Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hartunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode two hundred and eighty, airing in mid December of twenty twenty two. Whatever it is, we're talking about the year in review, so we'll be reviewing all sorts of things that did happen in twenty twenty two. And to prepare for this episode, Sarah and I both listened to our Goals episode that was looking forward to twenty two and I know that sometimes there might be no relation between the goals you set for a year and what winds up happening in the course of a year. I'm sure we've had some years that have gone a wee bit like that, particularly of late. However, I think that you know, it's interesting to do a year in the review episode with that in mind. So Sarah, you listen to the old episode. Is that something you normally do? No, it is not. I do try to listen to the episodes that you do alone, Like if we have a guest that I didn't get to interview, I love to hear what they have to say. So I listened to those episodes, often best forwarding through the initial banter with us together. So I don't listen to myself all that often. I recognize I probably should listen to myself a little bit more often since I am a podcaster, I suppose, And so this was an exercise in both wanting to see what my goals are and also just sucking it up and recognizing that it's probably a good idea to do once in a while. And you know what, I liked it. I enjoyed our episdis more than I thought I would. And I think many years ago I didn't love hearing my own voice, but perhaps doing this for long enough, I've just gotten used to what it sounds like, and so it was kind of fun to listen to. I actually listened it to it with Genevieve in the car. She was like, is that you so? I mean there's two initial things. I mean, one is like, the way you hear your voice in your head is different from the way it is heard out in the world, just because of the physics of your ears, right, Like you're not hearing everything that is going out into the world. You're hearing your voice in a different way. So many people don't like their voice just because they're not familiar with it because of that. But then we also all have our own verbal tics. I recognize that I say you know a lot. I hear that every time I go through the old episodes that are spontaneously discussed. That's less of an issue in Before Breakfast because those are scripted. I do listen to almost all of those, at least to some degree, because when I turn them into my sound editor, I report where there are sound edits that need to be made, and so I need to listen to it to get the time stamp on it exactly when that happens. But you know, there's still you know, hey, I just did it there. I don't think I say you know, I say like sometimes. And the other thing that annoys me about my own delivery is that I did it right now. I'll take these like strategic pauses when I know I'm trying to word something in a more nice way, perhaps trying to sound more politically acceptable. I'm doing it right now. No, I'm super aware. No one pays attention. For the rest of the episode. There will be no pauses ever again. Image for my boss. We're gonna go ahead and do it because we do it anyway. It's not the sort of thing that you have any real You can work on it, but you don't have a huge amount of control over it. I have noticed that my voice has this little like vocal fry in it almost every time I say, this is Laura. So I say in the start of before Breakfast, like good morning, this is Laura, and my voice almost always has this tight little break in Laura. I don't know what it is, no matter when I record. It's just my own name apparently is not in a good register for my voice. I never knew what vocal fry was until I started podcasting, but apparently I don't have a lot of vocal fries. So I'm happy with that. Yay yay. So onward, we have reviewed our year listening to the Year in Review podcast where the goals episode for last year, but we wanted to talk about how twenty twenty two went. So Sarah, you wrote your goals, I guessed and to doist for easy reference and what happened. I still looked at it from time to time because I do follow my own system of nested goals, where every time I make a quintile goals list, I am going to refer to my annual goal, so I wouldn't say it went ignored. But I found that I didn't really enjoy using the to do as platform as much as I thought. There are certain things about it that for example, by default, it doesn't show you the tasks you have already completed, so I found myself losing track of those, and I really like to see the stuff that I did so I can give myself gold stars or something like that. So I don't think I'll be using to doist again. But it was useful to have everything in one place that I remembered where it was and have a whole system plan for where I'm going to put my twenty twenty three goals. But obviously we'll get to that in a future episode. But yeah, the way I attacked this episode is that I just kind of went through and I don't necessarily think I need to share all of these But the takeaway was that many of my goals were not completed to a perfectionist degree, such as if I wrote in my list to complete my five year journal, I did not