Career Crafting. Ep 34

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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 position 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 thirty four, and we are recording this at the end of February, which is just a few short days before Sarah is done with maternity leave, which is why we are recording all these right now, trying to get her get our stock up before we go back. So, Sarah, how are you feeling about it? I yeah, that was my deep sigh. I feel I feel really a lot of mix of things, which I think is probably pretty common for women going back to work after the you know, three month leave or twelve weeks. That's pretty fairly common, at least in the United States. And that's I'm excited to some extent. I'm excited to have a little bit more autonomy during the day, not be dependent on when a baby needs to, you know, be held, although I will be dependent on the timeframe of the pump, and I'm excited to have those adult interactions. I'm excited to see my patients, although I'm sort of terrified that there's going to be a floodgate effect because I've been gone that I won't be able to handle. I'm super anxious about the milk thing, which we've talked about before. I probably need to take a lot of deep breath and get over the fact that it's just going to be what it's going to be. To be honest, I'm already having some minor supply issues, which I don't really have any reason for because I've been around Genevieve my baby the whole time, feeding on demand, so it doesn't really make sense that I wouldn't have enough for her. But there's a huge emotional component to that. And then add the fact that I'm going to be, you know, adding the challenge of pumping, and I just I feel a lot of trepidations about it. And the truth is, I'm just trying to get over the fact that however long she gets smoked from me is just going to be what it is. Yeah, and that's okay. I'll try my best. Just always tech from our you know, because I think some of our listeners might be worried listening to this because you're a physician. It's not that medically she needs to no, absolutely, medically, I know she would be okay. It's really it's more, it's really, to some extent, it's I mean, it's a little bit for her for those incremental possible benefits, especially because she is so young, she's only two and a half months old, I'd feel like they were they were almost really are very minimal benefits after six months, but she's young, but that's minimal. It's more because I wanted to maintain want to maintain that nice breastfeeding relationship. I want the convenience of being able to feed her, you know, when we're out and about without worrying about bottles. I don't want to second guess myself every time I try to feed her, like am I able to satisfy her? Like? That becomes very anxiety provoking and a big head game that I didn't want to get into. And it's because I've enjoyed having breastfeeding relationships with my other kids, particularly my first, and I was hoping i'd be able to do that. And there is you know, pumping is really easy for a lot of women. And we've talked about this. I mean not easy, but there's a spectrum of how easy it is for different people. And then there's this whole culture of it being a very heroic thing to do, whereas it's actually really not that easy for a lot of people. And maybe it would be more heroic for me to not do it because it's some extent I'm taking away from time for my husband and time for my other kids. So it's really complicated. So yeah, I've got a lot of thoughts going on. I am excited to like have sort of I am excited to get back into that work frame of mind and the you know, mentoring people and talking to patients and getting into that group again, that part because you have your medical your new residency program is starting out too. It's funny, I haven't even my mentals. We're on a little bit of a lull there to some extent because we're waiting to find out who matches with us, which we're going to find out and just well maybe by the time this airs that that's very, very exciting. And as soon as we find that out, we're going to be going into a flurry of preparations, making their schedules, you know, connecting with them, et cetera. But yeah, right now I'm focused a little bit more on the patient care aspects, just because that's I think, what's going to smack me in the face the first day I come back. Well, that that provides a great segue to the body of this episode, which is career crafting. We are talking about shaping your job to work right for you and Sarah, I think, you know what's kind of cool about what you do. I mean, you know some of physician work obviously, you see patients, you do sort of similar procedures or similar visits, but you've been kind of able to shape different specialties and then adding in that medical education component, so and then you do this other stuff too, I mean on the side, So, how have you been able to shape your job to work that way? Like what goes into that? You know, A lot of it has been patients and time and a lot of pondering and thought about what I really wanted my work life to look like and I think I'm excited for you to delve into your journey because it's similar. You sort of start on one path, and I think it is very tempting to get locked into the traditional expression of that path. So for example, if it's pediatric endochronology, you know, seeing patients all week long, or perhaps being a researcher. I knew I didn't want to go the research route, so I started. I started sort of the traditional way after finishing my training and was doing nine clinic sessions a