Work, Life, Running + More with Chelsea Myers

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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 Hartunger. 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 ninety, airing in late February of twenty twenty three. Sarah is going to be interviewing Chelsea Myers, who is a wonderful longtime member of the Best of Both Worlds community. She's a Patreon member. We just do a little shout out for our Patreon group here. We are having some awesome discussions. Both are live meetups and we have a discussion forum going online where we are engaged in three or four active conversations each week about different topics. Anyway, Chelsea a very active member there, and so we wanted to talk with her. I mean partly because we've heard from our listeners that we want lots more regular people on this show who could share how they make work and life fit together. And Chelsea's a great example of that, of how her career and various career aspirations have evolved over time, and also how she makes time for running, because Chelsea is a dedicated and fast runner. So, Sarah, why don't you tell us, since you did the interview, why don't you tell us a little bit about Chelsea. Yeah. So I actually met Chelsea in person once, I believe in North Carolina. I think she and her husband were like passing through. I don't think we got to go running together. But the reason we had connected in the first place, because this is way before best of both worlds, was that she had a running blog that I read, and I would sometimes blog about my own running, so we would connect in that way. And I'm talking about maybe like two thousand and nine, like you know, a long time ago. And I've been fascinated because back then I think we were very similar runners in terms of like volume and pace. And now she is such a great runner. She's so much faster than I am. She qualified for the Boston Marathon this year, which is something I'm not even dreaming of doing at my current age standard. I do want to do it, but I need to actually get older because I've just don't even entertain fantasies that I can be fast enough unless I turn forty five first. So she is awesome. She's motivating and inspiring and also has always been very methodical when it comes to tracking her goals and moving slowly but surely towards them. Plus she has three kids, a very active and busy life, and you know she's a fellow Floridians, so that's very well. Yeah, so we're looking forward to hearing from Chelsea. And you know, anyone who's thinking about building a serious, you know, running or other type side thing into your life, this will probably be some great advice for you as well. So I am not looking to do any marathons anytime soon, Boston or otherwise. I think I'm just going to let that dream be in the past and maybe focus on shorter distances. And that's okay, it's okay, all right, let's hear from Chelsea. I am so excited to welcome Chelsea Myers the best of both worlds today as I told you in the intro, I've kind of known Chelsea for a long time, but we have not had a lot of face to face or video to video conversations, so I'm super excited for this. Hello Chelsea, Hi, I'm really happy to be here. I feel like I've known you forever, way back in the ghost World days. I figured i'd you in there. Yes, oh wow, and you it was your early runner early runner, yes, yes, very good. Yes, way back in the runners world and running blog day day day. Yes, Oh my gosh. So what Chelsea was referring to is my website. The shoebox dot com had a few names at one point, like the url was lost in all alone at blogspot dot com, and then it said ghost world was like the name of the site. I don't know, I was being early aunts emo or something. And then yes, Chelsea was one of the many many running bloggers. I mean there's still some left. I feel like now they're more like running influencers or instagrammers, and people would share their training and their passions and I kind of miss those days, honestly. Yes, so it was always a lot of fun. There's one person who I used to read a lot about and I still follow her on Facebook and it's just so fascinating, you know, fifteen years later to everyone while I'll see what she's doing. So yeah, it was a neat world and one it became a famous author. So yes, yes, shout out to Shelby Van Pelt, the author of Remarkably Bright Creatures, which is an excellent novel that came out this year, and she did. We knew her as a running blogger back in the day. Well let's talk about running. So we wanted to bring you on for a number of reasons, and I think you've had a really interesting career journey. You have three children, like you're a perfect best of both worlds guests, and you're a Patreon member and everyone's been asking for more guests who aren't specifically authors or content creators like quote unquote regular people. Although Chelsea, I think you're more than that. So the first thing I want to do to talk about is you're running and how that journey has evolved over the years, and how you've kind of dialed into that passion lately. Take us a little bit on that journey. Sure, and first of all, let me apologize, I'm you know, I like everyone else fighting off a upper respiratory fun thing. So I get a little bit of vocal crispies here. But anyway, Yeah, So I started running a long time ago, back in high school, very very casually. I was actually really into music back then, and I think for some reason I decided maybe I needed to get a little exercise, and so I started running actually, like in the evenings. My dad would bicycle with me, because you know, I'm like sixteen running around at eight o'clock at night. And I would say I was a very casual runner in college. You know, I'd run sometimes and sometimes maybe I do the elliptical on some sides. I do thing for a while. And we moved to after college, to New Mexico, and I got a little bit more into it there. I did some races for the first time, I met some good runners, but it wasn't really until we moved to Wisconsin, and I guess in that time I was really into runners World. Like I read the forums and I read the magazine, and I was super into the training plans. And the first time I really followed a training plan again. We had just moved from altitude so Albuquerque's very high to Wisconsin, which is sea level more or less, and I had kind of a breakout race, like I ran a half marathon and like about one forty eight