Hey everyone. Welcome back. For those of you who don't know, this is the final episode of season one. I have so many notes. I was thinking about, how I wanted to wrap up season one and what I wanted to talk about there's just so many things and that's partly why I put off recording the last episode for so long, just because I really wanted to. In the head space and focus on the message that I wanted to share. You know, like in TV shows when there's a season finale, sometimes there's a cliffhanger and it leaves you wanting to come back to know what happens in the next season. I'm not gonna do that. Sometimes some TV shows in their season finale have an episode where things are neatly tied up because they don't know if the show's gonna be renewed, they need to wrap it all up so that everything's complete, just in case it gets canceled or not renewed. Don't get renewed or get canceled, and then you just never know what happened. So I don't think my podcast is gonna get canceled. I'm planning on coming back. Like I said, in last week's episode, I already have so many ideas for season two. I'm already starting to plan some of it, so I'm very, very excited. But anyways, back to how I want to end season one. I love words. I love alliteration, and when I was making notes, different words kept coming to me. The theme for this episode and for the summer break, my brief hiatus, or whatever you wanna call it, we've been talking about in the podcast, it's the pause and playback time we can pause with new recordings and go back and play back episodes we haven't heard or some of our favorite episodes, in real life. What we're gonna do for the summer is focus on the Rs. So what I mean by that is we are going to rest, relax, refresh and refill. I started making notes and I may actually post this page because I've got notes everywhere and we're gonna try to make sense of it and get through this in a reasonable amount of time. When I was thinking about what I'm doing over the summer, when I'm not podcasting and how I want to be feeling at the end of the summer, at the end of this pause and playback time, I just started jotting down a bunch of different things. I thought that during this episode I could share with you some of my summer plans, what I'm planning on doing during this pause time. And maybe it could give you some ideas of what you would like to do. Maybe some of them will do together or check in with each other or hold each other accountable for some of them, so that you can also get some time to refine yourself over the summer. We've done a lot this season. Looking into who we are, what we want, how we make friends, how we get through tough times, how our community helps us get through that, how to break free from some of the things we've been told or believed about ourselves. And so it's a good time to reflect on all of that. So I wanna share with you a little bit of that. So first I'm going to say relax. So I still have to work. It's not like I'm a teacher and I get the summers off. I mentioned that because, Alexis, Kelly and I were texting earlier tonight and talking about Alexis she's not working anymore, she's enjoying her gardening, reading, really just kind of relaxing. And Kelly and I are like, oh, that's not us. We're still working. But it's still important to make that time to relax. So over the summer, for my relaxing. I plan on going to some, outdoor concerts with my son, or we're going to some theater shows. We're going to do things that we enjoy. Like mother son dates hanging out. As a family, we'll go out for ice cream, family bonding things. I am not an outdoorsy person unless I am laying out in the sun, sweating in my own puddle of sweat, which sounds disgusting. But it's so relaxing when I'm laying at the pool and there's this splash pad and you can hear the water trickling and little voices in the background. Kids playing. Splashing. It is so relaxing to me and the warmth of it, like, summer really is my time. I will complain about winter all year long. I hate being cold. I hate the snow. I hate the ice. I hate all of it. There is nothing I enjoy about winter unless we have snow on Christmas, which very rarely happens. So I feel free to complain about winter all the time. In exchange for those winter complaints, I do not complain about the summer. I will be hot all day long. I may get a little uncomfortable in the humidity and the stickiness, but I'll not complain about being hot. I enjoy feeling like I'm in an air fryer or a toaster oven I used to go to tanning beds, I love the heat, I want the warmth. So just being outside is relaxing for me. But like. Laying out, relaxing, not like hiking. I did a 5K earlier this summer for Taylor's birthday. Happy belated birthday Taylor. And I survived. Thanks to Greta. Thank you Greta. But that is not my idea of fun, love all of you who enjoy running and physical activity. I'm not that girl. That is not relaxing for me. So that's what some of those things I'll be doing to relax to rest. One of the things I am most excited about this summer is I am going on my book club retreat. Ariel, who you heard from on the beauty blogging episode, she started a virtual book club that I've been in for a few years now, and