Today is the last day of August, and this has been quite a month! One thing I’ve learned about time over the years is that when you have a lot of memories from any given unit of time, it feels quite long in retrospect. August was one of those months.
Partly it was that I spent a lot of it on the road. I woke up on August 1st in Miami, enjoying a mastermind meet-up with a group of content creators. It was fun to talk shop and get to know people, including finally meeting my friend and fellow productivity writer Chris Bailey in person.
Then it was only one week until we left for the beach. (In between, I picked up my 11-year-old at camp — he had a great time!) My family has gone to one specific beach on the NJ shore for many years, so the place is familiar, but it’s still different from being at home, and so the memories came pretty thick with that too. We took family photos. We ate at a lot of cool restaurants. We tried different ice cream parlors. I took the little guy to the pinball arcade. I did a lot of runs along the boardwalk.
Then my husband took our eldest off to school and I left for Australia! After an epic flight (Dallas to Sydney is 16 hours in the air — I spent an actual percentage of August in the sky…) I enjoyed running around Sydney’s Darling Harbour, seeing the sights (like the Opera House) and visiting a few of the city’s museums. There are just a ton of restaurants there too. I’d make a point of eating in crowded places because it’s easy to fit one person in, and I figure when there’s so much choice, if a place is packed, people must know what they’re doing.
(If anyone is traveling with kids, there is a fantastic looking playground in Darling Harbor — like the equipment looked adventurous enough that I could see my 11-year-old liking it.)
Then it was home. This past weekend was actually pretty active too — I wasn’t suffering too bad from jet lag as I kind of never switched over in Australia. Most nights there I slept from like 8 p.m. to 3:30 a.m.! On Saturday night this weekend I took my two little guys to the Hot Wheels Monster Truck rally. This was so ridiculous and also a ton of fun. The various trucks looked like Hot Wheels (there was a tiger shark, a “Rhinomite” one looking like a rhinoceros with a horn, a “Skelesaurus,” a Big Foot truck, etc.) They jumped over crushed cars, did donuts, and walked on their front wheels in one case. There was also motocross as an interlude. Definitely a good activity for the 6-12 year old male demographic.
Then Sarah came over! She and her youngest daughter visited us on Sunday and we did some recording and hung out while the kids played. It was too short — only a few hours, as it was a quick visit and she was trying to spend time with her parents too — but it was great to see her!
And the month isn’t quite over, as I’m actually taking a short work trip tonight.
(I’ll also be doing a Substack Live with Meagan Francis today if all goes well! That will be at 11:30 a.m. eastern, just follow me — Vanderhacks — over on Substack.)
September will feature a lot more time at home, though I will take one trip to visit some other writer friends. I’m currently planning to see Melissa Etheridge at Longwood Gardens. I’ll run the September Reset Time Tracking Challenge (please sign up here!). I hope to have most of my rough draft of Golden Hours written, and then I’ll incorporate some new findings from the time tracking challenge. My four younger kids will start school. All our activities, including my two choirs, will start up again. It’s been nice to have Mondays and Thursdays off from rehearsals but I haven’t sung in a few months now and I am missing it. Everything has a season.
I’m talking about “Time Management for Thought Leaders” with the Op-Ed project on Sept 22 in the evening (virtually). If you’re interested you can buy a ticket here.
Toward the end of the month I’ll go to a baby shower for my sister-in-law and my little brother (the baby is due in November). My husband and I will take our soon-to-be 17-year-old out for a fancy birthday dinner. It’s going to be a good month and I’m hoping to get into a good routine with the family schedule. We have a lot going on but it’s only four kids not five and one can drive!
I do hope to make it apple picking at some point (Honeycrisps are a September harvest fruit, not later) so we’ll see if I can convince anyone to come with me. I probably need to make a Fall Fun List soon…
In other news: If you enjoy my writing, would you please pick up a copy of Big Time? My newest book is all about practical ways to cultivate a sense of time abundance. I know many of you have picked up a copy, but if you haven’t yet, I promise the book will make you feel like you have more time. And who doesn’t need that? Links to retailers here.
