Hey everybody, welcome back. It's funny that I'm saying welcome back to you'cause really this is a welcome back for me. Some of you may have forgot who I am, or maybe there's some new listeners who really don't have any idea who I am. So we'll do a little catch up. It'll feel like we never even left. Where did we leave off? I told you guys at the end of June, I was gonna take a pause and playback time and I had all these things I was gonna do to relax, refresh, rest, all of that, and we will get into that. But I definitely was gone a wee bit longer than I planned, so we'll talk about that too. So, yeah, I said that I was gonna take off July and I would come back in August I had intentions to do that, but honestly, the summer was going so great and I was doing so many other things that I kept putting off podcast stuff because I was, living my best life. More days went past, more weeks went past, and I was like, I've gotta get back to podcasting. I really did want to, but it was like. When you stop doing something and then the longer you go not doing it, the harder it is to start it. And then there was guilt. I knew I had people waiting for it and people were asking about it and I'm like, I really need to do it. But it was like I was almost immobilized. That's a pretty good word for it. Like I just felt. Stuck, like I wasn't ready. I had all these ideas. I have lots of topics that I wanna cover and we will, but I really thought in the off season I was going to do more planning. I was gonna come up with outlines and schedules, and I was gonna line up my guests and I was gonna be so prepared and ready to come back for season two. Spoiler alert, that didn't happen. I do have ideas and I have a little notebook with lists, and I do have some guests that have said yes. I just haven't put all the work into it. But we are going to, and here's the thing. Everything starts with one step, and this episode is our one step into season two. And I do wanna tell you about season two, but first. Let's do a little catch up about what I've been doing while I've been gone, while it was a very restful and relaxing time, before recording, I went back to my notes from the season finale episode of season one, where I kind of laid out all these things I wanted to do over the summer and books I was going to read. And I am here to report to all of you. I think I accomplished nearly everything I said I was gonna do. We'll break that down a little bit and then we will talk about season two and really get hyped about it'cause I promise it is exciting and I do wanna say thank you. I'll probably say this a couple times today, but I do wanna thank those of you who have stuck around, just absent from social media for the most part. I think I had two or three posts I put on Instagram the entire time, and one of them was literally, Hey guys, I am still alive. So that was just, I felt like I had to put it out there because I wasn't. Active at all, so, yeah, let's take a quick look back at how my summer was. I had talked about really focusing on rest, relaxing, and refreshing. And I talked about how that was gonna be, what it looked like to me and things I was gonna do. One of the things I was so excited about was my book Club Trip. Let me tell you guys one, if you don't have a book club, get a book club two. If your book club doesn't go on trips, encourage them to go on trips or find a better book club. You may recall I was a little nervous about it because I had never met any of the girls in real life it was me on a solo road trip, almost five hours away. To, go to a house and spend a weekend with people I'd never met before. It was the most amazing weekend. We went to a little town in Indiana and stayed in a cabin. We had a campfire the first night and made hot dogs and s'mores and just talked and got to know each other on a different level than what we had before. And it was so fun. We ended up playing games. There was a mouse. That was a whole situation in itself. We did get the mass out. All was well. The next day we went into town and visited the little shops, several different coffee places and kind of touristy things. Had the best cinnamon roll ever. I actually did post a reel for the trip, so if you go back to my Instagram, you can watch that and kind of get an idea of how the trip was went to a little bookstore. We went to this, body product store. It reminded me of lush, and I got a lip balm. Called marshmallow fluff you may recall when I talked about my favorite products, there was this other lip balm that I'm obsessed with, which I still am. It's, the one on my nightstand, but this marshmallow fluff one. Years ago when I was in high school, which according to my son was like back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I had a lip smackers, addiction lips, smackers is the Bonnie Bell. Lip balm, lip gloss, whatever. I was addicted, which apparently, if you actually look at it, you can't physically be addicted to it. But there is like this mental addiction. I was addicted. But my favorite, favorite flavor was called Martian Maow. And it was like a shimmery white one. It came from one of their cosmic lines or something, and it was my favorite, favorite lip balm. I am not even kidding you. This marshmallow fluff from this little store in Indiana. Smells exactly the same. It's like I'm taken back to 1999 or 2000 or something. And it is amazing. Not only the smell, the texture of it, it's just, ugh, it's amazing. Maybe you should all go and buy this marshmallow, fluff lip balm. This is not ad, this is not sponsored. It's literally me just saying how much I love this lip balm. So, anyway. That day was