone with three children pregnant. It was incredibly stressful them we didn't even have great weather, Like, so I'm hauling all this stuff to the beach because none of them were like reliably good beach stuff. Hollers No. Seven, four and two. I mean that's you had a two year old. That's definitely what I could convince occasionally to carry like some towels, but everyone else was just like useless. And then I mean the low point of this is like I'm so stressed and like, you know, dealing with them not all great weather, and the kids like at some point they started like jumping off the front porch into the bushes, like I and I found them doing this. I found my boys doing this, and I come out and I'm just like yelling at them, like get in the house, get your like you cannot do this. I feel like They're gonna like their legs and then I'm gonna have to deal with that. Then I get a call from our landlord because apparently some of the neighbors had heard me yelling at the children. We're trying to figure out what was going on. She was basically trying to suss out if I was like abusing my children, like like, oh my god, Oh I'm pretty much. I like I like my husband happened to be there when that phone called. Kanye had like gotten in there, and I was like, you know, hung up the phone and I was like in tears, and we are leaving now. We are leaving now. You're never doing this to me, like not actually abusing my children. I'm just you know, the pregnant lady who has children coming out my ears that are hurting themselves or trying to hurt themselves and you're trying to stop them. Oh my god. I I've been in that situation. Well, not not with that many kids and pregnant, but like we're the kids just you're saying the same thing over again and not getting any response and like what are you? You know, Yeah, anyway, this is why this is not apparently. I'm sure I don't know that there's any parent who hasn't had that happen. When you're in you know, the kids are trying to hurt themselves. You're in a very stressful situation. Like I don't there's nobody who doesn't like get stressed about that. All right, Well, our worst trip was probably Disney World when Cameron was fourteen months because we decided, oh, we had to go for Annibal's third birthday. I'm not sure. I mean, yes, she kind of enjoyed it as much as a three year old. Why did she decide like it had to be for the third birthday? I don't know. We had just moved down here and it was sort of we were giddy about the idea that it was like easy to go to Disney World. And don't bring a fourteen month old to Disney World. It's like the worst. It is the worst. They cannot stand in the line, like you try to put them in the line. They want to do everything, but they want to walk away. So I basically couldn't even have him in line because he'd like fight me and run the whole time. I just remember being like, we're like hemorrhaging money and suffering. So yeah, that was our mistake trip. And then I've vowed never to go back with anybody under three, I think. And then I totally broke my vow and brought Genevieve as like a tiny baby infant. But that was actually much much, much better than having a fourteen month old because she just like slept in the ergo. He was like a total paintings. So yeah, don't get it. The the toddlers are tough in general. I think that staring that down right now, Jenerish nine months and I'm like, oh, yeah, she's almost walking terrifying. Yes, yeah, no, that's that's a that's a rough one. I don't know. All right, you said not taking Spanish in high school or college. Yeah, I meanspecially useful for you, and I mean just living in the Miami, Oh, it would be so professionally useful. It would have been professionally useful in North Carolina as well. And I mean it's actually believed or not. It's better here than it was in North Carolina because here I have so many colleagues that speak Spanish that I just basically don't get the Spanish speaking patients for the most part, and they're so many people that are bi lingual that it's so easy to find interpreter. It was kind of a lot harder in North Carolina, where we had a very limited number of interpreters and this rapidly expanding population of mostly Mexican immigrants, and it's just made things so stressful. And I just thought, if I'd only taken Spanish, and my attempts to learn Spanish since then have basically failed because it takes a lot of time, and I'm not quite willing to devote that amount of time to something like that when I don't need it need it, and I'm not naturally inclined towards languages. I mean, I speak like some bad French. The thing is, I speak an amount of French that if I had done that amount of Spanish, like I think I could have bridged to medical Spanish, but instead my French is pretty useless. So yeah, yeah, I say, I took like five years of French and mine's pretty useless too. You know, I'm sitting there in France being like, yeah, I got nothing, Laura, there you go on a podcast. Everyone in Europe speaks English better than like the average American anyway, so it's not really an is satire is? Yeah? No, I was thinking about like things I should have done, And you know, for my writing career, early on, I wrote for a lot of different places, but I was sort of always just in, like can I get that next byline? And can I finish the next story? And I felt like I was always just trying to write quick stories, even though I had a number of places that would have run like longer, meaty things if I had written them, Like if I had really pursued sort of big features or you know, getting lots of interviews, longer pieces, they would have run them. I just didn't do it because I was always you know, if I was working for in the article I was, I was like, oh, I want to get my paycheck, let me write something quick. I could write one story and get paid pretty pretty much the same amount as if I, you know, write eight I write eight stories. I paid eight for eight stories, and I could write it in the same amount of time, Like you know, it's always it's a part of my personality. I don't necessarily like all that much just easy win aspect, it's good. I mean, it's good for some things. I had the satisfice or aspect that I'm good enough, is good enough in many ways, but sometimes I think, you know, it would have been good to have pieces in my portfolio early on that I was able to shop around more, but did not. So there we go, you said, letting a watch the movie my last one? Yeah, letting NFL watch. So at around age two, I