Retreats: An In-Person Conversation on Getting Away

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to Best of both Worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to Best of both Worlds. This is Laura. This is episode two hundred and forty two, which is first airing in late March of twenty twenty two. Sarah and I are actually here together in person recording this, which is what we're going to be talking about today. We are on a little best of both Worlds retreat, which is very exciting. Oh, we're doing this, so Sarah, maybe you could start talking it. You've done a few retreats in the past, whatever your retreats been. Yeah, most of the retreats that I have done have been with Josh. I don't know that I've ever done one entirely alone, unless you count perhaps going to conferences for work, which sometimes can have a retreat like feel to it. But Josh and I have done these short, like two or three day trips that are really too short to call a full on vacation, but they just feel like a little break and we often have a sort of planning or scheming component, or it'll just be like, literally, we just want to relax and not be woken up by children, so that can be the only goal. But we've enjoyed doing one actually in the same place where we are right now, which we'll talk about in October. We've gone like to the Keys for retreats. We have gone to the western coast of Florida. So our retreats tend to be. Luckily, there's a lot of very retreat worthy destination, so you are in a vacation destination. It's not that hard to find somewhere. Yeah, so we've had some really lovely ones. I was talking about how we had a retreat in twenty sixteen in Austin, Texas, where I believe my mission was to convince Josh we needed to have another child, and clearly it worked. Yeah, the intention of the retreat was meant. I don't know if that was truly the intention, but I just remember that, like I guess, I was having more and more feelings and we went on this trip and I was like, Okay, let's talk about it for real, and then yeah we did. All right, good, well, great we have Genevieve. That's good. Yeah. I've mostly done mine solo because I've been doing writing retreats, or more specifically, there are editing retreats. So when I am writing a book, I often like to be able to edit it. So if I'm in a spot where I'm close to done that I've written the manuscript, I've gone through and done initial edits and all that, and I really am at the point where I want to get through the whole manuscript as a you know, as a cohesive thing without mental interruption. I will take a tonight up and use that time to focus solely on editing it and usually can go through the entire manuscript sort of start to end within that timeframe and get it done. So I first did this actually with some fiction. I wrote a novel called The Courtland Boys. I tried this back in twenty fourteen and actually went to the little town where it is theoretically set in jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. Then I did a writing retreat with Off the Clock when I was you know, in the editing stage of that. I went to a ski resort near where we live, was about an hour and a half away, but it was off season. It was in the summer, and so it was just you know, a pretty hiking, mountainous area. But curiously, while I was there is when I read a certain blog post from a certain other blogger who mentioned she was thinking of starting a podcast. So I was like, I was in the mental space to you know, think, hey, we should do that. Curiously, Also on that retreat, I got an email from my publisher that they were thinking of doing a fable and was interested if I wanted to think about that, and that, you know, a couple years later, Juliete School of Possibilities was the result of that. So there's a lot that came out of that retreat. And then I didn't on this past fall to edit Tranquility by Tuesday, and I went to Cape May and stayed in a hotel on the beach there but in October, so it was you know, off season, and did a lot of walking on the beach and then in between that editing the book. That is amazing. It's true your mind. I think when you get that break from routine. And I live such a rigid routine most of the time, just out of necessity the way my job works. And when you have enough kids, you kind of fall into some pretty deep grooves. And getting out of that does give you the freedom to think about possibilities that you probably you know, might brush away as being too busy. Otherwise, it seems things seem more possible. Okay, maybe that's why you were like, Oh, so here we are. Yes, four and a half years later, Yes, on a current retreat right now. We've recorded a few in person episodes, but not that many, and we attempted to do some in twenty nineteen when I was in Florida and we failed to hit record. Oh yeah, we did, like a couple too. That was sad. That was a sad moment that was said. We were also supposed to go abroad yes, in June of twenty twenty, which did not happen, sadly enough, But you know, I'm sure we will do that at some point. But we're enjoying being here in Florida together. So hello from Vero Beach, Florida. Yes, and if you are a softworty, I'm looking for a very low key place to be. This is a really nice, easy destination. It's about a two hour drive from Fort Lauderdale area, and