Episode 75: When Flexibility Meets Reality: The Pros and Cons of Nontraditional Schedules
ITUNES | SPOTIFY
Have you ever looked at another working mom's schedule and wondered how they do it? In this episode, my dear friend and college roommate Rachel joins me to talk about what life looks like 16 years into running her own independent piano studio while raising two daughters and managing a nontraditional work schedule that flips the typical 9-5 on its head.We talk about:
What a “typical” day looks like when your workday starts at 3 p.m.
How she manages her studio, family, and home life (and what her students think she does “all day”)
Setting boundaries when you’re self-employed and work from home
Sharing calendars, coordinating schedules, and staying connected as a family
The trade-offs and freedoms that come with unconventional work hours
Reconnecting with reading, creativity, and hobbies as your kids grow
Whether you’re a working mom with a flexible schedule, a creative entrepreneur, or simply curious about how other families make it all work, this conversation will have something for you. Tune in for real talk about work, family, music, and the balancing act so many of us are navigating — with a little nostalgia and laughter sprinkled in
links & resources mentioned in this episode:
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You are listening to the Life Coach for Working Moms podcast, the show where we are talking about what it actually takes to make life work as a working mom. I'm your host, Katelyn Denning, a full time working mom of three and a certified life and executive coach. I'm so glad you're here and I hope you enjoy this week's episode. .
Welcome back to another episode of the podcast
where I'm sitting down this season with some of the women who have inspired me, who are meaningful to me, who have impacted my working mom journey in one way or another, and this episode is no exception. I'm sitting down with my college. Roommate Rachel. We have quite a shared history together,
which she does a great job of telling the story of we have stayed close all of these years despite not living in the same city anymore. And Rachel is the owner of an independent piano studio. And so we get into what it looks like for her day to day when you do not work a nine to five job. She starts her days at three o'clock teaching students when her girls are coming home from school. And I think ultimately what I realized through our conversation is that all of our schedules have trade-offs.
There are pros and cons to the hours that each of us works, and it's really about making and owning your choices and then doing what you can to set yourself up to be successful in that schedule that you've chosen Rachel and I get into all of that, the benefits and the downsides to her schedule, how she shares calendars and responsibilities with her partner, parenting challenges and making time for hobbies. And we of course, reminisce a little bit about the good old days, so if you want to hear me date myself by remembering what life was like before Facebook, please by all means, listen all the way to the end.
I hope you enjoy this Very fun, very heartfelt conversation with my good friend Rachel.
Hi, Rachel. Welcome to the podcast.
Thank you for having me.
I'm so excited to have you here. Before we get into it, why don't you give us a little introduction, tell us who you are, what you do, what your family life looks like, all of that fun stuff.
Sure. Well, I feel like we need to go back a little bit. Mm-hmm.
Because you and I have a little shared history and I kind of feel like you're part of my origin story, so I will just take it a little bit, you know, back a little bit farther. I love that. So, Caitlin and I were college roommates our freshman year at a music conservatory. And summer after freshman year, we decided to move into an apartment together in town near school.
And, , we needed a truck to haul our stuff from our respective parents' houses, , down to our apartment. And Katelyn said, I know a guy, , from high school, he's home. He can come down. , and that is how I met my now husband, Jared. So Katelyn, I think you went to high school together, is that right?
And, and junior high or middle school. Okay. That's what I thought.
That's what I thought. I thought you've known him for even longer.
I know. I've known my, my college roommate's husband since I was in the sixth grade.
Yes. Yeah. So the rest is history. , after college, Katelyn went into the workforce. I went to school a little bit longer, and then after I finished grad school, I started my independent piano studio, which I've had for about 16 years now.
So I'm a private piano instructor, and I also freelance as a pianist for events, et cetera.
We have two kids. , we have daughters who are almost eight and almost 11.
I love that you shared all of that, and this time of year we're a little bit passed back to school, but it's still fall and I will never not associate you with our purple floral bedspreads.
If any of you ever watched Gilmore Girls, Rory Gilmore had the same bedspread and we felt so special to match her in that way. But we had, yeah, we did. The whole potluck roommate. I didn't know Rachel. She didn't know me. I knew she was a piano major. I was a voice major. If any of you didn't know that.
I went to school for music back in the day and we decided to go shopping for our dorm room so we could match and meet each other. And the rest is history.