started this ritual of letting her like watch some YouTube video on the phone before bed, And it took like until age four to break it. And you're right. I mean, I guess I didn't need to break it, but I felt, you know, at some point it became very addictive. She'd asked for more, it would rile her up. The quality of what she chose was like getting gross, Like she always wanted to watch these like unboxing videos, which I just find oh, just so consumer, like some little kid wearing makeup, like opening fifteen new boxes of toys like ew, like that is just so bad for the earth and just gross and you know, that's what she would gravitate towards. So one day we were just like, you're done, we're not doing movies anymore. And it actually was fine. But I sort of wish I had never started that ritual because I think she would have been fine without it, or doing something else, or maybe it could have been like a song, something better, because it was I did it. I started it as a crutch and then hung on to it for too long. I don't know. I think I can't second, I don't think he's damaged, damaged if anything else, Maybe you should have started a sideline where you have her unboxed, like fifteen toys, and then I wish, yeah, then you and Josh could both retire. That'd be great, That's true. There are kids who have done that, But Alex watches Little Jack Jack. I don't know if anyone's listening to this as a fan of Jack Jack who plays the toys and on YouTube, and it's like the six year old kid and Alex is obsessed with Little Jack tyck. Well, you better have a good savings plan, because the thing is that does not a longevity type of a Jack Jack grows up, it won't be quite as yeah, and he has like acne. It's like, no, this isn't so rough. I don't regret like what we've had to do to get through bed time. I still sit with the three year old while he falls asleep on the nights that I'm putting into bed, And you know, at this point, I'm mostly okay with it because I'm just I'm reading books on my phone or I'm scrolling through Instagram, which I'd rather I should be reading more books on the phone versus Instagram. But it's like, you know, eventually he falls asleep and I've had a little bit of reading time, so it doesn't seem so bad. He'll probably outgrow it. Yeah, that habit, actually I would not put on my regrets list. We actually did that until like a couple of weeks ago, and we finally were like, you know what, you're in the same room, here's some reading life. We're leaving just to more get a little bit of adult time back at night. But I don't regret that one. I think you know, also, it's a wind down for you too. You're like, okay, Li here relaxed. Well. So those were various mistakes regret or not so much in some cases, but you know, things turn out mostly okay, pretty happy with life as it as it goes. Yeah, I am too. That's the funny part. It's like you think about what you could do differently, but then you look at what you have now and it's like, well, I did a lot of things right. I married a really wonderful person, and I'm so glad I had chose to have three kids. And yeahs, mostly good things, all right. So let's go to our queue. Our question for the episode is this episode drags on? Yeah, this is a long perview or workout. I hope everyone's getting their long run in for the weekend. Here I'll paraphrase this one. I said. We had a writer. A reader. Listener said that she had listened to the audio version of my latest book, Off the Clock. It was interesting to read what you learned about your approximately forty hour average work week versus the fifty hours you estimated in previous books. But I wonder if both are true. I expect that leading up to one hundred and sixty eight hours, and I know how she does it. We're intense periods, sprints if you will, to reach new milestones looking back. Now, could it be that you have incorporated strategies and information to make it possible to do the same or concentrated work in less time. When we learn more and can do more, do we need to apologize for doing it in less time? I think that sort of rhetorical question. But this lady goes on to talk about how as she's advanced in her current role, she's realized that she can make better, quicker decisions. She knows exactly what resources her team needs to move strategies forward, so she can work fewer hours and yet still be getting more done. And so now she's trying to figure out what do I do to reinvest the returns? And so she's spending additional time on high value activities at work, such as mentoring colleagues and employees, and at home she's spending more time with her kids. And so basically she's saying, does more time equal more time? The more time you put into your career early on, the more payoffs you get. So what do you think, Sarah, Yeah, well, I thought this question sort of led me down a track to think about, like in my line of work, like what can be compressed and what can and what's gotten faster and what's never going to get faster. And you know, for in my job, things that can get faster are patient documentation, so writing notes, which is a big part of the job, figuring out what I can outsource, and I'm sure that applies to a lot of jobs, like you start doing everything yourself when you quickly realize like this is what I don't have to do myself on that will I mean as simple as like I used to walk over and scan documents to email myself and now I just send a message and it takes like a lot. I mean, I don't get as many steps in, so that's a problem. But otherwise, yeah, running Wait where was I going with that? So that's gotten faster. So patient documentation takes let oh, running getting faster, although limited, I was saying, I've never I'm never going to turn into sal Lane planning in but to some extent you can be a little bit more efficient. I do feel like I get faster reading, and we definitely get faster writing and prepping this podcast. But then there are things that totally don't compress and I don't necessarily need them to compress conversations with patients, Like if you compress an encounter beyond a certain point, it's going to become less meaningful no matter what. And then family time and childcare, like you know, you might be able to get rid of the parts that you don't like, but the quality time to a certain extent, like you there is something that quantity means. You can't spend two minutes with your child and be like Jack done. I mean I guess you could, but well you can't guarantee that that would get everything in it that