it is it is pretty as relaxed as it gets. Like. The keys are a little more. There's more people like partying. But here's just like a lot of retirees and I don't know us us, Yes, just as far as we can tell, we were the perhaps the youngest people at our restaurant last night. But that's great. That's great because they had no it's not a bad feeling at all. They were having a great time and so were we. So yeah, we had to plan for a while to make this happen, obviously meshing two schedules. You know, it's not that hard to fly down to Florida, but you have to make it happen and make sure we both had child care and place. There's some things that have had to Neither of us has the exact normal schedule right now because Josh is off with one of your kids somewhere else and so he's having some time away with one kid, and r nanny has needed this Friday off for something, so we have a sort of substitute arrangement for part of the time. But yeah, it's you know, worth doing. I mean, it's totally worth doing, and it does require some planning, and you know people who are reverse to that it is going to be hard to get away if you do have kids, but I think it is very much worth it, and then you can spend some time on your retreat planning your next retreat. Yeah. No, But the thing is, if you're waiting for the perfect time, there's never going to be a perfect time, Like there's not some time that magically you'll have three days where you have nothing going on, and so you are able to say, oh, retreat, let's do that. But you know, life will still be there afterwards. And I find that time tends to be fairly elastic that when you put stuff in, I mean you still feel behind afterwards, but no more or less than you were before. When we say that is behind for the rest of our lives, I'm not caught up an email. Well, of course I still won't be afterwards, but I wouldn't be otherwise either, So there you go. Better to just take the trip sometimes, so there are a lot of components to a good retreat that might be helpful for people to keep in mind. If you are deciding to do this, one of the best things you can do is to have an intention for the retreat. And the intention can absolutely be relaxing, you know, rejuvenating, just being away from constant responsibilities like that. Those are all good intentions, but you want to know that's what you're going in with because if that's your intention, then you're not going to say, plan your next year while you're on your retreat. Whereas if your intention is to plan your next year, then maybe you aren't quite so, you know, set on having the rejuvenation relaxation time, So make sure you have some sort of intention. What else? What would you say that? For me, a very key portion of any retreat is the autonomy. And I think you know, many of us spend a lot of our lives answering to many others, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But you have kids that need you, you have a partner that might need you, you have job things that need you. And for me, the retreat, I think the biggest appeal is just being able to be like I'm out, like I will spend my day, my forty eight hours how I want, and everything can wait. And just that autonomy can feel really therapeutic, like remind me that I am my own person and that I can carve out some time to do what I want with it, And so that's really valuable to me. That's like probably the most important. And that's why to some extent I find that when I go to conferences, I get that retreat feel because I'm kind of in charge of myself. No, yes, there may be a schedule for the conference, but I can go to which portions I would like and wake up when I would like, and et cetera. The waking up when you like is a is a great, huge, huge, But going to bed when without you know, fighting anyone else to go to bed, and sometimes that in and of itself, especially if really little kids, is exciting that like, I'm going to go to bed at this time and I am ninety nine percent sure that I will not be up for anything until I mean, you know, who knows. You can always have a fire alarm in your hotel, but most likely it will be thankfully no fire alarms, ask me time. Although to that aside, two nights ago, we had a false like burglar alarm going out one am. That was super fun. So anyway, I need the rest even more than usual. All Right, So that was scroll down here in our notes we're in one spot and so I'm like, ah, this is how does Sarah operate her notes here? I'm like hitting her computer anyway, So I was just going to say that I love my retreats to have some element of nature. Usually exercise plays a part, Like I do like to work out unless I'm just super super tired and I just want to purposely relax. But and then yeah, something to reflect on some kind of question I'm working with. Maybe, Yeah, So my intentions have obviously been to edit the manuscript most of the time when I'm going through, but yeah, I like to go somewhere that's pretty as well. I mean, I'm sure you can not be somewhere pretty, but you know, why not. If you're trying to think deep thoughts, you may as well have something that's inspiring while you're there. I also just like to do something physical every day just as a way of processing thoughts. And so, you know, running on the beach in Cape may Or running. I did a hike at that bare