This is a bonus episode slash you may have noticed that episode number 29 did not come out last week. So the first time I have missed an episode, and that was for quite a few fun reasons. So today I want to tell you all about the future of the podcast, where I've been what's coming up and where we're headed from here. But first I want to share, what's bringing me joy right now. And that is last week.
I had the most wonderful adventure. We went to Paris, to Amsterdam, to Brussels, to Brugges. All in one week's time, which was a little action packed, but it was all the time we had for spring break. So we made the most of it. I was me and my partner and his two teenage kids.
And on the way home, our flight got delayed by 24 hours.
So my time to record podcast got eaten up by sitting in Philadelphia or more specifically Wilmington Delaware, because pretty much every hotel in Philadelphia was sold out due to the WrestleMania event, which. Who knew was a really big thing. So we did get stranded overnight there, but we had a good time.
We hit this cute little diner called Libby's restaurant and had some enormous French toast and pancakes. And. Eggs and made it back home very, very, very late on Sunday night. It has been a bit of a challenge lately for me recording these episodes for a few reasons. One, as you may have figured out, I traveled a lot in the last four weeks.
I was. In Europe and back twice in four weeks, which I can't say as I really recommend. But I did do that to myself because those were the times we had available. And I found good deals on flights and I possibly overestimated. My own stamina. For travel. I am getting a little bit older and getting a little bit tired or with some of these trips.
But we did have a good time. So no regrets. But the trouble was that in addition to all of the travel, which makes getting the podcast episodes scheduled and recorded and ready to go ahead of time, a bit of a challenge. It is also super raging pollen and allergy season here in North Carolina. Despite the fact that I take two allergy medicines every single day, year round, we have a lot of tree and grass pollen here in North Carolina, and it has been breaking through. So trying to find a time of day where I could record without having to clear my throat and then edit that out constantly has also been a bit of a challenge. And then in addition, my consulting business has kicked up quite a bit in the last month. And so trying to keep the steady pace of one episode per week. Without breaks without fail.
It's been a bit of a challenge. I've been trying to approach all of the things in my life from a place of creativity and inspiration and joy. And trust that I have it inside of me to be organized and persistent and get important things done without motivating myself with fear and being mean to myself when I don't get things done. So I've been trying to approach things from that perspective. And I've come to realize, getting one episode out the door without fail every single week is probably not where I am in my life right now.
So I gave it some thought, and this was validated by talking to my best friend who came up with the same idea. She said, why don't you do seasons? So let's say season one was, I don't know, 29 episodes, 28 and a half episodes. Season two will not be that many, but I'll probably do. Something in the neighborhood of six to 12 episodes per season.
And I want to create a little bit of space to plan those out, get them going ahead of time and then release them. So it should give me, should make it fit into my workload a little more easily and take some of that pressure off while still getting great content out to all of you. So some of the stuff I have planned for season two, tentatively speaking. I want to do an episode about being careful, who you compare yourself to. It's been on my mind quite a bit lately. I also want to do one about the power of baby steps and running little experiments to get clarity and get moving. That's been a big takeaway from my program. Just this morning, an old friend of mine messaged me and said, I would love if you would do an episode talking about how you did allowance and financial literacy with your kids.
Cause she said, you may not remember this, but you told me years and years ago before I ever had kids, what your method was. And now my son is four and I want to know all the details. So that was one unexpected one, but I was like, that would be a fun topic. I'll do that one. And I have a few other ideas too.
Maybe something about regrets, maybe a not to do list episode. So we all have to do lists, but what's on your not to do list.
I've also been thinking a lot lately about how you go about internalizing other people's love and affection for you. So knowing how others feel about you. How do you bring that into yourself and tap into it so that you don't need to hear it all the time? I don't know if there's an episode there, but there might be. I'm thinking too one about cultivating and sustaining friendships, maybe something about side hustles, hobbies, career. Maybe something about salary and title negotiation.
I don't know. Lots of ideas of more to come for sure. So stay tuned for season two, which I imagine will be rolling out the door. Sometime in the next few months TBD. Pausing for now, but I do plan to come back and if I decide not to come back, I'll come back and tell you I'm not coming back. So don't worry about that.
On a different note. I wanted to share with you a few unexpected delights that I experienced during our trip last week. The kids wanted to go to the top of the Eiffel tower, which oddly, even though I've been to Paris, twice is not something I've ever done.