Absolutely.
I love it. So this is fun for me because I obviously know from my own personal experience of taking piano lessons as a kid growing up, my children now take piano lessons.
So I think I maybe have an idea of what your days look like, but I'm actually not positive, so I'm so curious. I feel like this is the first time I've ever sat down to really get into the nitty gritty with you. . And I'm curious if my vision matches with your reality or not,
so Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I, I did have a student once come to a lesson and she was like, what do you do all day? 'cause you know, she knows what my, my teaching schedule is like, but there are a lot of other unaccounted for hours during the day. And I, I basically said, I can't remember if I had kids yet at the time, but I basically said, I do all the things that your parents do.
After work, except I just do it before work. So I have a typical day. It just, my hours are kind of flipped. , but now that I have two kids who are in school all day, , our day starts pretty early. We are up between six and six 30. Jared is out the door by six 30. The bus comes at 7 0 8, so the girls are walking out the door by seven.
Wow. Um, my, yeah, my oldest is in safety patrol this year, so every other week she's on duty, which means I drive the girls to school and we get to leave the house at. Seven 15, which feels so luxurious. Wait, what is Safety
Patrol? What does that mean? What does she do?
So, so there are plenty of kids that like walk and bike to school, and so the safety patrol is the fifth graders, stand out with their flags and make sure that they're crossing guard basically.
I love that.
So it's a win-win for everyone because , she enjoys doing that. And also we get a little bit more time in the morning, so that's nice for everybody. So then once the kids are in school, I have my mornings to do a, I usually do a mix of things. It's, I try to get a workout in. I'm doing administrative work for the studio.
I'm lesson planning for the day. I'm following up with lessons from before. You know, if there's something I need to prepare for this student for next week, if I have a gig to prepare for, I'm practicing. , I try to get a little bit of dinner prep in during the day so that when Jared gets home and the girls, get all that stuff done.
So there's not like an exact schedule, but those are the things that I am doing before two 30 when the kids get home from school and they ride the bus home.
Okay, so that sort of is what I would've imagined and I love how you describe, I can't believe one that that student asked that.
I love that. What do you do all day? But it does make sense that for any of us who work a more traditional nine to five. No one wonders what you do in the evenings. You are making dinner. Yeah, you're maybe doing a workout. You're tidying up around the house. You're maybe running errands. You're getting the things done that you couldn't do while you were working all day.
And so you are just working through the evenings when most of us are coming home and doing those things, and so you're just doing them during the day and without kids around, which at least now in this season, I'm sure that looked very different when they were young.
It did. It did. It's was like a whole new world when the youngest went to kindergarten because she did all day kindergarten, and I was like, well, what am I even gonna do with myself now?
Yeah. I mean, it was the
same things, but just I had, I had more flexibility.
Right. So what time do you typically start teaching and are you teaching all nights of the week? Only certain nights of the week. I have so many questions in about like extracurriculars and how does all of that work
absolutely. Yeah. So I teach Monday through Thursday. I typically start between three and four in the afternoon, and I go until like 7 15, 7 30. Okay. Um, I could start earlier in the day, but I like to see my kids when they get home at two 30. , they don't have access to the piano after I start teaching.
So oftentimes it's, Hey, we're gonna get some practicing in. You can't chill just yet, or you can chill and have a snack really quick. And then we're gonna hit the piano practice. Or, , they have a keyboard upstairs where sometimes I send them upstairs to, to do whatever their assignment is for that time.
So I get to see them, we chat, have a snack, do some piano. I start teaching and then I'm trying not to work. Too late sometimes. I have high school students who, you know, they can't get to piano until 7:00 PM seven 30, and so I try to limit that. Like usually I'll have one night a week where I go pretty late, but I try not to have that happen the entire week.
And then even before I had kids, I left Friday as basically an administrative day.
Okay.
So any catching up, running errands, buying music, just like administrative, non-teaching things that still need to get done for my business.
Yeah. Even as a coach I think that is a question of like, what do you do when you're not in a session with a client or when you're not at the piano with a student?
And I think it's easy to forget that there is so much other prep that we are doing, not just to, to better ourselves as. The instructor or as the coach to be able to show up to a session or a lesson prepared and thinking about what's next, and doing the research in my case, or buying the music or thinking about it.
