Hi.

I'm Laura Vanderkamp.

I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

And I'm Sarah hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer, and course creator.

We are two working parents who love our careers and our families.

Welcome to best of both worlds.

Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long.

Term career goals.

We want you to get the most out of life.

Welcome the best of both worlds.

This is Laura.

This episode is airing the second week of September twenty twenty five.

This episode is going to be about things that surprised us in our forties, and originally we thought we would also do some motivational quotes.

At the end we are like, well, well, this will be a compound episode of things that's us in our forties and our favorite motivational quotes.

And then we had a realization, Sarah, neither of us are all that into motivational quotes, are we No?

Not really Like there are certain phrases I find myself repeating all the time from certain wise people, but motivational quotes also kind of make me think of those posters with like the cats on them from the nineties, and they're kind of funny sometimes more than they are actually inspirational.

Yeah, one of my favorite Instagram follows is disappointing Affirmations, and it's just hilarious.

It's like those pictures, right, not the cats necessarily, but like beautiful mountain landscapes.

And then it's something terrible, right, like I wish I'd looked at this right before because now I'm thinking about it.

But and he had one the other day that was like a heap of discarded toys and it was something like we all wind up on the discarded heap of once loved things.

So terrible, little dark, it's dark.

So that's a nice little motivational quote for you.

If your humor ten's more toward mine, you might want to go follow disappointing affirmations.

But yeah, so I also have a feeling that a lot of motivational quotes are misattributed.

I worked as a fact checker for a year, and I can tell you when I would go try to check a quote, it was pretty much invariably wrong or attributed to the wrong person.

That's a pretty common thing that happens, and I guess I also just don't understand why something is more profound if somebody famous said it.

Well, they must know everything.

They're famous.

Do they know everything because they're famous?

I don't know.

It doesn't seem to me like they do, but I guess some people get into it.

If you do, that's exciting.

We're happy for you.

We love that for you.

But moving on to things that.

Surprised us in our forties, Sarah, how old are you are we sharing ages?

Sure?

I am forty five or quaranta y Sinkle.

I probably said that wrong.

I was helping Cameron with the Spanish homework yesterday.

Yeah, I am forty six.

So we're both right in our mid forties as we are listen this.

So we've been in the forties for a few years now.

I guess we get to be experts on our forties at this point.

But things that are surprised us, I will go with one, so that it turns out that your fertility does not necessarily fall off a cliff at age thirty five.

Do you remember reading When was it that this all was being made a big deal about it?

I feel like it was when we were very young like but not children, but like like twenty or something that there was suddenly a huge amount in the news about thirty five, is it or something.

Definitely I had that idea.

I mean for me, it was like the medical being medical as well.

At one point, I think I did say I wanted to have all my kids before I turned thirty five, and I wanted three kids, and I had a plan to have them at like twenty nine and whatever, and then I couldn't get pregnant at twenty nine, so you know that plan.

Was already ruined.

So yeah, I mean, you're right.

I definitely think that was the trope, was that like scary things can happen to women who even manage to get pregnant in their late thirties.

Yes, And so I was always like, oh, I hate everything about this because first it's always like, oh, you can't prioritize your career in your twenties because you need to prioritize finding a man and getting pregnant, as if the two cannot like happen at the same time.

It's like a a lot of people meet their spouse through work related type stuff or through education related things.

There's a lot of people.

At MBA programs marrying each other, for instance.

So if you were like, Ooh, I shouldn't go get an MBA because I should prioritize finding a man and starting a family, like, well, that was maybe not the best idea then, because that's one of the sort of sorting things that people do, is marrying people in similar professions and stuff.

But you know, again, like these things can happen at the same time.

It's not like you you only can do one.

So I felt like a lot of this, like your fertility is going to fall off.

The cliff was trying to get people not to have career ambitions, which I.

Think is stupid.

Also, I could just tell you from personal experience, it doesn't seem to happen.

