IT HAS BEEN A WEEK
. . . and it’s Wednesday. Wednesday!
However, things are slowly going back to normal. Everyone is healing well, and G actually cried this morning because she was sad her surgery was over (apparently being treated with extra care and attention vastly outweighs any negatives of say, pain).
Anyway, she did great! They removed the nail from her prior fracture repair so she is now hardware-free. I hope 2026 can be a year of NO FRACTURES (or any medical drama, please!) for our family. I have probably been to 15 ortho or sports med appointments at this point between the 3 kids and multiple fracture incidents.
(We will note that most of them are at least tangentially gymnastics related, though only ONE occurred while in the gym. It really is a tough sport! And you can be really lucky until you’re not!)
RETURNING TO NORMAL
In the midst of all of that, our nanny had a family issue and ended up leaving the country for a few days. (I completely understood, AND I hated the timing, but of course I told her to go). Anyway, she is coming back tomorrow, and it sounds like things are hopefully going to settle for a bit. I greatly underestimated how stressful it would feel to be with my family members coming out of surgery and I finally feel like I can breathe.
ALSO. I was totally dumb and did not press the easy button when it came to cooking and ended up feeling really overwhelmed, to be honest, but it’s largely over now. Everyone is recovering. I am back in clinic and even mostly caught up with my overflowing inbox — I’ve been away from patient care since last week, before BLP Live!
SLEEP
One thing I am glad I did was to just lean into going to bed EARLY the past few nights. I have been SO TIRED (ever since BLP Live ended, really!) and I actually feel like I still haven’t entirely adjusted to the time change, though at least I’ve stopped waking up randomly at 4 AM. A didn’t got to her late activities on Monday or Tuesday (she’s healing her fractured pinkie AND hip soreness) and what a huge relief that was! I think it’s important to remember that some of these things are truly optional — the world won’t end if a practice or training session is missed, if G doesn’t practice much piano one week, or we don’t oversee homework as much as we feel is ideal. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves as parents and some of it really doesn’t have to be there.
AND, I got my morning routine time back for the first time in many days. It was great.
(Though I have decided to shorten the Morning Pages thing. I simply do not want to devote 20+ minutes of my mornings to filling up 3 notebook pages — I already set up my planner page every day and do my 5 year journal, so will experiment with a shorter version as those things are also analog journaling and must count for something!).
CALL FOR TOPICS
Give me some inspo!
17 Comments
Godspeed! Glad the surgery is behind you (adorable that she cried because it was over!) and things are settling down, for however briefly. It’s always like that right! An investment in sleep will pay dividends for sure. Sleep can totally wreck or totally save a week IMO.
Something that I’ve been thinking about lately (as potential topic inspo) is pivot points… I recently had to make a big choice to make a BIG life change or not, and I saw the advice to basically reflect back on big choices, and identify the values that drove that change. Something about how your values – at their purest – are just how you’ve historically made decisions. Anyway, it was such a great thought exercise to identify some of the most significant pivot points that I made in my life… from leaps like leaving the corporate world to pursue academia, to marrying the bookish guy instead of the jocks I dated in high school… each choice is so reflective of values that I clearly hold close to my heart. I’d love to hear about what kinds of ‘reflective big thoughts’ are on your mind this reflection season.
P.S. I loved the BLP series idea that you brought up Monday! Enjoyed the episode so much, and love this foray into reflection season and thinking about those big end of year/beginning of year processes, so I vote a big yes in favor of continuing the series! (Kelsey Wharton guest!? Big GNDP fan).
Kelsey has been on !! https://theshubox.com/2021/04/blp-ep-37-digital-organizing-more-with-kelsey-wharton-from-the-girl-next-door-podcast.html (I am planning on having Erika too- maybe she’d be perfect for the series!)
Pivots is such an interesting topic. I’ve made several huge ones and have regretted none of them.
I would love for you to deep dive into Apple Watch metrics and also, supplements from a endo view!
