Annual Year In Review: 2025 Edition! Hits, Misses, and Works-in-Progress EP 438

00:00:09
Speaker 1: Hi.

00:00:09
Speaker 2: I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

00:00:15
Speaker 3: And I'm Sarah hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer, and course creator. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families.

00:00:24
Speaker 2: 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.

00:00:33
Speaker 1: Term career goals.

00:00:34
Speaker 2: We want you to get the most out of life.

00:00:41
Speaker 1: Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.

00:00:43
Speaker 2: This episode is airing in late December of twenty twenty five. We are going to be doing our annual year in review episode, talking about all things good, bad, et cetera that happened in twenty twenty five, what we learned from the year, how we did on our various goals, and play any highlights, any low lights.

00:01:02
Speaker 1: You know. It's that type of year, right, Sarah.

00:01:05
Speaker 3: Yes, quite a roller coaster kind of year that we'll have to talk about today.

00:01:08
Speaker 1: But I love this annual tradition. Yeah, and it has been quite a year.

00:01:12
Speaker 2: I mean, first of all, like, we're very excited that Sarah is still with us.

00:01:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, I selected finite as my word of the year for twenty twenty five. Keep in mind, I had no idea of any of the drama to ensue, and then in early March ended up with a major medical event, very dangerous cardiac arrhythmia that thankfully ended once it ended mostly well, but with a pretty life altering diagnosis. So it's been quite a year. There's been massive ups and massive downs and a lot that happened, and I do feel like I'm exiting the year with just a different perspective. But all that to say, there were still many sort of little victories and little things to celebrate that aren't that different from other years.

00:01:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, you know, fine as a word for twenty twenty five. There's a lesson here about being careful with our words that we select.

00:02:08
Speaker 1: No, I know it has nothing to do with it.

00:02:10
Speaker 2: I'm not superstitious, but it was something to get that message in early March. But Sarah has been very resilient about the whole thing, and twenty twenty five has been a good year in many ways.

00:02:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would still call it a good year.

00:02:30
Speaker 2: I agree, Yeah, still call it a good year. Well, my year has not been quite so exciting medically, Thank goodness that keep saying I had This was a non official goal that I didn't share on the podcast last year, but to get more caught up on medical thing like screenings and like I didn't even have any doctors going into the year because my OBGI in practice had closed.

00:02:55
Speaker 1: I hadn't really.

00:02:55
Speaker 2: Had a PCP during this time because I was, you know, the course of five kids. I was at the doctor all the time, so I just didn't bother going to extra visits outside of that. But we joined a practice, my husband and I a It's one of these concierge practices here in the area, so he and I both joined that.

00:03:13
Speaker 1: We had our physicals in March.

00:03:16
Speaker 2: I as a result of that, wound up doing a mammogram, which I had not done before this year. And before anyone writes me angry, notes, I was nursing up until like twenty twenty four.

00:03:27
Speaker 1: So that's why fair You did not want to irradiate the milk.

00:03:33
Speaker 2: Then, well, just I thought it doesn't like I thought, they aren't as accurate if you are nursing either.

00:03:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not an expert, but you're not an experts Okay, anyway, plausible, that's what I was told.

00:03:46
Speaker 1: And then I got skin cancer screening.

00:03:49
Speaker 2: I found a k new OUBI practice, OBGI in practice, like all this stuff. So I am I am at least more caught up than I was doing. Okay, Yeah, and health is so important. Again, if I I've learned anything, it's sort of re emphasizing that. You know, if you don't have your health, you don't really have much at all. So I applaud you for taking those steps.

00:04:08
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.

00:04:09
Speaker 2: Anyone listening to this is looking for a goal to set in twenty six, we heartily encourage you to go get your health checked out. If you are like me and been in the baby making stage for a long time and haven't looked at anything else, any other organs on the rest of your body, maybe that can be a goal for the year and hopefully everything will be great and then you can feel good about it and raise a glass to good health in the new year. So in this annual episode, we talk about what has been good.

00:04:42
Speaker 1: Our highlights are low lights, how we did on our goals.

00:04:44
Speaker 2: So first of all, let's talk about core memories, like Sarah, apart from your medical drama, your personal medical drama, I mean, what we're your core memories of the year.

00:04:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it was definitely the year of best laid Plans the book, and I know we talked about it a lot on the last episode if I won't be labor that, But just to summarize, I finished writing it, I did all the editing, I read the audio, and I launched it. So this was really like a very key book year. Then there was just lots of travel and family fun. Actually friends, let's talk about friend travel first. I have friends that I know in the blog world, but at least one of them, Elizabeth, I hadn't met in real life, and I met Kay and Elizabeth in Nova Scotia for a really fun weekend.

