List of 100 Dreams. Ep 61

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode sixty one. Today Sarah and I are going to be talking about our lists of one hundred dreams, which if anyone listening to this has read my book one hundred and sixty eight Hours, you'll know that this is a list that I recommend making. I got the idea from a career coach named Caroline Siniza Levine that she had her clients do this exercise, and it's a list of basically anything you might want to spend more time doing in your life to gold's hobbies, travel, you know, any sort of things that you dream about having in your life, and the reason to go all the way to one hundred is that the first third is pretty easy. Like, you know, people want to travel more, so they start listing, you know, the twenty countries they want to visit, and then there's the hobbies they've been telling themselves for years they don't have time to do. Is that, you know, you get to thirty thirty five pretty easy, But after that it starts getting a little bit more complicated, and so you really have to think about it, and you start listing all kinds of things and some of these are you know, going to take years to accomplish or maybe will never happen. Others you can do more immediately. And so it's good to have a balance because then it starts answering this question of well, what should I do with my time? And often I find that people have a lot going on in their lives, sometimes have a story that, oh, well, I don't have any time, so I don't really have to think about what to do with my time. But the problem is when we don't think about what to do with our time, than when time appears, we spend it in the most effortless way possible, which tends to be scrolling around on Instagram, puttering around the house reading. Instagram did not exist when you that's trick to it. You know, Facebook was around, Twitter was around, you know, relatively early Twitter stage. But the people have always managed to waste time. But I wrote about this in one hundred and sixty eight hours. It turns out that there was a reader of one hundred and sixty eight hours who was inspired to make such a list. Yeah. So, actually, I mean, I think that's how we kind of found each other, right, I read one hundred and sixty eight hours. I found it really interesting and inspiring, and then I found your blog, and then I think you found my blog because I commented on your blog, and then we kind of were reading each other's blogs for a lot of years before meeting. But I didn't really remember all those details. What I did remember vaguely is having written this list. So I searched my blog for one hundred dreams, and I found this gem of a photo I took grainy photo from some non iPhone in twenty ten of a partial list, and it was so funny and fascinating to see what I had on there. And then I also found a twenty fourteen list, which so it's really interesting. It's like every four years, right, and clearly I was at a very different place with each of those lists. Twenty ten, I had no children, although I had references to that on the list. In twenty fourteen, I had Annabelle and Cameron was a baby. So, you know, when Laura thought of the idea for this episode, delving back was my first instinct, and it was just very fun and interesting. So we'll share some of the stuff. And then we both decided that maybe it was time for us to create new lists, and that a fun podcast episode would be sharing some of the elements that we came up with, maybe some of the more unusual elements with you all, to see if it inspires anyone else to make such a list. And I will say that I think that one hundred and sixty eight hours is a really you know, interesting and inspiring read, even now, yes eight years later, nine years later, So if you haven't checked that out, I really do think it's a worthwhile read. Thank you very much. I appreciate that you what did you have on the twenty ten list or in the twenty fourteen list that you've now done or you know, made an executive decision to get off the list. You don't care about it anymore. Well, my twenty ten list, some of the big highlights were become an end of chronology, attending in a part time position, Check, have three children, and again, at the time of writing this, I had zero children. Check, go on dates with Josh. That's a really odd one, and I I'm like, wasn't that already happening? But okay, Check? I wanted to be in a book or dinner party club. Yes, I am in a you know, two book clubs, and one of them kind of is a dinner party club because you do it over dinner. Those are things that did happen. I also said have a housekeeper, which is not totally true, but I do now outsource a lot of my housekeeping, so I guess that did come true. Things that didn't come true are learn Spanish, write a book about residency and med school, takes trips with and without the kids to New Zealand, Sweden, Japan, let the kids choose. I mean, that could still happen and we'll talk about my future list. And spend at least four days a week with children. So I mean I spent seven days a week with children. But I think I meant at