Our 2023 Reflections

Susan and Whittney reflect on 2023 and Season 3 of the podcast. 

Website: susanandwhittney.buzzsprout.com
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Transcript

Susan: 0:37

Whitney, you're the kind of friend who knows me so well. You got me these figure skating themed earrings and a matching necklace for my birthday this year. I'm wearing them today and I love them. Thank you.

Detached audio: 0:47

Susan. They look great. I'm so happy you like them. Susan. Speaking of birthday earrings, you also got me a fantastic pair of earrings for my birthday, but they weren't figure skating earrings. They were Wednesday Adam's earrings. I was so excited. You know how much I love Halloween. It's probably as much as you love skating. and, Not that Wednesday. Adams is just Halloween. Wednesday Adams, as you said, can be a a year round thing and I will wear them year round, but I was so excited. Thank you, Suze. Oh, you're welcome. It's so much fun giving each other themed earrings. And also quick shout out to the Etsy shop. I got them from, it's called Hound in Hand, so definitely check out that shop. Really cute earrings. Awesome. Whitney, this is our final episode of season three, and believe it or not, this is our 10th episode of this season, which is the most we've ever done. It's double the content this season, so go us. Yes. I cannot believe how many episodes we produced this season. iT was a lot. WE did a lot this year. It was a lot of content and we were excited and it showed, it really showed. So on today's episode, we're gonna be looking back on this season and all the episodes we produced and also talking about, our words of the year for 2023 and how we did on those. And also just tying up some loose ends for the various reviews of shows and books that we've talked about this year and tying up some loose conversational ends. So let's, let's dive right in. Whitney this season. Wow. As, as we said before, our 10th episode, ironically, we attempted to produce shorter and less episodes, but we ended up producing double and more and longer. So yeah, it wasn't less work at all. Um,, but considering our yeah, considering our slogan is making a short story long since 2004, I guess it's not totally surprising that this was our attempt to do less and it was actually double. Yeah, I think, we have a tendency to overachieve and I think we did that this year. And, I think it's just proof that even when we think we're making it easier on ourselves, that, you know, the overachieving sneaks up on you and we just, we just didn't get a handle on it until we are counting our episodes this year. That's right. I know. So it was a lot of post-production. But I will say overall I'm really proud of what we put out there this season. I think we had a lot of really great episodes and. Um, on another note, we actually didn't even do all the episodes that we originally teased in our, our first episode in January. We talked about what was on deck for this season, and we didn't even get to some of those just for a number of reasons. Sometimes, you know,, you throw out an idea and you realize later it's just not gonna work out. Or maybe, we weren't really sure the direction to go or didn't have a guess. So, maybe we didn't do all the content we said, but we ended up doing so many other episodes that, just kind of was Going with the flow of our lives. Yes. So, yeah, it, it took some different directions and that's what happens sometimes. So, uh, just wanted to explain why we didn't touch on all the topics, but, the topics that we did touch on, I had several favorites. I think Some of my favorite ones from the season were collaborating with Devin on the Mad Honey Book Club discussion. I thought that was a really intelligent Analysis that we had. And I also enjoyed discussing persuasion, the Netflix adaptation, which was really funny. Uh, just the show itself or the movie itself was very funny. So our discussion of it followed suit. And I also really enjoyed all the novel ideas that we did this season, which was where we discussed books and shows that we were watching. That was really fun to talk about that with you. And lastly. I really enjoyed the surviving and thriving episode, which on a personal note was about myself turning 40 and a lot of my reflections about hitting that milestone, and I thought we had a really great discussion. what about you, Whitney? Well, Susan, first off, I just wanna say the Mad Honey episode, in addition to being your favorite, was by far our listener's favorite. That episode has been downloaded more than any other episode we've done in our three seasons so far, and so I thought that was really cool. and some of my favorite episodes from this past season also overlap yours. So you were discussing talking to Devin about persuasion, which I think that is always going to be one of my favorite episodes. It was so funny discussing the