week, meaning nine half days, which is pretty heavy. At more academic centers they do less. But I purposely chose a place that was more clinical because I didn't want to be research based, and found myself seeing a lot of patients all the time, which was probably good for me because I got a lot of practice to being efficient and really seeing a wide variety of things right out of training, which was awesome. But about two years in it started I would look at my schedule and it felt like this sort of treadmill like that I couldn't get off of, Like when would I get to do something else? When would I ever get time to pursue some of these you know, interesting potential research projects, or even though I said I didn't love research, there were some clinical questions I wanted to look into. When would I get more time to dedicate to teaching, When would I perhaps get to demonstrate some leadership potentials and you know, take over a small program or something like that. And so I started just to keep my eyes open for what those opportunities might be. And in my case, two things kind of jumped out and I didn't seek them out. I just sort of went down the paths as they opened up. And I think that's important because sometimes I think people do try to force things, and I do think some patience is necessary. I mean, this is you know, people talk about millennials, Oh, I need to be following my passion, and the traditional stories they quit something abruptly and then end up floundering around, and that's, you know, when that works out, wonderful, But that's not always a practical thing to do. Sometimes, if you give it some time, the more gradual approach does work. And I'll just use my example. I found out that our program was starting a residency, and I heard them announce who the program director was going to be and in one of my meetings with one of the leadership of the hospital, I sort of casually mentioned, you know, is there an associo program director because that may be something I'd be interested in, And you know, sure enough, that person was excited that I was interested in it. Nobody had expressed interest. I do think my interest was well received because on a number of occasions there had been meetings to come to to talk about stuff, and I just showed up. So by just coming on time, you know, during lunch hour and being present and interested, that kind of opened up that avenue and I ended up accepting the position. And then so ever, since December of twenty fifteen, I have had a portion of my job dedicated to planning our upcoming residency program, which for me serves two kind of answers two of my strengths and things. I enjoy the planning aspects because really a lot of it is kind of planning, especially as we're building a new program, and the fact that I really like to mentor and that I have pretty passionate feelings about the direction that graduate medical education should take. So that was one tweek. Another thing that just kind of evolved is the fact that when I came to accept my job, I actually inherited a large population of patients in a rather unusual niche becoming much more mainstream now, but that is transgender medicine, and I had never done it before, and it was something that I sort of had to learn from the person who I ended up taking over for. But it turned out that I really enjoy it. It's very nuanced, it's very challenging, but it's very interesting. And so that has become probably twenty percent to thirty, maybe twenty percent of my clinical practice, which is really interesting and has actually given me an area that I can be a bit of an expert in, whereas you wouldn't necessarily think that right out of four years out of training. But because it's an unusual area and I gained so much experience so fast, I was able to craft that part of my job. So I had that I had the graduate medical education. And then about a year and a half ago, I also decided that I wanted a little bit more time at home, not for the sake of my kids, but more for the sake of me feeling like I was missing out on that time with my kids and missing out on time to catch up with loose ends and pursue other things that I was interested in, and so that led to me asking for a eighty percent time decrease, which meant for me a four day work week. And the way that I've decided to make that work is actually to plan my work week around what meetings and such that I need to attend. So it's not that I'm always off on Monday, because if I were to do that, it could be problematic, especially with my graduate medical education responsibilities. Instead, I I choose four days per month that I'm going to be off, or really five days if it's a five week a month, and then I'm done with it. And then between those three things, I feel like I'm doing so much less of the grind. I'm seeing fewer of certain types of patients that I don't enjoy seeing as much. And I don't want to talk about specifics because that doesn't need to be on the podcast, but it really has shaped my practice and my job experience. It is something that really I think answers to my strengths and I think in the end it's only going to be of benefit to everyone. And if I hadn't gone down these avenues. I'd still be seeing just a general mix of patients nine clinic sessions a week, and I'm sure I wouldn't be as happy with my job as I am now. So yeah, that is my story. Well I think it's really cool. What I think is cool here is that, you know, Sarah found an area to be an expert in that didn't have a lot of people in it, so right there, she could establish herself as an experts so newly out of school. And there's an interesting book that came out a few years