Behind The Scenes: My Summer Schedule
My summer values are: spontaneity, leisure, freshness, presence, enjoyment
One of the most beautiful things about having your own reliable income source is that you don’t rely on trading your time for money. In the summer, that can translate to more fun, more spontaneity, and more quality time with the people you love.
Listen to find out how I’m managing my summer schedule in the latest podcast episode. It’s a behind-the-scenes look into how I’m balancing my business with a lighter summertime feel
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Full Show Notes (Transcript)…
Hey, risers. Welcome to episode 113 of Empathy Rising. Today is a bit of a behind-the-scenes episode, which I love to share with you guys every once in a while, showing you how I have really adjusted to being on summer break. We're about halfway through right now, a month into it. I think we get something like nine weeks for summer break here.
School starts pretty early in August. So at the time of recording, we're about halfway through. Summer is normally my favorite season. However, it is not my favorite season in the South. So it is our last summer here, which is exciting for me because I can't wait to get back west. I am just... that's where I belong.
I belong west of the Mississippi River. Somewhere very warm and very dry which is not here. It's very warm here, but it's not very dry. And it's just exciting and almost it's a little anxiety-provoking because every time we have a cross-country move, there's so many details and now we have kids and both kids will be in school and all of this stuff.
There's just more to do each time we move. I feel when it was just Josh and I, and we'd moved, we moved all the way from Alaska down to Georgia. The first time it was so simple, it was just so simple. And now there'll be two kids to enroll in school and two kids to do this.
And two kids' toys and two kids' clothes and let alone my stuff or any of the other things. So it's anxiety-provoking to think about moving, but this is also our last move with the army. This is the last time that we will relocate and then Josh will be retiring, which is also another anxiety-provoking change that's coming up.
As of recording, it's four years away, but when we move, it'll be three years to retirement. And it's just, it's really exciting, but it's also just a huge change. This is actually... this will be the second move since starting this podcast. If you have listened since the beginning, we're on our what, season three? Now we're in the middle of our third year. Then you'll hear that I will have moved twice since starting to record.
So that's the life of a military spouse and there'll be cross-country moves both times, potentially an international move. We wanted to move internationally this time. But it didn't happen. We ended up right back here in the south, our second time stationed at this duty station at this post.
Which, I don't know if I've ever told this story. So Josh came home one day when we were living in Texas and we were waiting on news. He had just gotten back. All month of October, he had been in California at a 30-day training and they were... this always happens to Josh. He's such a high performer and he does so well that they use him as an example a lot.
So his troop section of soldiers, his group of people that he's in charge of, had beaten a mission that very few soldiers do. I'm trying not to use too much military terminology because then I'll really lose you guys. Anyway, he had done really well in a mission and his command was going to send him back.
It's like you get punished for doing well. Command was going to send him back to show everybody else how to do well at this mission. And he was going to be gone another 30 days. And I wasn't happy with that. Logan was a little, he was real little then still a baby. And I was like, you are not going back to do another 30 days.
I was miserable. At the same time, we were working our move and we were planning to go to Washington state, which yes, rainy, but still Western. And I would have been very happy with that. And it is so funny because it was looking as if the bad news was going to be that Josh was going to go back to California for another 30 days back to back.
And the good news was looking like we were going to go to Washington. So it was like, okay. So Josh came home that day. We'd been waiting to hear. And he's I have good news and bad news. I was like, okay. And in my mind, I knew what the good news and bad news is going to be. And he's so which do you want first?
And I was like, I don't care. He says we'll start with the good news. The good news is I'm not going back to California for 30 days. And I was like, oh, yay. That's great. But it was the opposite of what I'd been expecting in my head. So then what's the bad news and man, you guys should have seen, he was, Josh was so braced for this conversation.
He knew how miserable I was going to be. And he said the bad news is we're going back to Fort Benning. I know it's like the bottom of my world fell out. And to be honest, it hasn't been terrible being back here. It's just, it's never been my place. And I took that really hard. I didn't want to go back to the same place again.
I never wanted to be at the same duty station twice. I thought if we have the chance to move all over the world and go places we never would have lived before, which is one of the good things about being in the army. I was like, why would we go to the same place twice? So part of that was, I was bummed to be repeating a duty station, and I was really bummed to be repeating this same duty station.
So the fact that we are on our way out is really exciting for me. I've been going on realtor.com. I don't even know where we're moving yet, but I've just been looking at houses. And at the time of recording the housing market is insane. It's insane everywhere, but in a couple of the markets that I'm looking at there, it's starting to slow down.
I'm noticing houses are on for 10 days, 14 days instead of 24 hours. So that's a good thing. Let's hope they continue to slow down, but by the time we end up moving. But just fantasizing. Like I'm looking at Vegas, wouldn't Vegas be so cool? Who wants an Empathy retreat or an Empathy Rising retreat in Vegas? Yes, please.
