Author and editor Kaitlyn Teer (you may know her as the editor of Joanna Goddard’s Big Salad newsletter ) joins Sarah and Miranda to chat about how weirdly hard and wonderful it is to have hobbies as a mom, and the unique joy of being new (even bad!) at something. We get into such pressing questions as: What is “contaminated leisure time,” and how can we carve out ‘uncontaminated’ time to explore who we are beyond work and caregiving? If modern motherhood is defined by a sense of pressure to optimize our every decision, what does it mean to chase ‘beginners mind,’ uncertainty, and inefficient uses of time? Are our hobbies an expression of millennial economic dread, and an effort to detach our sense of self-regard from the capitalistic value systems that have left us in the lurch? Are we totally overthinking this? We also touch on: Kaitlyn’s amazing hair, Doggy Land, and Sarah’s recent swimming pool cannonball-ing achievements. Plus culture recs, moving as a mom (hard!), and more.

This episode is sponsored by Freeya, a marketplace for free stuff.

Links

* Anne Helen Petersen on quality leisure time vs. ‘contaminated leisure time’

* Follow Kaitlyn on Instagram

* Kaitlyn Teer on Mountain Biking In New Motherhood

* ‘Popsicles Can’t Fix This New Heat’, Kaitlyn Teer over at Electric Lit

* Big Salad, Joanna Goddard’s newsletter (edited by Kaitlyn!)

* Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport

* The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature by J. Drew Lanham

* Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World By Christian Cooper

* Hike Clerb

* Family-oriented family (brene brown pod— sarah can you add?)

* Crayola Air-Dry Clay & how to make a clay flower frog

* Doggy Lands affirmations

* Madwoman by Chelsea Bieker 

* Skull King

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