But then there's also a lot that just has to happen for the business too. So, yes, I'm only seeing clients during these hours on these days, but I'm working way more than that, as are you. Right.
Right. When you're self-employed, I mean you're the entire C-suite, but then you're also janitorial staff, et cetera.
Right. So we're we're all the things.
Right. It was interesting, we, I've shared this before, I think on the podcast, but we are with a new or piano teacher. We've been with her for maybe six months. We just had our first recital with her a few weeks ago. It went really well and we met her husband for the first time and we're talking with him afterward and he made a comment.
He said, oh, I know all of these songs that all the students play today by heart. And we were like, really? And he said, oh yeah, Lulu plays them all the time. She, she plays these songs to figure out, you know, what is the fingering or what am I gonna teach next? Or how am I gonna challenge them? So he said. I knew everything.
I hear it all the time.
I think, I think Jared could say the exact , same thing. He's like, oh, so-and-so's playing bad. Like, I haven't heard that one in a while. Or, or a piece will come up and he's like, uh, this piece again. And I was like. No one's played this piece for like five years.
Like it wasn't, that wasn't enough of, obviously it was not enough of a break from that particular, sorry. Yeah,
sorry. Oh, I love that. So you get to spend, I love that you've designed it that way, that you get to spend a little bit of time with them. I also am chuckling that you're like, they have to get their piano practicing in before the students come in.
You're probably much better at that than I am with my kids right now. So then what do they do while you're teaching and what time does Jared come home? And I'm sure that looks different now that they're a little bit older than maybe it did when they were younger.
Yes. So one of the reasons that Jared is out the door by six 30 is so that he can be home by three-ish.
Okay. In order to take on being. Dad chauffeur dinner, all the afternoon extracurriculars. , and it used to be that he would still go to work early, come home around that like three o'clock hour he would go do a workout and then he would take on dad duties. , this past school year, he's actually been coming home like halfway through the day and finishing the rest of his workday remotely.
Oh, okay. So
he'll go to work in the morning. He liked being in the office. Since COVID, most of his coworkers have gone remote. He's one of the few who actually continued to go to the office because, I mean, I was at home all the time. The kids were little and at home all the time. So he was like, I'm going to the office.
Yeah. But lately he's been taking advantage of being able to come home partway through the day. If there's a meeting or a call that he has to take, he's got a little home office that he can do things remotely. If he needs to. But other than that, he, fortunately for both of us, has a little bit of flexibility as well to be able to start and end work as early as that is.
You know, the kids have X, Y, Z activities. He's usually the person who takes on all of that. Um, if there's a late practice like softball practice ends at eight, I pick up that sort of thing. So I'll do what I can when I can. If there's an afterschool activity that ends at three 30 before I start teaching, I'll go do the pickup for that.
So it just depends, but.
Yeah. For the most
part it's him.
Okay. And so has he done that for a long time? Was there a season where you did anything different? How has it changed over the years from when they were pretty young? I
think for the most part, he has always gone in early and come home earlier, just just because that's.
That's just worked better for him. I think he liked when everyone was going to the office. For him. He liked being at the office when it was quieter as opposed to more chaotic. So , I think that was just like a rhythm that he got into just in general. We did have more help to bridge the gap when the kids were really little.
Like right now it's fine if they, you know, do things independently, make their own snack, . But when they were really young or , when they were first born, my mom lives in town and so she was the one who was at our house pretty much daily. She would bridge that gap between. You know, when Jared would be coming home, taking care of the kids until he was ready to fully, take over.
Yeah. I talked previously of a client who. Has a very similar schedule to Jared and flexes to do very early and be done by three, to be able to pick up the kids after school. , and I love that that's an option for people where they can make it work and it can be really great and it has its own challenges as well.
Yeah, I don't know if Jared ever feels this, but. The, the women that I've talked to who have that flex schedule can be really hard to shut it down at that three or three 30 because it is such an odd time. Everyone else is still working and, you know, how do you draw that boundary of I'm not available for a meeting at that time.
Right. I've already put in my time early this morning before you were even probably awake. , so it's great, but it, I'm sure it's also something you always have to navigate.
He is better, I think about setting those boundaries. And I think that's part of the reason that he continued to go to the office even while everyone was working remotely, like through COVID, as soon as the office opened, backed up, he was back so that he could be done with work, come home and not be taking care of work.