So I'm looking at Vegas. I'm looking at San Diego, which is a pipe dream. Colorado Springs would be great. We could end up right back in Texas. Since now we've like, I was going to say pop the cherry, which is terrible. Since now we've been to a duty station twice, we've been here twice, I'm like I don't care if we go back to the one we were just at in Texas, I enjoyed it there. I love the city. When I drive, it’s seven hours from home. But like when Josh drives, like nine hours from home. So it wasn't bad.
So we can definitely choose to go back there. What's neat is the army has changed things about the way that people move and we get this thing called a marketplace where it's basically a directory, so to speak of all the jobs that are available to us and we get to pick from that list and we get to select 10 from that list. And then they choose.
What we've always done is backchanneled. We've always called branch, which is the HR department of the army. And we've always backchannel had gone directly to the source and say, hey, we want to move here. Is there a job available? What can we do? And it's worked every single time, except for this time.
So the marketplace is going to be cool because it's complete transparency. Now we don't have to do that backchanneling. We get to see upfront the list of everything that's available, but I know myself and I'm going to find one of those jobs and I'm going to get my heart set on that job in that location and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And do we put it as our number one? Do we get strategic and put it as, like, our number four? There's all these things that now come into my mind of: What do we have to do to get this one job? So I'll be sharing a lot more about this in the Facebook group, doing some more behind the scenes.
If you want to hear and keep updated on our move, where we're going. What house we ended up picking how I'm going to decorate that house. Those types of things will be shared inside the Facebook group. So make sure that you're in our Empathy Rising community. If you'd like this behind-the-scenes kind of stuff.
So we will find out our options. Our marketplace will open in about two weeks. 30 days after we submit our top 10 list, then we'll find out where we're going and then we'll be leading next June of 2022. So there is some lead time here. I'm really jumping the gun, really getting excited, cause I don't want to be here anymore.
But so really we have about 11 months left here. Like I said, this is our last move with the army until retirement. So it's really three years of positioning ourselves three years of getting ourselves in the best position possible. And making longer-term plans for this big shift that's coming soon.
It's going to be a complete identity shift for Josh as he moves from soldier to civilian, right? He's been a soldier at this point for 16 years, but at retirement, it'll be 20 years. And that's been his identity. So that's going to be a big adjustment for him.
For me, I feel like I've been pulling away from that military spouse identity. Having this business has been huge for that. Having something of my own, something that I can identify with. And also now, we've bought a house, we don't live on the installation. We've moved up. They call it onto the economy, but we live in the civilian world in a civilian neighborhood.
Not every single one of our neighbors is a soldier. So we've started to make that transition. But over the next three years, we're going to be doing it even more gradually. And I've shared with you guys plenty of times that my big goal before retirement is to be able to build our house when we move back to Arizona in cash.
Now, this has set me up for some black and white thinking. I've worked through with my coach and my own therapist about this looming deadline four years from now on the calendar and things have to be just right and just so before that date. And the truth is if we end up carrying like a $100,000, $150,000 mortgage like, it's not going to be a big deal.
Moving back home to Arizona, houses are very much more than that. We bought our land at the end of 2020. We bought two acres in the mountains in Arizona and paid cash for that, which was fantastic. So this business has been getting us closer and closer to those goals. So the property is bought and paid for.
We own it out. We're actually going to go camping on our own property next time we go home, which is going to be fun. And so now these next three and a half years is about saving up my earnings so that when we do move home to Arizona, we're able to build that cash or that house in cash, or pretty damn near cover the whole thing with cash, carry a small mortgage. So those are my big plans. This is my why for this kind of thing.
The financial stability has always been my motivator. And we talked about this a while ago. Are you money motivated or impact motivated? I feel this is family of origin stuff and this is all kinds of stuff coming up, but I feel my main motivation for this business. I talked a little bit about the identity formation, having something that was mine, and not being just an army wife or a military spouse tagging along with her husband everywhere. So some identity formation for sure, but money motivation was my number one reason for starting this business. I feel as the financial security has come in.
I've gotten to the point where I can now start thinking about those impact goals. And I feel secure and stable enough to start thinking about, oh, what can I do? Can I do scholarships for Side Hustle?Can I do this? Can I do this thinking more about the impact side of things? So that's been a really fun shift that has come up, but what we started talking about this episode, this is what happens with behind-the-scenes episodes is I just start talking and just start going wherever they go.
Speaking of shifts, what I want to really talk about today is how my summer schedule has shifted and some intentional things that I've done for the summer, as well as some things that were ramifications of the shifts that I wasn't necessarily anticipating and how we're dealing with those.
Speaking of summer and the summer schedule, I think most all of us are looking for some sort of lightness during the summer. For me, when I think about summer (and this probably has to do with where I grew up). One of my previous students, alumni, and somebody I consider a good friend, and we chat often, she lives in the Midwest. And when she talks about summer, it's so different for her because literally it's like snow, snow, snow, snow, snow, two and a half months of like decent weather.
And they don't do anything. They don't schedule courses. They don't schedule anything. That's going to take them away from enjoying that summer. And me, you know, growing up where it's hot, hot, hot, hot and then hotter for three more months. I guess I think I have a little bit of a different view on summer.