I'm so excited. A little nervous too, because while Ariel and I have known each other for almost 15 years, we've never met in real life. All of the other girls in book club are friends of hers that I know through book club but never met in real life. I'm a little nervous about that, but I'm also very excited. We're getting away to a cabin and as Ariel mentioned, it's a choose your own adventure retreat. So you know, whether you want to go on nature walks or hikes, which we established, I probably won't. Uh, if you wanna go into the shops in town, if you just wanna stay at the cabin and read. There's just so many opportunities for where we're going, and I am so excited about that. I'm just excited about getting away and I already have my books lined up, which I'm sure you're wondering about. So it's funny, when I was writing down the books that I'm planning on reading for the retreat. I looked back on the episode that Alexis and I did about books we loved in 2024 or some of our favorite books and books we were looking forward to in 2025, and a lot of the books lined up. I was like, first of all, this is great. I am staying true to what I said I was gonna do. This is all very on brand and I just thought it was fun. Going back to that episode. Which is the second or third highest rated episode of the season. If you haven't listened to that one, it came out February 19th. It was probably, I don't know, third or fourth episode that was published. So you'll want to like, I think it's called Escaping Reality, something about books. With Alexis. It's fantastic. If you love books. So anyway, some of the books I'm reading. For the retreat that I'm planning on doing, first of all, before I get there, I will be rereading the four wins. I have mentioned this book as one of my favorite books of all time. It's by Kristin Ana, and when I read it the first time I listened to it because Julia Whelan is the narrator, favorite narrator of all time. I was planning on reading it this time because I ended up buying the ebook when it was on sale, knowing that it's a book that I would reread, and I actually started listening to it again this morning. It's so good. That's the book we're discussing for book club when we're out there. I'm going to reread it and we'll discuss it when we get out there for the retreat. And then I plan on also listening to. The girls We Sent Away by Megan Church. This was a book I was really excited about when it came out last year and I just didn't get around to reading it. So when it showed up on the book Girls Guide Decades Challenge this year for the books in the 1960s, I was like, okay, that's it. I'm gonna read it then. So that's the book I plan on listening to when I drive to the book Club retreat. And then when I'm there, I have been saving atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins read, and I can't tell you how hard it has been to wait to read this book. First of all, I forgot that I had pre-ordered it. So when I went to buy it a couple weeks before it came out, Amazon's like, oh, you already pre-ordered this book. I was like, oh, that's fantastic. But then surprise upon surprise, because I am in central time zone, when the book released at midnight. It was sent to my East Coast time. So I actually got it an hour early, I started reading. The beginning part that has the author's note or whatever it was I was like, no, no, no. This is a book I want to read on my book club retreat. So I have held off. I haven't read it even though I have seen people posting it about on Instagram, and Alexis asked if I read it yet, and Ariel talked to me about it I really do wanna read it, but I am saving that to read on my trip. And if I finish that, I will also be reading Sounds Like Love, which is Ashley Post's new book that just came out and I went and I met her last week and got it signed she is so good. I mention these two books now because I had talked about them both in the episode with Alexis about books that I was looking forward to in 2025. I raved about how much I love Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston, if you haven't read that book, read it. It's one that I will read again and again because I still remember Lemon and I can picture specific scenes in my head. It was just such a good book and it's been almost a year and a half since I've read that one. So I was really excited. That sounds like love was coming out this year. I talked about atmosphere because I can't remember the last time Taylor, Jenkins, Reed had a book out. I wanna say it was Carrie Soto is Back. And that was probably, I'm not even gonna say a date 'cause I'm gonna get it wrong and then somebody's gonna be like, oh, you got that wrong. But it's been several years since I read a new. TJR book, so very excited about that. The other books that I mentioned in that episode too were, it's a Love Story by Annabel Mongan, which it's so great that I mentioned that book because I ended up reading that one on Net Galley. Thanks, Nat Galley. She was phenomenal. I ended up meeting her earlier this month too, and got all the books I have of hers signed and she was just the. Absolute Swedish. Exactly what I pictured her being in real life. She was amazing. The