something like that, and that was so much faster than I ever thought I was capable of doing. I mean, it was huge, and I think part of it was I had been doing some altitude training. But then I got I was sort of entered into my training plan phase. So I'd get a training plan, I follow the training plan. I did mostly ten k in a few halfs when we were living in Wisconsin because winter is just so hard to train through. So I would do like a ten k and Saint Patrick's Day and that kind of opened the season in a ten k in the Turkey Trot for in November. So that was my last one. And I only ran one marathon while I was up there, did the Milwaukee Marathon, and you know, I was pretty serious about it, but you know, in the interim, I had one baby and one pregnancy, and you know, it just kind of never really came together to really train for a marathon. So wait, so you ran the marathon. I just want to get that timeline straight. You ran the marathon, and then you got pregnant after that. That was before so I'm trying to think of I ran the Milwaukee Marathon. I want to say when I was twenty eight, and that's when we decided we really wouldn't have a baby. As we both know, we were both training to have a baby at the same time, and that was I think one of the things that drew us together. Probably too because the Annabel it was about six months older, yeah, about six months older than my oldest, and so kind of stopped running to try to have the oldest. I got pregnant with him, I guess beginning of twenty twelve, and so you know, I took it easy, bounced back very quickly from the first one, and I actually ran a half marathon pr that fall, and that was another breakout race because it was like that proved to myself I could run faster than I ever thought I could. So I ran like a one forty six something half and I did it after having a kid, so I was like, okay, you know I could come back from that. I was in the training plan phase, so I was doing my training plan, you know that I ripped out of my magazine whatever. And then then two months later I was pregnant with the next baby, so you know, we took it easy. We moved to Florida. I still ran. You know, that year is the year that if I could kind of take it back and take it easy on myself, that's the year I would have done it. I was getting up early, I was not sleeping because I had two kids under two. I mean, if that was the year that I could just give myself like more grace to kind of chill out, I would have done it and like run three miles a few times a week because I like running, but not try to really train for anything because that it's so hard, though. I get it because you were probably I mean I remember having that same feeling, which is like I have to maintain who I am. This is part of who I am, and it's going to be like this forever and if I give up now, I'm never going to be back to it. So exact. Now we understand that like things can ebb and flow, but back then it's so hard to have that perspective. Yes, very much, And you know I was We're all just figuring everything out as we're going, and that was kind of but I ran a crappy marathon. I did that a very crappy Disney hot Disney marathon. But then the next year I read a really good marathon, like I hadn't, you know, And so I just, I guess to put this in perspective, you know, this is taking place over what ten years, maybe more than that, So it's not like I definitely have not had a linear progression where it's like every year I get fester and every year that you have a better race than if you aren't, you know, definitely not There's been ups and downs. But I had a great marathon. It had perfect weather and I finally broke four hours, and so that was really wonderful. I was so excited, but I was having a little bit of an injury issue, and then I got pregnant with my third kid. So I took that whole next year completely off. I just needed a break. Like I walked, but I did not run like at all at all at all. And that was good in some ways, and it was not good in some ways because the third coming back from the third kid was the hardest. It was very, very challenging. I mean I ran a half about a year after he was born, and it was the slowest I've ever run, and I was killing myself. I mean it was really hard, and that whole first year, I mean it was just really really hard, like coming back and I was very slow and I was disappointed, and gradually I got a little bit faster. But when the pandemic started. Oh, I guess another really important thing is I am part of a big training program here. I live in the Orlando area and if anybody's in the Orlando area, a run with marathon Fest totally recommended. Trackscheck has amazing training playergrams, So shout out to them that I started running with that group, making really good friends and having you know, that team atmosphere to be encouraging it, and that was huge. So through a couple of people that iran with during the pandemic, I got introduced to a local coach who worked at the running store. But the running store was closed because of the pandemic, and so he did some coaching on the side. So that was my first real experience working with a coach. And it went wait, I want to pause really quick because I have a question about that. Yeah, so your kids were howled and do you think there was any moment when you were like, you know what, I want to like lean into this hobby, like I'm allowed to do this. I want to take myself. Like what was your thought process of going for a coach? Oh? Well, during the pandemic, it was kind of like I think part of it is I'm a questioner and I am so drawn to expert advice. I hate making decisions for myself. I really don't like it. I get paralysis by analysis, and I love someone who I trust telling me what to do. That motivates me more than anything else. And that's why I think I liked the training plans because that was the closest I was going to get for a I mean, I didn't even consider it. And the only reason I even really considered it at that time is because I had these two friends who are working with this guy, and I had just come off of another lackluster marathon. So I mean, it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't good. It wasn't where I knew I could be, and there were no races, we weren't doing any formal training. There was like nothing going on, and I said, I need some direction. I don't know. We had our Trump books or our Biden Bucks or whatever it was at that time, and it