rabbit section. That's some of my favorite audio we've ever done. I think that I will always look back on that one. Fondly, I think, you know, the content set us up well because the actual, uh, the movie we were reviewing had a lot of places that we could bring up really funny things like, you were talking about the entire modern woman breakup references that were integrated into Jane Austen in this one. But again, Devin and I. Mussing upon the rabbit is definitely going to go down as one of my favorite memories from this podcast. Oh, absolutely. That was very funny to listen back to. And I, I do have to give a shout out to the Netflix adaptation for even giving us that rabbit So, as you said, the content lent itself to funny commentary and I really enjoyed, I really enjoyed those episodes as well. Yeah. I also love talking stem with my cousin Elena, she's a, my real life version of Veronica Speedwell. You know how much I love Veronica Speedwell. And so I thought it was really cool having her on. not just because of her science knowledge. Uh,, she also is a teacher, and so the two of you had a lot to discuss and a lot In common that you know, you could talk about, but I also loved how we discussed encouraging women to pursue STEM and how important that is. I really enjoyed having Elena on as well, just because she was such an interesting person, very inspiring. She, and in addition to Devon, she was our only other guest from season three, and it's always really fun having someone else come on the show. So thanks to Elena for joining us and it was really wonderful having her. Yes. And then I think my other favorite episode of this past season again aligns with yours entirely. Our surviving and thriving episode I thought was great. I think when we originally planned that episode, you know, we knew some of the things that we wanted to talk about. Obviously, your 40th birthday, we wanted to talk about, my summer travel, but I think. As we were discussing that those topics, as you and I would just normally do in our regular conversations, we recorded it and we discussed those topics in such an engaging, genuine, and, and kind of even a little bit of a vulnerable way. And I think that that really just made it a great episode. We talked about, you know, some of the perceptions that we all have, and some of the expectations that we feel to, to be at certain places in our lives and how, you know, that doesn't always match up with, with reality. And I just really think it was a fantastic episode. It was, it was a really important episode for me personally, just to have all those reflections about my milestone birthday. And it was really cool when I was listening back to it,'cause I was wishing that my 30 year old self could have heard how far I've come and where I am now. And. That was really great to have that recorded just as Record And also, as I was just thinking this morning, I was like, wow, I need to go back and listen to that episode now. Because I talked a lot about my reflections in my career as a teacher and how I finally was able to see the culmination of that at graduation and see what I. You know the purpose of this, right, purpose of why I teach. And I think I need to listen to that back now because now that I'm in this point in the school year, I'm in the throes of one of the busiest times of the school year, and right now I need to go back and listen to me saying like,, oh, it's really worth it. And you know, not that I don't think it's worth it on a daily basis, but it does help to have that reminder from when I was at that peak moment of perspective. Yes. it is really important to have these reflections recorded and um,, hopefully other people can benefit from listening to our reflections as well. Yes, that little extra dose of motivation for you at this point in the school year. Absolutely. Oh my goodness. Yeah, it's, it's definitely a tough time of year. But with that said, it's also a nice time of year to reflect back on how the year has gone because we're getting to the end of 2023. So it's definitely some of what we're gonna do in this episode, reflect back on our words of the year, how things were going. We also have some ideas for what we're gonna be tackling next season. Yeah. So Susan, let's, uh, let's discuss some of those ideas about what we're thinking about for season four. Right. So we wanna go back to what we originally had as our model, which was a good solid five episode model. We had tried to do something different this past season by taking some of our segments and putting them into separate episodes. Our idea was that. It seemed in the past that our, our regular episodes, would run kind of long. We used to have all these segments and surviving and thriving or sunshine and monsoons used to be one of our original segments. We used to talk about what, we read novel ideas, but we were like, okay, how can we make our episodes