mountain place and through their old their cross country trails that are through the hills and the woods there. Kind of got a little lost in once. So it made a slightly longer walk I hike, though I was wound up hiking like six miles as opposed to thinking I was doing like three. I made it. I survived, just like we survived this morning. We survived this morning rather hot and sunny beach. Oh, yes, we ran on the beach, which Florida is something for running. Sarah was saying, like, we got to go early, like we gotta go and you know, this can't be a midday thing. And I am quite aware of why it wasn't even that early, but yeah, it was not kind of bit bad if we had waited until noon or something. Yeah. Yeah, So why don't we take a quick ad break and then we would be back more talking about logistics. So we are back talking about all things retreats, how you can take many retreats in your busy life and make it work, and what might make it move productive and fulfilling for you. We are recording this on our Best of Both Worlds retreat here in Vero Beach, Florida, in the same room using the same microphone. It is very exciting. It was still on squadcast though, but we're just seeing each other face to face as opposed to seeing one way dude. So a couple of things that the logistics. I think we both figured out that two nights is kind of the minimum. I mean, I if the choice is not to have any retreat or a smaller one, I mean, you certainly can take many, many retreats, like micro retreats, which could be during work days, childcare. You know that instead of going to work, you go somewhere else I don't know, library, coffee shop, spa, spa. Especially if your goal is relaxation, that could certainly be helpful. Or go for a long hike or something like that, get out into nature and have that time off. That would be wonderful. But in many cases, if it is possible, having the two nights away really puts you in a separate mindset because there's at least one full day that you are not traveling and that you are not dealing with the household stuff, whereas one night, like you're going to have to leave on that day, so you still have that time that you know you're going to have to depart on the day that you're there, even coming from the day before. So two nights is kind of the minimum for having that separate mental space. And I will say that during the week can be kind of more doable, at least for me compared to the weekend, mostly just because the willingness of our nanny to like do overnight coverage during the week is higher than her doing so on the weekend, although she's done that too. Sometimes she'll take our kids to her house or things like that. But often the week works well because your kids are in school or e maybe aftercare, so the childcare burden on somebody else is going to be lower, and then you can take paid time well, depending on what kind of job you have. If you are more of a freelancer than I guess you have your own autonomy over that. But for me, it's nice for me to be like I'm on pl I put a million away messages up, like I really tried to like this time it didn't entirely work. That's okay to really wall it off and be like I'm away for these three days, and then you know, then you might get home to your family for the weekend and you're in a more relaxed state and you don't have to like jump back into the workday. So I don't know, I love the Wednesday to Friday as kind of a nice window, and that's what we did this time. Yeah, yeah, I've done Wednesday to Friday or like Tuesday to Thursday, because I agree during the week has some upsides. I mean, many people already have done some sort of work travel during the week, so there is a process in place for figuring out how coverage works. It is less of a burden on your partner if you have one, or if you do not, or if your partner travels too then maybe you need some sort of additional coverage, but it's less in addition to what you already probably have, and so you know, it just winds up being a little bit easier on the other people involved than taking off a weekend. You know, we are I would say, don't try anything too ambitious in terms of traveling. I flew to Florida, but we are not far from you know, it's a two hour drive from the airport or from Sarah's house, I guess. And you know, when I've done these writing retreats. The destinations I chose jim thorpe Baar, Mountain, Cape May are all within a two hour drive of my house. And again, the reason is that if you are going to get this time off, you want to spend less of it in transit and more of it in the state of pursuing whatever intention you are you are trying to get to. Yes, and I'm sure almost every state has some kind of vacation like destination, you know, within a couple of hours drive. Yeah, because it doesn't have to be high budget. So, I mean, it doesn't really have to be. I like, going someplace that's pretty, but you don't have to. I mean, you could borrow a friend's house, but you could also just do I mean an A, B and B type thing that would be more rustic. Obviously hotels are great in their own way, but it wouldn't have to be a high end hotel. I mean, you know, anything that is away from your own responsibilities can be nice in many cases. If you're not flying somewhere, like if you're driving, then you don't have many other expenses