wasn't, you know, hugely expensive. This was just like a guy who was kind of doing it on the side, and so I started working with him and I think it helped, you know, I did get more fitness. But then, let's see, in the interim, I got introduced to Megan and that's kind of a little bit of a different story, but I did start working with her. But then I did the Wineglass Marathon in twenty twenty one, and it was another not great race, and it was a bummer because we had traveled and I really thought I was prepared. I really thought everything was going to come together. And I said, I've got it up my game, like I have to make a change. And so I asked Meghan and I'm talking about Megan Featherstone, that other sum Megan both brothers son, but yea, and I asked her and she gave me some recommendations for coaches, and so I went with one of them, and I mean, it's been amazing. And after working with her for a little bit, I had another breakout race. I had had another half marathon pr and based on that time, I predicted I'd be able to qualify for Boston, and then I had another great race marathon on that spring. We were actually going to go try to go for the BQ, and I got cold feet, so we backed it up by about ten minutes and I hit that goal. And then I trained again for the summer, and then I got the BQ Boston qualifying time in early September. So yeah, I mean that is just a long story. Forty for your age group, its three forty is the time, and I ran a third three thirty seven basically on the dot. I think it's like three thirty six fifty nine, which I tried to put in when I was applying for Boston and they're like, no, we were going to run that to three thirty seven. Sorry, but totally amazing, totally amazing. So I want to know because this is best of both worlds. Even though I you know, we could totally do a spin off running podcast. I can That'll be my NIR podcast, just kidding, just kidding. I want you to talk about, like, how does this go over with your family? How does your husband support you? Are you like Megan, do you every run at four am? We are hoping to give some of our listeners permission to also do this at times other than for it. Yes, So I'm hoping maybe you can give some mons so both. One thing that I think is very helpful is that my husband does not do any kind of endurance athletics. He there's no competition between us for you know, who gets to do their long run, who gets to do their long thing when they go out of the house. So he is really into rowing. We have a rowing machine, and so he gets up and he roes here. So we have young kids, they're ten, eight and five. Somebody needs to be at the house, but he's here, and they're old enough where like somebody wakes up really early, they can go play the switch for a little while and not interrupt him too much. So I think that's a huge part of it. Part of it is, I mean I do get up pretty early some days of the week. Three days a week I run with the group Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and we start four forty five on Tuesday and Thursday, and on Saturday. Sometimes we start as early as I mean four, sometimes as late as five thirty. As part of that is the heat, right, so we're in Florida, and so in the summer it gets too hot, it gets too sunny, so we need to do that. We beat the heat, we beat the traffic. But yeah, I mean everybody is really really supportive. I've been very thankful, Like nobody gives me a big castle about any of the stuff. And you know, part of it is I hang out with my running friends sometimes and I can't do it as much as I want. I don't w to go out as much as the people with no kids or the empty nesters or whatever. But yeah, I think they can see how important it is to be And it's been fun for my kids to get excited about the Boston thing. We're all going. I mean we're dringing my kids, we're bringing my parents, like, we're all going to Boston the spring. So it's I mean, it's been really wonderful to have her and cheering for me. So I really appreciate them. I love that. Do you generally have you brought your family to races? Oh? No, My husband has gone occasionally, but actually the last two I did last year I went by myself, which was nice and a certain extent because I could just kind of like chill out on the hotel bed and eat pretzels and watch you know, Indian matchmaker or whatever while I'm waiting to go. But this one we're planning to have be more of a you know, a family vacation where we do a lot of sight seeing and stuff. And I'm hoping to be trained well enough that i can still run well. But I'm not well. I say, I'm not going to put any pressure on myself to get a certain time. I would love to requalify, but I could do that with three thirty nine fifty nine two, So we'll see. You know, it's supposed to be a hard of course, so I don't know. That's amazing. Well. I love hearing that story, and I love that you're fitting in that passion. And even though you do get up early, it does sound like you have a great amount of family support. It's funny about the competition. I mean, I don't have any competition really with my husband because I cannot compete with him. But it is logistically sometimes a little bit more challenging. And I'm very grateful that I guess as a more native Floridian, he will run it too in the afternoon and suffer and I can do my run early and he's like really nice about it, so Yeah, that timing thing is real. All right, We're gonna take a quick break and pivot a little bit into your career crafting and your goal setting and some of your family logistics. So we'll be right back. All right, We are back, And it has been so fun to talk about your running journey, Chelsea, but you are even more than a runner. You've also gone through some interesting kind of pivots and shifts with your career, and I know our listeners would be interested to hear about that. So why don't you take us a little bit on that ride with you? Sure, I think it's about as long and winding as my writing story. So I have a bachelor's degree in journalism. Actually I've always enjoyed writing, but somewhere in there. So I was in college from two thousand to two thousand and four, which, if you think back about it, that was a huge revolution in the way media was done. And I feel like in school I learned how to do it the old way when the new way was going full steam ahead. And I wanted to do something that would set myself a little bit apart. And I had taken a statistics class in high