home. So that's very fascinating to see what my old self thought. Because your old self thought you would do a three day a week job, not a four day a week job. Guess there was one point when I thought that, and I mean, yeah, I don't think that's I think my four day a week plus really four and a half at this point, now that I do some other things, is good. Is good for now? I mean I don't feel in my current situation like, oh my god, I need one more day at home with the kids. I think that that would dilute my medical side more than I want to. So I guess I am in the end working even actually a little more than I thought, although less than perhaps average. But and then the twenty fourteen one, though you revisited it, did you wind up with a lot of the same stuff on there, or had you know life progressed enough that it well, I had already had two kids, and I think at that point I thought I was done. So the twenty fourteen list had a little bit more specific, like trips and items, some of which came true and some of which didn't. Unless big picture things. Some of the things that I did accomplish were try a bar class and I went through a big fly bar and then bar three phase after that. So there you go. See Arcade Fire in concert, which I saw last year. It was great. Eat it French Laundry, which with a lot of effort, I got us a reservation in twenty sixteen and we went for our tenth anniversary. Adopt a peaceful nighttime routine that does not involve technology. Actually, I would say in general I have accomplished that. I think I met with the kids bedtime and not having them, you know, with the phone that. Remember how I talked about how I didn't like that Annabelle would have to watch something anyway. So I feel like that's that's the way I want it. And then I think some of these are kind of funny. Listen to all the music we own? Well, I mean, does anyone own music anymore? Actually, I'm sure people are gonna write, yes, I own music and I love it, and I see value in that. But I don't actually own any music anymore, So that is no longer something that's accomplishable. Run another marathon and qualify for Boston definitely hasn't happened yet. Go on a wardrobe makeover spree. With a personal shopper. I mean, does trunk club count? And then finally sleep through the night again? Which did happen and then it didn't. Yeah, that's the reality of adding the third kid. So sometimes the dreams are at opposition to each other, right, yes, definitely, but that's okay. It's all figuring out where the priorities lie. So yeah, that was a lot. That was a lot, and I mean I left out a lot of that because these lists can get quite long, as is the point. So Laura, tell me a little bit. Did you find any old lists on paper or on typed Yeah, I mean I've I've posted them on my blog and you know, some of this stuff is fairly similar time to time because I haven't done it yet. You know, I still want to go to Portugal, which I have not been to Portugal. I would like to go the Greek Islands, and I have not been to the Greek Islands yet. But you know, some I'm thinking about doing a little bit more. I can't remember if I put eating at Noma in Denmark on the list in the past. I know it's on the list now, but I actually looked at the reservation system to figure out when I could put in a reservation for summer of twenty nineteen because we're thinking about doing a family Scandinavia trip. Oh my gosh, land in Denmark. There's you know, lots of fun, so it was a very family friendly place to travel. And my husband lived in Norway for five years, so we'd go see some of the stuff from his time there as well, so you know, some of the stuff is the same from time to time. But I made the list, you know, a new list over the past month or two, and so I knew we were doing this podcast. I'll probably post it on my blog. Anything on the old list specifically that didn't make the new list, that's interesting. Well, I had put I should watch Casablanca just because it's like the most famous movie of all times, and I haven't, you know, and I realized, like, maybe I just don't really want to. I'm sure we're gonna have people writing and be like it's the most amazing movie ever, and I'm sure it is. But I, you know, clearly, in six eight years, if I had wanted to watch it, I'm pretty sure I could. Yeah, that's pretty it's pretty low hanging fruit, low fruit, So that is just not on there. I had actually also put that I wanted to teach writing somewhere, and as I've thought about it, I realized, I actually don't know that I do want to teach writing somewhere. I I sort of, you know, glorify this idea of like the college creative writing professor, but I realized, like I'd be reading student papers, which you know, may or may not be all that wonderful thing to do. It takes time away from actual writing, and I feel like in my life I'm not doing enough time writing as it is. All the other aspects of running my business sometimes crowd that out, and that would be another thing there, crowded out. And I also realized I've gotten a few notices in the past, you know, two decades since leaving college, of like various