complete said journal every single day. I did not have three hundred and sixty five entries. However, I did complete that journal regularly more days than not. There is something written down, There are a lot of photos pasted in or just random ephemera. I think that's kind of like my theme for twenty twenty two and maybe for life, which is like it's okay to do something pretty good because it's better to do have done it pretty good. Then I know that's terrible grammar to have done it part way, perhaps than to stress about doing things perfectly and then not do them at all. So we're going to get into the nitty gritty, but I feel like that was the theme of some of my goals in twenty twenty two. Yeah, so how about in the self category you can talk about things that you were aiming to do and whether you did them or not. Yes, so I'll try to do the ones that I talked about on the episode. So I am glad that I listened to that. One of the things I mentioned was that I wanted to refresh my wardrobe, in particular to get some more casual outfits that I felt good in and to get some jewelry. I am happy to say again I have a closet full of amazing delights that just make me super excited to get dressed every single day. No, but is it better than it was in twenty twenty one. Absolutely. I found jeans that I really like to wear, and I wear them a lot. They're the made well perfect vintage gene for anyone curious. And I got some T shirts that I really like and just kind of found my new casual uniform. I did buy some earrings that don't bother my ears. I think I've spoken about this on a few episodes now, which is kind of embarrassing, But for years I didn't wear earrings because I reacted terribly. So this was kind of exciting, and I find myself, I don't know, just like putting together full outfits more often than I was previously. I have some work shoes that are comfortable and cute, So I would call this one a win check. Yeah, And another thing I remember you talking about was listening to albums deeply. Did that happen? It did some months and the months that I did that, like I listened to the Soccer Mommy album on repeat when it came out. I've definitely listened to Taylor Swift Midnights very very deeply. My children know every word, including the curse words. It's such a good album. But I don't feel like I did that on a regular basis. But the times that I did it, I was very satisfied with this practice. So I am going to continue a variation of that goal for next year. And by the way, I am someone that is super unashamed to a set repetitive goals or b repeatedly set a goal I fail at for years and then maybe one day I don't fail. Yeah, because this year you have been pretty much off social media, right, which was something, yes, that was okay. So the goal I set specifically was to try to spend less than one hundred minutes per day on my phone, and I did not meet that in its I mean, I definitely didn't meet that because texting and checking the kids, what's up schedules, and you know, various using Google maps. Like that's a very hard goal to meet. You can do it if you're like religious about closing your phone every single time you use it. But I know that the core of that goal was to stop mindless scrolling. And the thing that helped me to do that was that in twenty sixteen, I quit Facebook, and in twenty twenty one, I think it was like November, I quit Instagram and I've stayed off, like I do not go to Instagram for entertainment, and I actually think I'm going to do like a more like detailed blog post about this, because I did worry that it might hurt some of my engagement with my blog readers or podcast listeners, and it has not hurt at all. I had I feel like my best engaged year I've ever had in twenty twenty two, both from a just people reaching out to me and also just from like a financial earnings perspective. So I'm just super relieved to find that I don't need to be part of any of those platforms to get to share my creative work, and I enjoy my life much more without them. So that's a goal that I set many times, I feel like before it finally clicked. And flossing I set for like a decade and then in like twenty eighteen, I started flossing, and I floss every day so it can happen. Yay, yay for flossing. I floss because I feel like I get stuff stuck in my teeth a lot, and then you know, it annoys me. So it's not so much about being virtuous as just having those experience not yelled at by my dentists because I apparently have deep grooves and I've had my share of cavities and bad gum stuff. So like, I do need to floss, and I and I do, I'm super good about it. Yayyay. Well, so in my self category, my major goal for the year had been these daily rituals that I would be doing, and longtime listeners know that. In twenty twenty one, I set a goal to read through Warren Peace one chapter a day. There are three hundred and sixty one chapters, so indeed I stuck with it and finished on December twenty seventh. This year, my goal was to read through all the works of Shakespeare, so I have shakespeare Anthology, his Collected Works illustrated. It has one thy and twenty four pages, so you do the math, you need to read about three pages a day, and three pages is not that much. I mean, it's King James Bible size