This is a running list of longer term but not immediately urgent projects I need to tackle. Now, to be clear, these are not all actually annoying. For instance, in September I did need to get the numbers for my business taxes (annoying!). But I also did stuff like register for 2027 sleep away camp, and book hotels for a future trip. Those aren’t annoying things, it’s just that the many steps themselves can be annoying. I’ve been listing these out in a little corner on my weekly planning pages, and then moving forward what I haven’t done. I don’t actually intend to do all of them on any given week, which is why they are not on my actual priority list (just in a tiny corner!). But I try to choose one each week and by seeing all of them I know my options. This month I’m ordering Christmas cards, getting my ring fixed, renewing my drivers’ license, putting my annual deposit into my self-employed 401k, and a few other things.

Anyway, I’m trying to take some time at the end of each month to reflect on the month and look forward. September was a good transition month after my August month of being away from home from August 9-27 (minus three hours) and also gone Aug 1-2, plus 31st. By contrast, I only spent three nights of September in hotels!

The month started in NYC, where I got up and ran around Central Park. That was a treat — I also then recorded a few video interviews about Big Time (my most recent book, please check it out if you haven’t!). This has been helpful as I’ve been able to post some video clips over on Instagram. I keep saying I should do more video…and then other people did it for me. Efficiency!

The first part of the month also featured the Melissa Etheridge concert at Longwood Gardens. It was a beautiful late summer night and it was fun to spend time with my now-17-year-old. He was a very good sport about going to a concert where he was not exactly the target demographic. He joked about buying merch and wearing it to school.

I camped out in the yard with my two little boys over Labor Day weekend. Then we went to go apple picking — and found few apples to pick. So we picked flowers and got donuts instead. I would still call that a successful adventure. I ate a lot of Honeycrisp apples in September either way!

School started on September 8th (late!). We have mostly figured out the schedule at this point. It is always a work in progress the first few weeks, but it is starting to feel more routine. A few more things will be added shortly, but others will end (baseball/cross-country/flag football). We celebrated the start of the school year with a family dinner at the Melting Pot.

Speaking of meals, my husband and I also had a fun omakase dinner to celebrate our anniversary (22 years). We took the 17-year-old and a friend to Provenance for a birthday dinner and enjoyed their tasting menu later in the month.

I went to Portland, Maine for a few days to gather with some other writers and content creators. I’ve been to Portland in early fall for six years now, and the place is starting to feel very familiar. This was a fun time as always, including three runs along the water front in the morning. Plus I learned how to weave as a fun bonus activity!

I ran the September Reset Time Tracking Challenge and had over a thousand people tracking their time for the week (Sept 14-20). I am still working through the logs people sent me, but the reason this is slow going is that they are FASCINATING. I love my readers. Truly. I particularly love seeing the cool things people are doing in their “Golden Hours.”

As for Golden Hours (the next book), I have a rough draft. It is on the shorter side, but I’ll be putting in information and stories from the challenge over the next few weeks which will make it more substantial. There will also be a reasonable number of time logs in the back. My original book due date was October 1st, so I guess I did finish a draft by then — but now the deadline is January 15th, so I’m looking forward to playing around with the draft a bit more.

Other than that, there were a lot kids’ sports and activities and driving. My two choirs started up and I’m enjoying singing regularly again. There have been some challenges, not all of which are blog-worthy — I know this is the problem of writing about your life and having older kids. Some transitions to the school year have been rougher than others. But we are chugging along.

Looking forward to October…It is a pretty stunning month around here once the fall colors are more prominent (which tends to happen somewhere between October 15-20 and peaks right around the end of the month).

I have a few things I suspect will be highlights already on the books. My daughter will celebrate her birthday early in the month. She asked for a guitar and is getting one — I’m excited for her to learn to play that and add another instrument to her repertoire. We may go to an Eagles game — at least that is the plan, and I am excited about that as long as the weather isn’t terrible. I’m going to Nashville to see my college kid! He’s been enjoying Vanderbilt so far and is really getting himself plugged in there (he joined a choir and got a position working at a lab). I will sing in my first concert of the fall, which will feature the Chichester Psalms. And then there will be lots of Halloween festivities, including a Halloween music recital in which the 6-year-old will perform a self-composed piece about bats. Professionally, I hope to have a pretty well-revised draft of Golden Hours by the end of the month. Wish me luck!