professors who have stopped teaching. And it's often that they have some book that's a huge commercial success, and what it is is they don't need to anymore. So it's like, well, if you've got a situation where financially you don't actually have to have a full time job of something else, you know, then that's maybe something that's less important. And I'm wondering if maybe You're kind of fulfilling that need because you do a lot of educational type work already. As a speaker. You you teach a lot. You teach in your books. You teach about time management. Maybe you have more passion there than about teaching on the craft of writing. Yeah, I think I still would like to share my various strategies for you know, writing in some way, shape or form. But I'm also realizing that, you know, I can share tips on my blog. Maybe I'll write like a short ebook, as I say, or book proposal, you know, other things you pick up over the years that I think might be helpful for people. But it's also, yeah, I don't think it's it's gone down, you know, off the list. It's it's not something I put on this time. But as I was making it, the upside of making a new list is that, you know, you do start doing some of the really low hanging fruit that you put on the list. So I put on my list that I wanted to do more outside morning runs. I mean, I love to run in the morning, and I love to run outside, and you know, definitely I like running outside much better than the treadmill when I'm doing it. On the tremill. I find it really hard to go more than two miles because I just get incredibly bored. And you know, so it's just for whatever reason logistically hard to run in the morning outside. Either it's because you know, if my husband's traveling then I'm the only adult here in the house during some mornings in the week. But even if he's here, then sometimes I've stayed up later with him, and so I don't feel like getting up in the morning. You know, it's just all these excuses. So I just put it on the list, and then you know, I realize, like, I'm not going to do this every day, right, But I always tell people don't think in terms of every day, Like could I do once a week at least do some sort of morning runouts. Well, sure, I definitely can make that happen, and you know, probably twice a week if I've identified this as something I want to do, so you know, I do that. And the same thing I put like other things on this list as I was making it, like redo guest room, Well we just did that. We've decided to go for it, and so we have a new you know, some new furniture, new betting. It looks a lot better, you know, buy a new rain coat. Well, that was pretty easy to pull off. Schedule this. This can take that sort of nagging thought that kind of itches your brain and then goes away into something that's concretely there, and then you're not going to forget about how it's really good about doing. I realized I had all this stuff about, like, you know, being outside in October with the changing leaves. I'm like, wait, you know, let me look, because I can do this now that September, you know, in August, September I was doing this. Look at my calendar for October? Can I protect some days? Right? Like? Can I look at days that either have only one thing on them or currently don't have anything on them and just decide that I'm going to block that off, Like I'm not going to offer that time up easily. So you know, if I have to do something like it's the only day and it's something I really want to do, sure, but like don't just you know, oh sure I could do that. Then you know, oh, I'm going to add fall leaves to my list. Sea follows. Yeah, I'm not sure how many are in Miami. That's good point. I need to take a trip, but I need to I need to have identified that. See and now you said it, and I'm like, that's doable. Well there are You got me? So you know that's that's the upside of the list. So all right, Sarah, what's what's on the current list? We're going to trade off back, Yes, we're going to trade off, and we were going to try to we're trying to choose. You know, there's some more obvious ones on there, but we're trying to fix some go to New zeal all right, ready for Okay, No, I just wanted to pick a deliberately controversial one for my first one. Ready ready, ready, ready, ready have a completely con marrid home. Yes, it's my bucket list. That is not not on my list, So we'll see if that ever happens. I think the children will be much older by the time that's accomplished. But man, I would I really do have the yearning to live in a place that I feel like every item has been vetted. Whether that's possible or not, we'll find out. Well, it can keep going on the list, probably a year after year, because exactly it really happened, exactly, all right. Number one, Well, not number one. Well, so I organize these into different sections. So in my section, I have write a very long work of fiction, like a doorstop of an epic. Wow, oh how interesting. I mean. I like writing fiction, and I have this, you know parable coming out in March. It's Juliette School of Possibilities. Is a very short work of fiction. But