ago, cal Newport It's So Good They Can't Ignore You, which kind of talked about this idea of like partly creating the job you wanted, about having this thing that people need to come to you for because I assume that you can build this whole practice around this, like because other patients start coming to you because of that, right, like people tell other people they know in that community. And then yeah, absolutely, And it's the one area where I'm like sought out after, Like I'll get people on Instagram. Please don't do that, by the way, but I will. I need to get in with you, you know, like so and it isn't because I'm amazing because it's just because I happened to be at the right place, right time and expressed an interest in helping out. So I think actually, on that cal Newport note, didn't you talk about how you know it doesn't have to be something that you were naturally drawn to because it's not. I mean, the truth is, I love doing it, but it's it's not like five years ago I set out with the passion to do that. It was just like the opportunity opened itself up and I realized I could be good at it and be of help in that area. And that I guess sometimes your passion can come from experience rather the other way around. Yes, be open to opportunity because sometimes things come to you that are not what you would have necessarily planned from the beginning. I think it whys have sometimes being related, but it can be a different way of getting at some of the stuff that you are interested in before. Does that make sense? I don't know absolutely. I mean, I'm not going to all of a sudden become a surgeon, but you never know what different sorts of avenues might lead to each other down a path that I wouldn't have expected. Because that matter that you're going to wind up doing some research in that field, right that you I am, And since I don't love to do research myself, I've figured out that since I have questions I want answered, the best thing to do is to collaborate. So I actually have a social worker with a PhD who is interested in potentially doing some of the sort of research type grunt work, and then I just provide the patient population and a lot of clinical input, and we can actually produce some interesting results in that area. And as someone who again really I think I've said this a few times, doesn't love doing the research myself, it's actually kind of funny that things have come full circle. But it turns out that you know, you can't you can't write off anyone area because maybe you will end up doing it in a different way than you expect it. For example, I'm not going to be writing the paper, but I will be generating ideas, providing the patients and that kind of thing, And that may have been the part of research you were interested in anyway, Right, I Mean, it's that's the kind of the fun thing about crafting your own career, And to some degree, I've been realizing that about what I'm doing now how much it ties into the many things I did enjoy earlier in life. Not that I, at age ten or something, wanted to be talking about time management all the time. I think that would have not necessarily been a topic that I would have chosen per se. That that is more something I came to partly because of the you know, being open to opportunity that it was something I was writing about occasionally that people then reacted well to. I wound up doing a book proposal that got it that in sort of a backhanded way, and the publisher that finally made an off run it was like, well, it's the time management angle that we think is really going to be the important thing in here. And so that's what one hundred and sixty eight hours my first time management book came out. I'm going to ask you when you were writing that book, did you at that point imagine yourself speaking and blogging and doing all the other things that you do now, or were you at that point just thinking, Okay, I'm going to be a writer and see what happens. Well, I always myself as a writer. The writing part is how I came into the time management stuff. It was that I was casting around for different book ideas, and I'd written a couple of books, but you know, nobody's heard of them. But anyway that you know, this was an angle that was more marketable and that was exciting. But now it turns out to be a good topic to speak about, like everyone needs the time management. Speaker of people always like, oh, that sounds like something that would be useful, and you know, companies needed for their employees, and people like to talk about it at conferences. But you know, so when I was little, I loved writing, and so I'd always wanted to be a writer. But there were other interests I had too, which were performing. I did a lot of singing and dancing and drama when I was a kid, and really enjoyed being up on stage. I did. I was really into math, which is seems sort of like a totally different thing when I was growing up, But you know that I had this interest in writing, I have these interest in performing, and I have this interest in math, which is a totally different thing. And then I was also in college, late high school and college I realized I really enjoyed economics. So there were all these different paths. It's kind of thinking like, well, Do I want to go be an economics professor? Do I want to pursue math in some way? Do I want to you know, try to be a you know, choreographer because I was actually doing a lot of choreography for a while, or you know, the writing, like how does one make a living as a writer? I guess I should go the journalism angle, because that's a job I know exists to a degree, not so much anymore very well, but you know, the people