shorter? Maybe it makes sense to take these segments and make them into individual episodes, but again, you and I, our way of simplifying is by making more work for ourselves, So, you know, we tried doing that, but I think we're gonna go back to the model where we're gonna keep these segments as part of our regular episode instead of making all these separate episodes. So. To our original thoughts. We're also gonna continue our collaboration with Devin, which is always really fantastic. So continuing with some of the same, but you know, kind of going back to our roots with how we used to format the show. Yeah. And I, as we were discussing earlier, Devin is the not so secret third co-host of this podcast at this point. We just love making episodes with her and we can't wait for whatever we are Going to do with her in the next season. So if our listeners have ideas about things they think we should read or watch or, listen to with Devin, feel free to suggest those on our social media or by sending,, sending us an email to Susan andWhitney@gmail.com. Another thing, Susan, that we're gonna work on in, in the coming year and throughout next season is. Creating some more social media content. This was an area that, because I think we did so many episodes, we just didn't leave a lot of extra time for sharing with our listeners on social media. So in the, you know, coming months and year, we're going to share, especially more video content so we can share some more timely updates with our listeners in between episodes and so they can see what we're doing and what we're thinking and, what we're we're. excited about and we had discussed the possibility of doing an Instagram or Facebook Live in the future. So if our listeners have interest in that or if they wanna ask us specific questions or suggest content that we could discuss on the Instagram or Facebook Live, they can also share those suggestions with us. Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun to try out doing a different format such as the Instagram or Facebook Live. I've never done that, so I look forward to potentially dabbling with that this upcoming season. So Whitney, let's switch gears and I wanna wrap up some of our reviews from the season. As I mentioned, we put a lot of novel ideas, episodes out this season in which we talked about things we were watching and reading. So I wanna wrap that up and also just tie up any loose conversational ends that we've had throughout the season. So first of all, I wanted to ask you what was the favorite, or maybe plural, what were the favorite things that you read? Or watch this season. A theme that I noticed when I was, looking back on this, to figure out my answer to this question is, there's a Taylor Swift theme to my answers for both Reed and Watch, and. Uh, we discussed previously, probably in great detail how much I loved the, Amazon Prime series. The summer. It turned pretty. I know I talked to you about it and you watched it and loved it. I read all the books as I think you and Devin are also, well, I don't know if Devin's reading the books, but you are reading the books and, Devin is, has watched the series now. So it's one of those, really fond memories. I have from 2023 of watching this and The summer I turned pretty. I think one of the reasons I love the series even more than the books is because of the music. And a lot of the music is Taylor Swift, because I am a hardcore swifty and that is what speaks to my hardcore swifty soul. And so I was, when I was looking back over my favorite books that I'd read this year, I noticed an interesting tie, which was A book that I just kept thinking about and going back to, and I don't even remember if I discussed this in one of our novel reads episodes or not, but it, it was called The Summer of Broken Rules by KL Walter, Hmm. it is a, a Taylor Swift related book as well. So it is a book that I found out later after I'd read. It was based on the lyrics to the Taylor Swift song, Hey Steven, Also KL Welfare. Like Taylor Swift was born in Pennsylvania, KL Walter was born in Bucks County. So not far from where you are now, Susan. And, uh, I just, apparently This year with the Aris tour and, all of the rerecording, I'm, I'm just infusing Taylor Swift into all of my facets of my content I'm consuming. And so that was, I think my potentially my top read of 2023 I have not heard you reference that book before, so that sounds really interesting. I always like supporting local authors, so as someone who lives in Philly, I'll have to check that out. Yeah, it was, it was an interesting way I learned about this book, and I can't remember if I told you this, just, you know, outside of the podcast either I'd read this this, uh, article called books based on Taylor Swift Arrows. And I was just like skimming through it. And they had one book for each. Taylor Swift, album that they thought fit the vibe of the album. And this