I still tend to work during the summer, but I do tend to really savor some more leisure early hours during the summer. Also, I think having kids has made things different, especially because mine are so young of, do I have them home during the summer? Do I keep them in some sort of daycare? And that's one of the decisions that is that I've started to shift this summer.
So when I look at the end of May through really the beginning of August, to me, it's a time for freshness. I think of this not only in terms of fresh food, are my herbs in my garden are going nuts. I love to try and eat fresh produce, locally sourced foods. This is one of my values that's really important to me is a lower carbon footprint and being intentional about not only what I eat, but how my food interacts with the planet and things like that.
Those are really important things to me. In the summer, I feel like that's really easy to do because that's when that produce is available. That's when you know, gardens are bursting. So fresh foods as part of this season for me, but fresh experience as well, like al fresco dining, right? Fresco, meaning fresh, al fresco dining, eating outside, which is again, one of the reasons I don't love the south, cause it's really hard to do with humidity and with the bugs, but I love to eat outside.
I love to journal outside. I love to sip my tea outside. Cause I don't really drink coffee unless it's really terrible-for-you Starbucks drinks that are like 10% coffee and 90% junk. But I love to take my cup of tea outside. I would spend all day outside if I could, which is how I grew up in a dry climate.
Fresh experiences trying new hikes. I love to do that in the summer. Trying new things that are seasonal, this isn't necessarily new, but going to the pool, you can only do that between Memorial Day and Labor Day. You can't around here, at least the pools close. They pretty much close on labor day and then stay closed. And then they open until Memorial Day. So even though it's not necessarily a fresh experience in the sense of something brand new, it's a seasonal experience that can only happen in the summer.
So I really try to take advantage of those. And I'm trying to pass that onto the kids. We have a summer bucket list going on our summer vacation list of what are the things that you want to do this summer that we can't do once school starts back up again. So really that kind of freshness is what I mean.
The other thing that's important to me, and I'm trying to pass on to the girls during summer, is leisure, right? Temperatures are warmer. And like I was talking about my student Brooke, like for them up in the Midwest and where they live, this means more play. It's a chance to get out and do things. But for others, especially here, it might mean more lazy. Leisure can mean whatever you want it to mean. Leisure can mean doing more fun things, or leisure can be like lazing around. And what I really think is summer is the season for being present and enjoying that moment.
I think a lot more spontaneity can happen in the summer as well, especially now that the kids are out of school and I do have them in daycare, which is one of the things I'm going to talk about in a minute, but I could pull them out at any time. It's not like they're going to get a tardy or an absence or something like that which is a whole nother conversation.
It makes me want to homeschool every day because I don't want to worry about tardies and absences. I want a little bit more of this spontaneity. When Jessica was on the show a couple of episodes ago, we didn't talk much about this, but she's homeschooling. She decided to continue to homeschool through COVID and it's, they've started to make it part of their lifestyle. They're going to try it for a semester this coming school year and then see if they want to go back to public school or not.
But summertime, the way that we live in the summertime, more spontaneity, more in the moment, more "what do you feel like today?". Sometimes I wish that wasn't so seasonal. Sometimes I wish that wasn't only Memorial Day to Labor Day. Sometimes I wish that was all year round. This is why you guys have heard me say on the show like I'm fantasizing about these beach houses in Mexico. Like I wanna run away.
I want to run away from this, boxed in, I guess is the best way to say this... boxed in society. Take my online business international, homeschool my kids, or put them in some kind of online K through 12 thing where they could finish their schooling by nine in the morning. And then the rest of the day we do whatever we want. That's not life right now, especially because Josh still has three and a half more years on his contract with the army.
So that's not right now, but what I can do is make that right now for these summer months. So spontaneity, leisure, freshness, presence, enjoyment. These are all of the things that I'm trying to cultivate during these, what, nine weeks, and pass onto my kids. I think as a result of summer what kind of happens around here, at least in our family, is two things.
I think we have more connections. We have more time together because the kids are home and yes, they're in daycare. They're in daycare, shorter hours than what a school day would be instead of 7:00 to 2:30, they're there from nine to two or whatever. So there's more family time on the front end and on the backend of when they're in daycare.
So this happens a lot too. If you're in corporate, sometimes corporations have like shorter hours. I remember when I was growing up, my mom had Fridays off in the summer. So I think that this is something that European cultures do really well is, they'll take the entire month of August off or they'll take their summer holidays and really make the most of that.
And our structure isn't set up that same way, but trying to mimic that or trying to replicate the best we can within the way our society functions. What's the best about being an entrepreneur? What's the best about having an online business is that you get to dictate that you get to decide that right.
I'm picking my own hours. If I didn't want to necessarily work at all during the summer, I could have front-loaded April and May and not podcast, did not do it, not done anything, but see my students in June, July, and August, which is actually something I'm starting to think about for this upcoming move.
I know it's a year away. However, I'm already starting to think about how can I make it easier on my business. I could potentially not do anything all summer next year, except for meet with my students on Wednesdays. That would be fabulous. And that's one of my goals because we'll be moving, we'll be having to set up a new house.