do get jobs as journalists, So that's maybe what I should do. And you know, so I've done a lot of different things, but at all at this point has all of those pieces are coming back into it, And it's really just about over time, I have you know, been open to opportunity. I've tried to do more of the things I like and less of the things I don't. And I've discovered that you know, speaking involves being up on stage and the way I speak it's more of a one woman show than it is a normal sort of speaking gig. Like I don't use PowerPoint. I I just get up and talk to people. And so it's almost back to this kind of theaterist type thing that I like doing the math is there in you know, the time management because time is math with denominators of twenty four, one hundred and sixty eight and eight thy seven hundred and sixty which is a numbre of hours in a year, which which I love about it. And I love the economics angle of it too, because it's it's trade offs. There's there's a scarce resource, and you're trying to optimize scarce resources, right, and so the trade offs are what kind of make it cool that you know, one goes up, the other goes out. There's these these categories that fit neatly into the twenty four hours. So I love that angle of it. I even like doing the research I've I've done a couple of time diary projects now where I have huge numbers of people keep track of their time, and I get the data analysis of it. And obviously I hire actual PhD people to do a lot of the work on, you know, coming up with what my you know, whatever the stats sta of all this stuff is. But I at least understand what that means. And I love that part that I, you know, can at least get that. So you know, all these pieces are coming back into it, but none of that was necessarily apparent ten years ago. I was thinking back to this, like ten years ago, I was not yet. I had not yet gotten a contract to write one hundred and sixty eight hours. I had. It was only in early two thousand and nine that I got my first paid speaking gig on a time management related topic. You know, I think about who my writing clients are, just the magazines and newspapers I write for, Like only one or two of them am I still writing for now that I was ten years ago. So all of this is really about, you know, paying attention to what you like, what you don't like, try to do more of the stuff you like, list of the stuff you don't. And I think you did a kind of cool exercise with this, like you thought through your ideal week, right. Yes, I still have it actually in a notebook. I drew it out with little color code things, and I wrote like if I could have it however I wanted. And this was back when I was doing the nine clinical half days and was feeling like I was just in this cycle and couldn't escape. I was like, what would I want it to look like? Would I want to do three half days and then do something else, and I just drew it out, including like what I wanted in my mornings to look like everything like with little blocks, and I'll maybe i'll I'll have to see how embarrassing it is. I'll find the picture and if it's not too then I'll post it. But that really helped me to see that there were enough things that I could do that would be useful for my organization, that would fill up a week that would make me really happy and them really happy. And I think that is what spurred me to realize that I could make these changes. I think that's also when I decided that I had that I was willing to take that trade off for a little bit of a pay cut to work the eighty percent schedule because I sort of couldn't make the math fit any other way in terms of having some time for me and to pursue other pursuits like this podcast you're listening to right now. So you did, I mean, but when you were thinking of that ideal week, you're also looking at what makes my organization happy too, I mean, because unless you're going to make a huge change, I mean, part of crafting your career is kind of working within your current parameters to optimize what you have. I mean, obviously, maybe some people will decide that they do need to make a big change, but there's often a lot more flexibility within one's current position than you might imagine, or at least you've found that to be the case. Yes, especially again, once I realized that there were needs and that I could be the one to fill those needs, and that conveniently that would decrease certain things that I didn't like as much, I sort of just went for it. Yeah, I just found my charts, I typed it, which is uncharacteristic for me, but I have on here that I wanted to be doing patient care. This is actually fascinating to look at right now that I wanted to do approximately seven half days of patient care to make sure that I had dedicated time at the end of my work day for patient phone calls because I was eating up my time elsewhere to have resonant see time formerly built into my schedule. Yeah, So I mean I really did think through what I would like and would it be reasonable for my employers to want that as well? Yeah. I think that question of would it be reasonable for the people I work with is important, But there often are ways to make these two come together, and I've certainly seen this with people that you have to think about, like there's the substance of your job. You want to be doing stuff that you're happy with, but the substance of your job. There's also, of course the ways you're working, right the ways you're working, which could be things like, you know, would I be happier working from home? Occasionally some people maybe that's a part of their job that they really need to work on. Do I want to be out and