was one of the books on the list. This book was supposed to fit the, the lover, album era. And so it just looked interesting. And then I read it and I really loved it. And I thought you would really, like, one of the main characters goes by the name wit, like WIT Witt. And so I felt like that was a, a name you would approve of for a romance protagonist or a hero. What were your favorite reads and watches? I Was looking back at my Good Reads list. I actually read so many wonderful books this year. And there's different ones that I, or there's ones that I like for different reasons. But I think overall my favorite book of the year was The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne. I've referenced that previously. It was just such an incredible journey that you go on with this character. There's so much to it. It would be a fabulous book club discussion. I just loved it and I, again, as we always talk about, I love books on audio, so I really love the audio. I thought the audio Narrator was quite gifted and that was definitely my favorite read. I think possibly a close second, was remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt and, one Italian Summer by Rebecca Searle. Those were my top three as far as shows. I did enjoy the summer. I turned pretty a lot and so did Devin. We were texting back and forth about it, like Team Jeremiah, team Conrad, and by the way, Whitney, so I was hard. Very hardcore team Conrad for a long time. And by the second season, I was definitely a team. Jeremiah. I just feel like in the end she's gonna be happier with Jeremiah'cause Conrad's so complex. And anyway, just it, that's a tough choice. But I do appreciate you bringing that series into my life'cause it was just a delightful summer watch. I loved it. Yeah, I, I know, I know exactly where you are mentally with the team, Jeremiah, but I promise you you'll be Team Conrad at the end. Okay, well, I have yet to read the third book right now. I just got the second book out from my library holds. Um, the first book I was able to listen to on audio, it's narrated by Lola Tongue who plays Belly in the series, and I thought she, she's a delightful actress. She did a lovely job with the audio, but the second book, they didn't have available on audio for my library, so I'm reading it on my Kindle. But again, I'll have to go into the third book, and of course, next summer, hopefully the third series or the third, uh, season is gonna come out. And then I'll, I'll let you know where I'm at mentally. But, um, anyway, I'm, I'm enjoying all of it. It's, and Devin enjoyed it as well, and I. So, yeah, shows. I feel like maybe that was one of my favorites this year. I think actually my favorite movie, which we did talk about in the last novel ideas, we were briefly teasing movies that we were gonna see, and we never got to circle back to this, but I think Oppenheimer was my favorite movie of the year. It's extremely powerful. Um, it's tough because it is about a very difficult subject, so that's hard. But I, what I liked about this. Movie is that it challenged me to think about the perspective of the man who built the atomic bomb and what he would be going through during and after. I thought it was incredibly well done. Killian Murphy is phenomenal. If he doesn't win the Oscar, I would be shocked. his eyes are incredible. His eyes could win. The Oscar Whitney Yes. um, yes, he was incredible. And I, I also wanna throw out there too, just on the other end of the spectrum, you and I had also teased this in our last novel ideas and never got to come back to it. I was not particularly a fan of Barbie, I thought it was okay. It was kind of fun for what it was like. I appreciated the casting and the set choreography, the costume, all that kind of stuff was really fun. But I didn't really love that movie, so I just wanted to say that that was something that disappointed me this year. But, you know, I'd rather focus on what I did like, which was Oppenheimer. So Bravo to Christopher Nolan for directing that phenomenal film. I second what you're saying about Killian Murphy's eyes. I first, uh, encountered and I feel fell in love with those eyes and Peaky Blinders, which is an amazing show on Netflix if you haven't watched that. I have not. yeah, it's, I mean, it's about gangs, but Like Birmingham, England gangs, but it's um, it's a good one. I like it a Yeah, his eyes and his cheekbones. I just think he was the perfect choice for the role of playing Robert Oppenheimer. And again, the film is just a very important film. It's very complex with the history. There's a lot going on there. but I do think in the music, everything about it, uh, that really left a big lasting impression on me this year for favorite watches. So yeah, it was a good year for consuming content. Yes. Agreed. There, there was a lot to choose from on all of our lists. Yeah, absolutely. so Suze let's round out our episode