I’ve certainly noticed this, which is why I was fascinated to see the concept of “easy child privilege” mentioned online. The idea is that sometimes people who have easy kids get public credit for being great parents. Then people with more “difficult” kids, who may not be neurotypical, or naturally compliant, or who may have more challenges with eating or sleeping, look like “bad parents” — even though in many cases it is their excellent parenting that is keeping their kids within certain ranges of behavior.

In today’s episode of Best of Both Worlds, Sarah and I explore this concept. In some ways I have easy kids. They are smart, caring, and wonderful people (who also happen to be neurotypical and don’t have chronic medical conditions that affect daily life). I can also see, with an n=5, that some aspects of their personalities have little to do with me. The obvious example: one child was willing to eat eyeballs in a restaurant when that was on offer during some international travel. One child subsists on chicken nuggets. Same house, same general upbringing.

Sarah also shares her thoughts on some kids being “easier” than others. Then in the Q&A we discuss the concept of the babysitter “bench.” A listener needed back-up care recently and wondered how many people one needs on the roster. You want caregivers to be available when needed, but if you don’t have a regular need for them, people might stop being interested. Yet another thing to be managed! Please give the episode a listen.

It you’re interested in talking about issues of work and life and parenting, please consider joining our Patreon community. We have 3-4 discussion threads a week, plus monthly Zoom meet-ups. This month’s is tomorrow, Sept 30, at noon eastern. We’ll be discussing hobbies/fun/taking one night for you. Membership is $9/month and all meet-ups are recorded for people who can’t make it. Please join us!

The 17-year-old had a cross-country meet so I got up with him at 6:20 a.m. on Saturday to see him off (thank goodness he was driving himself). They ran in cold rain but the upside is he did run faster than he had at the meet I went to on Wednesday!

I was supposed to drive up to upstate NY for a baby shower on Saturday but I got 30 minutes down the highway and it was so wet and windy and so slow I wound up turning around. This was going to be a 4-hour trip each way, not a 3-hour one, and I had to get back for my 17-year-old’s birthday dinner. So that was too bad, though I heard from others that the house where the shower was lost power and there were lots or road closures and debris down where they were. It would have been stressful trying to make it back for the dinner.

That at least did happen. We went to Provenance in downtown Philly. This is one of Philly’s new Michelin-starred restaurants. It was great — French with Korean influences. We took one of my son’s friends too and the four of us were in the wine cellar. My husband and I did the “temperance pairing” — all mocktails to match the food. That was an adventure for sure.

On Friday night I took the 14-year-old and 17-year-old out to dinner at an Italian place (I had another mocktail…). Then we went in the hot tub together. This was probably one of our last nights in there — I think we’ll still get next weekend before we close the pool but the season is winding down.

Other than that, mostly the usual stuff. I wish I could say I used the 9 hours I opened up by not driving to the baby shower productively but…I really didn’t. I worked for about an hour. I read some, started a puzzle, made some preliminary versions of the holiday card, and took my daughter to Starbucks. I guess better than nothing. I wrote a draft of this while sitting in the party room on Sunday at a birthday party where my 6-year-old was playing laser tag. It might be a drop off party, but he insisted it wasn’t, so there I was. He now thinks he wants to have his party there so maybe I should just book it and not forget! (His birthday is right after Christmas…so it’s easy to not think ahead about this…)

I hope everyone affected by the storm stayed safe and dry. It’s been sad to see the pictures of flooding on the Jersey shore, such as the Lobster House in Cape May, and apparently the roof at the Stone Pony in Asbury is ripped up too. I saw video of the entire beach in Asbury covered with water and I know there has been some serious beach erosion on that part of the coast too (like pics of Bradley Beach with half of the dunes gone). Here’s hoping for a swift and uncomplicated clean up.

Photo: One of the tasting plates at Provenance. It was kind of dark in the wine cellar so it was hard to get the photos to come out.

One way I started my weekend? With a short hike this morning! My friend Joy and I occasionally meet late in the week to walk on a local trail. It’s good exercise and nice to get fresh air, but this morning it was a bit more challenging than usual — see the photo. The tree was down but it was just the branches covering the path so we were able to hack our way through. I managed to poke myself in the face with a twig though. Whoops.