font basically like very very tiny. So it takes a little bit longer than reading three pages in a contemporary novel would take, but it doesn't take that long. I'm definitely doing it in fifteen minutes or so most days, and that is not a huge chunk of time. And I stuck with it. And so when this is airing, I will have read just about everything Shakespeare has written. There will be two weeks left to go of stuff to read the final bits there. But it was it was a good experience. I would say, I now know the plots, and maybe I want in the future to read through many of the highlights again, just to make sure I've got all the language and some of the character development, the arcs and the tetrologies as a couple of four play tetrologies. So and I don't actually know. I didn't really study Shakespeare per se. I mean, I've just been reading the work, so I don't know when in his career, he wrote them, or what was going on, so all of that might be slightly more useful to read if I approach this again. And I did wind up reading more and piece twice, so maybe I will read through Shakespeare twice at some point, so we'll see. But if anyone is looking for a daily reading project to take you through the year, I would totally recommend this as absolutely doable. Like if you are willing to, maybe just read the Wikipedia article on each of Shakespeare's plays before you read it, so you know roughly what you're getting into, who the characters might be. You could do this in fifteen minutes a day or so, and then at the end of the year you've got it. You've done everything he wrote, So yay for that. Good sticking with it there. I didn't love all the plays, by the way, really, some are good, some are a little less. Well, maybe he didn't write those. Maybe he didn't write that's true. That's that's what the the hardcore Shakespeare scholars, the ones who really like Shakespeare. Well, he must not have written that. It's a play that probably must not have written. Okay, oh well, well you don't know. I guess another thing I stuck with was writing one hundred to two hundred words a day in my three hundred and sixty five projects. So this was going through a character's day, which was loosely based on my day of December fourteenth, twenty twenty one, which curiously was the day that we did the goals setting webinar for Patreon okay, and so as I was thinking about what sort of writing project, daily writing project I wanted to do through the day, I was like, well, I could just reconstruct today. It had been a very full day with a lot of things going on. So I did it. I made me a crazy face because I'm like, oh my god, I'm in your I have to be in your writing. You might have been on a wrote not not really. I mean it's it's it's a lot of it. It will just like vaguely say what you've done. And then I go off on a tangent, right, because I mean, if we're talking three hundred and sixty five entries, it's hard to be like every minute something interesting happens. So it's more mental flashbacks, looking at some plot that happened earlier in life but is related to something happening that day. I don't know. It's been fine. It's been fine. I just like the ritual of sitting down and writing something, and one hundred and to two hundred words is truly nothing. So if anyone does want to write something that is around fifty sixty thousand words, you might try doing this in the course of a year. Just sit down, write one hundred to two hundred words to yourself, and then you know at the end of the year you will have that much written. I want to read this. It sounds a god. I don't know if you do, it's either really bad or it's like it's a work of art. You know, it's probably pretty bad, but you know, nothing has to be good the first time, right, Like you can make it better if I decided to make I don't think I will make it better because I'm not sure that it's worth that. There are other things I want to focus on. But it was a good ex exercise also to just have faith that you can sit down and think of something. And I think that's a good skill for any writer, and we sort of have it with blogging, but it's good to keep going with it. I think that's so just one other thing I wanted to mention that I had. I had put also as a goal to have a wardrobe worthy of my new closet, like I have a fancy schmancy, new design closet in my new house right and no, I do not have a wardrobe that is worthy of the closet, partly because somehow or another, they were like moths that I don't know if they came over from the old house they were here or something, but they ate a lot of my nice sweaters pants. So I had to dump a lot of things in the course of then, you know, putting moth traps and whatever else and to get rid of them. But maybe someday when I trust that the moths won't eat stuff that I buy. But in my goal setting list from the event on December fourteen, twenty twenty one, I had in parentheses makeup, like this would be the year that maybe I would learn to do makeup. And as our longtime listeners know, we had a episode in May where we will worked with the folks at Style Space that I got some tutorials on doing makeup and I bought a bunch of new products and learned some new techniques. And so I'm pretty happy with how that turned out. I love it, and