We'll be having to register the kids in the new school system and all of those things. But I still want to have some of these things that are beautiful about summer, more from more spontaneity, more freshness, more leisure, more connection, more hours with my kids. And also, I think special memories tend to happen in summer.
Whether you're taking a vacation or like an actual destination vacation and traveling somewhere, or whether you're doing more staycation stuff, which is what we're doing this summer. We're not planning on going anywhere, but we're able to make special moments. I'm recording this right after the 4th of July.
And for the fourth, we went to a local lake and just spent the whole day there. They launched the fireworks over the lake. And so the girls swam, there's a playground, there's food trucks and that kind of stuff. It was not even a 45-minute drive. We didn't have to go on a vacation. However, I think they're going to remember that day for a really long time because we made it feel special.
We made it feel like it had a special memory attached to it. Also, things that tend to happen over the summer are traditions. I know families, which I think is so cool, that they've gone to the same beach house every year for generations. Like their parents and aunts and uncles started going there when they were kids, and then now they go there and rent the same house in the same place every year. So some of those traditions happen in the summer and making like that contributes to making those special memories. So obviously summing this up, a lot happens during the summer that we want to be present for that.
We want to be able to cultivate, for lack of a better word, cultivate a different feeling or a different experience in this kind of shorter season where things warm up, where things are fresher, where things are more fun, where things are more spontaneous. And that's one of the beautiful things about having a business that you run as well as an income source that doesn't rely on you trading your time, right?
Yeah. I talked about how I have two parameters in my business where I do trade time, Wednesday office hours, and Friday calls. Wednesday office hours are two hours long. Friday calls are a total of three hours. ’Cause it's two different calls. That's five hours a week that I exchanged time all day, Monday all day, Tuesday all day, Thursday most of the day, Wednesday, and a good chunk of the day Friday.
I'm still making money without trading time. So this allows me to capitalize on this summer. And this experience that I've been talking about, it allows me to really lean into that. And I can prep ahead in the months of March, April, and May, and take an entire summer off except for Wednesday and Friday. Or I can continue to work through the summer, but I can condense and shorten my hours.
That's what I've chosen to do this summer, is this condensed version. However, looking ahead to next summer and our move, I know that I can literally almost take three months off aside from two days a week and it won't impact my income. It won't impact my business growth. And I think that's really special about the way that I have things set up.
Alright, so I've idealized a bit. Let's talk about how I've made this happen. Let's talk a little bit more about the nitty-gritty. The hours, the things that have changed, what I'm doing differently for summer, how some of it has been great, how some of it has had a little bit of a backlash or whatever that word is, but I can't think of off the top of my head.
Let's get into kind of what I've done here. For all the reasons I shared a minute ago, this is why I tend to significantly change my work schedule during the summer. Also, I think the girls are still young and they do need some sort of daycare. But I've made that daycare to be shorter than a traditional school day like I explained already, and I think that's important. It gives them a kind of a sense of a break. But it also allows me to continue working next year during the move. I don't intend to put them in any kind of daycare because it wouldn't make sense.
Like they'd be in for two days and then we'd move. And then they'd been for like two weeks and then school would start. So it doesn't make sense to have them in daycare next summer, which is again, why I'm going to really plan to have all of my podcast episodes recorded in any front-loaded work that I need to do that way.
During Wednesdays and Fridays, Josh could come home during those couple of hours, or I can maybe bring a babysitter in for those couple of hours if I need to. But the summer after that, I anticipate them being old enough that I'll be able to continue to work and they'll be able to be fine.
By that time, they'll be six and nine at that point. So I think that they'll be able to give me a couple of hours two days a week and not be an issue. So one thing I did change about the daycare is I kept them at the same, like, company or the same franchise or whatever, but I moved them to a location that's closer to the house. I was a little nervous about this change because Logan has gone to this daycare since day one since we moved here.
So for two years now, and then Sawyer would join her Justin Summers and it was a 10-minute drive or actually a 15-minute drive each way. So like, a 30-minute round trip to take them to this daycare. Now, I chose that one because it's right across the street from Sawyer's elementary school. So it made sense that I would drive Sawyer to elementary and then I dropped Logan off right next door.
However, in the summer, it just didn't make sense when there was the same franchise literally a minute, actually, I think it's two and a half minutes from our house. The only reason I didn't start looking in that one was because then I'd have to drive two minutes this way and then another 15 minutes the other way.
And it just didn't make sense. But for the summer I went ahead and made this choice. It felt super selfish. There was nothing wrong with the other location; it's owned by the same people. So there are a couple of familiar faces, but basically the teachers that Logan has known almost her whole childhood, half of her childhood because we moved here when she was two, those would change. And so I had a little bit of mom guilt around this decision. I asked them what they thought at the daycare and they said "I think she'll be fine. She seems to do whenever we have, someone new or a new face around here, she doesn't get shy. She doesn't have a problem." So I went ahead and I made the change.
And for me it's been glorious because literally instead of being in the car for half an hour a day, twice a day and missing out on work time and having to cut things early, to be able to get them at a decent hour I'm in the car 10 minutes a day, two minutes there and back, to drop them off.