I am also now the parent of a 17-year-old! Kid #2 turned 17 this week. We did some celebrating this week and will do more this weekend. Early fall is one of our “birthday seasons” around here, so there will be celebrations next weekend too for another birthday.

Thanks again to everyone who participated in the September Reset Time Tracking Challenge. I will respond to everyone who sent me a log, it’s just taking me a bit to get through them so I’m a little slower with responses this week.

Now on to content! Over at Before Breakfast, I interviewed Lynda Gratton, author of Living the 100 Year Life. Please check that out!

In the short episodes I talked about how you should “Book the sitter – literally and metaphorically.” In life you want to make it easy for you to say yes to fun. I also talked about how you can “Do it with a broken heart” — a nod to the Taylor Swift song. We can move forward with things and work to create the lives we want even if all isn’t perfect. Both of these episodes nod at topics covered in my most recent book, Big Time. If you haven’t already, please check that out! And if you have, please leave a review and/or tell a friend — it all helps.

Over at Vanderhacks, my Substack newsletter, I suggested people “Take it week by week.” In life it’s good to plan ahead. Most people should spend more time planning ahead! But you probably don’t want to get into the weeds of day-to-day events happening more than a few weeks from now. For instance it would not have been helpful to spend much time worrying about how one kid was going to do a baseball game and a flag football game that were scheduled almost on top of each other when we now know the forecast means both will probably get rained out! I have my plane tickets and hotel booked for Nashville in a few weeks but I know that 8-9 days ahead of time I’ll be able to figure out the actual schedule for my visit. For a lot of things in life, looking a week ahead is fine and gives you a holistic view of time at a time when you actually know what conditions will be like.

Behind the paywall I talked about “One afternoon to a calmer home,” and “17 things to stop doing this fall.” Please check those out, and please consider a free or paid subscription!

And while you’re at it, you might consider joining the Best of Both Worlds Patreon community. This week we’ve been discussing math games for kids, dealing with aging parents, and how we’re spending the 100 days before the end of the year. Our monthly meet-up via Zoom will be next Wednesday, Sept 30th, at noon, eastern, and will be talking hobbies/fun for you. More info here.

Thanks for supporting me and my work!

If you want to see an example of one of my time logs, and of a time makeover, please check out the workbook section of Big Time — the last section is all about time tracking and how to analyze a log.

In the meantime, I’m continuing with my 2-lines-a-day sonnet writing habit. Right now I’m enjoying exploring aspects of the changing seasons. Here’s one I wrote recently called Night Swim:

September evening — dusk comes early now.
I want to grab more nights while I still can.
Here in the pool, it’s cool, and yet somehow
it’s not too cold. The leaves last week began

to fall. A listless oak leaf floats on by.
The hemlock needles clog the filters. Soon
the branches, bare, will let through bits of sky.
Already, up above, a silver moon

is biding time. Each day the night time grows.
I trace a ripple on the surface, feel
now in the water heat the earth still knows —
a memory that lingers, feeling real

for now in days that tarry in between,
so full of wonders, waiting, so serene.

Today I’m excited to bring you the next in the series of Before Breakfast podcast playlists. Today’s topic? Mornings.

Many people tell me that mornings are the most frantic part of their day. Somehow mornings can feel too short to get much done but also leave us exhausted before the day has really started. If you want to make your mornings better, this Before Breakfast playlist is for you. Each episode features a tip to help you start your days well — with time for your priorities and routines that set you up for a productive day.

What makes a good morning routine? — Mornings matter because they set the tone for the day. This episode explores the value of morning routines and offers ideas for building a routine that will make you excited to get out of bed.

The Secret to Becoming a Morning Person — If you want to become a morning person, make your mornings pleasurable — perhaps with exercise, a hobby, or a creative pursuit you enjoy.

Scrambled eggs with a side of connection — Breakfast can be social time. Having breakfast with the people in your home or meeting up with a friend or colleague for breakfast creates a great opportunity to build a little connection into your life.

Before you finish that first cup —  Choose a “coffee project” to complete before you finish your first cup of coffee. If you do this at home and at work, you’ll start the day with accomplishments and a sense of momentum.

Makeover your mornings — Mornings offer space for things that are hard to fit in busy days. What would you like to do more of? Could you do a half hour of it in the morning?

