There were some cool highlights. Among them:

— A new book deal! I wound up switching agents and publishers over the last year or so, but in April we announced a 2-book deal with Norton. Big Time (current title) will come out in early 2026, and The Golden Hours will come out in 2027. I love writing (and writing long) so I have been reminding myself how grateful I am to have the opportunity to create more books.

— In a totally non-commercial vein: I wrote a handful of sonnets I like. I continued my year-long project of writing two lines a day, thus producing one sonnet a week. Most are eh. Some I like. I’ll likely do a post of my favorite sonnets from 2024 over the next week or two.

— I didn’t really have a banner reading year but I read a lot about my current obsession: the ancient earth. This started with my obsession with non-homo sapiens human species, but then has extended back. My current interest: the end-Permian extinction (when 90 percent of all life died out), and then the Triassic, which was when the earth recovered and life re-evolved. At one point it rained for a million years. I am also obsessed with the Economist’s annual Holiday issue (I tend to read it over the holiday break), and they actually had an article on the Triassic this time around. Bliss!

— Spain with my big boys. This was a trip with a lot of memories, from a horse-drawn carriage ride in Seville (smelling the oranges the whole time!) to a little paella restaurant in Rondo, to bike riding in Madrid. While the weather wasn’t wonderful, we survived that and the upgraded seats home were just the cherry on top ending to a great adventure.

— Paris with my daughter. A college friend suggested we go see Taylor Swift in Paris, so we did. Taylor was exciting but it was also fun to see art, eat crepes, cruise on the Seine, and enjoy gorgeous spring weather. She and I had fun at the Olivia Rodrigo concert over the summer as well. I took my 17-year-old to NYC for a long weekend and enjoyed that, particularly our sunset boat cruise and seeing MJ the Musical.

— Fall leaves. I went to Maine twice this fall and really enjoyed the scenery — including seeing the Northern Lights in Portland.

— Singing in the B-Minor Mass. This has been on my List of 100 Dreams for years, and this year it finally happened. I listened to all of Bach this year as well, and so getting to learn this piece even better was a fitting capstone to the project. My church choir sang Brahms’ Requiem, which was also cool.

— I hosted a “progressive” dinner party in the spring where we moved to different places for different courses.

— I ate at my favorite Mexican restaurant many times.

— I went to many botanical gardens. I met friends in NYC and went to the NY Botanical Garden in April for their orchid show. Then I went to Phoenix on a speaking trip and got to see the desert landscape in their garden — totally different, but amazing as well. I went to Longwood many times, and also to Chanticleer, which can be done in a lunch time trip in spring/summer and is usually gorgeous.

There were some lowlights as well:

— Excruciating back and nerve pain. About a year ago I suffered a back incident (with corresponding nerve pain down my leg) that left me unable to walk for a week and then unable to do basic things like empty the dishwasher for a while. My life doesn’t stop, so this meant I took a family trip to Disney five weeks after that happened. That was…hard. Recovery has been fitful though I do feel significantly better now. I wish I knew why. I was doing all the “right” back exercises/physical therapy exercises before the episode, so it’s not like they prevented it.

— Some family travel. The 5-year-old has trouble getting to sleep at home and on the road it is even worse. So Disney (February) and Barbados (over Christmas) both featured some very late nights with a child throwing a tantrum. Not cool. Especially when you’re paying through the nose for the privilege! Bedtime battles in general are just tedious. I do know that “this too shall pass,” as my older kids don’t throw tantrums at 10 p.m., but this is a parenting stage I wish would go a little faster.

— Norovirus. Enough said.

— Child behavioral challenges. Will just have to vague-blog here.

— Not making it to Scotland. Longtime readers may recall our canceled flights, driving home from Newark at 3 a.m., etc. Good times. However, there is always the Bronx Zoo!

In other news: I had several longer Before Breakfast episodes run since I last posted links. On December 18 I welcomed Gretchen Rubin to the show, and she talked about habits, happiness, and more. On December 25 longtime listener Amanda shared her morning routines and her “pre-planning” rituals. On January 1st I did a solo longer episode in which I talked about time tracking — why and how to do it.

Please give them a listen!

Also, please consider signing up for my annual Time Tracking Challenge. From January 13-20 a great many of us will be tracking our time together. I’ll post my time logs on this blog. You can sign up here to get daily motivational emails from me.

Photo: Spain!

I did not mean to take two weeks off from the blog, but life happens. At the beginning of this stretch, the preschooler got a nasty stomach bug, so I was up much of the night with him. Then our nanny got it, so we were sans childcare. Not my most productive week!

And then of course it was Christmas. We hosted my extended family for a party a few days before. On another day, all 7 of us went into NYC to see the Rockettes and go out to dinner. Activities like this remind me that my family is…bigger than average. When we parked the minivan at the garage we’d booked and all climbed out, it had a real clown car feel. It was a fun trip, but it was also 17 degrees that day, and so every time we were outside someone got massively unhappy.

