Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode one hundred and seventy six, which is first airing in mid December. Today we're going to be talking about lessons learned in twenty twenty. I know this is the time of year when all podcasts and articles, magazines, blogs, whatever have a roundup of the past year, and we've already done a good Things episode or silver linings episodes were kind of moving beyond that. We're no more silver linings. But here's the things we have learned in twenty twenty that will hopefully keep us going in twenty twenty one. Things we don't have to relearn in the future. We would hope, right, Sarah, Yes, And we certainly you know, don't want to. I don't know, feel like we're milking this for content, but it just is what life is right now. So we talk about life and this is life this year. We also do not want to make light of any suffering that has occurred. I can imagine that if someone lost a loved one, then hearing about everyone's like newfound habits from the pandemic is probably really painful. So this has been a very tough year for many people, either from a health standpoint or from a financial standpoint, as people have struggled. So we do have that in our minds. But at the same time, some of us, many of us also have learned things or explored things, and some of these things can apply forever, pandemic or not, So we figured we would do it anyway. Yeah, well, some of this stuff is completely non panandemic related anyway, Like I mean, discover as you go through life. So my my recent discovery. I've been you know, dealing with these sort of like sore throats and like throat congestion for a long time and I had no idea what it was, and so this fall I just decided to start experimenting among the other things that seemed to make it worse or like red wine. I mean, that makes sense, I believe, but I wasn't drinking that much of it anyway, so I couldn't really blame it all on the red wine. Turns out that dairy is a trigger for that sort of thing. So I've been experimenting with giving up that, which I had to. You know, longtime listeners know I really loved my real cream and my coffee in the mornings. So I started to drink my coffee black. That is a twenty twenty lesson that I can drink black coffee. And yeah, just like trying everything. I really those stupid like Nettie pot things in your nose. Have you ever done those? Scared of it? I mean, I what party is scared of, like the idea of introducing some sort of like bacteria into your brain. No, no, no, I'm not. I'm not scared of it at all from a from a health perspective. I mean, I think a lot of patients and people like them. I'm just scared of the feeling of like having like you know, how like when you accidentally snort something up your nose, Like does it feel like that? Like I don't like that? So yeah, I mean it's not terrible. It doesn't feel nearly as much as like you know, or I have, Yes, I remember like going off the diving board as a kid and getting water up your nose exactly, That's what I was imagining. It's it's not quite that bad, and it seems to make me, you know, breathe either have less throat and nose congestion afterwards. So I don't accommodation of all these things. I mean, who even knows. Maybe we have some listeners who have experienced in this and want to send in their home remedies to you know, what else I can do other than give up dairy and you know, try the Nettie pot stuff. But you know, this is the thing of like getting older. I have all these small all health complaints that are just really annoying, and at some point you don't want to live with them anymore, and so then you have to experiment with stuff because who even knows? Right, you can google it and then like a million things under the sun will come up for it. You know. It's the same as like are you sure you're not allergic to your family pet. We don't have a family pet. I was thinking you had a never mind, you had good oh other than the hermit crab and the fish. Oh yeah, I guess not the hermit crab. That's what it was. The hermit. I was thinking it was like a hamster, and I'm like, maybe it's the wood chips. But no, crabs don't seem like they would be all that. Yeah. So yeah, I've been pondering that. But it's gotten somewhat better with with those things. I like not drinking coke, cream in the coffee, not having cheese, not having yogurt. But we'll say, we'll see how it keeps going. Do you want to should I read down my list or do you want to trade it for what we need? I feel like we need to alternate otherwise I'm I'm going to feel like I'm talking looking for like too long or something. I don't know. Okay, Lesson number one, shutting my office door is great. Were you not doing this before? I mean, like, no, I never did it. The etiquette is that you know it's open because you're always available, because that's because you're a nice person or something. I don't know. I never shut it before except when I was pumping, and in fact, if it was closed like back in the day, like people were just assuming that I was pumping. But that's been a while now, so yeah, I mean it's because it started because of COVID, because you know, if you were going to eat or drink anything and I would want to take my mask off, I'd want to shut the door. And then I'm like, wait a second, like I can keep it shut. And now when I have a resident with me, it's and I do a lot actually, but then when I do it's it's less relevant because if with someone anyway, like you know, I'm not having that like focused time. But otherwise, yeah, it's just been a it's been a stupid and great discovery. And I guess sort of the corollary to that that just work distractions are really they can take a lot of time, and so you know, working from home on my non clinical days has been something I truly hope that I'm allowed to continue post all of this, because you can focus a lot more when people are not knocking on your door asking for random things, and somehow those random things seem to get done. Otherwise, yes, working from home can be very productive and physicians can do it for part of their jobs. There we go, who even knew? Lessons learned twenty twenty. My next lesson is that three podcasts are a bit much Now. Listeners to this on should not worry. Best of both worlds is continuing and so as before Breakfast, but we've decided to phase out the New Corner Office. It had its run. I realized I wasn't going to be able to I think, keep generating that much content on that side. So I'll probably run a New Corner Office segment over at my blog, you know, every week or two, just something more career focused, to keep going with that idea, Like I love that name, the New Corner Office the people. I wrote a book this year called the New Corner Office. So I'm going to keep running with that, but probably not as a daily podcast. So I'll be back down to two, which is which is hopefully going to be more sustainable to daily podcasts. Is a lot of recording. It was a lot. Well that was partly the problem is I was getting so stressed about recording the episodes because my house is rarely quiet and so trying to get the time to record. If you and I have a little bit of background nose. It's more conversational. Anyways, it's harder to it's okay, like you know, we try not to, we try to have it be quiet, but you know, a scripted solo podcast really needed quiet and it was so hard to get. And I think five episodes is some amount that ten was a lot more. So there you go. And plus it had a smaller audience and so you know, just double down on the ones that keep going. You know, this is this is the thing you figure out with your careers, as you know, in your more entrepreneurial stuff. Some projects work, some don't. I'm not saying it didn't work. It had an audience that was turning a profit by the end of the year. But it's also like, you know, I only have so much time, so we'll figure out something else to do with that. Okay. My second lesson learned also has to do with work and kind of my work rhythms. And this has been the year of the walk, because why not. But honestly, again, I don't think that's so pandemic specific. It was sort of like it became more of a thing people were talking about, so it wakened me to the idea that like this was something that is available to me. But somehow I didn't feel like I had permission to walk at work. And I'm not sure who was stopping me. I mean, when I was pumping, okay, I didn't have time, but as soon as that was over. I think I've spoken previously about sometimes like reading during that time, you know, thirty minutes of like oh my gosh, I have this novel and I'm dying to finish it, and I can like rush to finish my charts. I do find if I have like strong motivation to be done with my morning charts, I am able to get them done. Not always a BYuT like twelve o'clock, but at least by like twelve twenty or something, which gives me like a solid fifty minutes sometimes because by the time my first afternoon patients in the room, it's usually one ten or so, so that's a great time for a walk break. That became a really frequent rhythm for me, especially on like my non running days, so that I get some movement outside. And I definitely it's sort of like odd that that was a revelation that I was allowed to do that, But I really enjoy it, I got to say. I mean, you know, offices have these very strong group time norms of like what people do, and we all sort of absorb this just from the air. I don't know where we get them from. One of the you know, lessons I think a lot of people have learned in twenty twenty is that many of these norms can be broken. Like they're not there for a good reason, they're just there. And so once we've all had to work differently in some ways, you