It seemed a little touristy. I don't know. It just didn't jump out to me as that appealing. But the kids wanted to do it. So I was game. And we went to buy tickets and it turned out all of the tickets to ride the elevator up. We're sold out much more quickly than the tickets to take the stairs up. So with some hesitation, we booked tickets for the stairs and I was so unexpectedly delighted by that process of climbing the stairs up the Eiffel tower, because you can't really tell from the ground, but when you are climbing it, you're climbing inside the. The workings of the Eiffel tower.
So you're seeing all of the metal and all of the screws and bolts that hold it all together. But you're also seeing through that out to the view. And so you're watching yourself just get progressively higher and higher above the city of Paris. And the city just looks unbelievable from up there. And I don't think we would've had that same experience, riding an elevator up in, a minute and a half.
And just looking out, you really felt like you were achieving something, accomplishing something as you got higher and higher up. And at the end of the day, we took a look at how many flights of stairs we had climbed. And it was about 68 flights of stairs. And I don't know, I just feel like I experienced the Eiffel tower in a new way. And it slowed down the trip.
It made that part of the trip feel less rapid and more something to be savored. I did resist the urge to pay for a glass of champagne up there at the top of the Eiffel tower, because it was a bit overpriced, but I did have some later on, back down on the ground at a little cafe, which was also a delight.
Another thing I did differently this time around was the kids wanted to go see the Mona Lisa and check out the Louvre. And my partner was going to go with them and I thought, I've already done that. Not really an art museum person. I'll go back again someday. When I take my own kids over there and I know they'll enjoy it, but today I don't really want to do that. And so I had bought them tickets to go to the Louvre and I decided I'm just going to take a couple hours to myself. So I went to a cafe and I had a lovely glass of wine.
I went to a little bookstore that was called Shakespeare and company. It's an absolute delight in Paris. It's been there since the 1920s. There's rooms upstairs that Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald used to hang out in and it was such a neat, quaint old timey place. And what I loved most was you were not allowed to take any photographs inside.
You could buy a postcard, but no pictures. So when you were inside, people were actually enjoying the bookstore, you know, flipping through books, sitting down upstairs in the reading room, looking around. Another source of delight during the trip was we decided to splurge and do two canal cruises, one in Amsterdam and one in Bruges, and a river cruise down the Seine in Paris. And that was really fun to do in all three cities. If I was planning the trip for myself, I probably would have just done one, maybe two. I certainly would not have done all three, but getting to see the city from out on the water, it's a different view of the city and it's really enjoyable. One last thing I did that I really enjoyed on this trip. I had already been to the Anne Frank House. And so when the kids and my partner wanted to go see that, I thought, you know, I've done this twice already. It is also a little bit heavy. And I think I want to do something else this time.
So I got their tickets for the Anne Frank House, and then I went and found tickets. Nearby. There is another 17th century canal house that actually had a church up in the attic. And it was really interesting. Historical site is called our Lord in the attic. I'm in English. And it's translated into Dutch, but I learned a lot about the history of Amsterdam. And that tension between the Dutch cultural ideal of. Freedom of expression, freedom of thought. Freedom of religion. And the time of the 17th century. Where that was just not the norm for a country to offer to people.
And so in Holland at that time, or at least in Amsterdam, The way it worked was if you were not part of the Dutch national church. You think that's the reform church? Then you could still be whatever you were, you could be Catholic, it could be Jewish so on and so forth, but you couldn't have an official church.
So you could have a church in a home. It just didn't operate with any official recognition, but it was also. Perfectly tolerated and understood these churches existed. And so this canal house was really neat. You went all the way up. And they had taken this third floor of this canal house and created a Catholic church in it.
And it was actually. In operation for about 200 years. And it was really like just like any other church, except somehow it was up in the attic. It was just really cool to see something like that. It was, it gave you a unique perspective on religious freedom and history and the tension between, having a community belief and an individual belief and how different cultures navigate that. So I really enjoyed that time to myself and I'm not sure it's the kind of site that most kids would have found all that.
Interesting. So it was nice to do it on my own. Well, this is going to be a super short episode because I could already feel the pollen is activating my allergies and my nose is getting quite stuffy.
Maybe season two will kick off. When all of this blasted pollen goes away. Stay tuned until then. And I will see you soon.