school and I thought, well, that seems like it would be a good thing to do, Like, you know, it would go along with that. I thought I wanted to be a science writer. I did a lot of my sort of schoolwork interviewing people in the sciences. I went to UF and so lots of scientists there. But as I was graduating, I decided that I kind of wanted to pivot. I wanted to be more part of doing science than writing about science. That was kind of the decision. So I got my master's and statistics. Then I finished school, I got married, moved to New Mexico with my husband, and I worked teaching math at the community college out there, which was fun. I had liked teaching when I was a grad student, so I taught like every math class that they offered for the two years that we were out there. Got confused for a student a lot because I was like twenty three. And then we moved to Wisconsin when my husband decided he wanted to get his PhD. So we were at ud W Madison and that was when I started working for a group that did ophthalmology research, and so I worked as a statistician there in person, I guess for about six years, and I really enjoyed it. I mean I loved learning about eyes and different diseases and how to run a research study and all those different things. And then you know, we had our first kid. That was a little bit of a rocky return to work because we had a very small group. And there was an interesting mindset on returning to work after having a baby because my PI, who went to medical school back in the sixties, well it was actually a husband and wife. She had a baby during Christmas break when she was a first year medical student and went back to work at the end of Christmas break, which is what you had to do back then. I mean, she said she wore a huge size forty lab coat and no one knew she was pregnant. Was like madmen. But that kind of colored the way people thought about how much time you might want to take after having a baby. So I had five weeks off during which I was writing a grant at home when my first kid was and my husband was a grad student, like I was going back to work. So my son, sorry daycare, went back but but that was hard. That's not enough time to be off. But it was a good place to work. But that did color the way I thought about things when I was gonna have my second one, because I knew that was what was gonna happen again. I mean that, it just was. So we had our move and when we moved, they offered to let me work remotely, and I said, sure, you know, I am six months pregnant. I'm not going to get a new job when we moved down there. So I started working remotely and I found that to be a very difficult transition. I knew I was going to have another baby, and I didn't want to go back to work so soon. And I was just getting to the point where I was a little bit I don't know, I felt like I kind of it was almost ten years. Well, no, I guess I wasn't. It was a little more than six years. Like I feel like I'd kind of done it, like I had learned what I was going to learn. I'd done what I was going to do, and I was ready to do something different. And I thought, well, I always liked teaching. When then I go back to do teaching. So I interviewed at a couple community colleges here and one, and I tell you, these people, their HR department need to give all those interviewers a gold star because I went in and did my teaching demo at thirty nine weeks pregnant. No one said a word about it, so gold star to them. So anyway, I went from full time to a project working on a project basis with the lab, the ophymology Lab, and then not that spring, but the summer after that, I started teaching, and so I was teaching part time for a few years. I did some online, some in person. Basically every math class they had, I taught mostly statistics, a lot of college algebra. Boy, oh boy, I can factor an equation. Man. Then I started working at the teaching part time at the small liberal arts college that my husban then was at, and I was really hoping that I could get hired as a lecturer there. So I don't have a PhD, so the position I would take would be mainly teaching rather than teaching and research. Well, that was all going great. We were adding new sections of that class I was teaching biostatistics, and then the pandemic happened and they said we're not going to have any more lectures or anywhere at jug City War. So the writing was on the wall like that, trajectory that I tried to build towards was not open. But at the same time, there were a lot of new online teaching opportunities. So finally, that August after I guess I don't know how many years it was that I had been just working part time, I went back full time teaching statistics for a data science boot camp. And part of that decision was, you know, I'd been cobbling together basically a full time load out of part time staff, and it was stressful. You know, I had like this thing that I was teaching in this place, and this thing that I was teaching in this place, and it was like, it'll be a lot simpler to have one thing I'm teaching one place, and that was definitely true. So I worked there for almost a year, and as these tech jobs go, there were a bunch of layoffs, and I didn't get laid off then, and I moved to a different company. I decided I was ready to take a break from teaching because I was teaching like three or four hours a day on Zoom and that it just takes a lot out of you. So I got a new job at another company that did data science boot camp type education. Doing curriculum development, which I really liked because that's its combination of writing and data science, coming up with interesting examples and stuff. So I did that all the way up until January when I got laid off, which I knew was going to happen, and they brought me back as a contractor and right now I'm doing modeling for student retention with them. So it's you know, and kind of tangential, but another new thing. And yeah, so it's quite a journey, and I think I think there was one thing left. Didn't you also have like a little entrepreneurial venture. Oh goodness, yes you were. Oh wow, yes, so for a while, and sadly it is defunct. At this point that I started a company called MCAT Math because so this was when I was teaching like the biostats the pre med students, and you can't use a calculator on the AMCAT, but you have to do some like logarithm stuff and whatever, and so I kind of wrote this guide and did these videos about how to you know, do