know, we can we can challenge them, which is which is awesome. And taking a walk during the days definitely a good idea. My revelation babies are hard. This is this is not a new discovery. I've been through this a few times, but it has been discovered afresh that I was out of practice. Alex of course, turned five a couple of days after Henry was born, so I had been out of the baby stage for a bit. And you know, they're they're wonderful, they're challenging, and the you know, interrupted sleep, the constant vigilance all challenging. They do grow up, though, I mean we're almost to the toddler phase already, and so I'm hanging in there and realizing that and sending out to anyone else going through the baby stage right now that yes, it's hard. It's always hard no matter what. It's not like you master it and you get to your fifth baby and you're like a PhD in babies and it's easy. Yeah, So it's never easy. It's never easy. You learn some things that make it easier, I suppose, but it's still hard. Babies are hard. Lesson learned twenty twenty, how about you, Sarah. Unfortunately I find Toddler's pretty hard too, So I'm not going to say twenty twenty one is going to be the magic answer for you there. But maybe you find Toddler's easier than I do. Okay, I'll pivot to my number three, which is that at age forty you can still learn new things and it can be fun. And my examples of things I've been working on learning this year are espanel. That's about as much as I can. No, I'm just kidding, it'd be too embarrassing for me to speak my very rudimentary Spanish on this podcast at this point. But I've been doing Duolingo, which I know is not like you know, it's not like taking a course, really, but I feel like I'm learning some things. I'm definitely learning some words. And then when I see like I saw a patient with an interpret the other day, I was like, Okay, I cannot understand this patient, but I'm definitely picking up more words than I was before and that's kind of fun. So yeah, and then I'm also we're rolling out a coaching program for our residents, so as part of that, I took the coaching training program and that's been fun too, and sort of like pretending to be a mental health professional for a brief period of my day. So two totally kind of like different outside of my normal realm learning activities that have been fun. And yeah, just that it never gets boring to pick up new things and learn and grow. And I hope that I'm doing that when i'm eighty as well. Yeah, no, that's great. Well, we've learned that my husband and I can both work at home. He's there was more of a revelation for his job that it turns out that a great many jobs can be done mostly from home. I think a lot of people have discovered that in twenty twenty, and I'm very curious how this will play out over the next year or two as we see, you know, a lot of places are sort of said the first half of twenty twenty one. Assume that there will be a lot of still remote work going on. But once we're back from that, how is it going to you know, go about like, where is it going to wind up in terms of the balance, in terms of how many days people are in the office or traveling or whatever. And I got to say that video conferences are not that bad. I know, everyone has a zoom fatigue. It's fun to complain about zoom fatigue. But we've built a whole podcast enterprise by video conference. I mean, we're looking at each other right now having a conversation, and this is how we talk. I mean, I haven't seen Sarah in person in a year and a half, and same with a lot of things. I realized the other day that I one of the people I would consider very close friend and I have actually never met him in person. And I was like, wait, is that actually true? You have enough video conferences that like you get to know each other. So anyway, it's a good technology and a lot of stuff can be done from home. And I'm not saying everything. It's good to see people in person, and I really look forward to that happening again. But you know, we've reached a new discovery of how much work can be done in different ways. That's awesome. I have a question, a follow up question there. Do you think your husband misses the travel or would he be happy for to like never travel again, or do you think he would like it to be somewhere like happy medium. I think there's probably a place for a happy medium. All right, let's take a quick ad break. We'll be right back. So we're back talking about lessons learned in twenty twenty. Sarah, you've been organizing your non clinical days in a different way. How's that going? Yes? And I will credit the Caunt Newport style of time blocking for some of that. I definitely don't do what he recommends every day because I actually find it a little bit stressful to have every single minute accounted for. So I don't necessarily think that I need that in my life on a daily basis. I think I'm pretty productive as it is, but when things are really unstructured and I have a lot I want to get done, actually taking the like five, it really doesn't take long. It takes about five minutes to sit there with my planner and demarket, Okay, these to do is from this time to this time. These to do is from this time to this time. This is what I'm doing from this time to this time. And actually, like instead of just having a list that I'm going back to, like specifically assigning each hour a job, as he puts it, it can be very helpful. And for somebody that's, you know, been into the time management sphere for a long time, you wouldn't necessarily think this was a new discovery. But I feel like he laid it out very clearly, and so that's kind of been helping me. So it's a good way to turbocharge through a long list on unstructured days. However, you may or may not want to do that all the time because I think I think it just would make life a little bit less fun. Yeah, I mean some days I do that, some days I don't. If I have a higher volume of stuff I have to get through, I do tend to block out, like when I'm going to do it, If there's also things that have to be done during a certain window, I will think about that. So, for instance, yesterday we were talking about the stress of doing recordings. So when our nanny had Alex and Henry out at the playground in the afternoon, I knew that was my window for recording. Like I'd have probably about an hour and ten minutes hour and fifteen minutes, so I needed to have practiced my ten episodes ahead of time so I could just record with very little repeat or stopping. And so I did get through all ten in the hour and fifteen minutes, but that hour did have to have that jomb So on a day's like that, I will, But today, you know, I just sort of have a list of stuff I'm going to get through this afternoon. I haven't blocked it out when it's going to happen. You know. Maybe that's I'm sure calendar report's more productive than I am, but that's what I what I do. No, I think the balance makes sense because I actually, I truly there is something stressful about feeling like you're against the clock and that every minute you know, oh, I'm supposed to be doing this or that, And so I do think that, you know, doing that every single day isn't really necessarily for everyone. So yeah, people have different styles and yeah, I said, it can be great for the times when I have to get through a lot, and if there's days that are a little bit more open, then it's kind of fun to sort of pick and choose from the list, like what do I feel like working on right now? You know, and that openness can be excited as well. So you know, again, all of time management is figuring out what works best for you, speaking of lessons learned of things that do not work best. I am not a big fan of virtual learning, and you know, it's interesting because I am a big fan of working from home, and so on some level, homeschooling is the kid version of that. And I'm a fan of homeschooling. I know lots of families do it well, and particularly if your child has different learning styles, it can be great. Well, you know, what I think doesn't work is virtual learning for young kids, especially those too young to read fluently. And on some level, I know that with working from home, like homeschooling is kind of the kid version of that. And I know homeschooling is a really great option for many families, especially when kids have different learning styles or things like that. But I think this mass version of it has had a lot of problems, and I mean, my older kids have done very well with it, but when Alex has had to do virtual learning, it's just I mean, it is really not a great solution. And that's with top of the line teachers and a lot of home support. So I can't imagine for those situations where those aren't present. You put Cameron in a school that was going to open, I mean precisely because of that, right, Yes, I mean we had been considering it anyway, just because he had kind of a rough year. We wanted to see if another style would fit him better. But part of that rough year it was rough before the virtual so I'll be completely honest, but it was even rougher after we went virtual, and so I mean, honestly, I didn't feel like he was able to learn much at all. It was very frustrating for him. And then, of course, I mean for kids, they miss out on that like kind of just learning how to organize themselves and groups and pay attention and like interact with peers. And yeah, I agree that in older years it can work better, and particularly if it's a child that's a fairly motivated or good student. It's been fine for my third grader, like completely fine, but I don't think that's true for every third grader, and I definitely don't think it's true for almost any like first grader and below. Yeah, yeah, My