You know, it may be a gradual decline at some point.

Well there is a decline in decline, but it's just not an off the cliff.

Yeah, you do not wake up at age thirty five and one day no longer able to have children, especially if successfully had a child at let's say thirty four, And then my guess is you're going to probably have pretty much the exact same experience in trying to get pregnant at thirty six, thirty seven, thirty eight, probably thirty nine, forty.

You know, at some point in your early forties maybe that starts to change.

But I had two of my children after age thirty five.

You had Genevieve after thirty five, or.

Yes I did.

Yeah.

It's much easier to get pregnant with Genevieve than it was to get pregnant with Nnebelle.

So there you go.

So what that.

All is, you know, is if you thought, like, hello, I'm forty, I don't need to use birth control anymore, you should rethink that.

Definitely rethink that.

Don't believe the people who told you your fertility would fall off a cliff if that is not in your plants.

Obviously, I am thrilled to have two children.

That is not me.

But if somebody is listening to that and had that thought, you should, yeah, maybe not have that idea.

Yes, all right, number two, sah number two, number two.

Okay, Well, I was gonna say metabolism does change.

And this is not to say that you can't be thin in your forties or whatever.

There's plenty of people who are, but at least for me, my experience is that I used to be somebody who didn't have to think about it, and at some point in my forties, if I want to be not gaining a lot of.

Weight, I do need to think about it.

And maybe that's the difference here because I'm going to be like very real, say, like I've always thought about it.

I thought about it when I was thirteen, I thought about it when I was twenty five.

I'm still thinking about it at forty five.

Not in like a toxic, scary way, but like I don't think I was ever of the naivete that like I'll just see whatever and like look however I want, because that's not what we're surrounded by, Like we're not surrounded by foods that really enable that relationship with food.

This is a big soapbox for an episode, but I think that probably does underpin where I'm like, I didn't have this realization because maybe I always had it.

Yeah, Okay, Well, I mean I look back because I know I'm not doing anything differently, like I look back before this episode on like my step trackers, which is you know, on my phone, and I'm walking way more now than I.

Was, say, eight years ago.

I pay more attention to what I eat than I did certainly in my twenties, probably well into my thirties, and I still weigh significantly more than I did when I was in my twenties and up to my late thirties, and I would say turning forty, it was all after that.

So to me, that was why I have this metabolism realization.

And again not to say people can't be thin, and therefore there are many people who are.

It's just for me, it would take a lot more effort to be at that same size that I was then.

Got it.

There are some ladies with some banging bods in their six years in Bloody's class right now.

So I don't know.

I think there's a lot of I mean, I agree with what you're saying.

But it probably takes a lot of work to maintain that, That's what I'm saying, Yes, yes, Whereas if you are twenty five, it may take less work to maintain that.

It may be that.

You can eat a lot of pizza and beer and still have a very spelt figure, and that may be less the case.

As you get older.

All right, Well, I'm a barrel full of laughs today and I.

You got to come up with one.

Sarah All right, Well, this one's more in you too.

Oh okay, I'm we're just skip ahead to mine.

Okay.

I used to think that, like when you were a season, I would see seasoned parents, Like I'd see parents with kids that are my kid's age, for example, and be like, that person clearly knows what they're doing.

They have all the parenting secrets.

They must be confident with all the choices they're making.

We're obviously I'm standing here making things up.

Guess what, You're always making things up because every kid is different, and like, no matter how old your oldest kid is, like that kid's still going to enter a new stage that you're trying to figure out.

Plus whatever you use to apply to kid number one, like when kid number three comes around, you may have a whole new set of circumstances that you just did not deal with with kid number one for whatever reason, And so the amount of feelings seasoned and like you know what you're doing, at least in my parenting experience, Like, stop waiting for that because it's probably not coming.

Yeah, there are certain things that you probably know a little bit more how to do, Like I would say, registering Henry for kindergarten.