I write it. Somebody sent me an article. I wish i'd call it The Details, but some woman had written about how writing very, very long books is almost exclusively the province of male writers, and there are various reasons for that. But I've read some of the you know, existing very long books by women like Kristin Labrinsader Middle March, and you know, I'm not gonna be able to write anything of that quality, obviously, But I could write a very long book, and I would like to. I would like to really spend years on a project like that. I love that. And I will say some of the longest books I have read have been the most memorable, because when you're with something like that, you know you can't You're going to dedicate. It's not going to be gone in three days that you can forget about it, even if the material wasn't necessarily that memorable. You are stuck with it because of the sheer length of time that you spent with it. So I think that's a great goal. Yeah, you're in that world for a long time. All right, what do you have next? Here is a blog one. I would like to grow my blog. Even though blogs are a thing of the past, it doesn't matter. Grow my website, let's put it that way. To let's say at least one hundred thousand pageviews a month. I'm not that far from that now, So I feel like that's a doable primary goal, and then maybe I could go from there. Yeah. No, I think that's a great goal. I don't have This isn't now on the list, but I was thinking about this now. You know, the podcast i'd love to, you know, had a million downloads by our second annivers rate, which I think is entirely doable. We're pretty much getting to that level of weekly downloads that we would cross that if we con Yes, I did have a podcast goal to of ten thousand downloads per episode, so come on, everyone, but we're already getting ten thousand download close per week. So it's just that's Heremula. We are people are downloading previous episodes, and so as the first episodes go up in traffic, you know it's not there in terms of average one, but you know it will be like we're getting that many. No, definitely, definitely. I purposely made them not like super high in the sky high numbers, but like that's you and me. Our goal setting are like, it's something that's doable. Maybe a slight reach, but doable. We like this. Give me one of your goals that's not so doable. As a counterpoint, oh well, I don't know that I have any that aren't doable. I mean, yeah, I'd like to hit the New York Times bestseller list, which, oh that's good. You know, I'd like to think. I think it's doing a little bit. I think that's a high goal. You know it's a high goal, but I think it's it's at some point in my life. One one that's a practical another career one. I want to form a writer's strategy group. We I had one going for a while in New York, and then many of us moved. I've enjoyed watching everyone's careers go since then. But there's enough Philadelphia writers you could have a local one. We have a local one, but you know, it would be people who probably have written, you know, books and are really doing this as their their job, because then that's where the career strategy sort of stuff comes in that you know, how do you pivot from one book to the next, and you know what other channels do you look at? So yeah, i'd like to I'd like to do that. Cool. Well, one of my probably maybe not as doable ones, but I kind of want to try at some point, is well, I definitely want to run another marathon, and if possible, when my kids are older and have more time to train, I think it would be fun to legitimately qualify for Boston. I'm not that talented. I don't know that it would happen, but I think I'd be satisfied with like just trying hard and coming close, like making me a good attempt, and if you make it on your attempt, then you can like be a charity runner for Boston, right. Oh yeah, because I totally money to buy your way in, yes, and so do it so you get yourself close and then you can do it so you get the pay. I'd be like, you know what, close enough I'm giving myself an honorary pass and honorari money. Good backup, I like that one. So I have one of going to Portland and Oregon wine country, but we're actually doing that. I know that's coming up. So that's so that's very exciting. Well, we went to one vineyard. We would have gone to more when we were there, and it was gorgeous and I will have to let you know which ones you went to. I mean, we, you know, buy wine from Oregon. And I'm like, I've been to the nap some of the Napos to Noma places, but I and I really enjoyed that. So yeah, looking it's part of the country I haven't really seen as much. I've been to Seattle a few times, but not south of there. So well, as it was one of my recent love of the weeks, I would say, don't just wine country. The city of Portland's awesome. Okay, there's a lot to do there. Yeah, there's really good ice cream there, salt and straw built in Okay, this is why you do this. You share them, right and then people know. Okay, writing it down, Okay, what do you have my I have a random travel goal that should be very