00:05:24
Speaker 1: My college friends came here to hang out me in Fort Lauderdale.

00:05:28
Speaker 3: Best Like Plans Live honestly feels like a friend's gathering at this point. I did a family friends trip to Hawk's Kay with our Miami Beach friends, and then I got to see Laura a lot in Philadelphia and Philly's game in Longwood. So I just feel like it was a really good friend year, and travel wise, I feel like it was more low key. I think twenty twenty six is going to be a little more memorable on that regard, but we did have a nice trip to New Hampshire and made some nice memories, including everyone going biking, which had been a the I don't know goal for our family for a while. But we have certain members who didn't know how to bike, and certain members who knew how to bike but didn't want a bike, and it turns out everyone really enjoyed it. And then finally we have not gone on our actually we're on our ski trip. If all went well as this episode airs, It's always a highlight for us going to Big Sky, Montana. But yeah, since the episode was being recorded prior to that, I can't really include it, but I suspect it.

00:06:25
Speaker 1: Will be yeah, yeah, No.

00:06:27
Speaker 2: I think they had some travel core memories for me as well. I made a wound to being a huge travel year the first half of the year, and I hadn't entirely anticipated all of that. I wound up going with my husband to Spain for a work trip, which was a lot of fun. I wound up speaking in Portugal, so that was another across the Atlantic trip, and then I went to France on the choir tour with Jasper and so that was another fun tour around there as well. Hawaii with the family was also fun. We saw some beautiful spots. I went swimming with the sharks with joh That was maybe not an adventure I would have willingly gone on myself, but I agreed to do it, and it was memorable for sure. I will remember that for a long time. There's also just like some little adventure type stuff. I mean, seeing the miniature show in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. So there's a Philadelphia Miniature convention every year and it is the same weekend as Best Laid Plans Live. So it wasn't entirely clear that I would be back to do it, but it managed to.

00:07:31
Speaker 1: Happen, and I'm so glad. I went, Like I love miniatures, and there was.

00:07:35
Speaker 2: Like two ballrooms full of tiny stuff, just like tiny whatever you might think of. And I had never seen that much miniaturia in one location, So I'm really glad I went. I will remember that biking memory, Yeah, biking by the beach. That biking is always great.

00:07:57
Speaker 1: I don't know.

00:07:58
Speaker 2: Going to the Eagles playoff games, to two of them early in the year, I mean that was exciting because I mean it was not known that they would be going on and winning the Super Bowl in early twenty twenty five, and so getting to go to two of those, and then finally singing in the B Minor Mass, which happened after our last year in review recording and such. It was actually New Year's Eve twenty twenty four going into twenty twenty five, but I will sort of put that as a core memory for the year, since we hadn't mentioned it at the last time.

00:08:28
Speaker 1: But you know, that was on the bucket list.

00:08:30
Speaker 3: Now that's been on your on hundred dreams list for such a long time, so that's must have been very.

00:08:34
Speaker 2: Like writing a book for you. You know, the timing had to be right. All these things require other people and luck and things to happen. And if it's on your bucket list to go to Hawaii, you can in fact buy a ticket and go. Whereas if it's on your bucket list to like publish a book with a commercial book publisher, like, that's going to require more people to assent to it, and you know a process for that, And same with singing in the B Minor Mass, like I mean, I mean, maybe if I was a bill, you could like just bring in an orchestra you know, and hire a conductor and rent out a big concert hall to do it. But as I am not, I had to rely on this happening and being here that I could be part of.

00:09:13
Speaker 1: So it finally did. It's so true. Those are outcome goals, definitely.

00:09:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we we had to make them happen. So, Sarah low Lights, have you know obviously there are some.

00:09:25
Speaker 3: Well yes, my medical stuff obviously, but not just me. So we have three children in our family and before the year twenty twenty five, nobody had ever fractured anything. And as I stand here, we had five broken bones. Every single kid broke at least one bone. One person broke bones in a spectacular faction, open displaced, had to have surgery. And all these breaks were incredibly disruptive to various things. I mean, I'm talking like an entire lacrosse season was lost, gymnastics meets that we were supposed to travel for. Where can old Poor Genevieve had to go to summer camp with a cast that went like up to her armpit.

00:10:05
Speaker 1: This was a lot.

00:10:06
Speaker 3: We actually just had our final Genevieve had her little rod taken out of her elbow, and Annabel was cleared from her last pinky fracture, So maybe maybe we're done.

00:10:18
Speaker 1: But that's definitely a low light. That was terrible.