So that's five minutes and then another two minutes there and back to pick them up it's another five minutes. So it's been glorious for me. We leave at the same time as we would have, but I get home sooner and then I get to stay about 10 minutes longer, and then I still pick them up at the same time.
So they aren't doing any longer hours at the daycare, but I am getting more time back. So sometimes it's tiny shifts like these, tiny little changes to our day that give us more time. I've bought myself 45 extra minutes of my day not by changing daycares. By moving them to a location closer to the house.
And so that's a huge pocket of time of what can I get done in that 45 minutes now? I'm not necessarily using that 45 minutes for my business because I've got that pretty much streamlined, but I might use it for an extra walk. I might use it for more time for my morning routine or more Netflix time before I go get the girls because I always like to have a little bit of a transition between work and picking them up.
I find that if I am working to the second that I have to walk out the door to go get them, that our afternoons are more stressed. I need a buffer time. And I need a little bit of a decompress. So now I've given myself 45 more minutes to decompress by making that quick little change. So that was one of the biggest changes that I made.
And we just... I decided to make the change halfway through June. I left them at the original daycare for a couple of weeks. So halfway through June, they'll go all of July. And then they start school the second week of August. So it's really only going to be like six or seven weeks at this new place.
And then what's really neat is Logan starts in the school district. Now she's in pre-K, which is in the school district. So I no longer have to pay for daycare at all, this is our last summer with daycare. They'll go to full-time school, both of them to the same school next year. And then the summer after that we move.
And I'm not planning on putting them in daycare that summer either. So that feels like a huge shift. We're talking about summer, but we're talking about also just shifts that are happening. Daycare's not cheap. And even though I was only paying for one kid over the summer, I pay for two.
But now after the summer, that will be an expense that we no longer have to pay. So I'm excited about that. That is the first change I made. Just changing their location gave me 45 minutes of my day back to do with whatever I want. I also decided to only put them in for part-day or part-time, which at this location is 24 hours.
So that ended up, when I did the math, they're going six hours a day for four days a week. So the girls are getting a full day off, which I think is really fantastic because it's a day where they don't have to wake up at a certain time. They don't have to be anywhere at a certain time. They just get to they'll stay in their pajamas till two o'clock, they'll stay in their pajamas till bath time and then take a bath and then put on different pajamas.
And I think that's part of the beauty of this summer, the spontaneity, this being able to be in the present moment. So it does feel pretty cool that I've been able to give them that full day. Another thing that I've done is that I've switched to shorter podcast episodes. It's funny because this was supposed to be a short behind-the-scenes episode, and I've already been talking for 30 minutes.
So this one's not going to be shorter, but it's fun to talk off script and it's fun to just sit and share some updates and what's going on. But shorter podcast episodes mean less time outlining. Like for this one, no outline as you could probably tell, but also less time recording. While I am still actually like working in real time this summer, I can take this with me for next summer for our move and I can intentionally craft shorter episodes.
And so when I'm front-loading in April and May, it will be extra work for those months, but if I'm doing shorter episodes during those months, it won't be as much. So shorter podcast episodes also because you guys are out enjoying your summer, it's easier for you guys to listen in to these shorter episodes, more bite-sized pieces. And then when we're all hunkering back down in the fall and winter, I'll roll out some more of those longer, meatier, more educational-type episodes.
Another big change for me, again, like a longer-term shift, a habit shift, a pattern shift that I'm noticing is that my days are starting later, and actually what's different about this is that I don't mind. Normally I'm like a total morning person. I'm the person that if something extra had to be done that day, I would have rather woken up at 5:00 or 5:30 to do it in the morning than to stay up late.
And this is still true for me. I think it's about four o'clock that I had turn off like my switch flips and I'm like, okay, the day's done. And I'm not really doing anything after that. But I used to be much more prone to wake up early. If there was something special that had to be done, I'm actually really noticing that I want to sleep in later.
I'm embracing this fully. This summer is an experience experiment to see if I'm not a morning person anymore. I don't know if that's something that shifts. What do they call this? Your chronotype? If you're a morning person, an afternoon person, an evening person, a night owl. And I don't know if that changes.
But where I actually really started to notice this was last year during the pandemic. And I don't know if it was just a stress response of I'd wake up, my alarm would go off and I just didn't want to. I wasn't motivated to wake up. I used to be the person that I would wake up before my alarm. Like I would wake up five or ten minutes before. During 2020, I very much needed my alarm to wake up.
And there were times where I probably snoozed it a couple times longer than I needed to. And so I don't know if this is again, like I said, a stress response. Or if this is just a natural shift that I'm experiencing, but I'm enjoying it this summer and not giving myself any time to be anywhere. I really know that kind of, my very earliest thing of my week starts at 9:30 in the morning.
So even if I'm dropping the girls off at 9:15, and I'm back here by 9:20 now with this closer location that's fine. So I really don't care when we leave the house. I don't care when we get up. And of course, when school starts back, that will be different. We'll be back to alarm clocks. We'll be back to having to be out of the house at a certain time and sitting in those damn drop-off and pick-up lines for however long.