And there was a time when he would be on call for certain things and so he kind of did have to. Have his phone near him and take calls in the middle of stuff. So he's experienced that as well. , but I think, once the call is over or the thing is over, he'll take care of what he needs to, and then he's pretty good about like, we're gonna be done now.
Yeah. So I kind of take that cue from him of, you know. Yeah, when you work from home, you have to decide like, oh, you get a late night text from a parent with a scheduling issue and it's like, you don't have to respond right away. You can wait until your business hour, you know, whenever that is.
'cause that's always, it's always gonna be happening, right? You're always gonna be getting emails and questions and texts , and setting those boundaries is really important when you are self-employed. Work from home.
Yeah, that's, that's so true. I mean, it sounds like a pretty well-oiled machine and obviously you've had the studio for a long time now.
This has been your schedule, your life for a long time. Is there anything that you feel like is a challenge about working the hours that you do? Or is it just all you've known?
, I think, I think that's. I have always done this. It's always been how it's been. Sometimes I do wish that we had like that free afternoon, and sometimes when the schedule changes and that happens, I'm like, oh, it's so nice.
, we're eating dinner at six o'clock. Like, what, what is this? , but the kids have their own schedules now too, and so sometimes even that is not a possibility, you know, it's like, oh, I've got a, I got a couple cancellations. I'm done at five o'clock. But it's like, oh, she's got softball practice. So.
We're still eating dinner late. So I mean, it just, it is what it is. , it is challenging to have this sort of, they're home and I'm not available and they're not available and I'm home. It's, it is a little bit tricky.
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All right, let's get back to the episode.
I.
Did you ever think about not continuing to teach after the girls were born? Was that. Ever a consideration or was it just like, how do I make this work with a baby at home because I was made to teach and I'm always gonna have a studio?
Yeah, I think it was more how am I gonna make this work? I mean, I had my mom and that was a big thing.
I have colleagues who have to work a little bit more carefully with their schedules because they're paying for childcare, I had that built in system, which is really nice. That allowed me to continue professionally. I could still be active in my local music teacher's organization. I was chairing big events like through the births of both my, both my kids.
I was like, I remember I was president of that organization when the youngest was born. That sort of thing. So I, I am fortunate to have had a lot of that help to be able to still do. What I went to school for for so long, you know what I love doing. , so it never crossed my mind to be like, I should do something else.
Although sometimes I feel like maybe I should do something, do something else with a, little bit of a different schedule. But I, I like what I do and I like that I can make it work, even though it is a little bit off kilter. Yeah, from a typical schedule,
sure. I don't know. When I listen to you talk through your schedule, what comes up for me is that I think sometimes when you are accustomed to, working at maybe a traditional office nine to five, or if you are self-employed and you create your own hours or I don't know, you're working some other scenario, maybe shift work.
We all think, oh, it would be so much easier. Wouldn't that be nice? Like, wouldn't it be nice to be at home in your house without your kids all day and be able to work out or go run errands? Or you might be thinking, wouldn't it be nice to have dinner together as a family at six o'clock?
And I think it just shows that there are pros and cons to all of our schedules and. We just have to design our days as best we can to accommodate what works and that everybody has challenges, right? For sure. Yes. There are parts, parts of your schedule that sound really great, and then there are parts of it where I'm like, oh, that, that would be tough or that would be a big adjustment for me and maybe I don't want that as much as I thought.
Who knows? But it doesn't matter really what your hours are. There's, there's always a give and take.
Yeah. Yeah. And I'm glad to be able to do things like I can volunteer for class parties, I can chaperone school field trips 'cause those are happening during the day. If I do need to reschedule something that is within those hours, it's a lot easier to do than evening.
, my Tuesday mornings, I actually have several adult students who come. So that I do have a morning of teaching in there, but I'm able to do those things that would be harder for someone who did have that nine to five job. On the flip side, I miss every single Girl Scout meeting because it's always on a Monday night when I'm teaching.
I, I went to the bridging ceremony where she went from Daisy to brownie. I don't really know any of the other moms. That's the right, that's the other downside. Like I know everybody's faces, but it's, you know, that's something that I don't get to do, but I, try to get to as much as I can.