00:10:21
Speaker 3: I think I've been to the orthopedis twenty times, Like I'm not actually exaggerating.

00:10:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds terrible, Like there's no way around that.

00:10:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then let's see other low lights. I don't know I had them. Wait, hold on a second.

00:10:35
Speaker 3: Sorry, I'm I'm gonna break here because I know I had others, but my page is not.

00:10:40
Speaker 1: No, I think that's it.

00:10:41
Speaker 3: No, that was it, Okay, just kidding. So I think that was pretty much our biggest low light of the year.

00:10:46
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I'm hoping that nobody either recording.

00:10:50
Speaker 2: This or listening to this experiences that in twenty twenty six, because broken bones are no fun for anyone whatsoever. I, you know, had this.

00:10:59
Speaker 1: I think I want as a kid that like, oh, you get a cast that people can write on. It's like, good lord, they can write on your arm.

00:11:05
Speaker 2: If you want, Like you do not want a broken bone, just to get a cast that your friends can right on. Well, my low lights, I mean some of mine were just like long plane flights. I don't I do not like flying. I wish I did, because it would make travel that much easier if I did that. I'm not a comfortable flyer. I find it hard to sleep on planes. I don't like the bouncing, like when you go through turbulence, like the flight home from Hawaii, and I sound so terrible saying this, but it was miserable, like it's an overnight flight.

00:11:36
Speaker 1: Henry didn't sleep till the last two.

00:11:38
Speaker 2: And a half hours, and that is when we started bumping like crazy.

00:11:42
Speaker 1: So I didn't sleep the whole time.

00:11:45
Speaker 2: He needed stuff like every ten minutes for the entire flight before he went to sleep.

00:11:50
Speaker 1: So good times. You know, like you're counting minutes.

00:11:53
Speaker 2: I hate the idea of counting minutes, but I was counting minutes, and there's.

00:11:56
Speaker 1: A lot of minutes on a flight. There's a lot of minutes because it's a long flight, just like even flying home.

00:12:01
Speaker 2: Went skiing in Utah as a family, and for whatever reason, the flight home was just I don't know if we were flying through snowstorms. It's just like the approach to Philly, we actually flew up into the air like I mean, people were like if gasa, I'm unfortunately they were wearing their seatbelts because we were on the descent, so for the most part, people were in fact in their seats. But like if I'd had a baby in my lap, I mean, the kid would have flown up into the air.

00:12:24
Speaker 1: I just it was horrible. It was horrible. I don't know. So anyway, and yeah, necessary my favorite thing.

00:12:30
Speaker 3: This is a total digression I like to tell myself while flying I learned from you, which is that turbulence is just like shaking in a bowl of jello.

00:12:37
Speaker 1: So I don't know, Yeah, it's kind of funny if you hear. That helps me a lot.

00:12:42
Speaker 3: That and using the mindfulness app on my watch to do box breathing, and I just think to myself, like, well, if we have three hours left, it's five minutes long, and I do this thirty six times, like the flight will be over.

00:12:53
Speaker 1: So yeah, that is true.

00:12:55
Speaker 2: I have found myself counting that sort of thing and be like, okay, you know, a minute just passed, and we just need sixty more of those and will be an hour more into this or whatever it is. But of course, you know, when you're on like ten hour flight, that's a that's bad. I mean, but all time does pass. All time does pass.

00:13:11
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, Henry's still hard to put to bed.

00:13:14
Speaker 2: It's better than it was, but it's still not great. Helping going through the college admissions process was stressful for everyone, so you know, there are low lights, of course, there always will be.

00:13:27
Speaker 1: But highlights too.

00:13:28
Speaker 2: All right, we're going to take a quick ad break and then we'll be back with how we did on.

00:13:32
Speaker 1: Our goals this year? Well, we are back.

00:13:46
Speaker 2: So every year we set goals, we do a mid year goal check in as well, and so then we can compare how we did on the things that we decided we wanted to set out to do. So, Sarah, let's start with work and creative work. What were your goals this year and how did you do on them?

00:14:03
Speaker 1: Yeah?

00:14:03
Speaker 3: Well, first I will share that the way I do this episode, and I think Laura's done in the past, is I listened to my prior year episode. So I'm responding to my prior self, looking at the notes that I wrote and also what I said on the podcast. It is very interesting to listening to yourself a year ago set goals.

00:14:18
Speaker 1: So you can do this too.