Have a no-reheat morning —  Maybe there’s no cure for the madness of the mornings, but it is possible to take five minutes enjoy an uninterrupted cup of coffee. Doing this will leave you feeling calm before the rest of the day.

What should you do the night before? — Moving morning tasks to the night before can make mornings easier. But it tends to increase the total time you spend on chores, and it can leave you feeling like you have no free time. Instead of rescheduling your morning tasks, try simplifying them.

Think checklist, rather than routine — If your mornings are unpredictable, a checklist, rather than an inflexible routine, can help you do what you aim to do in the mornings.

Mix and match a morning routine — Morning routines don’t need to look the same, day to day, to be a positive element of your life.

Enjoying Before Breakfast? Please check out my new book, Big Time: A Simple Path to Time Abundance. Click here to learn more or to order. 

Sarah and I record most episodes of Best of Both Worlds virtually, but we recorded this episode together in my house outside Philadelphia. We shared our “fall favorites” — not all fall-themed, but things we are really loving right now in early fall. From a Friday morning Starbucks routine, to complete ownership of AMs, to completed photo books, to non-alcoholic beer that actually tastes like beer, we have all sorts of things to celebrate.

In the Q&A we answer a question from a listener who speaks of being in the lucky position of being able to go out weekly as a couple. They are hoping to come up with ideas that not food-related (they don’t want to just go out to restaurants as their date night). We talk about exercising together, taking a class together, and alternating planning little adventures in their town. If you each planned a little adventure once a month, and exercised together one night, and maybe did a restaurant one time a month, that could be a great mix.

Please give the episode a listen, and as always, we welcome ratings and reviews.

So this week we are excited to bring you Dr. Anita Chandra. Dr. Chandra is a board-certified geriatrician and the co-host of The Millennial Sandwich podcast. She and Sarah discuss managing the help of older relatives in different stages, and what that can look like.

Please give the episode a listen! And please mark your calendars for the next Best of Both Worlds Patreon community meet-up. On September 30th at noon we’ll be discussing hobbies, fun, and “taking one night for you.” Our community has great discussion threads and is a fun alternative to social media. Membership is $9/month.

If you have been doing the project, would you please do me a *huge* favor and fill out the wrap-up survey? There is a link in today’s email. The data on people’s time tracking experience will be incredibly helpful for me. Thank you! I’m doing a small donation to one of several non-profits as an incentive.

I finished out my 168 hours in a fairly low-key way. I posted this, then mostly hung out the rest of the evening. We made dinner from 6-6:30, then ate family dinner (grilled chicken + corn and garden tomatoes) from 6:30-6:50 more or less. We cleaned up and the 16-year-old and 11-year-old went together to Scouts. My husband joined them at 8 for the parent meeting. Meanwhile I hung out here, worked on my puzzle, hung out with the little guy and finished one book and started another. Laundry happened in there too. I was in bed around 11:30 I believe — then I was woken up by a text at 6:05 a.m. (I’d forgotten to turn the sound off). I was also up at 2:30 for the bathroom.

So anyway, I’m up and posting. My observations on the week: I slept 53.25 hours, for an average of 7.6 hours per day. This is a little higher than normal — which may explain why I am up early this AM, and wasn’t really able to go back to sleep after that text. But it’s pretty close to normal, even with travel and the like.

Work clocked in exactly at 40 hours. This was mostly concentrated Monday to Thursday (I worked 4.25 hours on Friday and about 1.75 total over the weekend). This week was more heavy on the networking front than usual with my gathering of authors and creators in Portland.

I ran four times: Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings in Portland along the water, which was lovely, and then Saturday morning around my own neighborhood. I worked out with my trainer on Monday for 30 minutes, and then did two short strength sessions on my own (just 10-15 minutes). I did a long (hour-plus) walk around Portland mid-day Thursday.

I read basically two full books! I clocked 9.25 hours of reading. This is a function of a few things. First, I read on both my plane flights. Second, I was writing about my time publicly, so there were a few nights where I read for 30 minutes before bed when I might have gotten sucked into instagram or something. We had a low key weekend — which I have some mixed feelings about but it is what it is, so there was reading time there. My 6-year-old is also definitely into having daddy “finish” the bedtime job right now, so often once they’re in there I’m kind of done for the night. I get him ready and read him a quick story and then I have some time in the evenings. Since we weren’t doing much in the evenings this weekend I read for at least an hour in bed Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It’s a reminder that I really do have time for this and I need to be good about curating my TBR list because that time will be spent on something.