this kind of math without a calculator, and I mean it was kind of entertaining to do for a little while. And then the website broke and I was like, I'm never going to fix this and so no more mcat math. But it was fun while I was like, this is set in, I cannot come back and no. So the reason I know about this, and this leads very much into another thing I want to talk to you about is because you are very intentional with your goal setting. And the reason I know this is because every everybody knows I am like a goals junkie and I will read anybody's goals list. And Chelsea was continuing to publish her goals list on her blog, which was password locked at that time, but she gave me the password, and I would like every so often, like it was still on my Google readers, so it would pop up and I was like, oh, I get to read Chelsea's goals and they were always very interesting and very complete. And I don't know if you're still publishing them. At least they don't pop up anymore unfortunately. But I feel like people need to know about this because I feel like you got a lot done. Yeah. So I was very into the goal making list. No, actually my blog. I finally it the hosting or whatever it was ending, and I had made the decision in the end of twenty twenty one not to put anything on there before. And I can talk maybe in a minute about why I ended up making the blog be password protected, but so no, at last it is they funk, But I did. I actually invested in printing the whole thing out. It took two I love them, and it was not cheap. But I was like, I can't lose this. I can't lose all of this. So it's I don't know if I'll ever look at it again, but it is on my shelf. And if you have a blog and you want to print it out, you can't do that. So your's what be like volumes like the Incyclopedium, a room for yeah, wow, okay, keep going. Yeah. So I don't know. I guess I do very much subscribe to kind of the best of both world's best, like plans sort of, I don't know, thought process about life where there's a lot of stuff I want to do, and I think I really benefited from my mom was always very organized, and she taught me the way that she planned things, which was basically making to do lists, but she also kept a wall calendar that she wrote things on. And I still use a wall calendar, which people find is kind of funny, but she buys me one every year for Christmas and I write our you know, family things on there. But she was really the one way back when I was in grade school who kind of taught me the idea of like, if you have a smelling test on Friday, we start on Monday, and how do you pace yourself? How do you not do everything at the last minute. You know, if you've got to write a valentine for every kid in your class, do five this day, five this day, five this day. So I think it's probably partly in my personality and partly fortunately something that someone taught me at a young age. And so qualifying for Boston was a big goal that took a really long time, and just I don't know. I guess I think the thing that I have to be careful about is taking on fewer things than I would really like to do, or pacing them. And back to my word of the year. This year, it's pacing. Last year was endurance. This year it's pacing and just keeping in mind that there's time to do the things that are really important. If you decide what's really important and can push aside or push back the things that aren't really important right this very second. Now that makes sense, sort of like an Oliver Berkman style acknowledgment that you cannot do everything and that doesn't necessarily mean pushing everything aside, but like it's okay, like you can be loose about this and then just focus on the things you love and just enjoy it exactly. Yes, awesome, Okay. The other thing I wanted you to talk about was logistics, because again in our quote Regular Person series people, and when we when I like first you know, conceived the best of both worlds, I thought we'd be doing more of this than we do. So tell our listeners like, how does division of labor work at your house? What are your current childcare arrangements? And maybe take us through like a little bit of a day in the life at Chelsea's house. Sure, yes, and I will say I love the Regular Person episodes, so I I'm excited to be a regular Person for you all. Okay, So my job at least right now is very flexible. In fact, the person that I report to is in works on another continent, so we almost work night and day different. So that's really nice because It's like I have instructions when I wake up, and I report by the end of the day, and that gives me a lot of flexibility in what I do. And you know, sometimes are busier than others. Fortunately, this is actually really easy week. Last week was like crunch time. So I am kind of physically able to pick up and do different things depending on you know, just as long as I manage my time and get everything done. And I'm fortunate that I am usually able to just like sit down and get stuffed downe Like I don't really get distracted or whatever. I can like kind of crank stuff out. So I have three kids at three different schools. They're all basically on the same school schedule. Ish one gets starts at eight thirty, one at eight forty five, and one at nine. So my husband usually takes the one that has to be there at eight thirty because he has to be driven. He gets dropped off, and then he goes to work because he has I mean, he's teaching, so he used to physically be there, and then I take the younger two because they're very close. One is like one hundred feet from our house, the elementary schooler, and then the preschoolers just down the road. I take him in the wagon, and people around here know me as the wagon lady. Like I met someone at a birthday party and they're like, what, you're the wagon lady. That is me. I am the wagon lady. So I'm going to be sad when he goes to kindergarten next year. I can't be the wagon lady anymore. But so get everybody dropped off, come back, and then I like sit down and I work until about two thirty, and then I go and I kind of do the reverse. I get the youngest one, and then I get the middle one who gets picked up at three, and then depending on the day, I may or may not get the big one. And then usually we come home and they get kind of an hour of screen time, which lets me wrap everything up. They like to just veg then, and so usually that's about four point thirty, and you know, I'll