big part of it is the ability to read fluently. I mean that you need to have that element to make virtual learning more of a possibility, and so until you get there, it's really really hard. And then you know, it also requires a certain amount of being able to sit quietly in your seat even when there isn't all of that around you the norm of the class, and that's hard. It's definitely hard for little kids. So yeah, not a fan at all all. Hope, although you're your kindergartener taught himself to read fluently despite all this, it sounds yeah, that was a discovery. Well, partly he had been in full time in person school for two months and that's when he really picked it up. And then now that we've been virtual for two weeks again through a long series of unfortunate uh you know, county proclamations that make no sense, but that's another matter. Anyway, he has still been doing that and so that's made this bout of virtual learning a lot more doable than the one last Spring. It's also just fun to watch a little kid when he's figuring out reading, Like he's like, wait, I can look at this book myself. It's like the whole world has opened up and it's it's so cool. I mean, that's that's been a really fun thing to see again, that is totally cool. Yes, I feel like Cameron is still working on it. I mean, he can read, but it's not like you know, when it becomes then it becomes really fun. I'm still waiting for that part, but I think it's coming on. Yeah, yes, all right, what else do we have around here? Okay, how about just the fact I mean this is sort of cliche pandemic cliche as well, but I do kind of feel like it has tempered my I don't know, need for luxury. I guess in a way. I mean there's definitely a hedonic treadmill. Right. You get used to like going to a really nice restaurant, and then that becomes the norm, and then all of a sudden, like going to a hole in the wall seems less fun. You know. Twenty twenty took away the ability to easily get some of those luxury experiences. And I found I did not miss them as much as I thought I might, So I mean, I knew I do miss like the social aspects of date night. I definitely miss gathering with people. I will definitely would like to eat it up, you know, fancy Michelin Star restaurant again. So I'm not saying I wouldn't want to do that. I totally do want to do that. But I think I'm fine with it being a little bit more rare than it had gotten to be because in a way, the rareness makes it more special anyway, and there's lots of fun that can come in more simple forms as well. So yeah, cool. Another thing I learned, keeping with your walking theme, is we have a lot of really good trails in my neighborhood, and that was a discovery. I joined this trails association and they do guided walks on some of the trails so you can figure out where they are. And now that I know how to look for them and I have the map, it's like this whole new world of like running roots has opened up, which is pretty exciting. I mean, some seem to really be cutting across people's lawns, so I'm not quite sure that I'll do those on my own. But like I mean, there's this preserved farm in the area that I didn't really realize was open to the public and that I could run around, and so now I've been doing that. I did that a lot this fall. It just required cutting through a couple of people's sort of back yards, even behind their fences, but they've seated the land like it's okay, they allow that, and it's it's really just such a big mental health boost to go walk on a trail. And we've certainly been doing a lot more family walks on weekends in twenty twenty, just because that was like the one thing we could do in March and April when everything was closed, and that's not true now that everything's closed, but it's still something that we can do. And the kids whine about it every single time, but it's everyone feels better when they've gotten fresh air and exercise, so I've learned to just kind of ignore the whining. And I do think that family walks will continue to be part of our repertoire. You know, I was I was reminded of your I don't know if it was from off the clock where you talked about like how if each kid has a thirty chance twenty percent chance of being unhappy at any given time, and you have three kids, and so we had a really particularly like bad outdoor play it with Genevieve, and I just remember thinking like, well, what if one kid is point seventy five, Well, I mean my odds with five have gotten even worse. Right, So if you know each kid's happiness is an independent event, like I you know, I ran the numbers with four kids, and it's like two thirds of the time you're gonna have an unhappy kid if each kid is unhappy twenty five percent of the time. Uh, with five, it's even like we're down to to you know, a quarter of the time or so that you're gonna have all five kids happy. So yeah, it's it's you just have to know that as the numbers go up. So funny. I love that math problem. I think it's great. Well on that similar vein, I do not feel at all, and I know this is different from your experience, but no sadness at all about like having an excuse not to travel all year when Genevieve went from ages like almost two to almost three, because I don't think it's that fun to travel with the kid that age. She particularly, like you know, has a lot of bad sleep when routines are disrupted. And I think I talked on this podcast a bunch about like a fairly unsuccessful vation we had in twenty nineteen where like she ended up being up all nights nights, and yeah, the night at the Ritz Carlton spent with her like screaming for hours and Josh taking her from walk on the beach at two am, Like, oh no, we didn't spend money on those experiences. And I get it, like the remembering self does enjoy them, and I won't have as many nice pictures from this year of various places, but for the experiencing self, travel with a toddler is not all that fun for me. So I'm kind of like I didn't have to do it. Yeah, I mean I do. It is true that we have not had to really, you know, do much travel with the baby, and there is something to be said for that. We'll see. I'm sure we will do more in twenty twenty one, and he won't be in a great age for it then either. But yeah, travel with babies and toddlers is very hard and probably better for us that this is a no travel time versus like four years from now will be wanting to maybe travel more. So, yes, I understand that feeling of getting away with something. That's so true because I feel like I am very much looking forward to, like all the kids being over, say five, because I think that'll be like the golden years because we won't have college students yet. But so I would I would have been much more you know, sad about not being able to travel any year like that that I've been waiting for so you So with less time spent traveling, we have more time at home. And one of the things I've been reminded that I really like doing puzzles and I like doing you know, doing lego projects with the kids. So we've been doing a fair number of puzzles and legos and yeah, it's it's something that I can do with older children and actually enjoy. There are many things I do not enjoy doing. I'm not really big into card games, and I don't like miss kid movies and stuff like that, but the legos and puzzles are big thumbs up for me. Yeah, I can't wait till we can. It's hard for us to do puzzles all together right now, But as Genevieve has dropped her nap, it means she sometimes goes to bed, which means there is opportunity for that stuff as a group. And puzzles are so fun. I was actually googling your favorite puzzle brand yesterday, Crocodile Creek, because you know, there was that puzzle shortage and now there are definitely many more available, and I was like, what was that one that Laura likes? Oh right, Crocodile Creek. So I don't know if you're still into those, but they're they're available, They're available. They on toilet paper and Clorox wipes. We must be nearing the end of the pandemic, let's hope. Well, similar to your legos and puzzles, well kind of similar. Books were just so amazing in twenty twenty. For me, I knew you didn't feel like you had as fabulous as a that sounded Midwestern and I'm not, but okay, as fabulous as a reading year as you normally do. But I feel like I got really lucky. Just so many amazing novels in particularly, and many of them appropriately escapist for the time, where you just feel like, you know what I'm not in there is no locker done, and I'm not going to Zoom meetings. Instead, I am like on the prairie in Kansas and you know, like in nineteen twenty nine or something like that. So the most recent book that I just finished, So big credit to books just being a wonderful escape this year. Good for you. Yeah, no, I haven't been doing as much reading. Oh well no, that's totally because of your sleep. I mean I think that when you have that like interrupted baby sleep, you're it's so I feel like it's so under appreciated that your capacity for doing things that are like a little bit deeper and maybe a little tedious, like getting into a book with a lot of details, are are are so diminished. I know I was not able to read in the way that I can right now when I had a baby that I was, oh, yeah, it'll come back. I mean, you know, when Alex was too, that's when I read like War and Peace. So I presume that I will. I will get back there eventually. And I bet that's not an accident. That was like a rebound, like it was really good. Yeah. So I made the discovery the other day we were having real estate agents come look at our house in terms of, you know, when we do put it on the market, that I could tidy it up in about one hour to make it look okay, not horribly cluttered. And there's