actually, maybe I'll try that as well for twenty twenty three. I think that's a great goal. And yeah, I love that you did that. It's a peripheral goal. All right. Well we're going to take a quick break and then get back to our next category. Well, we are back talking our year in review looking over twenty twenty two twenty twenty two. Why is that so hard to say? As a lot of tees twenty twenty two in review in review, I know I'm going to trip over every single time, But we are doing this through the lens of reflecting on the goals we set at the end of twenty twenty one. For twenty twenty two, and Sarah, you set some goals in the category of blog slash Pod. Yes, because I like to divide my work goals up because they just feel like such separate worlds. They don't belong on the same list to me. So I feel like this was a banner year for the blog slash Pod, and the goals I set were not really part of why. The first one was I wanted to be better at preparing things in advance. I just felt like I didn't have a great system we were bumping up against deadlines like we always had it together, and honestly, compared to many podcasts, I think we had it together above average. But I always felt like I didn't have time blocked off or when I was going to record, et cetera. And I do feel like I got a lot better about that. I got into some rituals about how I record ads and track ads are do, and Laura and I feel like have been recording a little bit further in advance than we used to. Hopefully that is not ruining the incredibly spontaneous and moment relevant nature of our content. And then my other goal was to publish an ebook, and I had hired a writer to do that. Now I did not meet that goal, but it was a conscious decision to instead. I did meet it. Actually, the book is written like there are many chapters in chapter form. But halfway through the project, I decided that it would be more fun and more helpful to people to do this as an interactive experience, and that is where BLPA or BLP Academy came from. And so that material has been fleshed out and it's going to be delivered in a much more interactive format. And I'm super super excited. So I will call that check question mark because it wasn't exactly what I set out to do, but the project was essentially completed and just morphed into something different and I hope better, and I do eventually want to write an ebook, but my thought is that going through several rounds of BLPA, I will learn what really resonates with people. I will have some case studies of what's working for different types of people, and so I think the book will actually be better once I've had that hands on experience. So super excited about that. Yay, well, awesome, that's good. It's good to see things coming to fruition. And you know, as we're talking about this, things can be highlights of the year that weren't exactly what we set out in goals, but they're sort of related, and so you know, it's a it's a way of approaching the year and review idea. You could just also say, well, what are the highlights and then not even think about what you've set out to do, but I guess we've decided to do it this way. So my work, so your blog pot is sort of my work related. I put them all in one category. I guess you sort of split them out, but you know, one obvious big goal was to launch Tranquility by Tuesday, which I think was fine. I said I had wanted to be thrilled with the launch, and I think that was not necessarily the emotion I was experiencing with it. I'm thrilled with the book, I wrote. I am thrilled with my own audiences purchasing of it. You guys did a great job. You bought it ahead of time as requested. We so did more pre sales this time than any other book, So thank you very much for that. I was thrilled with my network coming through for me. The number of friends of Laura out in the universe who had me on their shows, on their posted reviews on their blogs, posted public things on social media. All that like there was also just wonderful, and I felt very honored to have that happen as well. I had hoped that maybe some more major media would come through, including many things that I had done in the past, and that didn't necessarily this time around, and so that was a wee bit, you know, a little bit more frustrating that a lot of things did go right, but some of the things that more rely on luck didn't this time around. And you know that doesn't mean they never will, like hopefully they will in the future, and they might even once you know, they might even it for TBT, Like I wouldn't give up on that idea, because every time I hear someone reference it, they're reading about it. So yeah, I mean, and people that are not necessarily know that you're reading, like they might put it in a comment on my blog or something like that. So I know the book has been incredibly well received, so I would not be surprised if the major media stuff pops up later. Maybe it's a slower burn. Yeah, no, slower burn could be. And so well, hey, if anyone's a booker who's for these major media places, who's listening to this place, I'd love to come talk about it. I promise I make a great guest. So yeah, that was it, and I enjoyed doing things some of the things that I was doing to promote it, like creating