about more versus being in an office, you know, So there's these different capacities that you can kind of move on these different levers at different points as well, and maybe even things as simple as and we've talked about this before, but mixing up your hours one day a week often for you know, it seems like a major paradigm shift before your employer, it may not be, and for you it may make things feel less monotonous and kind of give you a day that you can be with your kids at different times or pursue something else that you want to do in the afternoon, and it doesn't seem like a lot. But by making multiple small tweaks, your your your week as a whole can actually look a lot different and more like what you really want it to look like. Yeah, and I would say pay attention to what is making you happy, you know, as you try these different things, because you might want to just try small experiments. There is another book I read when I read this too, the one about design, the one from the Design school, people from school. But although that's a good idea too, I mean that's which one was that. It was called Design Your Life, and it was done by two professors in the D School. I guess it's just this little branch of Stanford Business School that focus focuses on intelligent business management through using the sort of the design principles. Yeah, and that's exactly what they did. They were they would talk about like I actually I didn't get through the entire book, sorry, but this idea was very valuable to me, which was, Yeah, think about what makes you happy and then do little experiments. And that's exactly what people do. They build prototypes when they're designing something, and then they see does this work? Does this work? And you often have to go through a lot of prototypes that don't quite work, but in the end you're going to morph into something that is what you want. What was your book? Yeah, and there might be little steps that don't work out along the way, are not exactly what you think you want to do. I mean, so, I don't know if some people might remember this. I came out with a book after one hundred and sixty eight hours that was called All the Money in the World. And so for a brief period of time, there's so like, well, is she going to be a personal finance expert? And the answer is no, I Am not going to be. And I can see that on the sales that the time books sell a lot better than the money books did. That doesn't mean that overall they do. I know many people's personal finance books have done really well, But it just wasn't a source of passion for me in the way that time was. And I think it may be just that concept of time is absolutely limited and we all have the same amount, which is absolutely not the case with money. And so maybe it's that that trade off economic thinking that I that I like, even though it seems like economics is more tied to money than it is to time. But you know, so you try things and they may not work, and you know, it may be things that you sort of have to work to become a lot better at too. I mean, I can certainly tell you that my first attempts at public speaking were semi disastrous. That you know, it's it's a skill like anything else. You have to learn how to do it and get comfortable with it, and it takes a lot of time before getting up on stage in front of lots of people and talking is going to be remotely comfortable. But you know, so these little pivots might not work. The book I was talking about was Jenny Blake's Pivot method. It was, which is the idea that instead of like, if you're thinking like, oh I need to change careers or I need to change jobs, I mean, maybe you do need to ch curves or changed it off, but you can also try changing small things and getting feedback on what you like and what you don't and what the world pays attention to and what it doesn't, and then you can use that to inform other ideas. I mean, so now I sort of always try out ideas as, for instance, blog posts, or sometimes we try them out as podcast ideas or something like that, because then if people are like, oh, yeah, that's really interesting. Then you know you're onto something. I mean, certainly we can tell it. Like our episode on the Planner Palooza we found out is one of our most listened to episodes, and that's certainly getting Sarah some feedback that that is a valuable thing to pursue as another area expertise. And I do think what you Sarah's got to be the only person out there who is an expert both on transgender medicine from the physician and planning, and on planners might be I might be pediatric transgender medicine, and we've got to get really really specific, well not pediatric like adolescent, Yeah, really really specific there, No, And that does speak to something which I was going to say that the more usual your passion is, the more likely it is to be something that you could harness into something that's useful. Because if your passion is just something like running, well it's a great hobby, but it might not be you know, it's not like there's a million people looking for a recreational runner to monetize that or to turn that into a career. But if it happens to be speaking about you know, time logs and you keep time logs for fun for three years, Like that's really unusual. That's gonna get people interested. And that is something that people that is going to make you, you know, useful, hopefully definitely clearly it has it is we've been oddball and it is an angle that other people have not necessarily talked about. But the thing you mentioned, the running, I do think you can turn oddball aspects into part of your life. It may need to be part of