you know, it's little things like you focus on don't have the boots scattered all over the mudroom, like line them up, and people like, ooh, that's a nice mudroom as opposed to a tripping hazard, or you know, just not having stuff on the floor in the hallways or having a clean kitchen island. But in about an hour, I could make it look presentable. So I'm like, oh, that's kind of cool. Like, no matter how bad the house is, probably I'm only you know, sixty to ninety minutes from it looking presentable. So that's that's a good, you know, feeling to have. I feel. Yeah, you know, it's it's funny when you have a big mess. Sometimes I've done your trick and like timed actually how long it takes, and it's it's you know, you have a bunch of toys on the floor and it looks insurmountable. But if they could actually leave you alone, it's done in like seven minutes. So sixty to ninety to make the whole house presentable is pretty impressive. But that's a that's a good skill to have. Okay, I'm gonna do one more right, which I think I'm going to pick the Oh Okay, my effective dose for news I think that I discovered this year since there was a lot of news, and I'm sure you could spend all day with said news if you wanted to, but I definitely did not want to. So for me, listening to up first at one point five speed, usually in the shower, became my daily news. And then like every once in a while, like an Atlantic article or like a New Yorker article, if something really like piqued my interest, and that's about it, that was great. That sounds like a great way to interact with the news. I can't get into the one point five speed. I don't know. That just makes me like some weird tennis Because my husband has stuff automatically said at one point five speed. That's like what he listens to as well. So when I get into his car, the podcast come on at one point five speed, and I'm always like, ah, make its top. I think my husband says the same thing about my listening tendency, So you, I guess, do either maybe we're more sensible or you don't. It just makes me feel like people are screaming at me, and I don't like it. So yeah, all right, lightning round, Let's go lightning round. Things you have done more of in twenty twenty than ever before, Sarah, what have you done more of? And I said, other than the obvious, like wear masks. I mean, does that's true? My number one thing, well, the walks I already mentioned. But naps. Twenty twenty has been like the Year of the Nap. I mean part of it was that, like I kind of Jenney was taking a solid nap for most of the year, and I knew those days were numbered, but like I was just like, oh, she's napping. I am napping. I'm bringing a book to my bed and I'm read for twenty minutes. I'm gonna fall asleep for an hour. It's gonna be amazing. And it was. And I have no regrets. No, no one should regret naps. We should regret the naps not taken well. Obviously, video meetings, I mean, that's related. I've done more of that, But I mean, I want to say that I had a Zoom Pro account before March twenty twenty and used it, but it was just something that people were not It wasn't the thing you'd ask people to do necessarily, Like, you know, somebody wanted to catch up, we'd just call. And I don't know why I didn't use video conferencing more as just a way to chat with people, but I really do like being able to see people's faces and I feel like it makes for a better conversation. So yeah, I think, you know, video conferencing is something I've clearly done a lot more of in twenty twenty, but I will continue to do afterwards things you've done less of, Sarah, What have you done less of in twenty twenty? Less social media for the most part, because again I think it just got very toxic and I made a very definitive effort to lessen its role in my life. And then also alcohol, I think I mentioned this before, but like I just was getting some headaches from drinking, and then also felt like it just wasn't as fun, like I feel like drinking is fun when you're with a bunch of people. And by the way, I never have drank a lot like I mean, like one glass of wine is what I'm talking about when I say drinking, like maybe two on a wild, wild evening. But even like that hasn't happened because there have been no gatherings and at like at first my college friends we would meet and like sometimes I had have like a beer or something when I was on our little zoom chat, but then it was kind of like, eh, whatever, I still have to put the kids to bed. I don't really need it. And then yeah, so alcohol has been with the you know those little like thumbs up thumbs down, it's kind of been like a thumbs down in twenty twenty kind of yeah, things I've done less than twenty twenty and then recent times we'll sleeping ha ha ha. But pumping this year of babyhood has featured less pumping and timing feedings around stuff, and that made breastfeeding a lot less stressful than it has been for other babies. So I am I am a big thumbs up of less pumping in twenty twenty than I did and say twenty fifteen or twenty eleven slash twenty twelve or twenty two thousand and nine, twenty ten or two thousand and seven, et cetera. And that's that's good. Yes, I actually think that having a newborn this year was not bad, not a bad way to go as long as everyone was able to stay healthy. I have a colleague who had a baby, and she does still have to work in person sometimes too, as we're seeing patients in person. But I remember thinking on her telehealth days like how nice she could just feed the baby between patients, Like who would have thought? So that is wonderful for you, all right? Well, a related question, Oh, love of a week? We had a lot of loves, but I will say that my love of the week was the fact that every once in a while, especially my kid was doing school for home one day and I was working from home, I can enjoy a midday walk with a kid that was like something I could have never even have conceived of in the past, but was perfectly reasonable last Tuesday. So yeah, my love, big thumbs up for that. We've done a few of those too, and it's it's nice. Sometimes I'll just even do laps in the backyard with a kid. I was going to say, my love of the week is this my Eddie Bower coat. I'm getting like a fourth Winter's wear out of it. I gave my maternity coat that I had from last year to somebody I joined a buying us in group, and I passed along that coat to somebody who's newly pregnant who needs a winter coat. But my Eddie Bower coat, I bought it like four years ago, and it's long and it's warm, and those are both good things. Has a nice hood with fur around it, not real fur, fake fur, but it comes down to my knees and so when I'm wearing my knee high waterproof winter boots and I'm wearing this coat, there's literally like three inches of me exposed, and that is about the right amount to be exposed during the winter. So I am a big fan of that. That's my love of the week. Puffy, long, warm coat. That's awesome. All right, Well, our Q and A is for you. I don't have much to add on this one, but it's quick and it relates to some of the things you mentioned today. So what was pregnancy like in your forties or at forty Was it different from your younger ones? So it's kind of hard to do because I feel like i've sort of blocked it out in the past. It's the kind of thing that was never pleasant, and every time i'd find myself pregnant again, I'd be like, oh, yeah, I really hated this, and I'm counting the days and weeks till it's done, because I have never liked being pregnant. I like babies, I like children, but I do not like being pregnant. I do think that the recovery was harder. It was harder to come back physically. I still feel like I'm slower running than I was. I don't know why, but I am. It took a little longer to feel like I could even sort of walk around the house without it being a painful experience. You know, the sleep deprivation is hard at this point. I think one of the things it's hard to compare those is, you know, pregnancies when you're older, oftentimes you have other children, so it's like, you know, my first pregnancy when I was in my twenties probably felt less hard. But on the other hand, I didn't have another kid I was caring for at the time, so you could just sleep when you could or take it easy when you needed to, say on an afternoon on the weekend, and you don't have that option when you have other children quite as easily, so that makes pregnancies harder. So it's partly that you're getting older, but it's also that you have more responsibilities the other On the other hand, you know, you know what's coming, and so that makes everything easier too. You're not worried about what to expect when you're expecting. I've found also being older, I just really don't care what baby books say, or what pregnancy books say, or what anyone else says. You know, just keep going along as I wished too, and that was that was fine. So I don't know. I mean, in general, with listeners, I think having your babies younger is probably better just in terms of your own energy level and your recovery. But if it works out to have a baby when you're forty, awesome, Like it's it's kind of you know, lucky to get another baby at this point, and I'm really grateful that I was able to have one, so you know, we're excited to have a fifth member, a fifth kid in the family. And given that that happened when I was forty, that's that's great. I mean, maybe it would have been smarter to have it earlier, but we didn't do it earlier, so there we go, So there you go. Awesome. All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking about our lessons learned in twenty twenty, lots of things that we've figured out. We'll 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. Out

Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode one hundred and seventy six, which is first airing in mid December. Today we're going to be talking about lessons learned in twenty twenty. I know this is the time of year when all podcasts and articles, magazines, blogs, whatever have a roundup of the past year, and we've already done a good Things episode or silver linings episodes were kind of moving beyond that. We're no more silver linings. But here's the things we have learned in twenty twenty that will hopefully keep us going in twenty twenty one. Things we don't have to relearn in the future. We would hope, right, Sarah, Yes, And we certainly you know, don't want to. I don't know, feel like we're milking this for content, but it just is what life is right now. So we talk about life and this is life this year. We also do not want to make light of any suffering that has occurred. I can imagine that if someone lost a loved one, then hearing about everyone's like newfound habits from the pandemic is probably really painful. So this has been a very tough year for many people, either from a health standpoint or from a financial standpoint, as people have struggled. So we do have that in our minds. But at the same time, some of us, many of us also have learned things or explored things, and some of these things can apply forever, pandemic or not, So we figured we would do it anyway. Yeah, well, some of this stuff is completely non panandemic related anyway, Like I mean, discover as you go through life. So my my recent discovery. I've been you know, dealing with these sort of like sore throats and like throat congestion for a long time and I had no idea what it was, and so this fall I just decided to start experimenting among the other things that seemed to make it worse or like red wine. I mean, that makes sense, I believe, but I wasn't drinking that much of it anyway, so I couldn't really blame it all on the red wine. Turns out that dairy is a trigger for that sort of thing. So I've been experimenting with giving up that, which I had to. You know, longtime listeners know I really loved my real cream and my coffee in the mornings. So I started to drink my coffee black. That is a twenty twenty lesson that I can drink black coffee. And yeah, just like trying everything. I really those stupid like Nettie pot things in your nose. Have you ever done those? Scared of it? I mean, I what party is scared of, like the idea of introducing some sort of like bacteria into your brain. No, no, no, I'm not. I'm not scared of it at all from a from a health perspective. I mean, I think a lot of patients and people like them. I'm just scared of the feeling of like having like you know, how like when you accidentally snort something up your nose, Like does it feel like that? Like I don't like that? So yeah, I mean it's not terrible. It doesn't feel nearly as much as like you know, or I have, Yes, I remember like going off the diving board as a kid and getting water up your nose exactly, That's what I was imagining. It's it's not quite that bad, and it seems to make me, you know, breathe either have less throat and nose congestion afterwards. So I don't accommodation of all these things. I mean, who even knows. Maybe we have some listeners who have experienced in this and want to send in their home remedies to you know, what else I can do other than give up dairy and you know, try the Nettie pot stuff. But you know, this is the thing of like getting older. I have all these small all health complaints that are just really annoying, and at some point you don't want to live with them anymore, and so then you have to experiment with stuff because who even knows? Right, you can google it and then like a million things under the sun will come up for it. You know. It's the same as like are you sure you're not allergic to your family pet. We don't have a family pet. I was thinking you had a never mind, you had good oh other than the hermit crab and the fish. Oh yeah, I guess not the hermit crab. That's what it was. The hermit. I was thinking it was like a hamster, and I'm like, maybe it's the wood chips. But no, crabs don't seem like they would be all that. Yeah. So yeah, I've been pondering that. But it's gotten somewhat better with with those things. I like not drinking coke, cream in the coffee, not having cheese, not having yogurt. But we'll say, we'll see how it keeps going. Do you want to should I read down my list or do you want to trade it for what we need? I feel like we need to alternate otherwise I'm I'm going to feel like I'm talking looking for like too long or something. I don't know. Okay, Lesson number one, shutting my office door is great. Were you not doing this before? I mean, like, no, I never did it. The etiquette is that you know it's open because you're always available, because that's because you're a nice person or something. I don't know. I never shut it before except when I was pumping, and in fact, if it was closed like back in the day, like people were just assuming that I was pumping. But that's been a while now, so yeah, I mean it's because it started because of COVID, because you know, if you were going to eat or drink anything and I would want to take my mask off, I'd want to shut the door. And then I'm like, wait a second, like I can keep it shut. And now when I have a resident with me, it's and I do a lot actually, but then when I do it's it's less relevant because if with someone anyway, like you know, I'm not having that like focused time. But otherwise, yeah, it's just been a it's been a stupid and great discovery. And I guess sort of the corollary to that that just work distractions are really they can take a lot of time, and so you know, working from home on my non clinical days has been something I truly hope that I'm allowed to continue post all of this, because you can focus a lot more when people are not knocking on your door asking for random things, and somehow those random things seem to get done. Otherwise, yes, working from home can be very productive and physicians can do it for part of their jobs. There we go, who even knew? Lessons learned twenty twenty. My next lesson is that three podcasts are a bit much Now. Listeners to this on should not worry. Best of both worlds is continuing and so as before Breakfast, but we've decided to phase out the New Corner Office. It had its run. I realized I wasn't going to be able to I think, keep generating that much content on that side. So I'll probably run a New Corner Office segment over at my blog, you know, every week or two, just something more career focused, to keep going with that idea, Like I love that name, the New Corner Office the people. I wrote a book this year called the New Corner Office. So I'm going to keep running with that, but probably not as a daily podcast. So I'll be back down to two, which is which is hopefully going to be more sustainable to daily podcasts. Is a lot of recording. It was a lot. Well that was partly the problem is I was getting so stressed about recording the episodes because my house is rarely quiet and so trying to get the time to record. If you and I have a little bit of background nose. It's more conversational. Anyways, it's harder to it's okay, like you know, we try not to, we try to have it be quiet, but you know, a scripted solo podcast really needed quiet and it was so hard to get. And I think five episodes is some amount that ten was a lot more. So there you go. And plus it had a smaller audience and so you know, just double down on the ones that keep going. You know, this is this is the thing you figure out with your careers, as you know, in your more entrepreneurial stuff. Some projects work, some don't. I'm not saying it didn't work. It had an audience that was turning a profit by the end of the year. But it's also like, you know, I only have so much time, so we'll figure out something else to do with that. Okay. My second lesson learned also has to do with work and kind of my work rhythms. And this has been the year of the walk, because why not. But honestly, again, I don't think that's so pandemic specific. It was sort of like it became more of a thing people were talking about, so it wakened me to the idea that like this was something that is available to me. But somehow I didn't feel like I had permission to walk at work. And I'm not sure who was stopping me. I mean, when I was pumping, okay, I didn't have time, but as soon as that was over. I think I've spoken previously about sometimes like reading during that time, you know, thirty minutes of like oh my gosh, I have this novel and I'm dying to finish it, and I can like rush to finish my charts. I do find if I have like strong motivation to be done with my morning charts, I am able to get them done. Not always a BYuT like twelve o'clock, but at least by like twelve twenty or something, which gives me like a solid fifty minutes sometimes because by the time my first afternoon patients in the room, it's usually one ten or so, so that's a great time for a walk break. That became a really frequent rhythm for me, especially on like my non running days, so that I get some movement outside. And I definitely it's sort of like odd that that was a revelation that I was allowed to do that, But I really enjoy it, I got to say. I mean, you know, offices have these very strong group time norms of like what people do, and we all sort of absorb this just from the air. I don't know where we get them from. One of the you know, lessons I think a lot of people have learned in twenty twenty is that many of these norms can be broken. Like they're not there for a good reason, they're just there. And so once we've all had to work differently in some ways, you