Yeah, well, normally I ask people, I love to know what morning routines are, but you guys are up so early. It's probably just how do we get out the door as quickly and efficiently as possible,
yeah, so my oldest at this point packs her own lunch, so she, you know, that she took that off my plate, which is good.
Love it. Um, and we're trying to get the younger one having more responsibility. Like, you can fill your water bottle, you can pack your snack. We haven't quite gotten there yet, but I know we're, we're, we're trying. So, , yeah, just making sure that they get out of bed. Usually it's a, Hey, this is the weather today.
You have gym today. Make sure you wear your sneakers and not your Crocs to school. That sort of thing. They're low maintenance enough that it's not, not too bad. We're not like spending tons of time trying to do hair or pick out outfits or that sort of thing.
So,
oh, I wish that were the case. Outfits are a whole thing. My, my strategy right now is to. We're spending a little bit of time as we can in this season, , to try on clothes and make outfits so that my daughter doesn't come in and ask every morning, what should I wear? I don't know what to wear. I'm like, if we just, we could just decide these in advance and you have your go-to outfits.
She was like, okay, I am willing to try that. So it's still like pulling
teeth. Does she pick 'em out like the night before?
No. No. And she changes her outfits like three, four times in the morning. We don't start school till nine 10, so actually she has the time. Again, this whole grass is greener part. I don't wanna wake up as early as you do with all of my kids, but we wouldn't have all of this time that allows her to,
I don't know what to wear. I'm like, if we had to be out the door, you would just have to put clothes on and leave.
Right.
So, I don't know. Anyway,
I just, you, you talking about putting outfits together made me think of your blog from back in the day where you, was it like 30 and 30? Like you're gonna make 30 outfits in 30 days, but you're, it was like a capsule wardrobe thing.
And I'd always be checking to see like, oh, what'd she do this time? Yep. So your daughter should , she can't appreciate it now, but maybe someday she'll appreciate, like my mom knew what she was talking about, even though I didn't wanna listen to her at the time.
Right. I'll pull up the archives, , and show her.
Yeah, those were some pretty great outfits. I mean, you get really creative when you have. Those limited wardrobes. So yeah, maybe I was onto something and that's what we need to do.
There you go. There you go. You could take pictures, you could make it a whole thing. She could probably get into that.
You could put it, we could do Polaroids and put it in an album.
Actually, that's a great idea. Let's do it. Done. Yes.
She would probably enjoy that. Like what can we think of next?
Yeah, she's very into that. .
Yeah. Um, it's gonna morph into the clueless where she like clicks on the outfit generator. Right. I
forgot about that. Oh, I love it. Yes. It's kind of scary to see some of our traits come out in our children sometimes for better or worse again.
, I wanted to ask about calendar management. So if you are largely unavailable, right? You're focused on your students in the evenings, Jared is stepping in to. Run kids to extracurriculars, take care of all of that. How do the two of you manage school things?
, evening activities, or if you, accompany and play gigs, like you said, some of those probably fall onto the calendar where the girls have other things now. I'm sure Jared has his own stuff happening also. What does that look like? I'm always curious how people share that.
So we have a shared Google calendar.
Nothing fancy. , he has access to my teaching schedule, so I have a studio management website where you can sync the calendar from that . And so he has access to that. He can see exactly what my schedule is, which is great because sometimes my schedule will change last minute. I, cancellations or other things happening so he can always see what I'm doing.
Workwise, I put all of my gigs and all things on there, the kids' activities all go on there. We're fortunate that for some of the girls sports things, you, we can also sync the calendar to our phone. So if something changes. That changes on the calendar, and we don't have to go in and do anything with that.
So that's a, that's a big help for both of us. We also will put like tasks on there, so even if it's not time related, it goes on the calendar. That's like, Hey, make sure you do this appointment, or let's make sure we do X, Y, Z. And then beyond that. It's just a lot of communication. So we're either talking to each other face to face, we send a text, he'll send me an email with forwarding something or other like, Hey, look at this, because we were talking about that one thing.
So it really is just like a lot of regular communication in addition to the calendar.
. Okay. I'm gonna ask something just because it comes up a lot. Has Jared always naturally managed a calendar well? , was that a learning curve for the both of you to communicate in that way? Has it maybe been a little bit more natural because of your hours always having been this kind of different set of hours?