Yes, lotistical things.

I've done that a few times.

Those are not like the hard the hard things.

Yeah, I was good at registering for things like before I even had kids.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree.

I mean you're always figuring out this stuff and it's going to be interesting.

I was thinking about it, like going into the kindergarten meet and greet on Thursday, that this is the fifth time starting a child at this school, and so there's a fair amount of things that you you figure out with it, and some things that you, yeah, feel very comfortable with later in your parenting journey.

But then there's other things that who knows, it's something new that your kid is different than you.

Didn't have to worry about Jasper, like using AI to do his third grade homework, but you will have to worry about Henry.

That's true.

He may already be.

He was asking for some AI download the other day and like, really, really, I don't think that's a game you need to be playing.

I don't know.

At age sixty or five.

And a half, kids are crazy these days.

All right, Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and then we'd be back with more of things that surprised us in our forties.

So we are back talking things that surprised us in our forties.

We were having a discussion of older kids versus younger kids.

I gotta say, I think I don't know if you had this experience, since you are the oldest kid in your family, Sarah, But sometimes the oldest kid feels a little bit like because their parents were figuring things out with them, they may have experienced some of the mistakes that later kids don't have to suffer from.

I don't know, did you have that experience.

I think is more like strictness that parents maybe realize like didn't have to be so strict, And like, my favorite example of this is I really really wanted contact lenses because I had really embarrassing glasses, and for some reason it was like, no, you can't get them till you're in eighth grade or thirteen, like there was some arbitrary number.

And I finally got them, and my life did actually improve, like markedly.

Okay, because bullying is real and like whatever, it's not any fun.

So then my sister wanted glasses, and they saw that it wasn't really that our contacts that big a deal to like switch your kid from if a kid's motivated to have contacts, like they're going to do fine with them, which I did, and she got them earlier, and I was so mad about it because like obviously I suffered.

So I mean, that's not a very good attitude.

But you see what yeah, yeah, now I remember, I mean I'm the middle child, so it's not I mean, I'm sure my older brother had like ten times as strict as I did.

But then, like I remember, I was not allowed to watch Seinfeld because it was deemed inappropriate, which it probably is, but let's leave that at there.

So I was watching it.

My mom was like, this is terrible, we have to turn her off.

Whatever.

And then I come home from college and I find my mom and my little brother watching Seinfeld to gather like laughing over it.

Just like what that is really funny?

Not fair?

So but yeah, I mean we've experienced this too.

I mean there's certain things like knowing to take biology over the summer before you go into freshman year of high school, because then that frees up space in your schedule to take more of the advanced science classes later on, which could be helpful for college admissions.

If you have multiple ap science classes, and especially if you have taken them before your senior year, because it tends to be your junior year.

That is a lot of the college stuff is based on.

And now we knew that Sam has gotten through a lot of that stuff earlier, and we did not know that for Jasper.

But of course kids are different because Ruth is like not excited about the idea of taking biology over the summer.

So we will see if that actually happens or if she just carves her own path completely.

So kids do what they want to do.

Yes, all right, Chronic pain, You should talk about this one.

Well, you know, there's always the joke about your body falling apart once you hit middle age, and there is some truth to that.

I mean, people wide up with more aches and pains, little annoyances, and obviously I know many people have had bigger health scares as Sarah can talk about, for sure.

But you can also become something of an expert in your own body, which is that you can experiment with things and try things and research things and see what works.

And sometimes people do that in conjunction with health professionals, and sometimes they do it on their own, but you can in fact solve many problems, which has been something that surprised me.

So, for instance, a couple of years ago, I was really suffering from chronic sore throat issues, and between strictly limiting dairy products and taking anti reflex medication, I have managed to mostly solve that problem, which has been incredible.

I try to pause and note that I'm like not feeling pain, which is the absence of pain isn't something you necessarily think about, but it's like, whoh, that's a lot better than it was.