know, we can we can challenge them, which is which is awesome. And taking a walk during the days definitely a good idea. My revelation babies are hard. This is this is not a new discovery. I've been through this a few times, but it has been discovered afresh that I was out of practice. Alex of course, turned five a couple of days after Henry was born, so I had been out of the baby stage for a bit. And you know, they're they're wonderful, they're challenging, and the you know, interrupted sleep, the constant vigilance all challenging. They do grow up, though, I mean we're almost to the toddler phase already, and so I'm hanging in there and realizing that and sending out to anyone else going through the baby stage right now that yes, it's hard. It's always hard no matter what. It's not like you master it and you get to your fifth baby and you're like a PhD in babies and it's easy. Yeah, So it's never easy. It's never easy. You learn some things that make it easier, I suppose, but it's still hard. Babies are hard. Lesson learned twenty twenty, how about you, Sarah. Unfortunately I find Toddler's pretty hard too, So I'm not going to say twenty twenty one is going to be the magic answer for you there. But maybe you find Toddler's easier than I do. Okay, I'll pivot to my number three, which is that at age forty you can still learn new things and it can be fun. And my examples of things I've been working on learning this year are espanel. That's about as much as I can. No, I'm just kidding, it'd be too embarrassing for me to speak my very rudimentary Spanish on this podcast at this point. But I've been doing Duolingo, which I know is not like you know, it's not like taking a course, really, but I feel like I'm learning some things. I'm definitely learning some words. And then when I see like I saw a patient with an interpret the other day, I was like, Okay, I cannot understand this patient, but I'm definitely picking up more words than I was before and that's kind of fun. So yeah, and then I'm also we're rolling out a coaching program for our residents, so as part of that, I took the coaching training program and that's been fun too, and sort of like pretending to be a mental health professional for a brief period of my day. So two totally kind of like different outside of my normal realm learning activities that have been fun. And yeah, just that it never gets boring to pick up new things and learn and grow. And I hope that I'm doing that when i'm eighty as well. Yeah, no, that's great. Well, we've learned that my husband and I can both work at home. He's there was more of a revelation for his job that it turns out that a great many jobs can be done mostly from home. I think a lot of people have discovered that in twenty twenty, and I'm very curious how this will play out over the next year or two as we see, you know, a lot of places are sort of said the first half of twenty twenty one. Assume that there will be a lot of still remote work going on. But once we're back from that, how is it going to you know, go about like, where is it going to wind up in terms of the balance, in terms of how many days people are in the office or traveling or whatever. And I got to say that video conferences are not that bad. I know, everyone has a zoom fatigue. It's fun to complain about zoom fatigue. But we've built a whole podcast enterprise by video conference. I mean, we're looking at each other right now having a conversation, and this is how we talk. I mean, I haven't seen Sarah in person in a year and a half, and same with a lot of things. I realized the other day that I one of the people I would consider very close friend and I have actually never met him in person. And I was like, wait, is that actually true? You have enough video conferences that like you get to know each other. So anyway, it's a good technology and a lot of stuff can be done from home. And I'm not saying everything. It's good to see people in person, and I really look forward to that happening again. But you know, we've reached a new discovery of how much work can be done in different ways. That's awesome. I have a question, a follow up question there. Do you think your husband misses the travel or would he be happy for to like never travel again, or do you think he would like it to be somewhere like happy medium. I think there's probably a place for a happy medium. All right, let's take a quick ad break. We'll be right back. So we're back talking about lessons learned in twenty twenty. Sarah, you've been organizing your non clinical days in a different way. How's that going? Yes? And I will credit the Caunt Newport style of time blocking for some of that. I definitely don't do what he recommends every day because I actually find it a little bit stressful to have every single minute accounted for. So I don't necessarily think that I need that in my life on a daily basis. I think I'm pretty productive as it is, but when things are really unstructured and I have a lot I want to get done, actually taking the like five, it really doesn't take long. It takes about five minutes to sit there with my planner and demarket, Okay, these to do is from this time to this time. These to do is from this time to this time. This is what I'm doing from this time to this time. And actually, like instead of just having a list that I'm going back to, like specifically assigning each hour a job, as he puts it, it can be very helpful. And for somebody that's, you know, been into the time management sphere for a long time, you wouldn't necessarily think this was a new discovery. But I feel like he laid it out very clearly, and so that's kind of been helping me. So it's a good way to turbocharge through a long list on unstructured days. However, you may or may not want to do that all the time because I think I think it just would make life a little bit less fun. Yeah, I mean some days I do that, some days I don't. If I have a higher volume of stuff I have to get through, I do tend to block out, like when I'm going to do it, If there's also things that have to be done during a certain window, I will think about that. So, for instance, yesterday we were talking about the stress of doing recordings. So when our nanny had Alex and Henry out at the playground in the afternoon, I knew that was my window for recording. Like I'd have probably about an hour and ten minutes hour and fifteen minutes, so I needed to have practiced my ten episodes ahead of time so I could just record with very little repeat or stopping. And so I did get through all ten in the hour and fifteen minutes, but that hour did have to have that jomb So on a day's like that, I will, But today, you know, I just sort of have a list of stuff I'm going to get through this afternoon. I haven't blocked it out when it's going to happen. You know. Maybe that's I'm sure calendar report's more productive than I am, but that's what I what I do. No, I think the balance makes sense because I actually, I truly there is something stressful about feeling like you're against the clock and that every minute you know, oh, I'm supposed to be doing this or that, And so I do think that, you know, doing that every single day isn't really necessarily for everyone. So yeah, people have different styles and yeah, I said, it can be great for the times when I have to get through a lot, and if there's days that are a little bit more open, then it's kind of fun to sort of pick and choose from the list, like what do I feel like working on right now? You know, and that openness can be excited as well. So you know, again, all of time management is figuring out what works best for you, speaking of lessons learned of things that do not work best. I am not a big fan of virtual learning, and you know, it's interesting because I am a big fan of working from home, and so on some level, homeschooling is the kid version of that. And I'm a fan of homeschooling. I know lots of families do it well, and particularly if your child has different learning styles, it can be great. Well, you know, what I think doesn't work is virtual learning for young kids, especially those too young to read fluently. And on some level, I know that with working from home, like homeschooling is kind of the kid version of that. And I know homeschooling is a really great option for many families, especially when kids have different learning styles or things like that. But I think this mass version of it has had a lot of problems, and I mean, my older kids have done very well with it, but when Alex has had to do virtual learning, it's just I mean, it is really not a great solution. And that's with top of the line teachers and a lot of home support. So I can't imagine for those situations where those aren't present. You put Cameron in a school that was going to open, I mean precisely because of that, right, Yes, I mean we had been considering it anyway, just because he had kind of a rough year. We wanted to see if another style would fit him better. But part of that rough year it was rough before the virtual so I'll be completely honest, but it was even rougher after we went virtual, and so I mean, honestly, I didn't feel like he was able to learn much at all. It was very frustrating for him. And then, of course, I mean for kids, they miss out on that like kind of just learning how to organize themselves and groups and pay attention and like interact with peers. And yeah, I agree that in older years it can work better, and particularly if it's a child that's a fairly motivated or good student. It's been fine for my third grader, like completely fine, but I don't think that's true for every third grader, and I definitely don't think it's true for almost any like first grader and below. Yeah, yeah, My