usually work maybe an extra hour Monday, Tuesday and Thursday when I wake up early, maybe get a little bit done on the weekends, and so it kind of balances out over time. But usually I'm able to wrap up about then, and then we do extracurricular activities piano practice, guitar practice, homework, all of the things. Our main child's care outside of school is mostly family. And the reason for that and the reason that I ended up, you know, taking my blog offline and stuff, is my oldest son is on the autism spectrum and that makes finding a childcare provider very difficult. We have scared off a number of babysitters and understandably, but so my in law has actually moved here after the pandemic where my kids are their only grandkids, and so they were ready to make a change and they moved to Florida. So like my mother in law takes my oldest son, he has an appointment every week, she takes him to that and then you know, my parents and my in laws step in a lot on school holidays and stuff like that. Although he's actually pretty self sufficient. In fact, he's here right now. This school had a water main break, so he's doing something. But yeah, so when we were going through that process of wondering, when stuff started going sideways, it was such a huge part of our lives that I didn't really feel like I was ready to talk about. And that's kind of when the blog went private. And then I just stopped posting because I just wasn't really well. First we didn't know what was happening, and then I wasn't really sure how I wanted to talk about it, because it's not something he really wants all of his friends to know and stuff like that. I mean, if you meet him, it's not exactly a secret. But you know, he's ten. I have to respect his feelings about stuff like that. So as far as the vision of labor goes, you know, I kind of end up doing a lot of the stuff that requires a lot of flexibility. Though I will say the fortunate thing about my husband's job is it's on the academic calendar, so when he's not in class or in a meeting, he does have a lot of flexibility. I mean, he can take the oldest in the morning. Sometimes he can pick him up in the afternoon. And he doesn't work super long days anymore. He actually did when we very first started because they had an evening program and that made for us all long days if he was teaching at nine am and didn't finish until nine pm. But fortunately that wound down. That was really tough. So he cooks. He's our family chef, so that is really nice. Part of that is because two nights a week I go coach my son's trap team, and so we don't get back until almost seven, so you know, he has dinner ready for us and everything, which is very nice. And he's a better cook than I am. And I grew up in a family where my dad was really the chef, so you know, to me, I'm like, yeah, get man, get in the kitchen, put on your apron, you know. But I don't know. Maybe that she could edit it out, but no, I love it. I love it. We're keeping it. Yeah, So that's great. I think for us. The best thing that happened as far as the vision of labor is honestly when he got tenure and it just like took a huge amount of work stress off of his plate. So that made things easier. You know. He didn't feel this pressure to like say yes to everything, which that's a legitimate pressure, right. I don't want to take anything away from that. He worked really hard to get tenure, but there was definitely like the stress level win, you know, and he was able to help out a lot more, and so that was that was good. I love it. Circling back to you know, the hard times you went through when you were trying to figure out what was going on with your own Do you have any words of advice for listeners who might be facing similar challenges in their families. So I would say, yeah, my advice would be like ask. And so one of the tensions that we had, my husband and I was in the early days. It was really hard to tell if his behavior was age appropriate or not, and you know, we both just felt kind of differently about it. He really wanted to wait and see kind of if he would grow out of it, how things would go. And I think in some ways that was probably helpful. I think had we pushed it too hard when he was too young, I think we might have gotten it confusing advice, like we might have gotten well, you should wait, maybe there's nothing, Whereas I was pretty sure pretty early on something weird was going on. But I guess my advice would be, like, you know, pursue it. Like something happened, and it was enough of a shock to both of us that we said, we kind of make an appointment with our pediatrician, and we have a wonderful pediatrician. We saw him and that started the process of you know, we saw another specialist, and then once we saw that specialists, we got another referral. And I think if you think something's wrong, you know your kid, like pursue it and that way because one of the things that we really struggled with was like how do we manage this? And the parenting books were not real helpful. One of my favorite, favorite favorite things that Laura said is says that kid didn't read the parenting manual. That kid did not read the parenting manual. And once you really know what's going on, once you have some real answers, you can actually you know, focus your time constructively. And the things that we were doing before not really that helpful. And now you know, we're on a path that's much more helpful and we were able to make changes that were really really positive for him and for us. But yeah, just going back to if you suspect something weird's going on, like definitely ask, like trust your gut, because maybe it's nothing, but maybe it's something and there's something you can really do about it. It doesn't fix it, it doesn't make it go away, but it can make it better. Awesome. No, that's really helpful because these things are so common and different variations of things are so common that I think anybody feeling less alone and hearing that others have been through it can be super, super helpful. And one other thing that I will say is you are not a bad parent, because penny of people are going to make you feel like a bad parent. I have been there. I have felt some serious parenting shame. You are not a bad parent. It is harder. It is harder. I have two normal children. It is way harder. Yes, that is I think people definitely need to hear that. Thank you. And then finally love of the week. Yes, do you