So we'll be back to that in just a few short weeks. I'm really trying to embrace these later start dates. All the things that I used to do first thing in the morning have now shifted to the afternoon. Which previous me would have not been so motivated to do. And for some reason, like I'm able to stay more motivated in the afternoon right now, probably because I'm sleeping later. But things like exercise, things like I always try and give like 15 minutes attention to the house and pick up a little bit.
Those are things I used to do first thing in the morning and now they're happening in the afternoon. So instead of a 6:00 AM to a 2:00 PM day, which is what I normally used to have, I am now having more like an 8:00 AM to a 4:00 PM day. So I'm still doing the things like my morning routine work, obviously play time and I'll give you a detailed schedule of when those are happening. But it's everything has shifted to two hours later. And I'm not really minding it. So that's one other change.
One thing that I'm struggling with is that normally when Side Hustle had been a six-month program, it would run January to June, and then it would run July to December. And so there were about two weeks, right at the end of June, coincided with my birthday, coincided with the 4th of July where I would have I'd be completely off.
So I usually wouldn't do any podcasts those two weeks. And I also wouldn't have any calls, any Wednesday or Friday calls during those two weeks, which was a nice respite. But I was often still launching during those two weeks. So I would still have people applying for Side Hustle applications would still be open all that stuff.
So even though I didn't necessarily have the calls or the podcast, I still was working some now that Side Hustle has had its glow up and has turned to a nine-month program. I don't have any time off this summer. So that's why I'm still recording in real time. And I haven't taken a break from the podcast or anything like that.
And I haven't taken a break from Wednesday or Friday calls. And I've felt this. I have felt that I have not had a downtime that my body was anticipating and expecting to happen right about now. It would be like at the time of recording, I'd be starting the next round we'll be starting this week.
So I've noticed that I don't have those two weeks. However, I will have three months. Our graduation week is the first week of November. So the last three weeks of November, all of December, and all of January, I won't have any calls. So I'm trading two weeks for three months. I'm noticing it now in the summer.
However, I think in the fall and winter, it will be well worth it. It is an adjustment. I do crave just one week off right now. And who knows, maybe next year I'll build that into the Side Hustle. We will maybe take a week off during the summer or something, but at least right now I know that there's three full months.
And that's a trade-off that right now feels well worth it for two weeks for me. Now here's the thing that I wish I would have done differently. I didn't know that I was going to do this four day a week thing with the daycare with the girls. It's just something that kinda came out.
Cause I was like, hey, is there a part-time rate? And they were like, yeah, you could do it like this. And I was like, okay. It just happened. So I did not pre-schedule. Our day off is Tuesdays. If I had that kind of in mind ahead of time, I would have been able to take that day off and just move things and not had anything on Tuesday.
But now instead, the girls and I sit down on Sunday, which is fun. We look at the week ahead and we pick which day they want to have off, or which day makes sense for them to stay home. However, it's not a day that I have necessarily cleared things off. So I have had calls during these days, or I've had other work that needs to be done during these days.
And it hasn't always been ideal. So this summer is really a nice learning experiment for what we'll do differently for next summer, especially with the big move coming up and I'll have them with me full time. It would have been nicer to have that day completely clear because we could have had that headed out straight in the morning to do things like hike, or we could have gone further away for like day trips or something.
But instead, I'm still having to keep normal work hours. They're just playing at home. I don't think they care. I don't think they mind at all. They're just happy to be home. I'm the one who feels a bit stressed because my attention is pulled into places they're old enough to be unattended for an hour or two. But that never turns off. It's still what are they doing? Oh, it's extra quiet. Let's hope they don't have scissors. There's still always a pull of my attention. So I would do that differently if I had a choice to go back and do it again.
So here are the things that we are doing with these extra days and with our downtime. And then I'm going to share a detailed schedule of what my summer days look like versus what my days look like when the girls are in full-time school. And we're back in the swing of normal daily routines.
So I've mentioned before that being outdoors is like my main thing in the summer. And it's one of the reasons that I struggled living here because with the humidity and the bugs, like you really only have a couple of hours that are decent before it gets too gross outside. So I feel like we are indoors more often than I want to be. So some of the indoor activities that we've started doing are puzzles and things like that. I found this really cool thing when I was in Ohio for the wedding about a month ago. It is a story deck of cards, but it has no words, which is cool because once you read a book once like you've read it. So the story is what it is.
But this deck of cards, you can shuffle it and then you flip over whatever the image is and that's the story. And so for Sawyer, cause she loves animals, we got this animal one and it'll be like a duck driving a car or something. And so one day there was a duck driving a car and you flip the next card over and it's like a pig at a dine-in restaurant.And it's "he was going to meet his friend pig for some lunch". So you just get to make the story up as it goes, as you go. We've been having a lot of fun with that. And then again, because you can shuffle the deck and shuffle the cards, the story's different every time. So that's been something we're having a lot of fun with.