I still get an episode every like two to three weeks that's bad, and then I'm like, oh yeah, I remember, and then back pain.

Longtime listeners know that I had a couple of I had some bad back issues about a year and a half ago, and one way or another, things have gotten better.

You know.

I took the steroids at the time to probably calm some inflammation that had been building up for a while.

But I think strengthening certain muscles, and it wasn't even sure which ones it were.

I think for me it was like my hip flex or muscles of all things.

Other people it might be their abdominals, Like my abs still aren't that great, but I've been working on my hip flexers and that seems to have.

Really helped with the back.

But who knew, right, Like, you try different things, and it turns out that by stretching and then strengthening your hip flexers, you can take pressure off your back, and so for me that seemed to have helped a lot.

I feel like I'm still getting my PhD, and like I haven't really experienced a lot of that kind of like discomfort pain type stuff.

And when I used to experience that, it was usually because of like high mileage running, and then I went straight from that to like vtex.

So, yeah, my experience has been a little bit different.

But I guess I will say my forties, I and more recently I like questioned like the things that you need to do to stay healthy, Like do you need to do a ton of cardio?

I used to think you did.

I definitely.

I read so many times that you don't need to.

But until I was actually forced to not do it and be like, oh, life is fine, I wasn't entirely convinced.

And that does actually kind of go with what you said, like you have to experiment on yourself, you have to try things and see what work and see what feels good, and some of that is going to be found in PubMed and medical expertise.

And then sometimes and I'm not even saying this in any kind of anti medical way, but every person is unique, and like, you're not going to find a paper that's just about your very very specific issues, and so you're gonna have to try things within reason.

But certainly cutting out dairy or only doing strength training like those are safe things to give a whirl and see what happens.

See what happens.

Yeah, Yeah, I think we've both found that your forties can be a very cool time professionally, partly because you've just been doing whatever you're doing at this point, unless you've switched careers.

But if you've been doing whatever you've been doing for long enough that you develop certain efficiencies and so it takes a lot less time to get the same things done.

I know from my time logs that I am working fewer hours now than I probably was ten years ago, and that's I mean, sometimes I want to work more hours.

It's been hard with very active kids, but I can't claim that I'm not getting as much done as I did during those years before It's just like, if I need to talk to somebody about something, I probably know the person to call or can get to that person through some part of my network.

Those things build up over time totally.

I feel like your forties, you've become really really efficient at the things that you do, and that's actually really like satisfying feeling.

And you might not even notice it until you see people maybe newer to the game, and you watch them and you're like, oh, yeah, I used to be like that.

And I see that in medicine a lot.

I mean, my younger colleagues are the best, but it definitely takes them longer to do certain things that for me are just very second nature now and with the same results.

So it's fun to see yourself progress.

Or like when I interview someone and they say you're a great interviewer and I'm like, I'm new at this, and I'm like, no, I'm not new at this.

I've done this for like eight years now.

I guess I know how to do this.

So that is fun to have mastery, and I think a lot of us do into that into our forties.

Yeah.

I had the funny experience of this.

I was interviewing someone a couple months ago for Before Breakfast.

Before Breakfast has been running for six years now, I mean Best of Both Worlds has been running for eight years.

I've done a lot of interviews, obviously, for all sorts of journalism things over the years.

And I just started adding an interview portioned to Before Breakfast in September of last year.

And so that is what somebody had told this person I was interviewing, is like, it's like a new show, a new interview show or whatever.

And so if I interview this woman and she gets off and she's like, are you really new at this?

You're like, I'm a savant.

I just I've never done this before.

How did it go?

So I quickly told her that she was not, in fact, the first person I had ever interviewed.

That's awesome.

Yeah, yeah, see that feels good.

And I'm sure lots of you listening to this are there as well.

So give yourself your own on the back for getting to a more efficient place in your career time.

Absolutely absolutely.