great. Next day we did a hot tub. We read, we sat around and talked. We napped. It was the most relaxing vacation trip I had ever had. And what I think was best about it was that these girls, even though I never met them in real life, and we've only talked, once every two months for when we get together for a book club. It was almost easier because there were no. Expectations, like I didn't feel like I had to be somebody else, which, if you've been listening to this podcast through season one, you know I have struggled with people pleasing and trying to be what I think people want me to be. And I don't know if it's because I'm old now and I don't care as much what people think. Or if it's because I had kind of worked through some of that in season one and was at a place where I was more comfortable with myself, I just am at a point where I can be myself around people, and it's probably one of the first times I have ever felt that, even when I go to events with people I know, afterwards, it's always that, oh, I shouldn't have said that. Oh, what did they think? Oh, why did I do that? I don't think I ever felt that on this trip. This is who I am. They can like me or not. I don't care. I'm not pretending. I'm not being fake. I'm not squashing who I am to try to fit in a mold That probably isn't even true because I've made it up in my head. That was such a growth moment for me over the summer, just like the best ever. So the trip was amazing. We all had such a great time that we agreed to do it again next summer and I'm going to be planning it, so that'll be fun. I was so excited when I got back. I already started looking at locations checking different areas and focusing on budget and distance took some time for me not coming back to podcasts because I was like in my planning mode for other things. Anyway, that was great. I had also said that over the summer my son and I were gonna go to some concerts and we did, we went to, a local band. They're not local to us, but they come up every year and we go see them and that was great, but the big event was going to see a JR and oh my gosh, we had watched their show from last year online and it was great. But being there in real life. Oh, it was amazing. It really was for my son'cause it's one of his favorite bands. And I bought tickets on his birthday for in March for us to go. We had to wait until the, middle of summer to go to it. Totally worth it. Seeing their performance. They are performers. They aren't just musicians. The whole thing was a performance. The last song, they had a marching band come in if you get a chance, go onto YouTube. People have shown clips from the show. You can see parts of it. It was just amazing and if you ever get the opportunity to see a JR take it. They're amazing. It was wonderful. Their new album actually comes out at the end of this week, so on September 5th you can listen to new a JR music. We are very excited about that. My son and I had a lot of pool days. It was an extremely hot summer, miserably hot. We spent a lot of time at the pool, which was wonderful. We have a community pool hanging out with our friends, like moms, we'll all hang out, he'll hang out with his friends. It's a really nice time sometimes we'll go by ourselves and, you know, throw a ball around or just talk. Like it's just a really nice time. So we got a lot of pool days in. I had provided a list of books that I wanted to read over the summer, and I am happy to report. I read all of them. The books that I had listed were, let me check my notes. I had said I was going to be reading four wins Atmosphere. Sounds like Love The Girls we sent away. And I did read all of those. Four wins was just as good as I remember. It is still a five star book for me. Kristin Hannah, amazing. If you don't know much about the Dust Bowl, it's totally worth reading to explain the Dust Bowl and just an all around amazing book atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins. Read that book just came out this year. So good. It was so good. It was actually on sale on Amazon last week. I don't know if it still is, but even if it's not on sale, it's totally worth reading. I posted it on, my Bookstagram, one of the only posts I posted on Bookstagram. We'll come back to that in a minute. But I had posted about it and said, if you love Taylor Jenkins, read, if you love nasa, if you love the eighties, if you love crying a little bit, then you'll want to read this book. It was so good. I did finally get to read Sounds Like Love. I went to meet Ashley Poston earlier this year and got a signed copy of the book. She signed almost all my books of hers that I had. Remember seven year slip. My favorite all time books. Sounds like love was an extremely cute story. It still didn't quite make it to seven year slip, but it was very enjoyable. Just a fun light read. The Girls We Sent Away was a good book too. I had listened to that one and that was my book, girls Guide Reading Through the Decades. That was my book for the 1960s. Then for my book set in the 1970s, I read The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah. Huh? If I thought four wins was amazing, this book was like even more amazing. Now, what I have found, and I think I could probably do a whole episode on this topic sometime, I'll probably set up a poll and get you guys to weigh in on this. There are a lot of Kristin Hannah fans, but I think all Kristin Hannah fans fall into one camp what I mean by that is while we all love her books, people will pick one of her books and it's their favorite and that's the one they stick with all the time. Like if you remember Twilight, you know, team Jacob, team