doable. Ready, okay, visit stationary stores whenever I go to a new city. I love it. Oh, I love it. And Bogel talked on her podcast about going to you know, bookstores in her city and that was like her thing, and I realized, I love to go to little boutique stationary stores, and particularly if they have like an Asian like there's this Japanese stationary store in Philadelphia that I love, So I have that one doable. I would make me so happy. That sounds awesome. So I've thought another travel goal of At first I was just a see a Shakespeare play in I'm Stratford on Avon, so I actually see, you know, in in his area a play there. But then I was realizing there's all sorts I'd like to just do a litter a tour of Great Britain. I want to more so even than that, I want to read to the Lighthouse while I'm on the Isle of Sky. I you know, there's all sorts of other literary places in the UK. And then I tried, well, why don't I try it and do maybe a music tour of Germany that I want to see where Bach composed his stuff, and maybe I could hear a bach piece in his Uh was it leaps Leipzig or I just butchered that? I'm sure that's okay. I think it's a great idea, like the idea of taking one passion and kind of combining it with travel to make this kind of all time big experience. I'm not sure I have anything like that on the list, although you know you mentioned Scandinavia. I do have Denmark on there because I've read The Year Living danishly and I find it the country culturally fascinating. So I have that on my travel list as well. Okay, in Japan. Japan for similar reasons, well, because you yes, you're yes, I'm as surprised have a good friend from there, and I know it is the will. When would I have fit that in? Come on? I mean maybe like it's going to happen, but at some point it was just the trip for the year or something. I don't know. It's a well, the I mean the interesting part about, like you know, having the financial means to do that coincided with having a lot of young children in our particular case, so the big trips we haven't quite made happen yet. But I actually think we're kind of right on the cusp of being able to do some very exciting things both as a family and as a couple. Not that we couldn't have done it before, but my style is maybe again, make things a little easier and and do it when it feels right. Yeah, no, I think that's It would be hard to take toddlers to Japan for just many reasons. The six year olds though, do aix year old? Yeah, I mean the jet leg is pretty brutal with Asia. Like I you know, you wake up in the middle of the night a lot, and so you're already sleep deprived with an infant. It's really hard. But obviously that people have extended family, they're like visit all the time. That's so you know, whatever doable. That's why my roommate from Tokyo used to sleep for about two weeks back to school. I'm not sure it was helpful academically, but she was a great like night owl, so it worked out. It worked out for her. So this one I have is not travel related. I wanted to brush up on botany and learn the names of more plants and trees. Partly it helps with writing, like doing fiction, like knowing the names of plants and trees, like allows you to give detail for a place that is hard to do otherwise. But also, I mean, every time you're out in the woods, if you know what tree you're looking at, it's it's just I feel like it's more familiar than you feel more at home in the woods where you know the names of every tree. I took a botany class in high school, and the trees and plants that I know now are all from that. I realized, like I could study more of this. I could read more about trees and plants, and you know, so I know like what color that tree will turn in the fall, for instance. I think that would be kind of a cool bit of knowledge to have, very cool on my learning or skills. And I would say I have revisit the violin and piano since I played both, and I also think it would be fun. So I sing also, not in the coral way that I mean I used to, not anymore, but I'd like to do a performance with my husband, who is now like getting really good at guitar. So that would be listening to You'd be like the coffee house couple acoustic guitar and singing, Oh that's our retirement plan. That's that's awesome. Yeah, to a bunch of weddings. So yeah, learning learning ones are always a good one. Yeah. I put take voice lessons for similar I mean, I am spending a lot of time singing. Maybe it'd be Yeah, you should totally do that. And also very low hanging fruit because if you find a music studio that one of your kids can go to, you can sign yourself up. I actually have a lot of friends who have like restarted piano because their kids are now at the age of they're doing piano and they just do lessons at the same time. Oh that's nice. Yeah, and that would be pretty convenient to make that happen. Hanging fru Okay, what else do you have I would like, Well, on the work side of things, I think at some point I would like to lead a pediatric interchronology division. I don't know where if it's going to be, you know, years and years down the road where I am