I would also say I've learned that older kids are very cool.

I love the mid to lateeen stage.

I know I've been lucky in this regard.

My kids are awesome, but it is still cool to watch who they become and how they think about their lives.

And I feel like there's so much negative stuff about teenagers out there, and I don't know, I think it's not inevitable.

I think that it can be a really cool, fun time of parenting and of family life.

So I'll throw that out there too.

Oh I'm not quite there yet, but I am also enjoying the stage I'm in, and it's been interesting lately.

I feel like I've run into a bunch of people in their forties who have like an old kid and a young kid like you, but even maybe like a three year old and a seventeen year old or something like that.

And I don't know.

Every stage is interesting.

Every stage goes fast, and it happens once.

So yeah, I will say I am not thrilled about being woken up in the middle of the night in my mid forties.

Oh, I would not like that.

Well, I don't like that for work, and I wouldn't like.

That for yes, one of my my baby may still be having a little bit of trouble on the sleeping front sometimes, and that is a bit frustrating because not that it was fun when you're twenty something, but it is sometimes to get.

Back to seal with it.

Yeah, yeah, there's that.

But anyway, all right, well we're going to take a quick ad break and then we'll be back with the next part of this episode.

So we are back the first part of this episode.

We were talking are things that surprised us in our forties.

We were going to do a section on motivational quotes before we realize that Sarah doesn't really do motivational quotes and I disappointing affirmations, So we were not really the sort of people who are penning motivational quotes to our bulletin boards.

So we thought we'd do maybe some of the things that we say over and over again that we are kind of our favorite greatest hits that we do.

So, Sarah, what are you telling people over and over again?

Oh?

Man?

I mean sometimes I tell people like this is from the planning side of things, to like control your inputs because people are so overwhelmed at what's coming at them, but they forget that, like you can put on that do not disturb, and you can you know, decide when you're going to look at your email, and you can have people contact you in a different way if they're bothering you in an asynchronous form or synchronous form of communication when they should be using an asynchronous form, et cetera.

So that's something I find myself like repeating a lot.

I do repeat David Allens, your brain is for having ideas, not holding them.

So that's also kind of like write it down, like, don't expect yourself to have so many things going on in your head for planning.

I'm always telling people to have one source of truth or one master so fun fact, it was one source of truth in my book, but it got changed to one master calendar, and now I'm like, master, is this like a gentry anyway?

Whatever?

At just one place where you look that you can trust to find all of your time specific engagements.

I say that a lot, and then this was kind of going to go with the other point.

But you know, not everybody has to like you.

That's like everyone's an acquired taste kind of a thing.

That's not a saying necessarily, but I feel like it's something that I have to repeat to myself.

But I have ingrained over time and definitely within the last decade.

Yeah, what about your quotes?

You have so many great quotes.

If somebody wants to make you a lot quote cards with these on uh with images of mountain streams behind them.

Well, one of my favorite is people are a good use of time.

So whenever you find yourself trying to be more efficient with like having a conversation with someone, you can kind of pause and note that whatever this is that is cementing the relationship can probably be deemed a good use of time, even if you probably would have made that point in fewer words.

Going to bed early is how grown up sleep in.

That's another favorite one because a lot of times adults have to wake up at set times for work or family responsibilities.

So if you would like to have that sort of luxurious sense of getting all the sleep you want, you kind of have to do it on the other side of the day.

So go to bed on time I don't have time means it's not a priority.

I love that one.

It's so true and people love to use that, and like sometimes it's tempting, you know, when someone says that, you're like, you want to say it, but you can also just say it in your mind.

Like it's true.

I tend not to say that to somebody if they're like telling me I don't have time to do this, I'm like, well, I hear that it's just not a priority, because that's usually.

Not what people want and people are a good use of time.

But with ourselves we can often say that, like, would you do this if somebody were paying you a million dollars to do it?

Well, okay, you probably would, Now how would you find the time in that situation?