00:14:20
Speaker 3: You could write a voice memo on your phone to yourself right now. Talking about you know, how you're listening to this a year from now, and what do you think you'd like to get done? And you might find that fascinating. So I'm full of digressions today. But the things that I wrote were finish and launch book definitely can give myself a check for that. Did I put as much effort into the actual launch process as I would have liked? Yes, and I did the amount that I could do. Just put it that way, and I'm okay with it. I did give myself a goal to put myself out there with more podcast pitches and speaking type stuff as well, and I did do two pretty sizable speaking engagements in early twenty twenty five, but I didn't try very hard to get more or to try to get on more podcasts, So I would give myself a C plus for that particular goal.

00:15:08
Speaker 1: I wanted to improve my shutdown ritual.

00:15:10
Speaker 3: I do feel like I've gotten better with my shutdown ritual, including just sitting there and making a migration mark on tasks I didn't get done. I find that oddly closure inducing for myself because I don't always complete everything on my daily list. But if I know that I have migrated, it I can feel at peace with that, and I've even started to do things sometimes like take a twenty minute walk at the end of my creative work day, just to create some sort of buffer between doing the work and.

00:15:38
Speaker 1: Starting the evening.

00:15:39
Speaker 3: So I think I have made progress on that. Come up with a fun and different summer project. No, absolutely not. I don't know what happened to the summer. I just actually I do. I was recovering from the hard stuff. I wasn't quite like I was going to therapy like, I wasn't quite there yet. So I'll give myself a low grade, but a pass. Yeah, So those are my work goals. What about your work goals?

00:16:03
Speaker 2: Well, I wanted to finish writing big time, which I did. That's my book that will be out in May. So exciting about that. It's in the final processes right now of edits and it we'll start launching all that in a few months. I wanted to write fifty two more sonnets. This is one of my year long projects. I write two lines and aambic pentameter every day and as a result of that, I will have fifty two sonnets by the end of the year. It's I've been doing this this is the third year I've done it now, so it's a pretty ingrained habit and I enjoy doing it. It's a good writing practice, so I am excited about having done that. I said I wanted to write a novel in between writing big time and starting on the Golden Hours, and.

00:16:45
Speaker 1: I didn't think I was going to do that, but then I.

00:16:47
Speaker 2: Did wind up writing a novella during National Novel Writing Month. It is not the full fifty thousand words. It's a lot shorter than that. It's probably only about twenty thousand words because I finished the plot I don't know I wrote, and then I was kind of done with the plot I had dreamed up, which right there reminds me that I need to make it bigger. But I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't written it. And so now I have something that I can think about and come back to. And I've done this with a lot of I mean, Juliet School of Possibilities began as a National Novel Writing Month novel, and then I wound up sort of mining that for other things than to turn into the book that became Juliette.

00:17:30
Speaker 1: So yeah, you have to start somewhere and.

00:17:35
Speaker 2: Then the one thing that didn't, Oh I need I said, I don't think I listed this in the goals episode, but I did want to print up a copy of The Courtland Boys because that was something that had been bugging me for a while that I didn't have a true printed copy with the cover and everything.

00:17:49
Speaker 1: And it was easy enough to pay a service to do that. So now I have a printed up copy of it. Do that for Norwegian Secret I probably could.

00:17:57
Speaker 2: I need to get that one professionally edited though, because I haven't even done anything with so I need to hire an editor to work on that one. But maybe in the future. It's not an official goal for twenty twenty six, but it could. And then I wanted to get eight hundred paid subscribers to vander Hacks, which is my subset new letter, and I am not quite there yet. Which this is the frustration of setting an outcome goal, because I actually grew a top and I grew a lot with it. I might you know, I get emails from substack about being one of their rising stars.

00:18:27
Speaker 1: Well you know, it's just.

00:18:28
Speaker 2: Like not that many people make what could be considered a full time income off substack, and I do, But it's not the outcome goal I set, so you know, it's like the frustration of that. But anyway, I've enjoyed doing it. I hope to continue growing it. I know that there's some worry that we've reached peak substack, but I think it's still a worthwhile thing to read, so hopefully other people agree.

00:18:53
Speaker 3: I renewed my subscription, so that's to saying, well, thank you for doing that, Sarah. Well, and well, let me just innerjact about the outcome goal. Like the good news and I've said this like in my book, is that your goals list is not even though I'm joking and giving them grades, it's not really a life report card. It's just it's as useful as you want it to be. So even though you didn't meet your exact number, you can still celebrate the progress you made in growing your sub stack, and maybe this will inform how you set the next outcome goal, like what you can expect as realistic piece of growth.

00:19:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean I think it could have been a realistic goal. It's just again, we substack is not seen as much of the meteorite growth as it did the year before. Anyway, Relationships Sarah what do you have on that front?