Sure. I think before there wasn't as much like rigorous, like he didn't always have access to that calendar. He didn't need it. He would just say, what time are you done tonight? And I would, I would say, what time it was,
we didn't have a lot of kid activities to. Jenga into there and make sure we're working. So it was a lot more casual as far as making our schedules work together. But now that the kids have a lot more extracurriculars, we've gotten to be a lot more, and it was kind of like a natural evolution, right? It was just little by little, this activity, this activity, this activity.
So it kind of grew from there. It wasn't like a big dump of , suddenly we go from nothing to a huge overload of stuff. So, um, it, it was a natural process. Fortunately, yeah. Okay. Uh, to get, to get used to that.
Communication has. Been evolving. You know, we have known each other since we were 19. So we basically have grown up together. Our communication styles, our conflict resolution styles are different. , and so even if it's not attached to like our schedule necessarily, being able to communicate with each other effectively at this stage of our relationship and at this stage of being parents, , you know, that obviously has been a, a long process.
To go to where we are now.
Yeah. Yeah. Do the girls have visibility into the calendar as well? Is that a part of this? If , you are both managing a Google calendar, is there anything that's like visible in the house where they know what's happening when
Yeah. We have a wall calendar on the side of the fridge that I try to keep pretty updated.
With what's going on. They can see that My oldest now has like a little planner with a calendar in it, and she sometimes comes to me, 'cause she's always saying, I wanna play with so and so, let's schedule a da, da da. And of course I'm like the mom who's like, no, no, no, we have this, we have this. So she came to me the other day and with her calendar and was like, okay, what's going on in October?
And so I, I looked at the calendar, I was like, these are all the things that we have. So if we're trying to schedule a, a sleepover or play date or whatever it is with such and such friend, like you can be looking at these things as well. So we are headed in that direction. She doesn't really have access to like our online calendar, but she's got a smart watch, so we're headed in that direction.
I think as she gets older of . Keeping track of the family calendar. I do have a middle school student. He's in sixth grade this year and he was just telling me about, , the start of his school year and he's like, we had to do a whole thing with our Google calendars. I was like, oh really? Tell me, tell me more.
Because it's his dad, his mom and him. All have their phones and they're all syncing their schedules together, and so he's telling me about this whole process. So I see us possibly heading in that direction. I'm like, you are a very responsible sixth grader to be able to, keep track of those things and
yeah, I was
impressed.
Yes. It's interesting, my oldest is sixth grade. He will transition up to here in our district. It's a high school starting at seventh grade. I've heard rumors that they do a class for all incoming seventh graders on time , and homework management, right? All those executive function skills, and he, , was a little upset the other night.
He had this big homework assignment due that he'd procrastinated a little bit on, and he said, I just feel like I'm not very good at managing my time. I have piano, I have trumpet, I have homework. I have. And I was like, okay. Yeah. Well, the good news is you can learn. We can practice. And so I was like, it's my moment to shine.
You know, let me teach you, let me show you, but what baby steps? , and, oh, I know what he said. He said, I don't feel like I'm very good at managing my time. I feel like I read too much. He's huge reader. I mean, if you can't find Henry, yeah, look around. He's somewhere with a book.
And so we decided that. Don't wanna give up reading. Absolutely not. That's so important. And maybe after school it is nice to come home and read. You decompress a little bit. He wants to read before bed. I said that's fine. I said, what about in the morning again, we have all this extra time in the morning.
Maybe instead of reading in the morning while your brain is fresh, you could sit down and get some of that homework done. And wouldn't you know. Every morning this week he sat down with his breakfast and done a page of his homework, and I was like, all right, we can do this.
That's awesome.
Yeah, so my oldest is going to middle school next year, and her schedule will change. The middle school starts later, and so I'm thinking, and she's gonna come home later obviously, and try, I'm trying to think of how that is gonna affect my. Teaching schedule.
Um, '
cause our routine now is come home, have a snack, do piano, and then whatever else it is you need to do before your extracurriculars.
But I'm thinking next year she may need to do that piano practice in the morning time, which I actually look forward to because she always does a lot better. In the morning, you know, your brain is fresh, so I'm hoping that that is something that we can make a smooth transition into.