Right?

And is there anything from that that you could make happen now, even in the absence of a million dollars, But that might be a strategy that you would employ and could make it work with that open space invites opportunity in a way a cluttered calendar can't.

I don't know about you, Sarah.

I always feel like I am so not willing to take on new stuff around the start of the school year or around the holidays.

Like if an opportunity came to be that, people are like, well, we could have a conversation about this, maybe it'll lead to something, because opportunities tend not to come gift wrapped, Like I mean, maybe if you're really famous and have a ton of influence, they do.

But for most of us they don't like you kind of have to track them down and talk to a couple people and see where they go.

And I'm just not willing to do that at a time when every minute feels spoken for, which tends to be the case when you're figuring out new schedules at the start of the school year and like over the holidays where there's events every night, and so it's just something to keep in mind.

If you can keep open space in your calendar, then you don't feel so resentful when somebody's like, hey, we should have a conversation about that.

No, no conversation, Yeah, no, you might and then see where it goes.

Yeah.

I think for me the default is stuff gets filled.

But there are some days where I just really I will make a note to like protect them, and it's almost like I have to cultivate the open space.

But then when it's there, I'm always so so thankful that it's me.

Yeah, things that can happen whenever happen when never.

That was one from Tranquility by Tuesday, just the idea that people are like, Okay, yeah, I need more me time, and then they're like, Okay, I'm going to have more bubble baths.

But the problem is your bathtub is not going anywhere, and so you could do it whenever.

And so if you say, like even if you put it on your calend, like ooh, I'm going to take a bubble bath at seven o'clock on Wednesday, then somebody wants you to drive them to the mall at seven o'clock on Wednesday, or there's some work thing that could happen Wednesday, and you know, so you do it, and then you don't have your bubble bath.

It just winds up not happening.

Whereas if things have a specific time, and in many cases involve a commitment to other people, that they tend to happen.

So, for instance, my choir practice happens at seven o'clock on Thursday nights.

That's not really a negotiable time.

So I tend to protect seven o'clock on Thursday nights in a way that I wouldn't if I was just like, oh, I'm just going to go sing sometime.

So I encourage people to choose something that involves all that.

I like that.

Sarah, did I forget to Oh wait, do I forget to include a question in this show?

Notes?

Possibly?

Can I give my other quote, I can't.

I really like my other quote, which is perspective things.

I think that just applies to so much, like, you know, you can be really sad about something, It's okay to be sad, but also like perspective is everything, right, Like there's going to be a time after this, there's been other people that are suffering, like you're not the only one, and like there's so many things to be grateful for.

I feel like it's tied to that.

So now we're getting all cheesy.

We could see a cat poster with that on it, but it's an Amy man lyric and I just love it.

If I was going to get a tattoo, which I'm not, it might say perspective is everything.

That's not one thing you're going to do in your forties get a tattoo.

I guess it's not on any bucket list or anything I plan on doing in my forties.

No, Well, our love of the week is sort of related then with our perspective as everything, because Sarah, you had a couple of things go wrong over the last week.

Correct, Oh my gosh, things way worse than forgetting a Q and A in a podcast transcript.

So we're recording this a couple of weeks after the fact.

But our nanny actually took a trip that wasn't going wrong, that was planned.

It was not the best timing, like I knew I was going to be on call and it was the first full week of school, so really not ideal, but it was something really special to her.

As I said, yes, so we're going into that.

I'm going into that like with baited breath, like I'm so anxious.

And then immediately immediately, the dryer breaks and my husband's car breaks, like breaks forever, like it's never Maybe it'll live again, but it's not gonna be our car probably again, because the breaks failed, and like you know, you know, breaks fail, We're done.

It's a twenty eleven prius too.

It was time, but like that was not it was not the time.

And honestly, the dryer was more disruptive than the car because he promptly runted a car.