00:19:39
Speaker 3: Okay, the first one I had was that I wanted to seek out opportunities for.

00:19:43
Speaker 1: One on one time.

00:19:44
Speaker 3: And I will say I do feel like I noticed and appreciated this when I had it. I don't know that I had all that much more than I've had other years. I did do a great memorable Mommy day with Genevieve where we went to the beach and then this place in Miami that you know, it really wasn't that hard. Everything was local, but it was still stuff that she often asked to do and I say no because we don't have time. So being able to do that felt pretty special. And then I do I will say I kind of had a fail at. I wanted to do a seven year old trip with Genevieve because I've done it with other kids, and we didn't do it. But I already have a very very short trip to Philadelphia for my niece's birthday party, and.

00:20:21
Speaker 2: I'm planning just to take I only got tickets for myself and Genevieve, so that's going to.

00:20:24
Speaker 1: Count excellent, excellent, Well that sounds good. Well then there was more. Yeah, oh you went well, hell yeah, there's more.

00:20:31
Speaker 3: Okay, I had goals to increase our date nights. Josh and I were not doing very well with having regular date nights, and I will say I met the school, but I only met it in November when I realized that I needed to do that as part of my monthly planning to actually set the dates that we would go out. And once I figured this out, funny, we started going on date nights again. I wanted to throw a casual neighborhood hang. Did not happen unless you count the fact that I hosted book club, which include a lot of members of my neighborhood, but wasn't exactly what I had envisioned. And then finally, I really wanted to spend a lot of time visiting friends, and I would say I definitely met that goal. As I mentioned in the highlights, there was just lots of friend time, including far flung friends, so a plus on that one.

00:21:17
Speaker 1: Yay, good job.

00:21:18
Speaker 2: I think I was thrown by the January trip to Philadelphia. I was like, wait a minute, I thought you were coming in February, so.

00:21:23
Speaker 3: I am the January ones very short. So I have not yet mentioned it because I don't think I'm going have time.

00:21:28
Speaker 1: To hang out with you.

00:21:29
Speaker 2: Sorry, Laura, We'll be here, but I won't be seeing you.

00:21:34
Speaker 1: No.

00:21:34
Speaker 3: And actually, when I booked the February trip, which I am coming to Philadelphia and we'll get to see Laura, yay, my sister goes, oh, no, that means you won't come for Miriam's birth and I was like, you know, I can fly twice because it's like a two and a half hour flight, and actually the prices were so like double digit flights we're talking about, so.

00:21:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, because nobody's going that direction, Well, I thank you going for ord to two food. I'm not going to stay and drive home.

00:22:02
Speaker 2: I have too, I know, but still maybe it's a round trip originating from Florida's the's.

00:22:09
Speaker 1: Where you get the discount on it. Well, I'm here twice. Yeah.

00:22:15
Speaker 2: Well, so I set a goal to go to three pro sports games and I did.

00:22:19
Speaker 1: I doubled that.

00:22:19
Speaker 2: In fact, we wad the two football, one basketball, three baseball.

00:22:23
Speaker 1: So that was cool.

00:22:24
Speaker 2: I wanted to enjoy our last nine months with Jasper and launch him. I'd say that's going pretty well. He will be almost done. I mean when this AIRRS, he'll be done with his first semester. Of college and it's gone quite well for him, and we had fun together in France. That was a really cool time being roommates when we traveled around France with the choir, and so I'm really glad we got to do that. And we've also been talking and texting a lot, and I've gotten to see him a couple times this fall, so it's you know, he's not gone. It's a different sort of relationship, like I'm not managing him in the weekly family schedule, but we've managed to stay in touch, which has been great. Henry's starting music because I wanted to have a family that does music, and Henry has started piano. He is singing in the church choir, so lots of music for him. Still working on some of the older kids on a regular practice schedule.

00:23:21
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly what.

00:23:23
Speaker 2: Sort of bribery will work, but because you've got to get over that hump of being good enough that it's fun, so we're totally figuring that one out. I wanted to host a holiday party, so this actually is okay.

00:23:39
Speaker 1: I'll back up.

00:23:40
Speaker 2: We did host several big parties through the year, which is usually it's been about offering our home as a place to have a party that is already going to happen. So like the choir picnic, we had a recruiting event for my husband's office. We hosted the whole high school cross country team for an event like so it's kind of cool to have the And actually we did the theater club, the high school theater club too.

00:24:04
Speaker 1: That one was a little bit more crazy. I left in the middle of that one.

00:24:08
Speaker 2: I don't even want to know what transpired in that one, but it was reasonably like no kids are high on life, Sarah.