Going outside is okay here, I found, if we're by water. A new hobby of mine that I've been taking up this year is stand-up paddleboarding. I saw Clarrissa Larentus do it on her Instagram, I think. And I was totally influenced. I do and buy and eat and consume anything that she puts out. She's totally like the number one influencer that I follow.
I grew up doing water sports in Arizona. We would do wakeboarding, water skiing, kneeboarding, all of those kinds of things. So when I saw her paddleboarding, I was like I know I can do that. So I rented a few boards and ended up asking for one for my birthday and everybody went in on it and got me the board.
I've been taking that out on the lake, which is fine. It's super easy to do with the girls too. I just put on their floaties and once it's on the front of the board and once it's on the back of the board and then we go in and we head out on the lake so we've been doing a lot of that and it's just, it's pretty fun to have something that is like you can do as long as it's not raining.
Which it rains here a lot too. It's just hard growing up in Arizona where it never rains. So I have to make sure it's a sunny day. There's no rain. But it's cool to just jump in the car, throw the board in the car, and then head out on the lake. And we've done that a few times. Sometimes my board has bungee cords on it so we can bring a little cooler.
So we started bringing water bottles and little chips and snacks and stuff. And so we can stay out there later. I think one day we could... we planned to go out for almost like a whole day, and we can bring sandwiches and stuff like that. It really can be almost like a whole day thing. It's really fun. This has also been like the summer of the splash pad because it's one of their favorite things to do. So I'll often pick them up at two o'clock from the daycare, run right down the street to the splash pad.
I love that they're getting old enough that they don't need to be constantly engaged or constantly played with. They can play with each other. They can play with other kids. So I've been able to bring books to the splash pad with me in magazines.
My book of the summer, which I would really recommend everybody check out, is called "Chillpreneur". It's written by Denise Duffield Thomas. She's an Australian author. And she's been in the online space for a while. She has books, like one's called "Get Rich Lucky Bitch". And I don't remember what her other book is, but Chillpreneur, it's like the perfect summer read because even on the cover, the girl’s wearing a beach hat, I think she's like laying on a beach blanket or like a... what is that called? Like a frickin lounger like a beach lounger or whatever.
But it's about automating a lot of things and cultivating more passive income which is, I think, perfect for summer. So I totally recommend going out and getting that book if you're looking for a summer business book to read. And so that's really what I've been doing when they've been at the splash pad.
Alright, so let's talk about what this typical summer schedule looks like, how we've been able to pretty much still do all the things that are important to us in a condensed schedule. So right now we're waking up about 7:30 or 8:00 or so, and I love how I get to put "or so" at the end of this because there's no alarm clock. There's no strict adherence to having to be somewhere at some time.
So say we wake up at about 7:30 or so. I let them lounge around. We eat breakfast at around 8:00, which has us leaving for daycare at about 8:30. So I'm still doing my morning routine, but it's starting at about 8:45 or 9:00 instead of doing it before the kids get up in the morning at 6:00. My morning routine runs from 9:00, some days to 9:30, other days till 10:00. And what I'm doing during that morning routine is often a meditation. I like to use tarot cards or oracle cards, so I'll use those, and then I'm doing some journaling in the morning, different things.
Sometimes I'll journal about the card that I pulled that day or journal about how if I woke up anxious. Or if I have things going on, I'll journal about that. I also... she's controversial, I know, but Rachel Hollis has the Start Today Journal. And what it does is it says five things you're grateful for, and then 10 future-paced goals.
So you write them as if they've already happened. Like "I built my forever home in cash" is one of the ones that I write. So you write it as if it's already happened. So sometimes I'll do like a start to date journal as well, five things I'm grateful for 10 goals as if they've already happened. Which I think is a cool system just to... it's more practical.
So it depends on how I'm feeling that day. If I need something a little more wooey or if I need something a little more practical, I'll pick either doing a tarot and a journal on that or doing more of the Start Today. I work from about 10:00 to 1:00, which is only three hours during the summer. During school, I work four hours during the day.
So working from about 10:00 to 1:00. That can look like recording podcasts. That can look like being on my calls on Wednesdays and Fridays. It can look like being on other people's podcasts. It can look like writing for the American Counseling Association, which I now have a contributor blog for the ACA. So I've been writing them a blog every week.
Those are the kinds of things that I'm doing from in that 10:00 to 1:00 block. I'm doing my Facebook live inside of the Facebook group, that kind of stuff. So my exercise, I moved from the mornings and I moved back to the afternoons. That usually happens from about 1:30 to 2:30. And then I go get the girls at 2:30, cause they're at daycare for six hours instead of seven and a half. So six hours, I pick them up at 2:30 then we have our summer playtime from about 2:30 to 4:30. That is the splash pad time, the lake time. Any of these other activities that we're doing it can be at home. It can be these sort of things.
If it's a rainy day or a yucky day outside, we'll do some of those home stuff, but I've really dedicated a two-hour chunk to that. Now I'm not always necessarily 100% with them during the two hours. Sometimes what I like to do is 20 minutes, quality time with one kid, and then the other kid has independent play and then I'll switch and then I'll do 20 minutes quality time with the other kid.