But we like had to, I don't know, like scramble to have clean clothes every day until we figured out that the local wandromat had a washing fold service.

We dropped off tons of laundry and then the next day picked it up.

All nice and beautifully folded, and it was just a lifesaver.

So that is my love of the week, and also just a reminder that sometimes a bunch of stuff is gonna happen all at once.

But you know, perspective is everything.

We got through it.

Yeah, washing fold services are great.

I mean, I know, so when I lived in New York City, I used one all the time because my first apartment didn't have a laundry facilities, but there was a commercial laundry out across the street, and I quickly figured out it's like, okay, you could go spend hours going in and out on a Saturday, like tending your clothes and moving them to the dryer, or you could just pay a very small amount, I mean, because it's so competitive because they were one on every block to get them to do it, and they would, and then you just pick it up again the next day and it's all beautiful, or sometimes they even deliver it if you wanted that.

But it was across the road, so I didn't really need that.

But yeah, like you don't do that in a suburban house where you have a huge laundry facility.

Thing, but might be worth it as a special treat sometime when you just can't get your head around doing the laundry totally.

It was a lifesaver, lifesaver, well, my love of the week.

I thought I was going to be totally done with it when we were recording this, but it turned out there was one more chapter that I had not counted.

I'm reading Anna Karina, so Tolstoy's novel, and this year I have been reading it at a pace of one chapter a day, and I knew there were approximately two hundred whatever we are two hundred and forty chapters.

We've gotten through of.

Eight months of the year, and so I read one chapter a day and we are coming to the end.

Tomorrow will be the last chapter.

Well, the thing is Tolstoy is irritating this way, both in War and Peace and Anakarnina, and that one of the main things that happens like to end the book is then like sixty pages from the end, you have sixty pages of like nothing wrapping it up.

And so I'm in that right now and just okay, we're going to learn all about the Serbian cause that the various Russian freelance fighters were going to do.

And I was like, have you read any commentary about why he did this, like did he have a whole plan?

But then he had to meet a word count.

I wonder because it's serialized.

It was like there are five serial like there's five.

Books, right, and so maybe he like not spoiler alert here, but Anna has already been under the train here.

So that happened like fifty pages ago.

And I guess his readers still wanted stuff or he well, he was more interested in Levin Constantin, Levin the other character, sort of big character, and it's his alter ego, it's Tolstoy's alter ego.

And so I guess he found him more fascinating and his spiritual journey and all that, And so we get sixty more pages on Levin's spiritual journey.

You know, someone listening has written their thesis on those sixty pages.

I'm sure they have, like why did he just keep going?

So let us know.

Our Russian literature experts, and why he did it with Warren Peace too.

The epilogue is like all the it's like one hundred pages on his great men theory of history, on how we need to recognize that it's not the great men of history that are moving things, all right.

You're not selling these books to me.

Well, okay, I like them, and I like to I've read them and I think they've either fascinating.

But I yeah, if you're reading probably two hundred and fifty page contemporary novels, you'd have to work to get through this, because it's there's some slow, very slow.

We'll see.

Not on my Sunday maybe list just yet.

No, not on your list of one hundred dreams from our previous episode.

Oh well, well, anyway, this was actually I meant to get at this of the forties versus what you do, because I read Anakarinana when I was twenty two years old, and I remember some of it, but I didn't remember all of this stuff, and so it was kind of nice to read it my forties and see some of the absurdity of some of it, but also just at this slow of a pace, because I think I went through it a lot faster the first time and missed a lot, and so I've experienced all of it.

So cool, right, all right, Well, that was just as good as a Q and I we weave back next week with a great question.

Next week we'll have it all well, all right, well, this has been best of both worlds.

We've been talking things that we learned in our forties, some of our favorite quotes from our own things we're telling people all the time, and we will be back next week.

With more on making work and life fit together.

Thanks for listening.

You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram.

And you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.

This has been the best of both worlds podcasts.

Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.