would have happened in a in a longer period of time. But yeah, I mean interactions with other people are always going to be difficult to compress and make more you know, efficient and putting air quotes around it there because I don't think that's really the goal necessarily with human interaction. That's you know, nurturing the relationship and you know, like part of different sorry, that's my part of Part of a question that's intriguing to me is like do you get punished for doing things faster and then like being assigned more. I mean, I think there is an element of that that you need to protect yourself from to some extent. So if you do become more efficient and then you're doing other things which are not not the widget cranking out. You have to make it clear to your employer that you are still you're doing other things of value in that additional time. I guess that, or maybe you're not. I guess. I guess that's that's a good question. Can you just leave early? Yeah, I mean it depends on the environment and some places that would be harder to pull off than others. I think some places you can definitely cash in your time dividends better than others. I know. One of the things that people resent most about billable hour jobs is I feel like, even if I'm more efficient, like I'm still needing to build these hours, so then I just have to go find more work to do. But that's that's a very short term perspective. And I think because as you become more efficient and good at your job and these billable hour client jobs, like, then clients start coming to you because your work is so good and so you have to spend and then you can charge more unless I'm going to find those clients because if they're coming to you, like, then you can build more of your time because you're not having to build in as much like, oh, I need to go find new clients time. So that's that's a very short term perspective of thinking. Oh, if I'm more efficient, I just you know, can't build as much time. And that's the problem I think for me. Yeah right, I mean what I do writing, it's definitely gotten more efficient over time. When I was first writing stories and articles, I wouldn't know exactly who I should call, and I wouldn't know you know that they would say yes to being interviewed, and I wouldn't know exactly the right questions to ask them, So I'd have to ask ask more questions and longer interviews, and then I'd have to hunt through all that for the right quotes and figure out where to put it in the article, and the article would have to go through more drafts, or even something as practical as like if you're assigned a thousand words and your first draft is sixteen hundred, you've got a problem because you can't cut that down to a thousand words as easily as you could. Like, writing for a sixteen hundred word length, you have a different structure than if you were writing for a thousand word length. Yeah, oh interesting. You wouldn't have known that on the outset, but you know exactly. But now I know exactly what can fit in a thousand words, and so when I write an article that's supposed to be a thousand words, it will be between nine hundred and eleven one hundred in the first draft, just naturally. That's because you know what fits. And so it's that definitely makes things more efficient. Blog writing definitely more efficient. I think we've gotten yeah, cost prep more efficient. Speaking. You know, I tailor my speeches to individual clients, but many of the points can be used in the same speeches, so that doesn't have to be completely rewritten every time. So that's a time efficiency, a time dividend there, if you will. But yeah, no, I think you definitely can. And it's good to spend that extra time on high value things like this lady was saying. The mentoring colleagues is a great thing to do with your time, to actually invest in those relationships, knowing that you know, I will get my work done. I don't need to carve out quite as much time for say, writing that report as I did in the past. So sure you can do more of both. So we have our love of the week, I guess is our last thing for this episode, What's What's yours this week? Mine is I just received in the mail the sequel to the Run Fast Eat Slow Cookbook, which is called Run Fast, Cook Fast, Eat Slow. And I will admit I've been not doing a ton of cooking lately, but I'm kind of motivated by this one because there's a lot of really pretty easy looking things. And I also like we've been eating some of the stuff even though I haven't been cooking it because I put it on the Week's list, so I highly recommend it. I love both of these volumes. They're just like healthy food that's actually good, like the kids will eat it, and the pictures are really beautiful, and you know, Sheleine flannag In is total badass. But Alis Kopecki, the co author who's like the real chef behind it, is really really cool too, and yeah, legit cookbook from real runners. So so my love of the week is I am so late to all these bandwagons. But the Lacroix water, like the Sparkling Water, a total parody of myself too. I think about it like I was in I was at the super Mariot Race. I'm like in my running clothes and going to the case of the pamplamuse Lacroix, and I'm like, you know, waiting for this other lady to go away, who's also like in running clothes, standing there in front of the great fruit flavor of sparkling water, like she's waiting for me to go out your favorite flavor, and I'm like, no, no, I'm also going for the Lacroix. Of course, both of us here in our running gear are like headed for the cans of Lacroix. Yeah, no, it's it's good, it's it's pat You know, sometimes in the evening you want something that tastes a little different, to like a little special, not just straight up water to drink, and you know you can have a beer, but like you're only gonna have one of those, and you know you're some nights you're not gonna have one of those, Like it's not really a beer night. So it's like the Lacroix is like the special drink. I guess in the evening it's I like the orange and the raspberry cranberry. So you're you're already on this bandway then oh we've we've yes, you're sitting at it very much so I'm a parody of your parody until Lacroix. But anyway, this has been best of both worlds. It's been episode fifty eight where we are mostly talking about our biggest mistakes. Tune in next week for more on making work in life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore 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.