The other one goes into some independent play. Then I really love to do something with the three of us together. So we're bonding, like having some sibling time, forcing them to share, forcing them to take turns, that kind of stuff. So practicing some relational things there. So it's not always two hours straight of a block of things.
Sometimes that two hours is broken up into different stuff, but that's really the dedicated time. At 4:30, that's usually about when Josh is getting home. So at 4:30, the girls do their chores, which in the summer it's much like they do one thing. Like, go make your bed. I want them to stay on a chore type of schedule.
But in the fall they usually have three chores each. So they use short time and then we do family dinner and bedtime is 8:00. So it's a three-and-a-half-hour chunk. What I have started doing is sneaking away and adding in an evening routine. I sneak away about 7:30 or so. And I wash my face, brush my teeth, that kind of hygiene stuff, which feels like self-care. And then I've started doing a stretching routine in the evenings.
Because now that I'm working out in the afternoons I feel like I'm not moving around enough during the day between the workout and going to bed. And I was waking up really sore. So I added in kind of a stretching routine before bed, and it's really helped. I'm not waking up as sore, and so that usually happens while the girls are doing their baths and Josh will make sure he's keeping an eye on them in the bathtub and I'll sneak away and do that evening routine.
It's also helped me fall asleep sooner because I can wrap up anything that I need to that would normally like be on my mind and keep me from going to sleep. So I'm really glad that I added in this evening routine. Then from 8:00 to 9:00, Josh and I try and do some kind of couple times, so 8:00 to 9:00.
We really liked the show called Debris. We watched it on Hulu we're really into that. So we will usually watch one episode of a show. We also found this documentary on Netflix called This Is Pop. Another thing that I don't share a lot is I'm a classically trained vocalist. So I used to sing when I was younger, and music has always been really important to me.
So the documentary is really cool. It starts off literally like talking about Nsync and boy bands. But the last episode we watched was about how music is a form of activism. And then we started watching, we watched how just different countries and cultures, we watched about British pop music.
We watched about Swedish pop music and the Swedish influence on American pop and all this stuff. It was really fascinating. It's a good documentary. So we've been watching it's like a docuseries. We've been watching an episode of that during our couple times. But just really trying to prioritize connecting for an hour.
And then from 9:00 to 10:00, I watch whatever I want to watch. Some Giada maybe, or some of my trashy reality show tvs. I'm really into Love Island. I really love that show. Don't ask me why. I watched that on Hulu as well, and then I've limited myself to an hour of TV time. It's been hard to turn it off, but that was one of the things I was finding of why I wasn't sleeping so well.
And I think why I've been choosing to or enjoying waking up later is because I wasn't getting to sleep soon enough. So at 10 o'clock I strictly turned the TV off and I read, I read from 10:00 and then I fall asleep. Reading is something that helps me go to sleep much faster. But usually, it's about 10:30 when I fall. And so I'm doing it all over again.
What I love about this schedule is that I feel like it has a great balance between my non-negotiables, which are the family time. Work is a non-negotiable, especially cause my goal to pay for this house in cash. So that's non-negotiable to me. It's really aligned with my values. It's really important to me, but I have a good balance between other obligations as well, like picking up the house or making sure the kids do their chores and that kind of stuff. Evening routine with self-care, making sure I'm connecting both with my kids and my spouse throughout the day.
So I feel like the schedule has allowed me to have that equal representation and equal... not always like the same amount of time. However, it feels balanced, for lack of a better word. Each area of my life is supported, and I'm intentionally choosing where my time goes so that each of these areas that are important to me gets time it deserves.
So that's the summer changes that are coming up. I shared the shifts that I've made for this summer, but there's also these shifts that I'm intentionally doing now to lean into what needs to happen for next summer when we have a big move coming up. So I like that I'm able to play around and experiment with our summer hours now in preparation for something bigger coming down the line.
We've started to cultivate more leisure, more spontaneity, really lean into kind of the breaks that summer affords us. And I feel like I've really built a schedule out that allows me to focus on each area that I think deserves my time and my intention during the season. Now, if you're wondering, like what the heck I'm talking about with non-negotiables, obligations, values, or if just hearing me talk about this as something that you want for yourself as well.
This is exactly what I cover inside of my mini-course called Side Hustle Schedule. The mini-course is only $47. So it is very affordable, but man, it packs a punch and I really have put in a ton of value into this mini-course. And what it does is it helps you evaluate where your time is currently going. You get to audit it to ensure that it aligns with your values.
And then I teach you how to move it around in certain ways. So maybe you find a 45 minute pocket of time that you didn't have before, and it gives you that space to build your Side Hustle. It's my proven system for making room for something new, without sacrificing the other things that truly matter to you.
And you can enroll any time in Side Hustle Schedule. It's available all the time. It doesn't have a start date or a stop date. So whenever it works for you to work through this time audit and this scheduling system, you can head on over to Marissalawton.com/schedule. All right, guys, I'll be back with you next week.
And until then, keep on rising.
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