now. I think that would be really cool, and I'd like to I'd like to reduce my time on call to six weeks per year or less. I think that seems like a reasonable bar to set at some point, and I'd like to become a little bit more involved in process improvement, like not just doing the care, but figuring out how to make the care run better, because I think, you know, I really have a lot of interest in efficiency and planning and that kind of thing, and I think I could actually apply those interests pretty well to my with my work expertise to create some change there. Yeah, certainly. And I mean I know that a lot of medicine is sort of done in certain ways just because it's always been done in certain ways, and I know you have strong feelings about some of those ways, So that would be that would be great. Make your mark on that. Yeah, my next one sounds pretty, uh, you know, not serious compared to that. But I want to build and decorate a really nice dollhouse. I used to be really into dollhouse and dollhouse furniture, and I've always enjoyed visiting like miniature the miniature rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago. I went to see the Queen Mary's Rooms at Windsor Castle. You know, it's it's theoretically it's something you could do with like my six year old daughter, but I don't want to do it that way. Like I actually want a nice non toy dollhouse. And so then it's kind of about having kids old enough to not play with it, unless you wait until your daughter is old enough to treat it with the respect, or one of your sons. Yes, I would say, I'm not worried about her. I mean, although there's plenty of you know, barbies with their haircut off, But you're worried about the young I'm worried about the younger one. It can always be a secret dollhouse. Yeah, yeah, you have enough in your house to give you like this, like sounds kind of creepy. I don't know the secret dellhouse I have in the basement storage area. Yeah, no, I would have to go visit it, but no, I don't think so that's so funny. I want to have a wine storage area and a more curated wine collection at some point, and with wine that's like stored at the right temperature like that. Yeah. Yeah, so that's what fifty seven degrees or something like that, I think. Yeah, I don't even know. I would have to research, but I know those little cabinets are not that terribly expensive. Like this also is a doable goal. Yeah, although well, the rooms themselves then wind up being pretty expensive. Though partly that's you know, how much wine are you buying to fill it? Right? Because if you're buying, you know, five hundred bottles. Oh no, I was thinking on a very minimal scale, like a little half of a closet's worth kind of a thing. Yeah. I do have a friend who has like he actually has like outside storage facilities, Like we visited his wine. Like that is another level that I well, but you need to get here much and is expensive enough. Then it becomes this questions of a you need special insurance because you know your your normal homeowners insurance isn't going to cover that because but if the if the power goes out, for instance, then you know your your wine that's being capped at fifty seven degrees can be ruined. Yeah, and imagine if but if you have like decades old bottles that are like historical going through like these freeze though slash war Oh my gosh, Yeah, that's true. That makes sense. Yeah, all right, let's just do like two more and we may use this as blog fodder as well. You know, I don't know if Sarah wants to post her as I might wind up posting mine, So I have one about Christmas. I want to make some Christmas ornaments, decorate my whole house really nicely for Christmas, and also visit some other like really lovely Christmas decorated homes. I don't know, I've got this thing about it would be fun to have seasonal decorations. It's not really something I naturally do, so that's why it's on this list. I okay, I'm gonna throw out two actually, so one is a I have no idea if I'm ever going to be in position to do this, but I'd like to take a year long sabbatical. Whoa you know, might as well aim high, So I think that would be really cool until like, right, I don't know. My husband has crazy fantasies of going to another country for a year, so that seems like it would be a perfect opportunity. We'll see if that fits into my practical life, but I might as well keep it on the list. And then finally, I also have like a little streaks section, So I would love to complete a journal every day for a year, meditate every day for a year, and phlos every day for a year. I'm not sure why it would be satisfying to do these things in streaks. But there you go. So I'm really curious about the flossing because I feel like you mentioned that, and if not even it, it's not even in the vein of self improvement at this point. It's more just like or like health. It's more just like, can I freaking do it? After all these it doesn't seem like that unpleasant. I'm really curious why that doesn't happen with getting analyze that one. It does happen sometimes, I just don't find the ability to happen