00:24:15
Speaker 1: It wasn't substances. It was like just that they are gung ho kids.

00:24:20
Speaker 2: Anyway, So we've like four huge parties at the house. I said I wanted to have a holiday party, But the truth is I am going to host my extended family on Christmas Day and I want to as I'm thinking about that, I can like turn that into a real, true like Christmas party. I mean, we think about, like, I don't know, I read like Ma Martha Stewart Living Magazine from years ago about her party at the Bedford House, and think about how we could do that right, like you do some sort of appetizer and a holiday cocktail and have people go through different things. We'll have the dinner and the presence of course, but you don't really think it through and have it be a coherent party. I think I can do that, and especially since I know the guest list. I mean, it's my extended family, so it'll be good sounds it's going to be a win.

00:25:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, all right, right, Well we're going to take a break and then get to our next category, which is personal.

00:25:26
Speaker 2: Well, we are back talking our year in review. We talked about some highlights, some lowlights, and now we're talking about how we did on our various twenty twenty five goals. So, Sarah, how about your personal goals? This part's kind of amusing. So my first personal goal was to strength train because I was not doing very well with that. I think I counted something like twenty five total sessions in twenty twenty four.

00:25:46
Speaker 1: It was disappointed with that.

00:25:48
Speaker 3: And guess what, guys, I did so much strength training in twenty twenty five because it turns out the secret ingredient for me strength training is that I'm not allowed to run, so strength training becomes my activity of choice. And I didn't actually count all my strength training, but I would not be surprised if it was more than one hundred and fifty, with my goal being one hundred because most weeks I'm doing three or four strength training activities and that doesn't even count going to pilate's because that's not really the same thing as strength training, but even just traditional lifting dumbbells using videos. I met this goal, so yeah, that's great. My second one was a safe Boston qualifying time, so well, sometimes you have a goal that you can just completely abandon kind of peacefully and not have to worry about it again, So that one was axed off the list. The third one is I wanted to improve my wardrobe and I had specific items I wanted to get. I wanted two new pairs of Genes, which I got and really like, and they have enhanced my wardrobe significantly since that's generally my uniform on non scrubs work day. I wanted two presentable tops that are not T shirts.

00:26:54
Speaker 1: I did not.

00:26:55
Speaker 3: I don't think I sh no other T shirts. Yeah I did not succeed. They're like nicer T shirts, but they're still T shirts. I wanted a new professional utfort for speaking that did not happen, and I said, I genuinely wanted to invest more in clothing than I did in twenty twenty four, and I would say I did. I particularly got some really nice casual sandals. They're mefisto, they have like a gold buckle, and they just make my everyday jeans uniform look a little bit more elevated and nice, and still they're extremely comfortable. So I think I actually would say like B plus on my wardrobe improvement set of goals. Then I had a reading habit goal. I don't know, I'm always setting weird reading goals and then being like, no, I'm just I'm fine the way I am, Like why am I messing with it? And I wanted to read ten minutes a day of nonfiction and ten minutes of fiction, and honestly, most days I did do that, but I don't think I did the fiction every single day. I did probably read nonfiction almost every single day, but I didn't track it. And I'm finishing the year at around fifty books. As we're recording this, it's early December and I'm at forty five, so it's just my number. And then finally I wanted to continue to track and curate media because towards the end of twenty twenty four, I realized I really enjoyed it if I wrote down the podcast of the TV shows, the books that I read throughout the day, and I just incorporated that into my daily planner page. And it turns out I do love doing this. I do this every single day. I wrote down yesterday that I read all of the well I skimmed all of the New York Times, and it was just fun to write things like that down, or that I listened to the Mariah Carey Christmas album or whatever it was.

00:28:30
Speaker 1: So yeah, I love media tracking. I'm going to continue that. So I'm glad I gave it a try.

00:28:35
Speaker 2: Very all right, your personal goals, yeah, I don't know. Maybe you just should stop setting reading goals.

00:28:41
Speaker 3: Yeah I don't have any bandage year, or I want to abandon more books.

00:28:45
Speaker 1: That's my well, no spoilers, but yeah, I agree. Yeah.

00:28:49
Speaker 2: Well, for personal I wanted to listen to all the works of Beethoven. That was my listening project for the year, and I will have done that. Curiously enough, today's today's assignment is actually Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, So that was a pretty big winner of a day.

00:29:05
Speaker 1: On that one. It's been fun.