other than the food and lodging, so that can keep the cost of it down. Yeah, and you can repeat places too, Like I kind of have a goal of making Vero Beach my regular retreat destination, and then you don't have to think that hard. If you find one place that works, there's no reason you have to be creative and do something different every time. If you're happy and you like it. Yeah, I think Kate May could be my repeat destination for the future too, and especially off season. It turned out, I mean, hotels were dirt cheap in October, which is wonderful, and a lot of places were still open. I mean many restaurants were closed because they only operate sort of May through September, but there were enough that were open that you were able to, you know, see some cool stuff that sounds nice. Off season beach. Well that's kind of your theme, right, You're like off season ski resort, off season beach. Yes, but that makes sense. So then you kind of have more peace, probably lower rates, and it's still pretty places. Yeah, you know, the mountains don't cease to be pretty when the snow is gone. So it's also good to have a loose schedule. Now again, it doesn't have not like every fifteen minutes. For people who are seeing patients every fifteen minutes or who have you know, conference calls booked every thirty minutes. Some of the upside of a retreat would be to not have that and to have a bit of a feeling like, well, what do I feel like doing now? But you still might want to have some bit of a loose schedule or plan. You might want to think about how you're going to feed yourself. If it's going to annoy you to wait for a restaurant or to wander around finding one, you might want to just sort that out ahead of time, or see if there's to your wherever you're staying, but just to put a little thought about that so pursuing food doesn't take more of the mental energy that you are are doing for other things. Then we had a good time last night walking around trying to find Yes, we purposely well, I purposely booked one night and then I was like, well the other night can be more spontaneous and we can walk around. And then it turned out to rain. So we were very very lucky that we picked the place that was right next to the hotel by the way circle. We like circled the town before we realized, okay, we'll just go to this place. Next door, and then you know the upside of doing it, you know, with somebody and but not with kids is like we could wait at the bar for a table, like we was fine to wait for one of thirty forty minutes we wound up sitting there. Yeah, it was such a weird experience to be like, oh, this is actual. We're the kind of people who could wait at a restaurant for a table as opposed to like fleeing with our small children. That's so true because when they said the weight time was like, I think both of us instinctively were like, oh god, because yeah, we have that other scenario in mine where you have four, five or three hungry children and they all are not going to make it. But yeah, it was interesting. But yeah, so we didn't plan that one. We did plan this one. And think about if there's anything that you would want to do that it would require a reservation of some kind, like I don't know, a performance or a massage or spa treatment or something like that. It's nice to have if you're interested in doing like that, Like it booked ahead of time, because then you get to look forward to it and then you don't have to you know, be wondering if it's going to be available when you get to your destination. Yeah, or even just having a sort of sequence of things if it doesn't have to be exact time. But I sort of like in the morning, I would like to go for a walk in this pretty area, and then I would like to have breakfast, and then I would like to work on this question for two hours, and then you know, probably I'll take a break and then I'll take a nap, or just sort of think through a general sequence. So you make sure that you use the time in a way that fits with your intention. Yes, I definitely did not have an hour by hour plan, but I like having a couple of anchors. Couple anchors. Anchors are good. Like you might want to try to limit your check ins with others. I'm not saying that you should throw your phone away or keep it in the trunk or anything like that, but it helps if the people who might be contacting you regularly are well aware that you are gone and that you are attempting to focus on an intention of some sort that probably doesn't involve checking in with them. Yeah, don't forget to be really thorough about where you get your inputs. For work especially, I have learned the hard way that like not only the things that I have learned to do to like escape fairly well are number one and email away message number two and email to like all the people that work like directly kind of under me or with me that I'm like gone, and this is who is in charge unless there's And I always say, like, call me if there's an emergency. But the truth is, in my line of work, and I'm not talking about the clinical side, I'm talking about the more resident management side, there's rarely going to be that kind of emergency. So I feel fine with that. And don't forget if you have some kind of other paging system or something like that. In Epic, we have this chat function and again that's like the world's worst thing to get interrupted with. But you can set it to unavailable and put a little message without the dates. So I went ahead and did that too, So three pronged it has worked mostly, Yeah, mostly mostly. And you like to do this fairly regularly. I mean you've been pretty good about doing regular retreat. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. My feeling about this is like life is short. It's pretty strenuous. I mean it's not strenuous, like right, Like objectively speaking, neither of us are relieving that strenuous lives. But it's pretty full. On my normal life, I have to get up really early if I want to exercise. It's kind of like every minute is like for my kids and then my job and I come home and like there's just there's not a lot of reflection or time to spend unstructured and having kids that are still younger the weekends, I need to do a lot of active parenting. So I really crave some of this space in my life. And I found that, like, I just feel better if I have something like this to look forward to every few months. I mean, my goal would probably be to say every quintile that I would have either with a friend or by myself, which I've never done but I would totally do, or with Josh, to just have something on the calendar to like take a breath, think, et cetera. Yeah, I don't know, I just lif it is too short, Yeah, to do it well. You were saying, people who want to spend time planning and it's just hard to do in the day to day life. This is one way to remove yourself from the constant whitewater rafting experience of daily life, and like get over to the side and see what the water looks like, and you know where you wish to direct your craft through. I certainly have not done it every quarter or but I think twice a year would be good for me to aim for, and so maybe that can be a goal moving forward. I know I still have a weekend trip off the gut from Man's a birthday gift which I haven't ye. I hope this, I hope this was not considered. I feel this is this is a work trip. This is a work trip. This is definitely a work trip, because listen, we're producing content. This is content content creation exactly Like never said that it's but we are content creators on our work retreat. All right, let's go to our question section. So this is from a listener who writes in she has three young kids, ages one, three, and seven. Currently works four days a week, like an eighty percent schedule, completely from home in a job she loves. So sounded pretty good so far. She says, I have a fair amount of flexibility. She can work out during the day, pick up the kids early if she needs to go to appointments, and so does her husband. Again, all sounded very good. This year, I will be taking on more responsibility and as a result, will be up for promotion midyear. My boss has made it clear that I can continue to work in my current part time schedule forever if I want to, but if I want to go full time, he fully supports and encourages that. So this listen says that on one hand, she feels like she may do the same amount of work as a full time person and it would be nice to get paid for it. However, and she's saying the extra day of work time if she went to up to one hundred percent, might give her a space to focus on more forward thinking projects and professional development, at least in theory. On the other hand, she really likes to have Fridays off to do whatever she wants. I mean something she does is a longer workout lunch with her husband, Aaron's household management. If she needs to do that, it gives her flexibility if the kids are sick er, school is canceled, and life happens to still be able to get everything done. So what should she do? She knows Sarah recently went up to full time, so she wants our thoughts about it. So my thoughts were, and I guess when I first read this question, I thought the promotion was definitely happening, But she says up for more promotions, so I guess we don't totally know. I don't know whether this promotions happening. I assume it's going to. And the way you worded it made it sound like you could have that promotion either at eighty percent or at one hundred, which is great, and I'm so glad that they are not, you know, putting you in a box where you're not at a certain FTEs then you can't be at a certain level. So my thought, yea, that is a way people maintain a glass ceiling. By the way, yes that's a pretty common one. But yeah, so I'm happy that that doesn't sound like that's the case for this person. I think it depends on how sacred you are with those fridays, if you want to like wall off those fridays, and you truly think it is going to be possible even with the promotion, and you're happy, and maybe you're getting like, you know, an increase in pay anyway with the raise, but you want to like shut off work on Fridays completely and be able to say, like, I don't work Fridays, then I think eighty percent is the answer. If, however, you find it, especially with the promotion, stuff is going to bleed in anyway, and you're gonna end up like doing one meeting here and sending a couple emails there, to the point where your time is getting a little bit like polluted. Then I say just go full time and you know, maybe just try to maintain since your job is nice and flexible, maybe Fridays could