other book I'll be reading this summer, I'm going to finally read The Great Alone because that is the book set in the 1970s, which will be my book Girls Guide Decade book in August. I'll probably read some more, but those are the big plans of what I want to read on the retreat and while I'm in my resting mode. To refresh. Also, along with the rest time on the book club retreat is that I am planning digital detox unplug. You've heard me say multiple times during the season how frustrated I get. With social media and how it makes me feel so I really mean it now when I go away. We're just going away for a weekend, but I plan on being off social media the whole time. I will have my phone to check in with my husband and son but really I just wanna like get away from it, disconnect and all that. And I'm hoping that I'll be able to do that and have that last when I'm home from the book club retreat too. I would like to. Break the addiction of always looking at my phone for no reason at all, because I've noticed that I'm really bad at that. I think a lot of us probably are, so I'm gonna be working on that and really focusing on, a full digital detox, unplugging, using my phone more for what I need to almost like an old fashioned summer when you didn't really use your phone unless you were calling your friends to hang out. It wasn't what it is now. I think I just wanna go back to a simpler time and not know what everybody is doing all the time, not care what everybody is doing all the time and really just focus on me, my family, my friends, building the life that I want and not focusing outwardly not gonna go a whole episode without talking about Oklahoma City Thunder, because how excited are we that they won the championship game? Oh my gosh. So, so excited. And I'm sure I'll talk about it more at another time too, but to go along with enough, focusing on what other people say. So J Dub, Jayden Williams, he had a really good quote from an interview. He said, you don't want your food to get cold looking at somebody else's plate. Here, you can actually hear what he said here. Uh, I don't compare my success to anybody else's. You don't want your food to get cold looking at somebody else's plate. So that's, I just bared up right there. Yeah, you just, you kind of just wanna focus on like what you're doing. So like you can't measure your success by what somebody else is doing. I feel like that's how you get lost and that's. Really stuck with me when I saw it. I ended up saving it on Instagram so that I could remember because I feel like the text happened to me a lot. Seeing what other people doing on social media and comparing whether it's my success or something I'm doing, and you know, they always say don't compare your every day to somebody else's highlight reel. But it's hard when it's there all the time. So I am just going to continue working on me over this pause and playback time, and focus on refreshing my mind, my soul, my spirit, and just focus on me and get away from that and unplug and staying off socials and limit my exposure to all of that. So if I'm doing all that, then how am I refilling? Well, this kind of goes along with a lot of things and I know it's gonna go contrary to what I just said about staying off socials, but I am going to try to revamp my bookstagram a little. I have let my bookstagram go while I've been focusing on my podcast. Although as you can see, it's not like I'm super active on my podcast Instagram either. I am really not a great. Content person. Like I have all these been in my head, but I'm just not good at keeping up with it. So I would like to get back with my book Instagram a little bit through. I've read so many books that I haven't done reviews, so I wanna get some more reviews up. I wanna update more what I'm reading. I wanna engage more with others on there and focus on reading and sharing that with others too. If you don't know, my books to Graham is read with Kristen with an e. One word. You can find me there on Instagram. I'll be posting a lot more there. If you like books or reading or wanna keep up with what I'm doing, you can follow me there. I'll still post on the podcast one occasionally too. But something I wanna work on is really kind of get back to doing reviews and updates on my Instagram account so that's what I'm thinking about as I am relaxing resting, refreshing, refilling. Then I started jotting down other things I wanna do over the summer and focus on, and I just kept writing and writing and a lot of it was about. Finding the little things every day to find joy in like those little things that kind of spark you. So I'm gonna give you some of the things on my list. Maybe we'll talk about some of them. But I also want you to think about little things that bring you joy, and we'll kind of bring it all together. So here's some of the things I wrote. Singing in the car, dancing in the kitchen, enjoying the sun, catching fireflies, making s'mores. Sitting by a fire, jumping in a pool, leaving work early to go to the pool, ignoring my phone, catching up with a friend in real life. Iced coffee on a hot day. Driving with the windows down. Fireworks Parade, America Drumsticks. Lawn dyke bars, simple summer