have anything running related? No, it doesn't running related. Well, you know I had two that it were in the back of my mind. Well, one I was going to do was our local, our local children's theater because we actually saw a play last week that was so lovely. I mean, we just have amazing, amazing actors. I don't know if it's because it's we're so close to Disney, but just like I mean, everything that goes into these productions I love theater is just so so good. We saw it was called Luciadora, So if it comes to your theater, it's the story of Mulan but told in nineteen sixties, which'll Lee Ray Wrestling, and I mean it's like girl power and everything. It was really really cute. So that was one. But I'll give another running related love of the week, which is a company called Sarah Marie Design Studio. She is an individual who does graphic design, but she makes all these really awesome running T shirts, hats, sweatshirts, all kinds of different stuff. And actually, friends of Mine is just Valentine's Day when we were recording, but a couple of my friends sent me a Boston one for Gallantine's Day and I was like, oh my gosh. I mean it was just so so lovely. And I tell you, the material on those shirts, I have a million of them. It is so soft and so light. So I can send you a link to it. But Sarah Marie Design Studio is definitely my reading love of the week. Awesome. Well, my running love of the week is Strava because you guys know, I'm not doing any social media and this is like the closest thing to social media for me. But I follow like a lot of my friends now, and then I follow people like Chelsea, I follow previous guests Emily Oustar, who's a really fast runner by the way, and this is like, it doesn't suck me in the way social media does, and thankfully, I guess I'm at a place in my running journey where I don't find it like triggering because I think I think a younger me might have been more annoyed by it, like oh I'm slow. But now I just find it like inspiring and fun. And so if you are a runner then and you're not on Strava and you want to add a little social aspect, there's a free version. I just have the free version, although I did upgrade, but it's I'm like fully planning on canceling before the trial period is over. So anyway, I'm on there. You can follow me, I will follow you. It'll be great. Excellent. Well, Chelsea, thank you so much for coming on. This was such a fun conversation. I feel like we were just like hanging out, and hopefully we can hang out at some point and you can slow down and go for a run with me when I'm ever up in Central Florida. Yeah. Absolutely, Well, this has been so much fun, so thank you for having me. Awesome. Have a great rest of your day. Bye. Well, that was awesome, incredibly motivating. I always love to hear from Chelsea about what she's doing with her life. So today's question comes from a longtime listener of the Best of Both Worlds podcast who has a question about dealing with kid health needs. So both of her children have underlying conditions and she needs to see specialists with them several times each year, with the occasional procedure involved as that, she said she tried Laura's tip on batching little things on Friday afternoons, such as making appointments, but with doctor's offices, she feels she is often leaving a message for them to call her back, and they call me back while she's gauged in something else, and it interrupts the flow, and she's initiating a long game of phone tag and hold times and automated options. Everyone hates the automated options phone tree. Anyway, between scheduling the appointments, paying the bills, planning for upcoming procedures, getting the kids their various appointments, it feels like another job on top of everything else. Do you have any tips for managing kids with moderate to severe health needs? What of any of this can be outsourced let her know. So, Sarah, what do you since you're dealing with this obviously you know, yeah, I do well from the provider, from the parents side, from the provider side, yes, which I think might have some valuable perspectives for this person, just because I kind of get to see a lot of different situations and setups, and I'd say, like, I do have some patients where their primary issue is the issue they see me for, like my Type one diabetes patients, and then I have other patients who are just really really complex. Maybe they were a former premium and they see six different specialists, so juggling tons of different things. So the things that I see that probably might be helpful, and you may have already thought of many of these, So forgive me if it's redundant, but definitely use the online portal if there is one. Obviously every practice is different, but if you're at a larger health system, a lot of them have the ability to schedule appointments online and also to do some asynchronous mexaging with your providers, both in terms of like routine things like I need to refill of this medicine, in which case hopefully the system has a way that that will get like to the nurse or a medical assistant rather than necessarily straight to the doctor. But then also if there are like some short, you know, straightforward medical questions, then I get those all the time, and I expect them, and you know, within reason, like I'm happy to answer those kinds of things. And I think it's much easier for the parents and for myself to get those messages in an online via our portal versus like a phone call, because with a phone call, someone leaves a message and then I end up leaving message for them, and then like, honestly, it takes up so much more mental space versus if I see it in writing, I see it when I lug in and I can just go ahead and give them an answer, and if it's something really complicated, then I need to bring them in for then I can facilitate setting up that appointment. So I do feel like the online portal can be a time saver for parents, And don't be afraid to use it, because let me tell you, lots of other people are using it, so you should not be afraid to use it. Number two would be to bulk schedule your appointments as far out as possible and then as simultaneous possible. I know this is very challenging and depending on where you live, like you might have to see two uber specialists in very specific areas and they might not even go to the same satellite office on the same day. So I know that that can be a pipe joint dream. But to the extent possible, I