big part of it is the ability to read fluently. I mean that you need to have that element to make virtual learning more of a possibility, and so until you get there, it's really really hard. And then you know, it also requires a certain amount of being able to sit quietly in your seat even when there isn't all of that around you the norm of the class, and that's hard. It's definitely hard for little kids. So yeah, not a fan at all all. Hope, although you're your kindergartener taught himself to read fluently despite all this, it sounds yeah, that was a discovery. Well, partly he had been in full time in person school for two months and that's when he really picked it up. And then now that we've been virtual for two weeks again through a long series of unfortunate uh you know, county proclamations that make no sense, but that's another matter. Anyway, he has still been doing that and so that's made this bout of virtual learning a lot more doable than the one last Spring. It's also just fun to watch a little kid when he's figuring out reading, Like he's like, wait, I can look at this book myself. It's like the whole world has opened up and it's it's so cool. I mean, that's that's been a really fun thing to see again, that is totally cool. Yes, I feel like Cameron is still working on it. I mean, he can read, but it's not like you know, when it becomes then it becomes really fun. I'm still waiting for that part, but I think it's coming on. Yeah, yes, all right, what else do we have around here? Okay, how about just the fact I mean this is sort of cliche pandemic cliche as well, but I do kind of feel like it has tempered my I don't know, need for luxury. I guess in a way. I mean there's definitely a hedonic treadmill. Right. You get used to like going to a really nice restaurant, and then that becomes the norm, and then all of a sudden, like going to a hole in the wall seems less fun. You know. Twenty twenty took away the ability to easily get some of those luxury experiences. And I found I did not miss them as much as I thought I might, So I mean, I knew I do miss like the social aspects of date night. I definitely miss gathering with people. I will definitely would like to eat it up, you know, fancy Michelin Star restaurant again. So I'm not saying I wouldn't want to do that. I totally do want to do that. But I think I'm fine with it being a little bit more rare than it had gotten to be because in a way, the rareness makes it more special anyway, and there's lots of fun that can come in more simple forms as well. So yeah, cool. Another thing I learned, keeping with your walking theme, is we have a lot of really good trails in my neighborhood, and that was a discovery. I joined this trails association and they do guided walks on some of the trails so you can figure out where they are. And now that I know how to look for them and I have the map, it's like this whole new world of like running roots has opened up, which is pretty exciting. I mean, some seem to really be cutting across people's lawns, so I'm not quite sure that I'll do those on my own. But like I mean, there's this preserved farm in the area that I didn't really realize was open to the public and that I could run around, and so now I've been doing that. I did that a lot this fall. It just required cutting through a couple of people's sort of back yards, even behind their fences, but they've seated the land like it's okay, they allow that, and it's it's really just such a big mental health boost to go walk on a trail. And we've certainly been doing a lot more family walks on weekends in twenty twenty, just because that was like the one thing we could do in March and April when everything was closed, and that's not true now that everything's closed, but it's still something that we can do. And the kids whine about it every single time, but it's everyone feels better when they've gotten fresh air and exercise, so I've learned to just kind of ignore the whining. And I do think that family walks will continue to be part of our repertoire. You know, I was I was reminded of your I don't know if it was from off the clock where you talked about like how if each kid has a thirty chance twenty percent chance of being unhappy at any given time, and you have three kids, and so we had a really particularly like bad outdoor play it with Genevieve, and I just remember thinking like, well, what if one kid is point seventy five, Well, I mean my odds with five have gotten even worse. Right, So if you know each kid's happiness is an independent event, like I you know, I ran the numbers with four kids, and it's like two thirds of the time you're gonna have an unhappy kid if each kid is unhappy twenty five percent of the time. Uh, with five, it's even like we're down to to you know, a quarter of the time or so that you're gonna have all five kids happy. So yeah, it's it's you just have to know that as the numbers go up. So funny. I love that math problem. I think it's great. Well on that similar vein, I do not feel at all, and I know this is different from your experience, but no sadness at all about like having an excuse not to travel all year when Genevieve went from ages like almost two to almost three, because I don't think it's that fun to travel with the kid that age. She particularly, like you know, has a lot of bad sleep when routines are disrupted. And I think I talked on this podcast a bunch about like a fairly unsuccessful vation we had in twenty nineteen where like she ended up being up all nights nights, and yeah, the night at the Ritz Carlton spent with her like screaming for hours and Josh taking her from walk on the beach at two am, Like, oh no, we didn't spend money on those experiences. And I get it, like the remembering self does enjoy them, and I won't have as many nice pictures from this year of various places, but for the experiencing self, travel with a toddler is not all that fun for me. So I'm kind of like I didn't have to do it. Yeah, I mean I do. It is true that we have not had to really, you know, do much travel with the baby, and there is something to be said for that. We'll see. I'm sure we will do more in twenty twenty one, and he won't be in a great age for it then either. But yeah, travel with babies and toddlers is very hard and probably better for us that this is a no travel time versus like four years from now will be wanting to maybe travel more. So, yes, I understand that feeling of getting away with something. That's so true because I feel like I am very much looking forward to, like all the kids being over, say five, because I think that'll be like the golden years because we won't have college students yet. But so I would I would have been much more you know, sad about not being able to travel any year like that that I've been waiting for so you So with less time spent traveling, we have more time at home. And one of the things I've been reminded that I really like doing puzzles and I like doing you know, doing lego projects with the kids. So we've been doing a fair number of puzzles and legos and yeah, it's it's something that I can do with older children and actually enjoy. There are many things I do not enjoy doing. I'm not really big into card games, and I don't like miss kid movies and stuff like that, but the legos and puzzles are big thumbs up for me. Yeah, I can't wait till we can. It's hard for us to do puzzles all together right now, But as Genevieve has dropped her nap, it means she sometimes goes to bed, which means there is opportunity for that stuff as a group. And puzzles are so fun. I was actually googling your favorite puzzle brand yesterday, Crocodile Creek, because you know, there was that puzzle shortage and now there are definitely many more available, and I was like, what was that one that Laura likes? Oh right, Crocodile Creek. So I don't know if you're still into those, but they're they're available, They're available. They on toilet paper and Clorox wipes. We must be nearing the end of the pandemic, let's hope. Well, similar to your legos and puzzles, well kind of similar. Books were just so amazing in twenty twenty. For me, I knew you didn't feel like you had as fabulous as a that sounded Midwestern and I'm not, but okay, as fabulous as a reading year as you normally do. But I feel like I got really lucky. Just so many amazing novels in particularly, and many of them appropriately escapist for the time, where you just feel like, you know what I'm not in there is no locker done, and I'm not going to Zoom meetings. Instead, I am like on the prairie in Kansas and you know, like in nineteen twenty nine or something like that. So the most recent book that I just finished, So big credit to books just being a wonderful escape this year. Good for you. Yeah, no, I haven't been doing as much reading. Oh well no, that's totally because of your sleep. I mean I think that when you have that like interrupted baby sleep, you're it's so I feel like it's so under appreciated that your capacity for doing things that are like a little bit deeper and maybe a little tedious, like getting into a book with a lot of details, are are are so diminished. I know I was not able to read in the way that I can right now when I had a baby that I was, oh, yeah, it'll come back. I mean, you know, when Alex was too, that's when I read like War and Peace. So I presume that I will. I will get back there eventually. And I bet that's not an accident. That was like a rebound, like it was really good. Yeah. So I made the discovery the other day we were having real estate agents come look at our house in terms of, you know, when we do put it on the market, that I could tidy it up in about one hour to make it look okay, not horribly cluttered. And there's