Recognize the people in the image above?

Yes.  That's my husband, Dae (aka @LuggageDonkey) on the left, me on the right.  

Back when we had just started dating, my husband introduced me to the idea of "windshield time".  Knowing is half the battle - knowing the idea of windshield time allows us to intentionally use it with each other.  Dae uses it to catch up and bond with his aging father (who is now 79 years old).  I use it with colleagues to prepare for meetings when driving together to a meeting.

I never thought I'd actually work with my husband... and here we are.  We've argued and fought, and battled our way to actually LAUNCHING the pilot podcast episode this week.  WHOO-HOO!  I wish you could have seen his face on Tuesday - Dae was so happy.  He was beaming about the beautiful weather, the view of Mount Rainier that was magnificent as we were driving to a meeting. We're on anchor.fm now. Check us out - give it a listen, send us some good mojo/feedback/ratings if you can to help us out. Thank you so much! 

Can't believe we actually got this done.  Whew! 

Here's the link: https://anchor.fm/windshieldtime206.

For my next post, I'll work on a list of quick early lessons that I've picked up in working with my husband. We both have strong opinions and personalities - and we are married, live together, and have two very young children together.  We're both sleep deprived.  That makes for an interesting mix.  

Hope you like it.  

Hugs,
Arry 
P.S. Second pilot episode of Windshield Time going live today! 

I saw this image fly by my eyes at about 330AM this morning - and I saved it as a reminder that I want to share/write about this... A LOT MORE ABOUT THIS.

Many of us humans, we have our dark down days.  Some have them more than others.  At my worst, I think I did not leave my room/bed/apartment for weeks.  Some times, the idea of being alive is just so exhausting.  Some times, I am able to push myself into being somewhat functional, going through the motions of a fully productive day - only doing what is absolutely necessary to not let anything blow up.  Other times, I've written long goodbye letters to my husband and family - only to "wake up" and throw it away.  I even daydreamed about getting in the car, alone, and driving endlessly on the highway to just go away from this surreal non-reality reality I was living in. 

I had a really tough time with postpartum depression with our first baby.  Really bad.  I had no idea how bad it was at the time.  Only looking back today, do I realize how deep in the depths of velvety despair I was living in day to day, night after night, month after month.  To help myself with this newest baby who was recently born, I did things differently. 

Five Things I'm Doing Differently with Our Second Baby to Avoid Postpartum Depression: 

1. Proactive Communication (before giving birth) - I told my OBGYN, my husband, friends, and more about how challenging postpartum depression was for me with our first baby.  With more people aware, they can help me when they see me teetering on the edge.  Recently, I woke up.  For some reason, everything felt so difficult.  I sat down on the couch ready to feed our newborn, and tears just started rolling down my face.  My husband looked at me and said, "go put on something comfortable to go outside with.  I'll drop you and the baby off at the mall and you can walk around a little while I do this quick 30 minute meeting this morning."  I started to object - and then something in me said, just do it. The day turned out to be really great because my husband was aware.
2. Lots of Photos - while pregnant, I put up photos all of over the home of wonderful memories, family, and friends.  It's seriously made a difference.  When I'm home, the photos are constant reminders of good memories, loving faces, and comfort that keep me from falling into that dark place too much.
3. Therapy - I see this Phd psychologist/leadership coach quarterly.  Todd.  When he saw me pregnant, in my second trimester, he asked, "did you get postpartum depression with the first pregnancy"?  I said, "yes, it was really bad".  Considering what I was going through last year, he strongly advised me to get a therapist ASAP to start working weekly on building some strong mental foundational tools before the baby was born.  Oh my goodness, SO HELPFUL.  He even looked up a few folks for me to call to find the right fit. 
4. Breathing Room & Forgiveness in Breastfeeding - For those that have not breastfed a newborn baby before, it's REALLY hard.  It's hard to produce the milk - enough milk.  It's hard on the body physically.  There's a lot of pain associated with it.  There's a lot of stress related to it knowing that this amazing adorable innocent human life form depends on you for it.  There's sacrifice - the sleep, the social events, what I can or cannot eat/drink, and then some.  This time around with this baby, we're going with "fed is best".  I've been supplementing with formula from the day he was born.  With our first baby, I felt so ashamed to even go there, so I pushed and pushed to have him exclusively breastfed until about 6 months of age.  I still feel the shame with not producing as much milk as with our first baby - and at the same time, I feel a tiny bit happier and freer.  It's a weird discombobulating feeling.  My husband has been reminding me, fed is best.  Whole generations of humans are and have been exclusively formula fed.  The baby will be okay. I don't know if it's the same for other mothers - my self worth and self esteem daily seems to be based on how breastfeeding is going that day.  
5. Indulging Myself with Food and Sleep - to my heart's content.  It took about a full month before I even allowed my husband to take care of our newborn ALL NIGHT LONG while I slept in the other bed with our toddler.  A full month.  For some reason, I have this innate feeling that it is fully my own responsibility to stay up all night, every night, with our newborn.  I feel an immense amount of guilt letting my husband do that.  I've been learning to let go - with coaxing and coaching from both my husband and therapist.  Sleep is amazing - milk flows so luxuriously and freely after a night of good sleep.  Same goes with when I've had some delicious food/beverage.  Oh, and this time, proactively recruiting help from not just family - but also the community has helped.  I now know what a MEAL TRAIN is!!! 