would say build out your year's schedule of appointments as much as you can, because that's going to give you the most options I know for my like you know, like working parents that have the least flexible schedules, Like I can think of a couple attorneys who are really aggressive and I respect it, where they're like, I need eight A, I need your first appointment of the day every three months scheduled for the entire year, and we're happy to do that for them. So I would definitely be very proactive about the scheduling. And then if you have two specialists in the same building, see if you can just have a doctor day and see them both, even if there's a few hours apart. That may save you more time than you know having to make that track twice. And then you know you asked about outsourcing, I think there's some things that are great to outsource. I mean, you know, picking up prescriptions, like managing like when things are running low supplies that kind of a thing, and even scheduling appointments honestly, to some extent, could probably be outsourced if you have a great assistant. I know that's not everybody, but you know, if you're lucky enough to have one, they might be able to help you with those kind of phone calls and things like that. I will say, if it's a complicated child, if you're able to come to most appointments, if you're the one that does most of the care, that is helpful for them to provide the best care for your kid, because it can be really hard if you have like a babysitter that brings the kid and they don't know the details surrounding their specific case, then it could just be really hard and not make the most productive use of that time. We are absolutely happy to FaceTime parents, but it just sometimes doesn't feel like the same. All that said, I think as a stopgap measure, absolutely fine to do that. I have done that on occasion with my own kids, especially if it's something like I just want a strip test, like I've sent our nanny to go ahead and get that at Walgreens or wherever. But I think if they're complex and you can be there, it is helpful. Or if there is like a you know, a nanny that's like with the kid twenty four to seven or not twenty four to seven, but like during the day and it's really familiar with the details of what, then that might be just as good because honestly, they're going to have as much inside information as you do if they're the one managing the kid's insulin pump all day long. So, yeah, those are my thoughts from the other side exactly. Yeah, you know, do a shout out for the online portal, and you know, if you are doing a lot of this, you you mentioned the batching time and how you're trying to make the batching the little things work. And I often suggest people create like an hour or two on Friday that they go through their punch list. And as she's pointing out, if she's making a lot of appointments or trying to speak with a lot of doctors, this can be difficult, but maybe she needs a longer batching window. If she thinks of all of Friday as her batch time, and that doesn't mean you won't get anything else done, but it's that you're not trying to confine it to two hours, like maybe you do your deeper work on other days and then Friday is you know, you understand everything's going to get interrupted. Because she mentioned the problem of getting out of the flow, maybe think of Friday mentally as when you do little tasks in general, both your personal ones and your professional ones. I think you could also generally have blocks of time where you aim to do appointments first thing in the morning, even day of the week if you sometimes you get lucky and you get to choose right. So if you always think of say Tuesday and Friday mornings as when you are doing appointments, then you can feel a little bit more relaxed about other times scheduling other things. Again, it's not always going to work if somebody's got an eight months lead time and appointments that you're desperately trying to see. Like, you know, there's really problems with supply and demand in some particular specialist fields, and that's really unfortunate in its own special thing that we can talk about of like medical reimbursements or whatever else that you know, because we talked about this earlier, Like you're trying to do IVF, you can get an appointment at six am with a provider very soon. You know, if your kid has some other complex condition and you know, you may not be able to get an appointment for a while, and that's really too bad. But that's bigger issue with medicine in general. Think about you can push for what times are most convenient for you. I spoke, you know, not too long ago with somebody with a parent of a child with special needs and as a toddler, and like people are offering her one thirty pm appointment. She's like, no, I'm not going to take it. Like the kid wants to nap, They're going to be miserable in the middle of this, like medical appointment. You know that we've interrupted nap for doing so just don't take it. Push back and think about what would make the day better for you as well, unless it's an absolute emergency, but yeah, those are just yeah. And if you have a troublesome like a difficult experience with a front death that just doesn't want to like ask them when they tend to confirm appointments and when cancelations tend to be available, and then be like, all right, I'll be calling daily and probably they'll get sick of hearing from you after a few calls, and you'll probably get the time you want. That's another insider inside servation. And there are for some things you are kind of stuck with the providers who are in your community. But if it's anything that there's multiple providers somewhat locally, you might shop around and see if some practices are a little bit more user friendly and in particular more working parent friendly than others, because if you're going to be dealing with them a lot, it's going to be aggravating if every time it's a problem, so you know, might be worse seeking that out. Kind of like our orthanonys, we had so many options because there's a million, so we were definitely were careful to find out about ours, and then like the shortest drive from our house, that was a big factor as well. Excellent, All right, well this has been best of both worlds. Sarah has been interviewing Chelsea Myers about combining work and life with intense running. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.