Edward, things like that. Even Laguna Beach, right? Like your team Kristen, or Team lc, I feel like that's how Kristin Hannah Books are and your team. The Nightingale, or your team, the women or whatever. Because I feel like so many people are like, oh, the Nightingale is my favorite. Kristin Hannah book. Listen People, the Nightingale is a very good book. I enjoyed it. It was a lovely read. The grade alone though. Oh my gosh. Rips your heart out. Pieces it back together, cracks it again. I was literally. Falling in bed when I was finishing that book. And my husband looked at me and he's like, what is wrong with you? And I said, it's just this book. He's like, it's just a book. And I'm like, you don't understand. He's like, they're not real people. And I'm like, but she writes like they're, and like, I am just a blubbering mess, because that book was so beautiful. All right, let me know. Send me a message, drop it in the comments, what team are you on when it comes to Kristin Hannah Books? I'm really curious and I will make a poll of it, we'll make a whole episode of it at some point because I firmly believe this, that people are on a team or a camp in Kristen, Hannah books, so other ways that I rested, relaxed, refreshed. I caught up on some Netflix shows. Got into Sullivan's Crossing. Oh my gosh. How did I not know about this show before? I think I did hear something about it when it was coming out because it had talked about if you like Virgin River, if you like Gilmore Girls, there's this perfect show for you. Hey, guess what? I do love Virgin River. I do love Gilmore Girls, and Sullivan's Crossing was the exact perfect show I needed. I went through season one, season two. I know season three is out there, and I have watched the first two or three episodes. I'm trying to not rush through it because once it's over then it's over. I don't know if there's gonna be a season four or not. At least if I don't watch them all, I will still have some to watch. So I watched that. I feel like I watched something else. There were a few other. Little shows I watch, oh, I got really big onto YouTube of watching Ryan Trehan channel. So Ryan and his wife Hailey, who has a book coming out next year called Just Friends. I think it'll be amazing. I've already pre-ordered it, so clearly I'm all in. Over the summer they did a 50. States in 50 days fundraiser for St. Jude. They had to stay in an Airbnb in a different state every day. And ranked them to find out which one was the best Airbnb in the nation. It was so fun to see them, it trying new things, spending time together as a couple, seeing the Airbnbs, it just, it was so wholesome. So my son and I would watch that together. And that was just a fun thing we did too. So overall it was amazing. We had a family vacation at the end of the summer, which was kind of unplanned. It was one of those, oh my gosh, you're going back to school. We should totally do something before you have to go back to school. So we went out of town at one of our favorite places and had just a little, you know, four or five days away, just a nice time to reconnect as a family and. I have one last hoorah before, like we all got back to regular life and schedules overall it's a fabulous, fabulous summer. So what did I not do that I said I was going to do? Well, I'd said I was gonna do a digital detox and get better about not being on my phone all the time, and I have gotten better. I will say there are some days where I'm not on it all and I'm like, oh my gosh, I didn't even check my Facebook today. And there's other days where after work, I'm just kind of empty and I just find myself. You know, getting into the doom scrolling. So it is something I am still working on. I have made improvements to it, but I did not unplug as much as I thought I was going to, so we're still working on that. The other thing, funny enough, is I said that I was going to get better with my books to Graham and go back to posting reviews and trying to be more active over there. That didn't happen either. And it's funny because, I could say, oh well,'cause I'm trying to be off social media more so I wasn't posting as much there. And that is kind of it, and kind of was just like, what's the point? I mean, honestly, it's good for me to do my book reviews there because I find sometimes I'll go to my Good Reads and I'll see a book and I'll give it like three or four, stars. I'm like, what was it even about? What did I like about it? And when I was doing full reviews on my book Instagram, then I could go back and say, oh, that's right. That's what I liked about it, or that's what I didn't like about it. That part was nice, but at the same time I'm like, it is so much work and I just kind of lost interest in it, not in the community. I still went to several author events. I still keep up with the Missouri Book Girls Chat. There's still people that I'm following and liking their stuff, but I feel like when I go on social media now, it's for more of a purpose. The purpose is watching corporate memes and reels and sharing things with my friends that make us laugh. That's kind of more what my social media waray is now. Is that the right word? Foray. I, I don't know. What I find myself doing now is really going on and just sending reels that are funny to some of my friends, and that's what we do. We communicate and sending reels, there's a couple of my friends that we do that a lot. What's funny is like if we send the same one to each other or like, oh, you sent it to me, I think I sent it to you a couple weeks ago it's fun. So really, that's kind of what I've been using it more for now. But again, like being more