consistently, and it's because I'm a much better person. Well, actually, I could probably answer my own question if I do it at night, and I'm like a bad person at night, like I'm too tired, I don't want to do anything. So maybe if I just moved it to the morning, probably would be sage machine exactly. Hmmm. All right, well, okay, Well my last one I'm going to share here is I want to get some really nice pajamas. Like this pajama game is so sad right now. I have to figure out ones I like because I don't actually like those like fuzzy ones all that much, or like the ones they sell us sets in department stores, and that tends to be the ones I wind up with, and then I don't really like them all that much. So I got to figure out what it is I would like to sleep in, and then then maybe I could aim for like some really nice version of that. I think that that is so doable and it will improve your quality of life and you'll be so happy to check it off. So I'm I'm gonna choose that one to follow up on, all right, all right, and if we have listeners who have a favorite brand of pajamas that maybe very luxurious but also very sleepable, because I can't sleep in it, Like, what's the point? Yeah, I would love recommendations, so right in with that? Awesome? All right, Well, we are going to head into our Q and A. And this was This was inspired by a blog post that I wrote recently where I was I know, I you know, this has just been a year, and I vacillate between Okay, I've got this, I love this, this is wonderful, and oh my god, I'm so overwhelmed and overloaded that I just don't even know what to do. And this was after one of those latter posts and I love that you know this about yourself though, because once you wrote this blog post of like outlining what your blog looked like for the year, you're like happy, happy, happy, other utter dist fair, right, Like that's the sequence of posts that go up, So it really, it really is. And I think on one of my happy posts, I had someone right in the question I'm wondering how you handle overload overwhelmed. I tend to shut down and then nothing gets done. You have ways to climb out of that. And then that inspired my whole new post because by that point of getting that comment, I was then back in that season. So my wonderful readers had a lot of you know, good suggestions, and I think the ones that I liked a lot were to kind of just accept didn't immerse yourself in that hard time, not looking too far ahead, so you know, look, you can look ahead to the fun parts, but not looking far ahead to oh my god, I have so much to do next week, because sometimes it's more helpful to just get through that minute, that hour, that day, you know, making me begier to do list for the next day, but instead of looking two weeks ahead and being overwhelmed with the deluge to really kind of focus on that moment and vent to friends, because I definitely feel better when I do that, and you know a lot of people did point out rightfully. So you know, figure out if you're doing too much. Are there things that need to be cut out? Are there things you don't want to be doing or don't need to be doing, So that's always something to consider. Yeah, I definitely look closely at the why you are doing something, so you know, look at what's on your plate that you're feeling overwhelmed about and ask yourself why you're doing it, because you know, we tell ourselves all sorts of stories, and I know a lot of our listeners are women, often mothers that you know, we have the various stories we tell ourselves about doing various things, you know, whether it's about lunch packing or driving kids to school, or being at every event or having a certain number of you know, extracurricular activities, or having a ban on screens or you know, the children only eating kale or whatever it is only educational television. You know, we have these various stories about what we have to do, which might not be true because there's probably people who've grown up perfectly successfully without having all those things. I know, I didn't always eat kale growing up, and I seem to be fairly healthy at the moment, and so a lot of stuff can be offloaded or just not done. And you know, I think about this with me this this month has been really full in a good way. I don't have the infant stuff going on right now, which is I you know, definitely know that I have a lot more time because I don't have that going on. But one of the reason, one of the things that I've realized is like I don't have to get back to emails as quickly as I normally would have, right but that's you know, if you add another twenty four hours on what you consider your normal response time, that sort of eyes used some extra time and you don't have to be on top of things as much. And you know, every couple of days they'll get through a big chunk of it. And so that's been one thing that I also, you know, make sure that I'm sharing the load on stuff, Like I took one kid's we have two fall birthdays. I took one kid's birthday presence. My husband is fully responsible for the other kid's birthday presence, and partly because I know she