00:29:06
Speaker 2: I've been following the calendar at complete Beethoven dot com. This has three hundred and sixty six entries because it was originally done for twenty twenty, which was a leap year. If anyone's looking for that as a project, it's pretty well structured, so you could do this as well as long as you stick with it. I wanted to read Anna Karnina, which I did. I don't know if I mentioned that in the goals episode or not, but I ultimately decided that that was on my list, and I read it at the pace of one chapter a day, got through it by September, so that that is done.

00:29:42
Speaker 1: I wanted to eat.

00:29:44
Speaker 2: Produce for breakfast, and I have every day except for six. Those were six days when I was traveling and not in charge of my breakfast, and not everyone automatically includes it in produce in breakfast, so there's only so much one can do about that, unless you're like traveling with bananas or something.

00:30:06
Speaker 3: Instacart blueberries to your friend's house or something your friend my produce.

00:30:13
Speaker 2: So exactly, so I guess it'll wind up being close to three hundred and fifty five days, maybe by the end of the year, So I'm happy about that.

00:30:24
Speaker 1: I think that was good.

00:30:26
Speaker 2: And I wanted to do one more strength session a week. I mean, I've been working out with my trainer since twenty twenty three, and so I wanted to make sure I did an extra session on my own. And I think I pretty much have done that. It's been ten minutes, but that's fine. I hit it so great.

00:30:41
Speaker 1: I love it.

00:30:42
Speaker 3: Do you report back to your trainer, like, is there an accountability element?

00:30:45
Speaker 1: Nope, No, I just do it. They don't care.

00:30:46
Speaker 2: But I put it on my planner, like my weekly planner page I have. I've started to do a line that says run one, two, three, and then strength one two and then I need to end the.

00:30:56
Speaker 1: Week with all of those crossed off.

00:30:58
Speaker 2: Love it, Yeah, all right, So other categories, Sarah, you had a few more than I kind of did, but I had household.

00:31:06
Speaker 3: I had one more, and I wanted to declutter, but it didn't happen.

00:31:10
Speaker 1: I thought some of it did. No, you're right, isolated areas got decluttered. That is true.

00:31:16
Speaker 3: Genevieve's clothes, but it hasn't been completed in any cohesive way to prevent it from happening again, and I'm not satisfied.

00:31:25
Speaker 1: With my progress.

00:31:26
Speaker 3: Ar Nanny did do like a really nice organizing job, but I just don't think we got rid of enough stuff for everything to be sustainable.

00:31:34
Speaker 2: So well, I'm curious, Yeah, when you're going to decide that's done right, Like, I don't know that.

00:31:40
Speaker 1: I disagree with Marie Kondo.

00:31:42
Speaker 2: There is not a point where it will be forever done and you will not relapse into disorganization.

00:31:47
Speaker 1: So I'm very curious how this goal.

00:31:48
Speaker 3: I'm literally rereading that book right now and I was guffing at I was reading it aloud to Josh and he's like, that's so funny. And I love her her writing and have loved the things that she promises, but there are certain things that I just I just can't And I really would love to see Sharshley has a new book out, but I would love to see an updated edition of Life Changing Magic from the perspective of someone now with two or three kids and probably a much larger home than she had when she wrote that book.

00:32:19
Speaker 2: So well, yeah, we'll see. I don't know what the decluttered house like. How we will know we have achieved this zen like state of happiness here.

00:32:29
Speaker 1: It's a good question. I'll have to think about what the end quoder should look like. Yeah, well, because then I think you could aim for it, right, Like if you.

00:32:36
Speaker 2: Could say, like these ten spots in my house will be decluttered, like that would be a goal you could actually execute against.

00:32:43
Speaker 1: Yes, that's true, Okay, I.

00:32:46
Speaker 2: Sort of had a household goal of getting some more miniatures, which I did. They are on shelves in my office. I have different vignettes. I now have a primary bedroom, a kid's bedroom, a kitchen, a living room, a laundry room.

00:32:59
Speaker 1: And bathroom, plus accessories for all of those.

00:33:02
Speaker 2: I almost don't even have more space, Like I don't know what other room I would put in at this point, our garage.

00:33:10
Speaker 1: I can do it.

00:33:11
Speaker 3: Love this hobby of yours, and I almost feel like, yeah, every year, I imagine the miniature world is going to grow.

00:33:18
Speaker 1: It will it will be Well.

00:33:20
Speaker 2: I bought like a little Christmas tree at the miniature show, so you know that's that's fun. But just a sort of reminder with this episode that a year is a lot of time. That eighty seven hundred and sixty hours is spacious. I mean even you know in retrospect if it feels like it's gone fairly quickly or whatever.

00:33:42
Speaker 1: I mean, you can do a lot in a year, even.