Having a baby - it's like the whole family getting hit by a bus.  For the mother who just gave birth, it's like getting hit by the bus a few more times.  The physical and mental demands are big - and not knowing any better, I really struggled with recovery with our first baby.  This second baby has been easier in so many ways, and more difficult in other (like having survived the unplanned c-section, that got infected... more on that some other time.)  

Net-net?  
Ask for help.  
Accept and embrace the help.  
Don't add more stress than is really needed.  
​Eat/sleep as much as you can.  
Have strong mental and visual anchors to stay strong daily.

Arry 

Bar Rescue has become an integral part of my morning routine with the Quinoa in the past several weeks since he's been born.

Bar Rescue.  I kind of laugh right now realizing how much time I've spent half-watching/listening to this show.  Maybe Quinoa has been absorbing some of the lessons.

At first, it started as this random, mindless thing that was (very un-seriously) randomly on one day when I was feeding our newborn - that I kept on watching day after day after day.  I don't watch it on weekends.  Now having seen at least 20 episodes to date, there's definitely a formula and pattern - and I've extracted the takeaways for you here.  These takeaways are actually applicable to the world of entrepreneurship and startup, too.

8 Lessons I've Learned from Bar Rescue:
​

1. Leadership is Key: There's got to be a clear leader.  A leader worthy of following.  In the vice business of bars and alcohol, the leader cannot be drunk.  The leader has to be an effective manager - or the leader has to give the proper authority to another manager to run the day to day operations of the business.  This is probably the most important piece that Jon Taffer (the star of the show) will work on fixing in every episode - and everything else is details.  No leadership, no business worth saving (or having).
2. Consistency in Vision: Have a clear vision that is consistent throughout the business - from everything in the product served, the brand, and the service.  
3. Know and Serve the Market: Know your market - who is the ultimate customer you are serving and what do THEY like, want, and enjoy.  Serve the market.
4. Have Clear Processes and Clear Bottlenecks: Enable the business to thrive.  Anywhere your employees are getting stuck, focus on creating or enabling a solution to remove that bottleneck.  Investment in creating a great work environment that enables employees to thrive is important - skimp here, and the business suffers.
5. Don't Cut Corners: Literally, do NOT cut corners in the quality of the product and service or it will bite you in the ass.  It's the leader's responsibility always - to ensure that the quality bar is known and met EVERY SINGLE DAY.  Clean work areas.  Proper procedures are known and followed.  Safety of customers and employees is tablestakes.
6. Team Over Me: If anyone on the team is not willing to be part of the team, cut them as soon as possible.  One person can pull the effectiveness of an entire team down.  Hell no.  It's the leader's responsibility (or the manager's) to ensure the team is made up of team players.
7. Customer Service FTW: The leader is there to ensure the employees are happy, safe, and thriving.  The employees (and leader) focus on happy customers and clients.
8. Repeat, Consistency: Have a vision.  Be consistent in all matters of execution from hiring, to the product and service.  

And looking at it - yea, these are lessons that also are core to running any business well.  

There you have it.  Bar Rescue. 