She’s so sweet! My daughter (8.5) is too risk-averse to do gymnastics, and I was a bit bummed about this, but also maybe it’s a blessing? If we had a rhythmic gymnastics gym close to us, I would enroll her in that (I grew up with it, very popular in Eastern Europe). I agree that skipping activities and reducing homework supervision won’t be the end of the world. As someone who can be a little too flexible sometimes, I find it tough to figure out how much you can skip without worrying about losing good habits and discipline. Obviously, situations like surgery, illness, special family events and commitments are all very solid reasons. Anyway, as far as topics go – corporate/organizational shenanigans are on my mind today. And just general inefficiency. I feel like my org is always trying new things, reorgs, new systems, and too many of them at the same time, without allowing many of them to succeed. It’s fun to come up with new ideas and systems, a lot less fun to grind it out through the execution stage. I’m trying to stay optimistic and productive amidst all the churn, but it’s hard. I’m curious if others experience this and how they navigate it without becoming too frustrated.
Some quickie topic ideas: current favorite pens, favorite notebooks, paper storage systems.
I’d like to hear about your 5 year travel dreams. I need some inspiration.
Topic idea: dream guests for BLP and/or podcasts you’d love to be a guest on.
Topic Ideas: Ups and downs of being an upholder; Reranking of Life of a Showgirl tracks now that it’s been in your life longer; More on the midcareer work perks you talked about on BOBW this week
I’m glad G’s procedure went smoothly! And she must have felt so tenderly cared for if she was sad when she was on the other side of the procedure.
I’m hoping 2026 is kind of boring for us. We could use a break after the challenges of 2025! 2025 was a doosy for me – started with surgery in January on my finger joint, then September 2025 was like “hold my beer.”
I also hope that 2026 can be a year of NO FRACTURES, or any other medical drama, for your family, Dr. Sarah Hart-Unger.
I’ll need to keep listening to the past episodes of BOBW to understand the overall picture of how you and Ms. Laura Vanderkam work together with nannies.
I’m also glad that you just leaned into going to bed early the past few nights.
The category tags of your blog posts actually have a significant impact on me choosing which blog posts of yours that I’ll read, and the blog posts of yours that I’ll most likely read and comment on have the category tags HABITS, GOALS, PLANNING, TIME MANAGEMENT, PRODUCTIVITY, ROUTINES, BOOKS, READING, PREVENTION OF PROCRASTINATION, SELF-CONTROL, TIME-TRACKING, WORK, CAREER, VOLUNTEERING, BOBW PODCAST, BLP PODCAST, HEALTH, GRATITUDE, you know, those types of things. I’m actually also fine with you writing just 2 or 3 blog posts per month, Dr. Sarah Hart-Unger. Of course, that won’t work for this month, so I’ll wait for San to elaborate on that.
And no, I was not expecting G to grieve over the completion of her surgery.
Yes- let’s hope for a medical drama-free 2026 for your family! Sheesh- you really had a lot this past year (and I didn’t know A fractured her pinkie?) Once again, I’m appreciating having two band kids- no one gets injured playing the piccolo.
I know what you mean about the morning pages. I just couldn’t commit to it… but weirdly I’m thinking maybe I should try again (NOT NOW- in January). Maybe if I did it more I would get into a flow and start getting more out of it???
Selfishly I’d love for you (and Laura if this is for BOBW!) to do an episode looking back on the little kid years. My first daughter is 7 months old and I’m dyyyyyyying and could use some perspective.
I’m glad everyone made it through surgery ok, and things are settling down. Hoping for a much more uneventful year medically speaking for your family in 2026. It’s such a helpful reminder that a lot of things are optional, and I’m glad you were able to prioritize rest in a stressful week.
I also need frequent reminders that kid activities can be skipped. Sometimes a skipped kid activity makes everything better! There are weeks when one randomly cancelled kid activity is the brightest spot in five days! I hope you start feeling less tired soon and that things feel more relaxed moving forward.
Topic Ideas:
1. Interesting goals and how to plan for them
2. How to plan and set experimental goals
3. How to plan for and execute a habit goal of journaling (resources, prompts, etc)
4. Call for listeners to send in one goal they want to work through your system and walk them through using nested goals.
5. Interviews of people implementing your planning systems
6. Interviews of people implementing strategies from your book
7. BLPer of the week – like lazy genius of the week – but reader planner tips
oooohhh those are interesting! are you volunteering for #4 🙂 ?
I just popped on to say “I get G completely”. I would also put up with some physical pain to have kindness and care LOL