the Tranquility by Tuesday in real life videos. This had been a goal I wanted to do for a long time, like creating time makeover videos, but figuring out like what would it look like how would I do this? I thought maybe I needed to do it in partnership with somebody, and no, actually, I can hire a predu, sir, I can hire a you know, camera team, and so we did. So we have these handful of really fun videos. So if you haven't checked this out, please go do them. You can hunt on YouTube vandercam Tranquility. By Tuesday they will come up. So yeah, and it's also going to wind up being my top grossing year ever in terms of income, so that is worth celebrating. I'm sort of having this moment of like whether I want to attempt to earn a tiny extra little bit in terms of like a few thousand dollars to hit a rather arbitrary but round number. So try to see if I'm like suddenly hustling in December for this episode is behind a thousand dollars paywall. Sorry, it's like I just or it'll be some ridiculous number. It'll be like nine hundred and ninety five, like just oh my gosh, Well don't adjust it for inflation, because then, yes, you might be sad. But that's awesome and that's amazing, I mean, especially because the world is I feel like still ramping things back up from having been asleep for a couple of years, and like even in the beginning of twenty twenty two, like you're speaking, probably wasn't at its full capacity yet. So twenty twenty three is going to be amazing. Let's hope. Let's hope. How about you, Sarah, Work work, Yeah, so work work. I wanted to go to a live conference, although I admitted in the Goals episode that I knew that was not under my control, so it was an outcome goal and not a process goal. We had a whole dive into that, which was kind of cool. I did not get to go to a live conference because the conference that I did end up having a poster accepted at was only held virtually, so it wasn't even I think I talked about my institution like not allowing us to travel, but that actually was no longer the issue. The conference itself just did not exist. I did go virtually, it was not very fun. This year, it's going to be live and I'm definitely going. However, I got an invitation to speak at a conference next week, not on medical related stuff, on type stuff, so maybe that counts. I'm going to a live conference, I'm going to be there, so check kind of My next thing was I wanted to improve my shutdown ritual, and yes, I feel like I have. I think this was like a year that I left with my inbox, my work inbox the most empty, felt really really good about it. Like sometimes there would be something I got really better at. Is if there was a really long, detailed patient interaction I was going to have after hours, I was like, we are doing that as an appointment. They are coming in like, which actually helps twofold Number one, it increases, you know, your engagement with your patients, which they're always looking at those kinds of metrics, and number two like the patient feels better taken care of and I'm not doing it in a rush way. So I don't know. I feel like I got better about inbox management and feeling like I was totally done by the end of the day, so I'd say yes. And then the third one was I wrote, I want to take notes during meetings so I can stay engaged, but instead I pivoted to quit every role I had that in all going to meetings where I wasn't a completely active participant. And so I will call that one accomplished as well, in a very different manner than I set out to do. So I love it. I think, well, that's great. Many, maybe many people should set that as a goal for the upcoming year. To not go to meetings where you are not an active participant, like please, if there's a meeting where you are able to multitask through, for instance, like a virtual meeting where you're just checking your email the whole time, that might be a sign that maybe your input wasn't quite so critical, and maybe don't go to that one next time. All right, So, category of Home, Family and Relationships, what did you What were the things that happened this year based on your set twenty twenty two goals? I mean home was enormous because we bought a house and moved and and you knew you were going to do this, yes, right, that was all my goals. And we even like did the floors and I didn't even say I said we were going to paint and like replace one piece of carpet, but instead we did well most of the floor, so that was huge. I did not organize it. I did do some pretty aggressive decluttering before we move, because you kind of have to do that. But I did not do the detailed organized to be sixty five journey through our home that I wanted to do, which other people should do, by the way, we do. We still want to do it, and I'm totally doing it next year, so we'll talk about that in the goals episode. Also, so yes, and then what else? One on one dates with the kids? I did some of these. I think I wanted to do like one per month with each kid. That was too many. But I did do some dinner dates with the kids one on one that were really fun, and Josh and I went out on dates, probably on average ones per month, which I really enjoyed. I wanted to complete the twenty twenty photo book and I did a couple months ago, and I'm