, and tell Henry he's not alone with, , wanting to read all the time. I feel like that's, that's something that I had to make a big adjustment for when I became a mom because I used to be like a binge reader. Like before we were binging TV shows, I would binge a book. I would love to just sit. Read the whole thing or read half the book or stay up way too late.
I just loved getting so immersed in that. And then once I had kids, I was like, well, I can't do that anymore. Just I don't have the time, and my brain is not in that space anymore. Yeah. So I just, I stopped reading completely. I didn't pick up any books really at all, and it's only been in the last few years that I was like, okay.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna finally read a book again and I think I read maybe like four books that year and I was so proud of myself. Yeah. And then the next year I read, I read like eight or 10 books and I was like, oh my gosh, this feels so good. , so yeah, it's something that you can work into. And for me it's audio books.
That's really the big way that I get. A lot of reading in, although I am a lot better now about just like, oh, I can just enjoy opening. Mm-hmm. Opening a physical book from the library like I used to. Oh,
So he's
not the only one.
Yeah. It was like, maybe I'm reading too much. I know. I, I very similar to you.
I still do occasionally binge a book while my life goes up in flames around me, and the kids are like, hello, mom. I'm like, don't talk to me right now. This book is so good. I have to finish it.
Actually, Rachel got me into this year. A virtual book club to read some different books. What do we call it? What's it called?
Oh, it's the governor Sharon McMahon's, governor's Insider Book Club. And so the books that we typically read are, , they're narrative nonfiction. So about things that actually happened, but they're told in a more compelling way. , memoir, , sometimes they're like thought books. Kinda like an Adam Grant style.
Yep. Something. , we did do a little bit of historical fiction, like we read Kristin Hannah's the women this semester. This semester we have a memoir, so Lake a. , I listened to that on audiobook. She narrates it herself. It's beautiful. Okay. It's a beautiful book.
Be prepared. I I'll get to it.
Be prepared to be emotional.
Oh, great. It's FYI. , and then the other one is Amy Coney Barrett's book called Listening to the Law, which, , was a little controversial for some people who may or may not agree with her, side of the political spectrum. But a lot of people went into it saying like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to learn something.
I'm gonna try to. Here, or whatever it was. I haven't, I'm partway through listening to the book. They just had the meeting with her recently. I have, I'm, I will finish the book first and then I will catch up. That's the nice thing about this, , kind of asynchronous book club is you can kind of choose your own pace for things.
I think that's what intrigued me about it but that she really does try to curate a mix of books.
. That you may not align with or agree with or have some preconceived notions about going in, and can we still create conversation about that? That debate is healthy and good, and disagreement can be productive. . Again, I'm not, I've not dabbled in it very much yet since I joined. I like that it's asynchronous right now.
, I need a little bit more flexibility in my life, but, , I like to be challenged to read some different things than I would normally pick up on my own. And sometimes it is nice to just have somebody tell you. What to read, who makes so many decisions as it is. And I could easily default into just all romance and all fantasy.
, and so it's nice to have someone say, Hey, these are the books we're gonna read this quarter and you're gonna get to hear from the authors and we're gonna have discussion about it or debate about it. And I think that's interesting.
I'm totally with you on picking different genres. 'cause I do love, like the romance novel and the romantic comedy.
Or the romantic drama, but to, to pick up a memoir or a historical fiction that I wouldn't necessarily think to pick up. , just yeah, really some really interesting things or historical things as well that I wouldn't necessarily be like, okay, let's the, what was the first one that I did it? They became a movie.
, oh, it was the Leonardo DiCaprio.
Oh, to kill a, a flower. Moon. Killers of the flower. Moon.
Thank you. You got me there. You got me there.
It was like, I can see the cover. Me too. In my mind, I haven't read that. Yes. Killers of the
Flower Moon. I ne I never would've picked up a David Grand. , book like that.
And I think you read the
Oh, I
read, I did read the Wage, read the Wager.
I mean, I enjoyed it again, I was glad I read it, but Oh, that was, it was hard to get through.
Yeah, it was a heavy, it was definitely a heavy book and, you know, for a Martin Scorsese film, you always think it's very like dark and very graphic, but honestly it kind of paled in comparison to like the actual historical events, which is wild.
So just learning those things about our, our history that I never would've thought to.
Yeah.
So kind of broadening our horizons here.