purposeful with it, honestly, I don't know that I'll keep my books Instagram going or not. I mean, there's nothing wrong with having it open, but I don't know how active I'm going to be on it. Honestly don't know how active I'm gonna be on my podcast Instagram, either. Probably a little bit more. I think I talked about at the end of last season too, when I go and post something on social media, I really do stop and think, why am I posting this? What am I posting this for? Who am I posting this for? I have been more purposeful with what I post and share. So I have made some progress in that also. So now that we've had a full recap and caught you up on where I've been and what I've been doing for the past two plus months. Now we'll talk about what you probably really wanna know, and it's, so what are we doing for season two? I am very excited for season two. I know I didn't get into all the planning that I wanted to, but I still believe is going to be an amazing, amazing season. So season one was kind of introspective, learning about ourselves, dealing with insecurities, challenges, things like that. Season two is going to build on that with personal growth, but I also want to focus on burnout leadership and people following their passions. You may think, well, Kristen, those sound a little all over the place. They do, but they all line up the same in my brain. Because these are areas that I'm working on and that I am interested in and that I think are important for others. It doesn't matter where you are in your life. If you are a student, if you are a stay at home parent, a. Corporate person or a boss babe, or whatever you are. I feel like personal growth is something we can all work on. Leadership is something I'm passionate about. I got a degree in it and, I see so many examples of good and bad leadership. Leadership is everywhere. It's in the workplace. It's, you know, in your friend group. It's. With the sports teams, it's in your community. There's so much leadership everywhere, and I think that being a good leader in whatever environment you're in is something we can all work on people following their passions. Is something I am passionate about and part of it is because I am, what you would call risk adverse. And I prefer stability, security, and I'm not one to take big risks, but throughout the past year I have encountered people who have just left their job to try something completely different. People who have found something they're passionate about and really go on to do great things with that. I want to share those stories and offer people. Insights and the courage to follow their passions. I don't know exactly where we're gonna go with that, but that's something I really do want to look into. I love talking with people having guests on and having people share their stories. So if you are one of those people that has followed your passion or has a leadership story or has thoughts on personal growth, I would love to have you on. You can always reach out to me on email. You can go to the website, Instagram, Facebook page, and you can just go to my Calendly pick a time and we'll talk about things and it'll be amazing. I know Alexis does, and I think Kelly would probably be up for it, is doing another book club too. So we'll be looking at something there. I have a couple of books in mind, but honestly I don't know that I can get Alexis and Kelly to agree to them because they're nonfiction books. Since we're talking about personal growth and development, I wanted to have something kind of on that brand. We will see where we go from there, the plan right now is to kind of do topic months, so we'll focus on things each month, but honestly, depending on how scheduling works out and who's available when it may, it may sway a little from this schedule. But we'll be looking at some, personal evolution kind of ways we've changed, looking at that. Progress we've made from last season. We'll be talking about leadership and identity. We'll talk about ambition, burnout, and boundaries. And then we'll talk about time growth and looking ahead. And that's again, us through December where I anticipate we will take another brief pause. I promise it'll be brief that time. I promise. Because it'll be winter and what else will I have to do, but lock myself in my studio where it's warm and just talk. Right? So that's the plan. We are finally kicking it off in September. Yay. The plan is to go September through, probably early to mid-December and do a little holiday break and then, come back again. In, January, February time. So that's kind of what I am looking at. So I am back. We are back together. It is so good to be talking with you again, I am so excited for season two and thankful for those of you who have waited. For me to come back. Also excited for new listeners who are going to join in. I encourage you to go back and listen to season one, whether you are a new or seasoned, listener, because there was a lot of good stuff back there. We did touch on burnout and boundaries a little bit in season one, so probably be good to go back and listen to those episodes. Before we, barge into them all. In season two, there were also some good book episodes. There were some insecurity episodes. There was a lot of good, we had a lot of good guests. Learning about friendship and friendship stories. Paige and Amber's story was a big one. Taylor's story Recovery is a good one. Like there were a lot of good episodes in season one. And I promise you, there's gonna be even more good, more, better, more amazing episodes coming in season two. So stay tuned. I'm excited about all of it. All right, talk to you later.