sort of side hustle, passion project type things. It is easier to monetize passion product Jackson's side hustles now than it ever has been before. And maybe we can we can segue from from that thought into I mean, because you decided to take a week off, I mean a day off per week to do non medical related work and probably a for example of how to monetize things. Yeah, well we're not monetizing this. Well, you know, I wanted to mention would be our previous very popular guest, the author of lag liv who you know you hear the story of like, oh, they quit their Wall Street job to become a yoga instructor. Well she didn't do that, but she took on a less a law job that took less hours and actually became a yoga instructor on the side. So that's a good example of someone who did monetize a passion not as her sort of main thing, because I think that would have well, I mean, that would have been a large pay cut for her. But she's able to kind of get the best of both worlds, for lack of a better phrase, by still practicing law probably a niche that's a niche that's fairly valuable and rare, like you know, Cal Newport talks about, but then also pursuing something on the side that's really fun and then also brings in a little bit of extra cash. I mean, my example, I've been blogging forever because I love it. And it's really funny that you mentioned the childhood hobbies because that was kind of also mine. I mean, blogs obviously didn't exist back then, but I had access to our lovely, you know, IBM computer with like one gig on it and an electric typewriter in my room on which I would compose really long, ridiculous stories that were usually about incredibly mundane things. So I guess maybe they were like blog They weren't blog posts to each the third person, so they weren't really about me, but still they were like somebody else's blog posts, right. And then when blogging kind of exploded in the early well, I guess the early explosion in the early two thousands, I thought, Oh, this seems kind of like it might be fun, and I kind of copied off one of my friends that was doing it, and then realized, oh, I love the discipline of writing every day like this is this stirs the same passion that I had when I sat in front of that electric typewriter in my room. And then that kind of you know, increase and increased, and then at certain points, you know, it's very hard to make like actual money blogging, I mean, like money that could support you. But at different points along the way, I did take on some sponsored opportunities, which I don't do anymore because I'm not in a place where I need that and I'd really rather not. And I think I talked about I paid for my treadmill while I was in residency by writing a bunch of blog posts for Huggies. I mean, who would have thought, right, like that is completely random, but it took my passion project and turned it into something that I was able to to actually monetize a little bit. Now I do have ads on my blog. I make very little from that. I joke that it's enough to pay for my hair straightening, which actually is pretty pricey hair straightening. But that's that's pretty much it, and we do not at this time or plan on monetizing the podcast. However, I do keep my mind open that perhaps getting this experience could lead to other opportunities down the road that could become a little bit of a part time career for me, maybe if I if I do end up writing the book that I'd like to write, or even maybe doing some speaking or consulting to physicians someday. I don't know. I mean, I have no concrete plans to do this kind of a thing. But I like that I'm getting experienced. I like that I'm having fun, and I know that should I need to take more of a pivot or want to take more of a pivot, than this can only be valuable. Yeah, I mean, I think certainly for me, the podcast has been a great way to reach new audience, people who you know, sometimes then become interested in my writing, which is what I'm hoping for. And sometimes there are companies are looking for time management speakers, and then that's another way of monetizing it. And so, you know, hoping the same sort of idea for Sarah eventually when she writes her book and you guys can all go out and buy that, which I'm sure you will because it'll be great. But but you know, it would have been hard. I mean, she obviously could have started a podcast on let's say, transgender medicine, which would have been you know, more immediately tied into not a bad idea. Yeah, maybe I should do that too, I'll wear that out there too. But you know, sometimes the side hustled passion projects are a good way to take on something that's a completely different interest of yours. It's not even totally tied into to what you're doing in your main job. If you're sort of crafting the main job to look more and more like what you like, but then you have these other interests you're just not sure how they're going to quite fold into the same narrative. That can be something you do on the side, and you know, people are there are more ways to do that these days than ever before. I mean, certainly, yes, blogs, it's hard to make serious money, but you can make some money on it podcasting too, obviously, people who run ads and sponsorships get some element of financial payoff from that as well. And you know, the whole idea of becoming an expert at something and then speaking about it and writing about it, those things are more accessible to people than ever before as well. I mean, given the internet's ability to you know, you can do webinars and have people pay for that, and so you can become a public speaker on your own YouTube channel. Because your own YouTube