wants a hermit crab and I just can't deal with that, Like, but can you deal with the fact that he's going to get her herma crab? I I've also managed to like say that all pet care is not my responsibility. I don't even know how to do what needs to be done with our saltwater fish tank. Oh yes, stay ignorant. That's smart, that's smart. I think a lot of men employ that, like a lot. So yeah, good and so because I have no idea, like I can't be asked to do it, and my kid is supposed to be doing it, like the kid whose fish tank it is is supposed to be taking care of it now whether he actually does that, but again it's it's fish, like obviously you can't do this with a more sentient creature like a dog, because you know, you lose a goldfish. You can lose a goldfish for many rights. Laura, do you really want to go there on this podcast? But no, we will, you don't, I mean, because then he realizes he has a day. It hasn't come to that. Good good good. But what I'm saying is I am not going to be responsible and I just won't take it on. So she will learn to be responsible for it and he will help, I'm sure. So there we go. I love of the weeks, Let's go to that. Yeah. So I am in hardcore preparation for our next planner extravaganza on this podcast, and I reached out to several planner companies and I got samples, which was like super fun, and one of them that I got is actually I think they're trying to get the mail market. Actually it's called the full Focused Planner, and there's a guy named Michael Hyatt who has a whole suite of different products than productivity hacks that he's else But I was intrigued by this planner because it did have kind of an interesting structured layout, and I've been having a lot of fun with it because you have like this whole space for your day. So I sort of combined Laura's time tracking and I put that on the right side of the page because it's got plenty of room for that, and then on the left you kind of have areas for to do and it's it's good for that overwhelmed season because it's not my calendar. It's more just like, you know what, I need a page for today that I can just look at today and not look ahead and not look back and just you know, decide the three things that I'm going to do and be happy with. And this has helped me do that. So full focused Planner. You're going to hear more about it in our roundup later. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to our second Planner Palooza episode when I did I when I revisit the goldfish thing here, I would like to say my kid has actually been feeding the fish. It has not come to that, and if I feel like he hasn't in a while, I will mention it. So I don't, and then you have to put the fish up. You'll put the fish up for adoption. I'll put the fish up for adoption. Like, yeah, so I don't. I don't want angry notes coming in a movie accusing me of not taking care of the fish. But it is. It is not my job. But I will say everything something in you know, two days if I suspect he has a fish done anyway, all right, My of the week is paper planners in general, just because I love writing things down and crossing them off, and like I write down things after I've done them, just across them off. It's just so much more satisfying than it's some sort of electronic ephemera where it's gone, you know, I don't know. I just like to say, yeah, that's no fun. And although some people have gotten really elaborate with there, there are now these like electronic bullet journals that look almost exactly like written one. But I hazard to guess they take a lot more time to create than the ones on paper, maybe perhaps defeating the purpose. But you can actually like cross things off with your like apple pencil and your I don't know, it's very interesting, but yes, obviously I'm on the paper train. Papers. Well, I went to this Homer and parents orientation the other day, uh, and we were all sitting at the tables, all of us who are doing the third grade classes, and we were getting dates on accounts I've noted. Several people also pulled out paper planners and we all got to talk about being on team paper, those of us who were on there, and why we love them. So this is this bonding moment over that. All right, anyway, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking about our list of one hundred dreams things we have done or wished to do. We would love to hear about your list of one hundred dreams. I highly encourage people to do this exercise. It is so it's fun to think about things that you want to spend more time doing in your life and than the outside is. You have this list, so if you're thinking about, hey, what do we want to do this weekend, well, maybe some of the things on the list could actually happen. Or if you're thinking about what we want to do for vacation next year, or what we want to do as a family various activities, you can start pulling things from this list and then you don't have to brainstorm it in the moment, and so things are far more likely to happen. So this has been best of both world set. Tune in next week for 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,