you know, it's little things like you focus on don't have the boots scattered all over the mudroom, like line them up, and people like, ooh, that's a nice mudroom as opposed to a tripping hazard, or you know, just not having stuff on the floor in the hallways or having a clean kitchen island. But in about an hour, I could make it look presentable. So I'm like, oh, that's kind of cool. Like, no matter how bad the house is, probably I'm only you know, sixty to ninety minutes from it looking presentable. So that's that's a good, you know, feeling to have. I feel. Yeah, you know, it's it's funny when you have a big mess. Sometimes I've done your trick and like timed actually how long it takes, and it's it's you know, you have a bunch of toys on the floor and it looks insurmountable. But if they could actually leave you alone, it's done in like seven minutes. So sixty to ninety to make the whole house presentable is pretty impressive. But that's a that's a good skill to have. Okay, I'm gonna do one more right, which I think I'm going to pick the Oh Okay, my effective dose for news I think that I discovered this year since there was a lot of news, and I'm sure you could spend all day with said news if you wanted to, but I definitely did not want to. So for me, listening to up first at one point five speed, usually in the shower, became my daily news. And then like every once in a while, like an Atlantic article or like a New Yorker article, if something really like piqued my interest, and that's about it, that was great. That sounds like a great way to interact with the news. I can't get into the one point five speed. I don't know. That just makes me like some weird tennis Because my husband has stuff automatically said at one point five speed. That's like what he listens to as well. So when I get into his car, the podcast come on at one point five speed, and I'm always like, ah, make its top. I think my husband says the same thing about my listening tendency, So you, I guess, do either maybe we're more sensible or you don't. It just makes me feel like people are screaming at me, and I don't like it. So yeah, all right, lightning round, Let's go lightning round. Things you have done more of in twenty twenty than ever before, Sarah, what have you done more of? And I said, other than the obvious, like wear masks. I mean, does that's true? My number one thing, well, the walks I already mentioned. But naps. Twenty twenty has been like the Year of the Nap. I mean part of it was that, like I kind of Jenney was taking a solid nap for most of the year, and I knew those days were numbered, but like I was just like, oh, she's napping. I am napping. I'm bringing a book to my bed and I'm read for twenty minutes. I'm gonna fall asleep for an hour. It's gonna be amazing. And it was. And I have no regrets. No, no one should regret naps. We should regret the naps not taken well. Obviously, video meetings, I mean, that's related. I've done more of that, But I mean, I want to say that I had a Zoom Pro account before March twenty twenty and used it, but it was just something that people were not It wasn't the thing you'd ask people to do necessarily, Like, you know, somebody wanted to catch up, we'd just call. And I don't know why I didn't use video conferencing more as just a way to chat with people, but I really do like being able to see people's faces and I feel like it makes for a better conversation. So yeah, I think, you know, video conferencing is something I've clearly done a lot more of in twenty twenty, but I will continue to do afterwards things you've done less of, Sarah, What have you done less of in twenty twenty? Less social media for the most part, because again I think it just got very toxic and I made a very definitive effort to lessen its role in my life. And then also alcohol, I think I mentioned this before, but like I just was getting some headaches from drinking, and then also felt like it just wasn't as fun, like I feel like drinking is fun when you're with a bunch of people. And by the way, I never have drank a lot like I mean, like one glass of wine is what I'm talking about when I say drinking, like maybe two on a wild, wild evening. But even like that hasn't happened because there have been no gatherings and at like at first my college friends we would meet and like sometimes I had have like a beer or something when I was on our little zoom chat, but then it was kind of like, eh, whatever, I still have to put the kids to bed. I don't really need it. And then yeah, so alcohol has been with the you know those little like thumbs up thumbs down, it's kind of been like a thumbs down in twenty twenty kind of yeah, things I've done less than twenty twenty and then recent times we'll sleeping ha ha ha. But pumping this year of babyhood has featured less pumping and timing feedings around stuff, and that made breastfeeding a lot less stressful than it has been for other babies. So I am I am a big thumbs up of less pumping in twenty twenty than I did and say twenty fifteen or twenty eleven slash twenty twelve or twenty two thousand and nine, twenty ten or two thousand and seven, et cetera. And that's that's good. Yes, I actually think that having a newborn this year was not bad, not a bad way to go as long as everyone was able to stay healthy. I have a colleague who had a baby, and she does still have to work in person sometimes too, as we're seeing patients in person. But I remember thinking on her telehealth days like how nice she could just feed the baby between patients, Like who would have thought? So that is wonderful for you, all right? Well, a related question, Oh, love of a week? We had a lot of loves, but I will say that my love of the week was the fact that every once in a while, especially my kid was doing school for home one day and I was working from home, I can enjoy a midday walk with a kid that was like something I could have never even have conceived of in the past, but was perfectly reasonable last Tuesday. So yeah, my love, big thumbs up for that. We've done a few of those too, and it's it's nice. Sometimes I'll just even do laps in the backyard with a kid. I was going to say, my love of the week is this my Eddie Bower coat. I'm getting like a fourth Winter's wear out of it. I gave my maternity coat that I had from last year to somebody I joined a buying us in group, and I passed along that coat to somebody who's newly pregnant who needs a winter coat. But my Eddie Bower coat, I bought it like four years ago, and it's long and it's warm, and those are both good things. Has a nice hood with fur around it, not real fur, fake fur, but it comes down to my knees and so when I'm wearing my knee high waterproof winter boots and I'm wearing this coat, there's literally like three inches of me exposed, and that is about the right amount to be exposed during the winter. So I am a big fan of that. That's my love of the week. Puffy, long, warm coat. That's awesome. All right, Well, our Q and A is for you. I don't have much to add on this one, but it's quick and it relates to some of the things you mentioned today. So what was pregnancy like in your forties or at forty Was it different from your younger ones? So it's kind of hard to do because I feel like i've sort of blocked it out in the past. It's the kind of thing that was never pleasant, and every time i'd find myself pregnant again, I'd be like, oh, yeah, I really hated this, and I'm counting the days and weeks till it's done, because I have never liked being pregnant. I like babies, I like children, but I do not like being pregnant. I do think that the recovery was harder. It was harder to come back physically. I still feel like I'm slower running than I was. I don't know why, but I am. It took a little longer to feel like I could even sort of walk around the house without it being a painful experience. You know, the sleep deprivation is hard at this point. I think one of the things it's hard to compare those is, you know, pregnancies when you're older, oftentimes you have other children, so it's like, you know, my first pregnancy when I was in my twenties probably felt less hard. But on the other hand, I didn't have another kid I was caring for at the time, so you could just sleep when you could or take it easy when you needed to, say on an afternoon on the weekend, and you don't have that option when you have other children quite as easily, so that makes pregnancies harder. So it's partly that you're getting older, but it's also that you have more responsibilities the other On the other hand, you know, you know what's coming, and so that makes everything easier too. You're not worried about what to expect when you're expecting. I've found also being older, I just really don't care what baby books say, or what pregnancy books say, or what anyone else says. You know, just keep going along as I wished too, and that was that was fine. So I don't know. I mean, in general, with listeners, I think having your babies younger is probably better just in terms of your own energy level and your recovery. But if it works out to have a baby when you're forty, awesome, Like it's it's kind of you know, lucky to get another baby at this point, and I'm really grateful that I was able to have one, so you know, we're excited to have a fifth member, a fifth kid in the family. And given that that happened when I was forty, that's that's great. I mean, maybe it would have been smarter to have it earlier, but we didn't do it earlier, so there we go, So there you go. Awesome. All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking about our lessons learned in twenty twenty, lots of things that we've figured out. We'll 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. Out