channel, you can become a video star that way, you know, or or Instagram be a photostar. Just all these opportunities are available that weren't there before. And obviously, yeah, it's not a whole lot of people make a lot of money from it, but particularly if you are doing that main job, let's say three or four days a week, then that can be a great way to supplement it as well, so so that you know that works, which which kind of brings us to our question of finding time and prioritizing passion projects and side hustles. So we had a question from somebody posted on Instagram, right, yeah, someone named Stephanie posted and just to remind everyone. That's an easy way to post questions or suggestions, because every week I will post you know what the episode is and give a little bit of a teaser, So you can just write in those comments if you have a question, or you can always write to Laura or me, or you can write on her blog where she always does a weekly thread discussing what we talk about. But here I'll read the question it's said is how do you make time and prioritize passion projects, side hustles, et cetera. I am working part time studying to be an occupational therapist and also have a two year old and boyfriend. I'm also trying to pursue acting. I would love to spend time on my days off at home to work on stuff, but I'm worried I'm spending too much time on it and not enough with my son. Hmm. Yeah, it's hard to define what enough enough enough, And that's the quiet problem with this. Like if there were some specific number, like you know, then people could could execute against that and all would be well. But I think the question of enough is that it gets into these narratives of what mothers are supposed to be doing and that's just hard to ever know. I mean, the question you certainly need to know. Do you do you feel satisfied with the amount you're spending with your son? That's an important question. Is he doing well? Does he seem like he needs more time with you? That's another important question, Or with your boyfriend or whoever, whoever, if there are other parental figures in his life. I don't know exactly what the situation is here, but yeah, I think that. I mean, I'm a big fan of tracking time, obviously, but particularly when you have lots of different things going on, I think tracking time is particularly helpful because it helps you see what sort of space you are devoting to each of these aspects in life. And you know, it can be very easy to feel like, oh, well, you know, I had a lot of crazy stuff going on at work today, so you know I'm a failure because I didn't do any studying on this occupational therapy study course, and you know, I didn't spend enough time with my kid or whatever. But then you know another day you are doing more of the studying and more of the kid time. And I think that that's a very helpful thing to see on a time like that you you might track your time and discover that you aren't spending nearly enough time studying, which sometimes happens. People see that and then they decide, well, I need to put that in. Like I would feel a lot more comfortable in my program if I knew for sure I had found an extra four hours per week to study. Well, four hours is not that much, you know, you can accomplish a lot in four focused hours. But then saying well, exactly where am I going to try to stick that in? And then people decide, okay, well, maybe, like you know, Saturday morning would be a good time to you know, put the two year old with friends or family or whatever and have that time available for studying or something. But you know, pursuing acting is a really fun thing to do. I think one way to sort of put a toe in this is just an audition for a community theater production. They're always going on it. You can always find one if you live in any sort of reasonable sized community, which I'm going to guess that she is if she's you know, working at school and act and acting, So you just try out for one, Like usually it's only going to be sort of six to eight weeks I would guess what for an adult production of rehearsal, and you probably oll rehearse like once or twice a week for that time. So let's say it's twice a week for eight weeks. You know that is not a huge time commitment. That's going to be five to six hours a week. You're going to do the show at the end of it, and then you can say, like, hey, was that something that fit with my life. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't, But it's not a permanent thing, like you haven't done anything that's you know, completely unchangeable in the rest of your life. It's two months that you've devoted to this, and then you know, like, is this something that I could do another show per year, or maybe this is just something I do once per year, And we decide that those two months are going to be a little bit busier than the rest of life. But that's also fun because it allows me to keep my hand in this too. I think that makes sense, and I think being very specific and honest with yourself about the time that you're going to spend rather than it be a nebulous home working on acting, but instead what Laura said, like, oh, I'm going to be doing this performance, so I'm going to have these hours set aside to do it and just sort of accepting that and experimenting with it is a more useful way to think of it then the more nebulous way that the questions suggest to me. So I agree, track it, yeah, look at it, think of it objectively. There may also just be you know, sort of opportunities. I mean, if she's a student somewhere, I mean, there were probably opportunities around campus. There may be like student run