by talking about our words of the year for 2023. We haven't talked about them that much this year, only in the episode where we introduced them. So, uh, how did yours go this year? Whew. Yes. I was just reflecting back on this this morning while I was making breakfast, because you're right, we haven't really formally had conversations about our words this year. I know in the past we did like a mid-year check-in episode, which we didn't do this year. Maybe next year we'll uh, go back to that model.'cause it was kind of nice having that midway checkpoint. Um, so I think this year my word was open. I think it went very well. Uh, you know, as we always discuss, it's never gonna be perfect, and I think that's something we have to be okay with, is we're never gonna have this unbelievably perfect achievement of this word that we tried to embody this year. But I think I did a really good job at getting close to that. So I tried to be open as much as possible to new ideas and new experiences, new people. I think that the word open also made me think about the fact that I, Like, you know, think about things that I do want to be more open to in the future. I think when I set this goal, maybe I didn't know exactly what I was aiming to be open to, and now I have more of an idea of that for next year. So, um, I'll have to consider that when I'm choosing my word for next year. Like I. Maybe, maybe the word's gonna be about tackling new things or something. but as far as keeping my calendar open, I tried my very best with that one. And I, I think I did pretty well. I tried specifically to be open to incorporating more time for dating, particularly in the spring. I've honestly gotten away from that because I sort of lost interest in dating. Honestly. It wasn't that I wasn't open, I just You can't be open to something you don't wanna do Mm-Hmm. so there's that too. Um, and I, yeah, and I did my best for that in the spring. I think I was really open to trying new things and keeping my calendar available for that. Um, in this fall, I've tried to keep my calendar open just for myself to create more time for my work responsibilities because it is really hectic during the fall, as I said. And in the past, maybe I was traveling a lot on weekends or whatever, and I specifically tried not to schedule trips on the weekends. I, I haven't been anywhere since the end of September, and now we're in mid-November, so I did a good job with that. But on the flip side, I've been missing my family a bit since I haven't incorporated as much time to see them and. Ironically, their schedules were not open. So even though I might have had time to see them, they weren't, they were busy. But, um, overall I think I did well with this word. I enjoyed trying to encompass open, and now I just have to think about what I'm gonna do for next year. What about you, Whitney? Yeah, so I mean, similarly, I felt like the word I chose for this year, which was listen, was helpful as kind of a guide. It was. It was mostly helpful, I think, in reminding me to listen to my body, like my physical or internal cues for things. I, I really wanted to make this a goal this year because I tend to overthink things and I tend to just like let my brain spin out about decisions and, you know, what I, what I think I should do as opposed to what is feeling good to me. And I, I definitely Did check in with myself more this year, and there were times that I slowed down just because I was tired and you know, the signals that I was getting from my body was that I was doing too much and I just needed to rest. And so I did listen to those and. There were also other times where I would pay attention. Hey, this feels fun. And afterwards my, my body feels good when I do this. obviously the easiest things to point out, um, for those cues are exercise. I. You know, we've been doing personal training for a year and a half now, and so keeping up that schedule felt good. I got really into pickleball this year, and so that felt great. we now play like two, sometimes three times a week, and it's super fun and I really like that. But at the same time, if I'm overdoing it, my body tells me and I, I have to pull back. So it works on both the good and the bad sides. Right. It helps When things are going bad and when things are going good, I, I felt like this was a great word. It was absolutely, I, I was thinking the same thing for you, that it's very important to listen to your body and what you need, and I tried to incorporate the same thing when thinking about Open. like for myself, if I was feeling like there was too much going on, I tried to think about keeping my calendar open and not putting too much on the weekends or whatever to allow those moments to breathe. but again, I'm still thinking about what to do for next year. It might be a word kind of along the lines of being open to something specific. Like meeting new people, maybe something