hoping to get through twenty twenty one as well by the end of this year. And then finally, I had a savings goal of twenty percent towards wealth building, and that counted some money being put into the house because some how I rationalized that that was wealth building. I don't know. I think we're close ish maybe we weren't far, but I don't feel like I kept a handle on tracking that as well throughout the year. As I'd like to. So we're definitely going to do a detailed deep dive into our financial situation at the end of twenty twenty two. Sounds good. Yeah, Well, especially as things change, is your income is coming from different places and part of it's going to be quite a bit more variable than it would have been in the past. That's that's definitely going to be something worth looking into. Yeah. My major goal for the year was to move, which, as with Sarah, I knew was happening. In my case, it was happening January fourth, so as our goals were being set for a twenty twenty two, this was shortly coming up. But I wanted to move and make the house feel like home. And I will say not everything is done, like my upstairs bathrooms, so they were still like in a state of rubble the moment because they ripped up the floors to solve the leaking issues and we're still waiting to get tiles put back down. Not everything is done, but a lot of it is, and we're making progress on stuff, and it is a really cool house, Like I'm really enjoying it now having lived here for a year. I'm aware of how lovely the yard is, for instance, in all the different seasons, just looking out on this autumnal vista of the trees. I had worried about that because with my old house we had some really lovely trees in the backyard and I was like, oh, I'm gonna be missing this, you know, beautiful orange Bradford pears and the red maple that we see them to gather. And it's just this brilliant thing. And now I'm like, well, I've got even more. I've got reds, orange, yellow, wherever. And it's great. So excited about that. So you know, I said, throw some parties. I had listed this as another small random goal, like in parentheses on our goal setting workshop thing we did On December fourteenth, twenty twenty one, we actually did two rather sizable parties in our new house. One that was for parents at my youngest kids preschool and one that was for some friends and family coming over for tranquility. By tuesday, we also hosted two birthday parties. And now we have the formula down for like having an outdoor party that you can put people on this patio where they can see the trees, you know, put our card tables up. We have our nice igloo cooler with the ice for the drinks, and you know, have even an outdoor trash can that we put out when we have parties. So it's all good. It's great. Decorate beautifully for Christmas twenty twenty two. You were planning ahead, Yeah, I well, because I was in that season. I was like, well, I'm not doing much with my house this year because we're moving, and then maybe it'll be next year I'm going to do well. No, I had on my on my planner the calendar four end of October that I was going to call this company that we found that does professional outdoor light installations. I was like, that was gonna be really cool. We're going to do the full on thing with the trees and all that. And then I had a moment where I just kind of like cheaped out and I just I didn't want to do it, like I didn't care enough, Like I kept putting it off, like I didn't call them in October, and then I didn't call them at the beginning of November, and I'm like, well, at this point, I know other people are going to start call them too, Like you know, it's not it's going to be harder to get on their schedule. It's like, why do I keep putting it for in and this because I don't really want to. You didn't want to spend the money. I didn't want to spend the money on it. We'll see, we'll see. I don't know. Maybe it's something I'll do in the future, but I or maybe a kid will do a minimal version of that and make you happy. Yeah. I also do not have fresh flowers everywhere in the other worlds lovely though, but we do have a lot in the new yard, and my husband has totally developed a hobby of planting trees and flowers. He's gone like full on gentleman farmer here, you know, in terms of his botanical knowledge and stuff. So I think we're going to reap the benefits of this over time, as all these new shrubs and trees and plants keep growing and flowering and stuff. So that's great. And then I had said start traveling with the big kids, and yeah, we went to Paris over spring break, which was quite a bit of fun. And I had not booked that when we did our thing in December, so that was something that came out of them. We had a lot of fun you know. I also did some other things, like individually with the big kids, you know, and I continuing to spend time with them is a big goal because I want them to still talk with me, enjoy hanging out with me and all that. Yes, and we recognize the years where they're actually living at home start to kind of dwindle rapidly all of a sudden. Yeah, yeah, all right, Well we have just a few other highlights. I'll try not to repeat stuff we did. My kids went to sleep away camp for the first time. That was