00:33:44
Speaker 2: If there's very big highlights, some low lights, and there's still a lot of downtime and space even with all these things.

00:33:53
Speaker 3: So totally with even all these things we listed, I'm like, and there was also so much puttering.

00:34:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, and to be expected, huttering, scrolling for me, I mean, headline reading it could, I mean just a ton of it, even with everything else.

00:34:09
Speaker 1: So there you go. All right.

00:34:11
Speaker 2: So our question for this week this came out of one of our Patreon meetups. We were talking the holidays, and somebody asked, is there a way to steer extended family away from large gifts for kids or ones with lots of plastic pieces? You know, like that three thousand plastic piece set that you know is going to be turning up in the vacuum cleaner for the next year at least.

00:34:36
Speaker 1: So, Sarah, what did you have for this?

00:34:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, these ideas actually are not mine. These are collected from the wisdom of our wonderful Patreon group. So yeah, if you want to have your own burning questions answered by this collective wisdom, then you can join anyway. So one idea is to have the gifts be free for all, but have them live at those people's houses. So sure, you can buy the Barbie dream House, but it's for grandma's house and our kid will be delighted to play with it whenever they're there, which is probably true, and then keeps the item out of your home.

00:35:10
Speaker 1: That's your desire. You could have an open discussion.

00:35:14
Speaker 3: People definitely noted that your mileage may vary with this on how well or not well this goes. And you could have wish lists on Amazon or another app just to make things a little bit easier, and perhaps you include items on there that are not necessarily tangible items but more like subscriptions or tickets or things like that. I like the Marie Condo inspired This is Condo Heavy episode. The gift's purpose was to make the giver feel good. We thank them and then dispose, donate or rehome later. And then one final idea was to ask for consumables or books, because neither of these are cluttery and hopefully they can get used up.

00:35:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, those are great ideas.

00:35:56
Speaker 2: I mean, certainly asking for a membership to an area zoo or children's museum or science center or something, because that's something you could use over and over again, and particularly if you say, like, oh, this is thanks to Grandma, We're going to the science museum again. Isn't it fun to go to the science museum thanks to Grandma? Just keep bringing that point home and then your kids will probably talk about it with your relatives as well, and I think that could be a far more meaningful experience. But yeah, this is tricky because I mean, part of a thing with a gift is that people choose to give what they choose to give, and sometimes people want to do that in their own way, and there's not a tremendous amount you can do about it if they are not asking for your input.

00:36:39
Speaker 1: So there you go, love of the Week. All right, Sarah, what do you have? Yeah?

00:36:44
Speaker 3: Well, I'm just excited that I'm going to be digging into my twenty twenty six planners very soon. I actually marked in my calendar that the day we get back from Montana and maybe the day after will be my days of just diving into my planners and getting them set up for the year. And so well, if you want to see what those look like it is on YouTube on my Best Laid Plans video channel.

00:37:04
Speaker 1: But yeah, just excited about that.

00:37:06
Speaker 2: What about you, Well, I love photo memories. I love that my phone just serves these up. I mean the photo widget or whatever on the home screen that you get some photo that's in your photo role from. At this point, it's like ten years that I've I've had this same Apple ID through various phones, and so yeah, it could be a photo of Alex at age eighteen months and that's kind of crazy.

00:37:32
Speaker 1: But you know, it just serves up something random and I'm like, oh, that's so cute. And so I love seeing how little they were.

00:37:39
Speaker 2: I mean even as early recently, as like twenty twenty, everyone was still fairly little.

00:37:45
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's been cool to see that.

00:37:48
Speaker 3: Well, I love when you serve me up a memory of like us, it's some recording trip four years ago or something.

00:37:53
Speaker 1: It's very fun. We look less cute.

00:37:55
Speaker 2: We were not appreciably cute four years ago than now, but still you know, slightly, slightly, Well, that's goods. The long hand of time get to us all. This has been best of both worlds. Speaking of the long hand of time, we have been reminiscing about twenty twenty five, celebrating what went right, commiserating about things that did not go as we entirely planned, but ultimately happy that we are still here and still recording and we have had a great year. Thank you everyone for listening to all these episodes in twenty twenty five, because having this community has definitely been a highlight of the year for me.

00:38:33
Speaker 3: Right, Sarah, Yes, we appreciate each of you. It's been so much fun, and thank you so much for listening as well.

00:38:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll be back next week with our goals episode Goals twenty twenty six. But in the meantime, if you are celebrating Christmas, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and we will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.

00:38:53
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.

00:38:54
Speaker 3: You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can.

00:39:01
Speaker 2: 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.