nostalgia. I started thinking about everything that I enjoy in the summer and all the things that make me smile. And some of them are little, and some of them are big. I mean, fireworks, parade America, hello, July 4th. Sitting by a fire and jumping in a pool seemed contrary. But in the evening. If it ever gets cold, sitting out by a fire making s'mores camping, that's some outdoorsy things I can get behind too. When I got to the drumsticks and Klondike bars, it reminded me I would spend summers at my grandma's house in Massachusetts and she always had drumsticks. She also had pudding pops and Klondike bars, and back when Friendly's made the watermelon roll. Oh my gosh, so good. Ps last time I looked, they don't have it anymore and I'm very disappointed and I might see if I can make one myself, because if you know, you know, and it was amazing anyway, think about the simple things that bring you joy and how you can embrace joy in every moment. Try to just center yourself and be present where you are and not worry about what's going on around you or what's going on with whoever else is around. Just focusing on being content. And I think if you focus on that, you'll automatically feel more joy and be happier because you're focusing on what you have. You're not letting your lunch get cold by looking at somebody else's food. When I was thinking about nostalgia, I started flipping through one of my old journals. I actually ended up only doing, I think, one dear diary episode this year. And there really are so many I could do. And I have a whole story in, the summer of 99 that really could make for a really good story too. So maybe I'll record it as a bonus episode before we completely wrap up. In this journal from 99, there was a page of quotes and I was like, Hey, some of these are still pretty good. So how I'm going to end the episode is just to share these quotes with you. Maybe they'll resonate with you, maybe not. So these are listed here as quotable quotes. Summer of 99, I'm gonna vote for Reagan. We need to get him back in office. That was my grandpa. All girls want boys. All boys want football. That's why things don't work out, Elise. I just don't know what to do. Pause, I need ice cream. I feel like that is still actually very good advice. Now, even 26 years later, when you laugh, the world laughs with you. When you snore, you sleep alone. A snorer on the news. Kristin, I don't know where your attitude comes from, but I love it. You are such a blessing to me. You are a really wonderful person. Debbie, I shared that one because in relation to the final two that I'm going to share, it's an interesting way of how somebody viewed me and then kind of how I viewed myself. The two quotes from me that I put in here, they hear my voice and they hear my words, but they just don't hear what I'm saying. And the last one, I may never be who they want me to be, but at least I'm who I want to be. And I loved those because I feel like those last three, the one that Debbie said about me and the two that I said really encompass this whole podcast. Season and why I set out to do it. You know, talking about how they hear my voice and they hear my words, but they just don't hear what I'm saying. I think for so long I struggled with being seen I loved being on stage. I loved people seeing me, but I never actually felt seen, I never. Thought that people took the time to get to know me, and part of it was me not letting them in and not letting them get to know me. But that's how I always felt. And with the other one, I may never be who they want me to be, but at least I'm who I want to be. I think even though I said that in 1999, I don't know that I actually believed that. I don't know that I was ever okay with being myself. I wanted to be, I wanted to be okay with me, but because I struggled so long, with people pleasing and trying to fit in and morph into what I thought people wanted me to be and do what they wanted me to do, and try so hard for that validation and acceptance that I wasn't okay with me being me. But again, this podcast whether anybody's listening or not, me being able to talk out loud is kind of just like when I was journaling when I was younger, and it's given me an outlet and a way to share where I am. And I do feel that I am comfortable being me now, and I don't care if anybody likes me or if they don't like me because I like me and I am going to keep sharing my words and my voice, and hopefully they hear what I'm saying. And I hope that maybe something I have said. Over these last 30 episodes, these last almost six months, maybe. Maybe made a difference to someone, maybe that someone was you. And I don't know how to really end this. I just, it's hard to put into words what I'm really trying to say, but. Thank you for coming along on this journey with me. Thank you for listening. Whether it's been one episode or all the episodes, I'm grateful that anybody is taking time to listen to me and allowing me to have some success in this opportunity, and I'm just really grateful for that. So I hope you find some way to rest, relax, refresh, and refill yourself. Have a wonderful summer. Find joy in the little things, enjoy the big things, and we'll talk again in August.