exciting. They're not going back. They had a great time. They decided they're ready to move on. I'm cool with it. So that was interesting. I changed my job like crazy. We've already talked about that. The BLPA launch went well. I would say our travel highlight was that we went to Universal Studios along with Amelia Island and that was just a lovely trip this summer. Although I think our twenty I'm hoping our twenty twenty two travel highlight will actually be after this episode airs, which is our ski trip that we're planning during Christmas week, So stay tuned for a report on that because it's going to be quite the adventure, and then I had a lessons learned category, and I will say transitions can take a long time, and if you decide you want to change things in your work life or your home life, just be prepared for a longer road than you might desire, because once you get excited about the new reality, you want it to happen. But so many parts have to fall into place for these things to happen in a calm and logical manner. So I'm speaking about my residency role, and you know, in retrospect, I'm glad that we took the time to make sure that the program is really really well taken care of and they are thriving under the leadership of the new program directors, so it ended up working out. And then also just that I always feel like I'm relearning this, but seeking out expert services is almost always worthwhile when you're struggling either for mental health related issues, for actual health related issues, for things like graphic design, or using all the millions of apps that are in the kind of entrepreneurial world these days, Like I can't do all that myself. I shouldn't because I'm not going to do a good job. So getting experts to help is great, and then it's also a way to support like other small businesses and I love to look for, you know, businesses owned by women or people of color and things like that. So yeah, it's great, Yeah, awesome, good things to you know, learn as we're reviewing what worked and didn't work in the year. Yeah, I say a couple of travel highlights. Well, Paris was obviously great, but sort of smaller ones. Going to Washington, d C. To see the cherry blossoms. This is something I just want to do every year now. And we went as a family on a weekend, but it wasn't quite perfect timing because they weren't fully in bloom yet. I kept watching the camera. There's this cherry blossom camera that's on the top of the Mandarin Oriental that looks out at the Jefferson Memorial, so you can see if they're blooming, and they were certainly blooming when we went on the weekend. But I knew that we're going to peek on Tuesday, and I went, well, I work for myself. I'm going to get on a train on Tuesday get down to Washington, d C. And I did. I walked around for like three hours and then got on a train and came back. You know, it was pretty straightforward. I think I would have done it for a meeting, Like if I had a meeting in Washington, d C. I would have taken the train down and come back. So why not do it for this so, you know, remind myself that I can do stuff like that. We did a wonderful leaf peeping trip that was on my review. We do this most years. Go see my brother in the fall and he has some gorgeous upstate New York scenery. There. Surprising highlight for me is that I have now driven in Manhattan. And I lived in Manhattan for nine years, and yet I never drove because I don't know, I just the whole thing seemed very terrifying to me. So I always, you know, if I had to leave, I was taking some you know, a cab out of the city or something we were going with Michael or whatever. But it was just it's now even living out of the city. I've been in, you know, I'm sure dozens of times since we left, and I was always taking the train or taking a car service or Michael was driving. And then there were a couple of things. This year that it just it was better for me to drive. You know, I was doing the videos and one of them was being filmed in Harlem and at a restaurant there, and so it was gonna be hard to get there and then get to the places north of the city that I was needing to film the rest of the day. So I'm like, Okay, I will just drive, and I did, and it was fine. I went over the GWB without incident, and so emboldened by that. When Jasper and I went in for his kind of Mommy day we did went to see Harry Potter and The Curse Child in August. I drove in parked for the night. You know, we took subway when cabs and whatever walked around on to see stuff while we were there, but then left with the car again and you know, drove in and out of the Lincoln Tunnel just fine. It worked. So I feel like I have like grown up in a way that as a driver that I had had not before. So yeah, I feel like you should get a special badge on your driver, a special badge, a driving badge, because I didn't. I mean, I got my license when I was sixteen, but then I didn't really ever drive until we moved to the Burbs when I was you know what, I was like thirty two. Yeah, so it was it was not something i'd really done, so I had to kind of relearn to drive at age thirty two. And then, you know, I've slowly been building up my confidence. Of course, now I drive all the time with the kids. But still it's a highlight. Just