along the lines of networking, making new connections, something like that. I'll think about it, but overall, I do think this year went well. It's not over yet. We still have time to round out the year positively, but overall, I think it was good. Yes, agreed. I am also failing the same way. So, Susan, do you have any ideas about your word for next year? Yeah, not exactly yet. Like I said, I'm still kind of thinking about what's gonna make sense. Usually. I do a lot of thinking about that in between Christmas and New Year's. Um, I don't think I've ever been great with coming up with the word like far in advance. I need some time to finish out this year and see how it goes, and then. Sometimes I even choose the same word or variation of it twice. Like the one year I chose bold, and the next year I was like, you know what? I'm not done with this. I wanna continue. And I made the word bolder or picked the word bolder. So who knows? Maybe I'll do something else along the lines of Open, but just kind of the next level of that. But I, you know, I'll get back to you, When we record our first episode for season four, we always talk about our new Word of the Year. So that might be the point where you're gonna find out what it is, one thing that's been coming up for me as I've been listening this year is, simplifying, keeps coming back to me where I think. In order to keep everything in my life manageable and to minimize the stress, I need to simplify. So I need to maybe decide once as the lazy genius, Kendra Adachi would say decide once, and that's what we do every time. Or just decide that this is the routine for these certain seasons of the year. I'm thinking of this right now as I think about like holiday decorations. I love holiday decorations. I love Halloween decorations. Christmas decorations are like two of my favorite holidays to, to decorate for, and I can get crazy over the top with them and it can take me weeks to put them all up. And then it takes me weeks to take them all down. And then I'm trying to put them away in a way that's like organized. Sometimes I just need to streamline that. I just need to focus on, two, two big feature areas and then call it a day. Right. Or even with gardening. I noticed this year because I was traveling so much for the summer, I did not get to spend as much time outside in my in my flower gardens, in my raised bed vegetable gardens as I did in the past. Simplifying those would've helped me out a lot. Instead, I came home to a lot of weeds and overgrowth that Jumanji. That's what my sister's husband gardens, he has a huge garden. He built a greenhouse this year. Even when they came back from one of their vacations, he said it was like Jumanji in the garden. It was so overrun. It literally looked like a jungle. Yes. So I, I can relate to that. Sounds like simplify would be a really good word for you this upcoming year. And Whitney, if it makes you feel any better, it's November right now, and I'm still taking down Halloween decorations. I'm looking at my skull candelabras right now, so I need to put those away. And I think everyone goes through the same struggles with decorations, but it's a good idea to just simplify and tackle one room at a time or one section at a time. So I like your strategy. Yeah, I did. I did take down all of my specific Halloween decorations last week, so I'm ahead of my usual schedule on that. And I've left up a handful of pumpkins that can double as fall decor until yes. Christmas comes out of the boxes. Yes, I agree. I like Halloween and Fall day decor, or Halloween and Thanksgiving decor.'cause there is a lot of overlap. So actually my skull candelabras, I did just turn them around so you can't see the skull side, but they do still look kind of creepy, so you need to put that away. But away. But anyway, there's always something to work on. right, we're, we are all a work in progress, including our goals for the year, that's a wrap for the season three, Whitney. Um,, thank you so much to everyone who listened this season. We would love to hear from you. Please tell us what episodes you enjoyed. If there's something you wanna hear us discuss, if there is a book or a show or a movie that you think we should collaborate with Devin on to discuss and analyze, please let us know. We really look forward to hearing from you, our listeners, and. Whitney, you and I look forward to returning for believe it or not, season four in in 2024. I cannot believe it's season four in 2024. We really planned that well, didn't we? We really did, and I remember when we first started recording, it was during the height of Covid, so it's incredible to see how far we've come, how far the world has come. It's kind of cool to follow our journey. So thanks to everyone for listening, and we're so excited to come back Yes. We'll see you all in season four in 2024. Four in 2024 have a wonderful rest of 2023. Woo. All right. Yay.