I also did a fair amount of puzzle-assembling. I started a new one last week and I’d say I’m more than half done. I clocked 5.75 hours on this project! Most of this was in 15-20 minutes chunks here and there between things (I rarely do the puzzle for more than 30 minutes, though I did once or twice on the weekend). Nonetheless, small chunks add up.

I had two hours of Choral Arts rehearsal Monday night, and then 30 minutes of choral practice for the church choir Sunday AM, followed by an hour-long service.

The kids are definitely in my log, though what this looks like changes as they get older. I drove my high schoolers to school on Monday and Tuesday, and picked up my 16-year-old at cross country on Monday and Friday. I read stories to my little guy on the four nights I was home. I was the “adult partner” for a Cub Scout meeting. I went in the hot tub one night with the little guys and supervised as they blew cat tail seeds around. I enjoyed a lovely chat with my daughter outside on Saturday later in the afternoon – I’m glad I suggested that. I talked on the phone with my college kid a handful of times (and spent time booking tickets to go visit him!)

I had my big adventure of going to Portland this week, and then the weekend was a little anti-climactic. We had a lot of sports starting up (tennis, flag football, baseball) so there wasn’t a whole lot of space to schedule stuff (though rain affected the schedule somewhat). There was a fair amount of amorphous time. I read and did my puzzle and the kids all had stuff they did (the 11-year-old played with two friends, for instance, and the 16-year-old went to a sleepover Saturday night). But I didn’t have anything I did that I was like “oh, that was a fun and memorable weekend experience.” I guess one highlight is that our church organist (a young man who is studying organ performance) did a fantastic Mozart piece as a postlude. Next weekend there will be more adventures.

And Portland was truly cool. It’s nice to spend time thinking about what I want to do when I grow up. I did manage to get all my “regular” work done, and even spent some time on writing Golden Hours. A lot can fit in a week.

I hope your week was satisfying! Let me know what happened and what you learned. And of course you can send me your log if you’d like too!

If you are tracking, please take the survey that will go out tomorrow. I want to know how the week went! I believe you can also still take the Friday survey to reflect on how you spent your weekday evenings. This data will be helpful to me, and I really appreciate it.

After hitting post yesterday, I went outside with the 11-year-old and 6-year-old to blow cat tails into various bodies of water — in the hopes of getting more of them next year. Then I went in to work on my puzzle for a bit, then sat on the hammock outside reading the Wall Street Journal while everyone had downtime. I came back in briefly, then I sat outside chatting with my daughter from 5-6 p.m. It felt like fall and this was quite lovely!

After that, I practiced my music for Sunday morning. My husband got back from his run and we made chicken wings to eat while watching the Texas A&M game (taped, it also did not go as we hoped). At 7:15 I went out to the hot tub with the little boys (they played in the pool for a bit…it is getting cold!) and my husband came out after doing the dishes and we all were out there until 8 p.m.

After that, I spent a little more time on the puzzle (it’s addictive) before bringing the 6-year-old up for a story a little bit before 9. I read to him and then my husband took over before I went to read in bed. I probably read for most of 9:30-11 before making sure the 11-year-old didn’t have his phone, and then going to bed.

I woke up once at 5:45 then went back to sleep until my alarm at 7:35. I got up and showered and got ready for church (my breakfast featured garden tomatoes — see picture). I went on my own around 8:40. We had rehearsal from 9-9:30, then I chatted with other choir members and listened to the prelude. My husband brought our younger three kids. They all left before I got out after the postlude (which was Mozart!). I was home around 11:20.

I ate a snack, then commenced activity driving. I’m not sure anyone wants the whole play by play, but I drove to the tennis place three times. I stopped at Wawa in the middle for one kid, and Starbucks at the end for another. The baseball game at 1:30 was canceled, so that didn’t have to fit in the schedule. I was home a few minutes before 2. I did another half hour on the puzzle, then went to read for 30 minutes before taking the 6-year-old to Cub Scouts. That’s where I was from 3:15-4:30 p.m.

I’m home now and posting this. I will mostly just be relaxing the rest of the day though I assume dinner will happen at some point…