lots of people know, I do these TBT scorecards every week that I say, if I've been following the rules in tranquility by Tuesday, and that's been good. I've been mostly sticking with it, which is a highlight. Lots more walks, more piano playings, more observing of the bedtime. But I also want to give a shout out for all the little adventures that I had in the course of the year, just like random stuff like taking my kids to this wolf sanctuary in Pennsylvania, are going ice skating, so yay on that, And then you know, I guess finally we all just managing five kids in four schools surviving the first semester of that. There should be a badge for that too. There should be a badge for that too. The sheer logistics of our lives right now are It's complex. The three ring circus metaphor is apt, and I am trying to think of myself as the ring master, right and I have directed like in one ring, people are like driving motorbikes, like six motorbikes around a dark sphere, all around each other. And in another one there's like lions leaping through hoops, and then in another one somebody's like on a tight rope and making sure that they don't fall off. But you know, it's all mostly working as a good circus should, and so I'm trying to kind of appreciate that, give myself appropriate pats on the back, and shout out to others too. But it's like I would like to make it even more that it can run with a little bit less of my involvement. So that is a goal maybe for the new year, what we can talk about. But it's also been you know, just a challenging year with still having a toddler. We've had a lot of childcare sort of turmoil, which again is nobody's fault. You know, longtime blog readers know that our you know, longtime nanny had a very serious injury at the end of October that we've been sort of dealing with the thought of that and having temporary care and things. So it's it's just it's been a lot, but we've come through, so yay, yay. All right, Well we can get through our listener question, which this fairly minimal this time. Is there anything you plan on eliminating or saying no to in twenty twenty three. Well, I don't know. I like to think I'm pretty good at saying now. I guess it doesn't bug me as much to say no to things. I know some people really don't like to say no kind of. I don't know. I'm not an obliger, and I well, I don't know. Maybe I'm not very nice. I don't know what they It just doesn't bug me as much. I think to say no to things that I don't want to do, and so I would like to continue with that. And sometimes I think there's probably more things I should say yes to, but it's always kind of easier not to, how about you. Yeah, Mostly I just want to make sure, since I am now employed part time, to make sure that job really doesn't bleed too far around the edges of what it's supposed to be be which can be hard because I don't want to say no to patient demands, but at the same time, like I can't be adding in extra clinic slots if I'm paid for X number of sessions per week. So I think that is going to be something that I have to navigate carefully that I didn't used to as much because even though I was only half clinical, I was fully employed by that company, so the division wasn't so critical. But now I feel like I just do need to be careful in order to be fair to myself since there are so many other things I want to do with the rest of my time, both in my creative life and then just for me and my time with the kids. And obviously I took a very significant voluntary pay cut, but that hour's cut has to be proportional. So yeah, that's going to be my challenge for next year. Excellent, well, real quick. Love of the week. I mean a lot of these things we've been talking about have been love of the weeks. I guess one love of the week I have is having certain episodes that we do every single year. On some level, it makes it sound like it would be easier, like if we have things that we repeat, but I think it also makes us think about it more because we know it's coming up and so you have a longer lead time to start processing. And I know both of us were doing our year review kind of process over the past few weeks as we knew this episode was coming up, and we've been doing a lot of goal setting as we knew that episode is coming up shortly in the next few weeks. So yeah, it's good to have those because it makes you continually think about it and hopefully we continue to do them a little bit better. Yes, well, I will similarly add my level of the week would be our retreats because they were such a fun highlight this year, both to have some time for just protected creative work and to hang out with you and just to relax. So hopefully more of those in the year to come, and definitely worth a love of the week. Absolutely. Those are another love of the week for me too, a year on the review highlight. I guess neither of us actually really mentioned that in our travel but because you were local, but for me, I had never been to Key Largo before, so now I have there's many other keys we could check out. We could check out all the keys exactly all right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been doing our year in review for twenty twenty two. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.