productions that she could just try for one see if it works, or take an acting class, like if she's taking you know, ot classes, maybe you could throw in an acting class too at the same institution and see. Again. It's just, you know, it finds some small way to fit this into your life. But I think especially when you are so you have so many different things you're doing, it's probably needs to be something that is set time in your schedule in order to make sure it happens right. Like, you know, if you know you have rehearsal every Tuesday night from six to nine, like, then you can build that into your life. Or if you know you have acting class every Friday from one to four in the afternoon. Again, you can build that into your life as opposed to saying, oh, I'd love to get into acting at some point. Well, you know, when is that going to happen. I don't know. Somewhere between the other classes and the work and dealing with the kid, right, it's not going to happen. Awesome, Well, we should segue into our love of the week, which actually sort of relates to that in a forced sort of a way. No, I'm just kidding. My love of the week this week is that, well two things. The Wildcrats Show in particular. I gotta say it's one of my kid's favorites and it's one of the few things I can watch with them and feel good about. I think we've actually mentioned it before, but not as specifically as a love of the week. It's these two guys. They've been doing it for years. They have a live action part where they talk about an animal and they teach you obscure facts about the animal to the point where my kids can tell you like eighty different things about a basilisk lizard and a cheetah and whatever. And then there's a cartoon, so there's enough to keep the kids interest, but I still feel like it's educational overall. Well, we went to see them live this weekend and they were just awesome. The show was so great. They were enthusiastic, and we did because my kids loved the show so much, Spring for the VIP tickets that allowed us to meet them afterwards. And I didn't know what to expect. I figured like, oh, they'll just like sign a little thing, but they actually it was kind of like you know in Disney when you meet the princesses. It was like that, like they spent a few minutes. They use the kids' names, they were wearing name pegs. They were so kind and I was just thinking about the fact that they were doing two shows with two meet and greets and have that much energy. It was so impressive. So it warmed my heart to see my kids with these guys. The show was awesome. I love of the week. It's definitely Wildcrats, Wildcred. So I was excused to something so that I'll throw on an acting related one too. I was at the Watermark Conference for Women last week speaking about time management, and one of my fellow speakers who I did not get to meet, but it was Reese Witherspo. Yeah, she's really cool and I really appreciated the way they set this up. They did an interview with her, and I'm going to forget the ladies Dandis she's very famous herself as the former editor of teen Vogue. Is sort of out talking about. Yeah, she did the interview. She did a very good job of it, but they were talking about, uh, you know, it was it was interesting to hear Reese Witherspoon talk about sort of her interactions with trying to get projects, trying to get you know, even hearing her talk about trying to when she's starting her production company, which now there's this opening space up in Hollywood as some of the major players have fallen, which turns out to be a very good thing. But you know that she's starting to exercise that power of having money, having authority within this world, and then getting these projects done that she wants to see done. But it was really cool to hear her talk about that, like and even that she had her own sort of insecurities. I mean, I thought it was kind of crazy. She was talking about trying to get the rights for a wild you know, the Cheryl Straight Yeah, and I was like, what it seems like. You know, from my author perspective, I would find it really awesome if Reese Witherspoon were trying to, like preak play me, but she's like, well, I was trying to get her to take a chance on letting me produce it as well, like not just play her like she thought that, you know, she'd be fine for having her play her, but to get her to produce her and take a chance on it. She was so worried about this, and I thought it was a really cool thing to put out there that she was, you know, here, this amazingly ambitious, powerful woman and you're still worried that somebody won't take a chance on her at that. So I was enjoyed hearing that. But also I think, hm, I want to write some sort of epic that Reese Witherspool will like play the main character, and that is a good pool got to get on that excellent. So hearing her was my love of the week. But anyway, this has been our somewhat technically challenged episode thirty four, hopefully our wonderful podcast producers, So shout out to Sound Advice and Sales Phyllis and her team. Oh my goodness, they did a wonderful job of patching together another episode that we had major technical difficulties on, and I'm sure they will manage to make it sound like my gutters were not being cleaned during this whole thing, And if you hear sounds of gutters, it's only because it was so atrocious that even they could not help that. But they do an amazing job so they can be our lovable yeah too, thank you, Thank you you guys. Anyway, episode thirty four. Career Crafting will be more 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 shoe Box on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.