I love that. Yeah. I love that. We can talk about books and, we haven't even talked about knitting, but you and I could talk about knitting for a long time.
I think we have a healthy number of hobbies and that's good. And I think it's good for our kids to see as well.
Yeah, I do. I do think that's good. I did have a mom ask me once, she's like, what is it like to have your passion be your job? Like the thing that you love to do all the time, and then it's work.
Like, what is that like? And I was like, I, I think it's okay because I think there's enough variety to my job. Like I don't just teach, I don't just perform, I do a number of things that incorporates various facets of my skills. I'm active in my music teacher's organization, which is largely . A social and plan, like planning events, that's a whole different facet of skills as well.
Getting into professional development things and connecting with other teachers. My job is pretty solitary, so that's another avenue that I like to travel down. Yeah. , and , just being able to do, do other things outside that, , outside work.
Yeah, I agree. It helps
to have that, helps to have that balance.
So I'm like, okay. I haven't, I haven't burnt out yet. I, I still feel pretty good right now.
Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I wish my kids could take piano from you. Me too. That's what I wish.
Yeah, I should tell every, everyone needs to know this. Maybe sometime you could come on and teach a class on letter writing because you write, Rachel writes. The letters that you read about, like in historical fiction where you're like, gosh, people just really knew how to write a in depth, thoughtful, intentional letter, those.
If you can imagine it, and she has the most beautiful handwriting, those are the letters that Rachel sends, and every time I get one, I think I should sit down and dissect this. How does she do this? I wanna be able to write like you. So if you ever do burnout on teaching piano, maybe you can teach the art of.
Letter writing.
That's so funny. I did grow up as a pen pal. My family moved around when we weren't living in Ohio, we were living in different countries. And so I kept a few pen pals. , and I think the first time I contacted you, the first time I found out you were gonna be my roommate, I pulled out a piece of black.
Yes. Notebook paper. Took out my sparkly gel pens. This was what, 2003? Yep. Yep. , and I wrote you a nice little letter about , Hey, we're gonna be roommates. Here's my number or whatever. Let's get together. And that was, before we did the let's go to Bed Bath and Beyond and get , our dorm stuff.
I wrote Katelyn a letter. Yeah. And mailed it in the mail. 'cause I didn't have a phone, I don't think.
I, I might have, but I mean, texting was not really a thing. Was not a thing. Yeah. There was no Facebook. Oh gosh. We sound old. We should cut this part out. Yeah, and so I. Even if we don't get to speak as often as we did when we were living in the same dorm or apartment, , or traveling together before kids.
I love getting a letter from you. And that makes up for all of the other times that we don't speak.
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for. Sharing for chatting with me. It was so fun to get a glimpse into a different day than I think what a lot of us think of and we think of a working parent or working mom, and I love what you've set up for your family and to be able to do what you do so well for all of these years.
Thank you. This was so fun. I just wanna bask in this moment actually, because I still remember when I was about to give birth to my oldest and you were just ahead of me by a few months. Like you had had your oldest just, just a few months before and . I had either just given birth or right about to, and you had sent me a letter that was basically like.
I'm your postpartum cheerleader. Like Get ready. It's gonna be amazing, but it's also gonna be extremely painful and difficult. And you're gonna go through all the things, but you're not alone. And I'm gonna hold your hand through it from afar. We're going through this together kind of thing. And that was like the foreshadowing, right?
Yeah. Of what is now. And I remember. You emailing me and a couple other people to be like, okay, I'm gonna do this thing. What should we call it? To what now? Mother Nurture. Yeah. , so I feel like this is like a really awesome full circle moment. , I've always cheered for you, so big as you have taken on this endeavor and then turned it into a career change.
So I'm super proud of you. I'm so happy to support you in any way. Chatting with you here is just like. The cherry on top.
Oh, thank you so much. I'm crying for you. Can't see. I have so many tears in my eyes. And get yourself a friend like Rachel, everybody. You need one. Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you for listening and as always, for being a part of this working mom community. You can find everything related to this episode in the show notes at themothernurture.com/podcast.
And don't forget to get your ticket to stress less this holiday, my annual holiday planning workshop that's coming up on November 6th, come plan your entire season with me so you can enjoy a slower, more intentional end to the year. Head to themothernurture.com/holiday to get signed up and I can't wait to plan with you.
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