This week has been pretty good so far. I’ve been doing a number of “big kid” things. I took two of my older kids out to lunch on Monday. My oldest and I attended a webinar for his new university, and then I did a college planning session with the 16-year-old. The 14-year-old and I did a brief shopping trip, during which I got a call from the 11-year-old’s camp. I was a little panicked when I saw the number (some residual big feelings from the era when I was getting called by the elementary school multiple times per week…) but he had not done anything. He had gone to the infirmary with what might be poison ivy. I am far enough along in my parenting journey (and have been through enough…) that I think “phew, thank goodness it’s just poison ivy!”

I will be driving up to camp on Saturday to get him. I’m hoping it all went well. I did get to talk to him for 6 minutes last night. I’m pondering some discussion topics to make the drive home be more entertaining.

The 16-year-old has been getting up early this week to drive himself to a camp that is 50 minutes away. All I can say is thank goodness he can drive because I’m not sure how that would have worked in the schedule. He is putting gas in the car on his own!

In another “big kid parenting” category, my daughter has been needing to collect names/contact info to serve as references for a volunteer tutoring gig she is applying for. So this has been a discussion of how to figure out which adults know you and can vouch for you. This is more character reference than job skill reference as 14-year-olds don’t have much work experience. But she has figured it out.

Anyway, I’ll be on a much lighter posting schedule the next few weeks – perhaps doing some BOBW and content posts. Speaking of which…here’s this week’s content!

Over at Before Breakfast I interviewed Ruby Ryba about how to stop scrolling. In the shorter episodes, I talked about why you should “Buy extra tickets” and that “A working vacation beats working on vacation.” Every summer I am reminded that being able to work remotely, and being willing to do a little work while being on vacation, means I can take a lot more time away than if that weren’t the case. I know not all jobs are like that, but many people work differently now than in the past. Remote work doesn’t always have to mean “from home.”

Over at Vanderhacks, my Substack newsletter, I wrote that “You won’t come back to it.” The sad truth is that your future self is not going to have any more energy or time than your current self. So only take on what you know you can realistically do. A project you stop in the middle, like a photo book, could stay in the middle for…a while. Lots of people have emailed me that they needed this one!

(Though, counterpoint: This week I finished a book that I started in 2018, abandoned, and then came back to it. So there is that. Though since I remember nothing of the first 40 percent of the book from 2018…it is possible my husband bought it on my Kindle/Amazon account and he is the one who started reading it and abandoned it…Also, I think Shutterfly has their unlimited pages promo going on if anyone needs an incentive to finish their photo books.)

I also wrote that “After 5 p.m. it’s Friday” — one mindset shift to have more relaxed evenings.

The Best of Both Worlds Patreon community has had several great discussions going this week. We’ve talked about whether it’s possible to take two weeks away (and how people have done this) and also how to get a good vacation split between new places, familiar places, and seeing family (or traveling with family). We also have a thread talking about mom guilt – what people might feel guilty about or not. Screen time comes up more frequently than, say, work.

I’d also love if you’d grab a copy of Big Time. I got a copy for my Kindle the other day to see what people are highlighting. Apparently a lot of folks like the quote in the ringmaster chapter that chaos and complexity are not the same thing. I like that quote too! I’m hoping to have a long career writing books, and part of that is making sure that the current and previous books continue to sell. So thank you for buying the book, and thank you for supporting me and my work.

In the meantime, we’re trying to do family photos this weekend. Wish me luck!

Laura Vanderkam

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