​--Arry 

Nice chart, huh?  BYND baby.

My husband has a huge influence on me.  I think I have a huge influence on him.  That's marriage...  and he's really into investing, money, markets, all things business and finance.  

I've always been pretty passive, especially when it comes to finances: 

• I don't look at the stock performance daily, even weekly or monthly.  
• I believe very strongly in living a lifestyle significantly below your means - that means smaller house than you can afford, buying baby stuff at GoodWill or embracing bags of hand-me-downs, cook at home more than you eat out. When we have dual income, that means, we still live as if there's only a single income coming in.  
• In our marriage, I have happily given him full CFO/Chief Investor reign of everything regarding our assets and finances.  I really trust him (as I should).  And, we're both happier this way.
• Previous to our marriage, I managed it in 6 month to 12 month chunks at a time - investing (well) takes work.  When the S&P500 did its thing 2001 - 2006, I rode that all the way up, and a lot of it down.  I threw in a whole bunch into Gold, Gold Miners, Commodities, Apple (of course), and some death stocks (I think I was too early).  Cashed out on Apple when it doubled (~$40 to ~$88) to buy my first home.  In hindsight, oh man I should have held onto Apple.  Cashed out on MSFT at $24.10 too, because it was not moving year after year (back then).  Man I should have held onto that too.  Shoulda. Woulda. Coulda.
• I spend from time to time on myself (less than 5 times a year).  I spend mostly on family happiness (gifts, photos, experiences), or donating to charitable causes (mostly at gala auctions and events).  My husband calls me the family "social worker".

Smile.  

I'm tracking a few different stocks and companies now.  We've been mentally placing bets on companies (or with angel checks) since 2012, and have learned A LOT.  I'll write up the summary of learning in another post.  Now I'm taking those principles and applying it back to the stock market - and with that, I've placed a bet on BYND.  In at ~$80 on BYND, and today it's up to ~$166.  Not bad, huh?  I'm playing 1-5 year ranges now (versus the 6-12 month ranges I had done previously).  In hindsight, I should have put more in when I did - shoulda, woulda, coulda.

Ah well.  Proud owner of BYND.

Sharing, because sharing is caring.  :). 

​Arry 

This is a blog post to... warm up my blogging self again.  It's really hard to start something again after dropping the ball for so long.  I am trying to pick the ball up again.  

​Smile.

I look at our growing family, now with two amazing little babies (technically, one is a toddler). Never say "never" is the lesson.  To think I was adamant with my (at the time) soon to be husband that I did not want children is crazy.  Never say "never".  I did not know what I was saying.  Of course, it's hard - sleep deprivation, mess everywhere, our home has been invaded with kids' items and baby gear.  Giving birth is hard - 36 hour labor with Lentil, and an unplanned c-section with complications with Quinoa.  Feeding them (or convincing them to eat healthy) is a constant negotiation exercise.  

On the other hand, I'm probably a better human for it (than if I hadn't been lucky to have had our children).  I see the miracle of life, the blessing that life is, and have far more empathy for how babies grow up to be people.  Probably, most of the troubles we have in our lifetimes are because of how someone was or wasn't wired properly based on who the parents were, on top of all the emotional baggage we collect as adults.  That about sums it up.  To fix some of the biggest world problems, be pro-human and make sure that the world's babies are brought up with love and the proper nutrition, from birth.  How can we prioritize that globally as one human race? 

​Seriously.

Lentil is our toddler, full of passion, curiosity, energy and zeal.  He loves to learn, sing, dance, anything art/creative, help in the kitchen, and most definitely, anything red with four wheels on it.  I'm sitting in his bedroom right now as I write - smelling his toddler smells and smiling. 

Quinoa is our newest addition and now barely over a month old.  He arrived, after being breached (twice), and a failed second attempt at a versioning, via c-section.  I'm mostly recovered from the c-section and its following complications now, as I'm now starting to worry about my vanity and how I am going to lose the extra baby weight (15 pounds to go).    

Dae keeps referring to himself as "grandpa-dad" - mostly because he'll be about 70 years old when our kid(s) graduate college.  :). I refer to Dae as "Benjamin Button" because he looks seemingly younger and younger each year that goes by.

Life's truest blessings is family and friends,
Arry