be like a lighter day, but at least you're get paying for everything. So I think it just depends on how how much of a while you want around your Fridays. Yeah, my sense is that you are probably correct that you are doing as much as the average full time person in your organization, because I'm sure you are a diligent and hard working person who listens to this podcast. And so my theory is that, yes, you should be getting paid for one hundred percent if you are doing one hundred percent of the work, and I think you might be able to mostly wall off Fridays anyway. Again, if you are doing a lot of the work already that a full time person would be doing, and you're managing to keep your Fridays pretty clear. You could probably keep doing that. I mean, you could just make it very clear that Friday is not a good day to meet with you. And you know, if you're working from home, nobody's going to be seeing what you're doing anyway, so they're not going to be asking you questions like why are you not there at exactly one pm? I mean, you can just sort of say, like, you know these I don't want to do meetings on Fridays because that's when I think about long term projects or whatever you want to say, and then discourage that from on your schedule. I'm not saying it will never happen, but I think if you are very good about pushing, then you will have more time open on Fridays then you might think you will. Again, it's just it's the kind of thing I suggest people try to do anyways, not schedule a lot on Fridays, because you need a backup for, as you said, where stuff happens and you need a space for it to go. So you know, given that that's good calendar management in general, I think you know you might be able to make it work in a full time position as well, and if you have flexibility, it might be worth working like a little longer on same Monday or Tuesday, if that's an option in your life, and try to sort of get some of that overflow to that time to again, try to keep Fridays off if that's a really attractive thing for you. I'm pretty sure you will still be able to work out on Fridays and have lunch with your husband on Fridays. Well, it sounds like she does that anyway, she does that anyway, it's a good job, it's a good Yeah, yeah, I think I think so. My vote would be full time and then just as much as possible, try to keep some of that open space, knowing that you are a very efficient person who can probably get a lot of your work done in you know, and knowing that from my experience, trying to wall off a day as sort of entirely is a little bit futile. Anyway. Yeah, yeah, so there you go, all right. Our love of the week, Sarah, what's yours? Yeah? So I used to follow this fashion blog called Unfancy and then it disappeared. But if you keep like a blogger that you like on your reader, then you'll know when they reappear. And so she came back after like more than a year of being completely gone and now she's doing daily outfit photos. Her name is Caroline. She lives in Texas. She's very casual like with her style, very intentional, very minimal. I love it. I just want all her outfits. I'm sure she probably posts links to them. You could buy them. Yeah, I'm gonna gradually slide in until I just copy all of her No, I'm just kidding, but it's really good and I just like that. It just felt cool to be like, oh, I only know she's because I kept this on my reader. So pro tip, if you have someone you like that you're following, don't delete it just because they went away for a while. They might come back. They might come back or not. Sometimes they disappear forever. So my love of the week is Charleston shoes. And they were laughing because I had a total like shoe fail. So I brought a pair of like slip on, rusticky sandal type things with me here to Florida. I think they would look comfortable, look cute, but they gave me a really awful blister when we were walking around last night. I don't know what. Something just went wrong. It's I hadn't warn them in a long time. Maybe they shrank or my shoot, my feet expanded, I don't know. And so then you know, I looked I had a band aid on it, and I looked down when we were at our brunch and there's like bloody stain on the back of my like the old Grimm fairy tale of like Cinderella with blood on the track. It's just yeah, exactly, it was. It was. It was something. So we made an emergency stop at Charleston Shoes, which is a cute little shoe store. By yeah, I mean, what was the chance that I was like, oh, look, there's two shoe boutiques one walk away walk away from our brunch spot. So we went in and I bought a pair of very comfortable shoes. It was sort of an elastic key back part and top and cut, very cute. The boutique person gave me a ten percent to discount for my shoe emergency, not because she knew it was going to be a love of the week, No, we did not. She threw out my old shoes for me, and she gave me a band aid, so it was all nice. We did not play the podcast ad, so this is this is completely nonspawn, non sponsor. Yes, but I'm happy to have new shoes now, very exciting. A little souvenir from Vero Beach where we are here on our Many retreat, talking all things Many Retreat in this very meta episode. But we will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoe Box 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.