We did the Christmas pageant (this year we had a reader and a sheep) and the service of lessons and carols on Christmas Eve. Christmas itself was low key in the morning but then the afternoon was a flurry of packing because at 5:45 a.m. on December 26th we drove to Newark Airport to fly to Barbados! International travel is another thing that is challenging with 7 people. But we made it. We spent time in the pool, on the beach, with my husband’s brother’s family (they went to the same resort) and just generally relaxing. Also, we celebrated someone’s 5th birthday! Yes, the little guy turned 5. For the first time since 2007, I do not have a child under the age of 5. Crazy.

I will give a shout out to my husband here, because I arranged to fly home from Barbados on 12/29, leaving him to travel solo with five kids the next day. Why? Because I had a dress rehearsal in Philly on 12/30 for a performance of the Bach B-Minor Mass!

Yep, this item has been on my List of 100 Dreams for ages. If you read 168 Hours, it’s in there. In college, I learned the mass, but then I was going abroad to study in Australia, and so I missed the concert. I figured I’d have another chance. Then 25 years passed. I started to realize that a bucket list item like this was going to be challenging because while you can buy a plane ticket somewhere exotic if you wish to go, it is a lot harder to arrange for an orchestra, a chorus, a director, a performance venue, etc. My back pocket idea was to audition for a choir an hour north of here that performs the mass every spring.

But I got a hot tip that Choral Arts Philadelphia would be performing the B-Minor mass on New Year’s Eve, and the director was kind enough to let me join them. I started going to rehearsals on Monday nights downtown, and re-learning the music. Yesterday, I sang in the performance and finally crossed this off my list. It was really cool. The singing sounded amazing and I was just trying to be as present as possible to appreciate it all. I hope it won’t be another 25 years (any other Philly area choirs doing this work, let me know!) but I know now to appreciate the opportunity.

(Also cool: a member of the orchestra introduced herself to me before the concert and said she had read my books! How fun is that?)

Then I drove up to my neighborhood to meet my younger two kids at a New Year’s Eve party (our nanny worked during the day and took them to the start of it). We did a New Year’s countdown at 7:30 p.m. The kids danced and waved glow sticks. Just perfect. Then my husband and I came home to supervise a houseful of teenagers, because some of the older kids decided to have sleepovers. There are 5 extra young people in my house right now but everyone is still asleep and they have all been very good.

So that was how I rang in the new year. This hasn’t been the easiest year, but I love the way it ended — with music, family and friends. Here’s to a great 2025!

What do we hope to do in 2025? We look at the realms of personal, work, relationship, and home goals. Then in the Q&A we discuss how often we review our lists — seasonally, or more? Please give the episode a listen!

Since I didn’t manage to get a blog post up last week, I’ll also use this one to tout last week’s episode: our “2024 in review” episode, reporting on highlights, lowlights, and our 2024 goals. How did we do on those? Listen to this episode and find out! And then you can listen to the episode that will come out at the very end of 2025 to find out how we did on this year’s ideas.

Thank you so much for listening! It’s been a great year for Best of Both Worlds. We’ve also enjoyed having our Patreon community, and have lots in store for that in 2025. See you in the new year!

It’s the holiday season, and this week’s Best of Both Worlds talks about how to plan out the next few weeks. We recommend taking a mindful approach of figuring out what everyone truly wants to do — though of course tradition does carry some weight. We talk about what *we* would like to receive as gifts as well!

Please give the episode a listen. We’ll be gathering with our Patreon community at noon (Eastern), today, 11/26, to discuss how to curate a holiday season. If you’d like to join you can go to our Patreon page (if you see this after noon, don’t worry, there’s a recording). We’re also happy to announce that our annual goal-setting workshop will be December 19th (also at noon, eastern) and Sarah will lead us through some goal setting exercises for 2025. That’s always a great one! Membership is $9/month and includes access to our forum, where we have 3-4 discussion threads going each week on issues of work/life.

In this episode we discuss the planners that we are both using (and have used). A planner on its own won’t change everything, but if a pretty planner nudges you to plan more regularly and thoughtfully…that’s not a bad thing!

In the Q&A a listener asks what the highest costs are in raising teens. There are the obvious ones (college? Or private school for folks who go that route…) but there are also things to consider in terms of lessons/contests/trips/etc. These are all optional, to be sure, but we’ve also realized over the years that we want to be able to provide a lot of these things. That’s something to think about when making financial choices (to the extent that people are able to do so).

Please give the episode a listen. And please consider joining our Patreon community. We have a great discussion going this week of jobs that are both flexible and high-paying. Membership is $9/month, and includes access to monthly online meet-ups where we discuss all things work and life.