Episode 384: Righteous Anger and Weaponized Incompetence with Laura Danger
No More Mediocre author Laura Danger joins Doree and Elise to discuss what equality in a partnership really looks like and granting yourself permission to feel righteous anger. They also chat about what a reimagined future could look like with a community-centered mindset.
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Transcript
The transcript for this episode is AI generated.
Doree Shafrir (00:10):
Hello and welcome to Forever35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Doree Shafrir.
Elise Hu (00:16):
And I'm Elise Hu, and we are two friends who like to talk a lot about serums.
Doree Shafrir (00:20):
And today we are talking to the author and domestic equity advocate, Laura Danger. You may have seen her TikToks. She kind of got TikTok famous talking about domestic equity. And we had a really interesting conversation with her about this stuff. And it actually made me think about the conversation we were having at the end of our last mini app, Elise, about co-parenting, where you were saying you're still the one who makes the plans.
Elise Hu (00:56):
Yeah. Yeah. So Laura in this interview talks a lot about how women, because of the way we're socialized, we end up having to be the kinkeepers. We maintain the relationships or make the friends with the other parents who could carpool or do
(01:09)
Play dates or help take your kids. And that is an inequity. That's an area of inequity. And how can we equalize that? And so anyway, I think y'all are going to enjoy this conversation. We certainly got a lot out of it. And hopefully you got something from last week's episode too with Ann Helen Peterson. So this time of year, as a lot of people are reflecting, looking back, but also looking forward, she put out some questions, stuff like what gave you energy, what drained it? When did you feel most joyful and carefree? And one that I wanted to pose to you, Doree, because, and we can ask each other these too throughout the year, but because this is a show in which we really focus on how to nurture our relationships, take better care of ourselves. The question for you is, what habit, if you did it more consistently, would have a positive effect on your life?
(02:05)
Probably less iPad in bed. How much time do you spend on your iPad in bed?
Doree Shafrir (02:14):
Well, if I wake up in the middle of the night, I reach for my iPad. Oh, I never mentioned this on the show, by the way, but this just made me laugh. I recently saw my OBGYN for my annual and I really like her. She's younger. She had a baby a few months ago. When I asked her for HRT, she didn't even blink. She's very up on all the research and
(02:46)
All the things. So I was saying to her, "I don't know if we need to change my HRT because I'm waking up in the middle of the night all the time." And she was like, "Are you having trouble falling asleep?" I was like, "No, I go right to sleep." She was like, "Well, that's probably just stress." Because she said that the indicator for perimenopause is having trouble falling asleep more so than waking up in the middle of the night. And that waking up in the middle of the night is more due to stress and anxiety. And I was like, "Cool. Okay." So that isn't a thing that HRT solves per se. It has its own solution. Right. Yeah. I was
Elise Hu (03:38):
Like, damn it.
Doree Shafrir (03:40):
I thought if I just maybe took some more estrogen, I could sleep through the night more. Not that, not that. Maybe some other drugs, but not that. Right, exactly. Exactly. But why I bring this up is because when I do wake up in the middle of the night, instead of just trying to go back to sleep, I will usually just read or scroll for an hour or two. And I think it would be a lot better for my sleep and my mental health if I did not do that. So that is a habit that I would like to break. I also, I guess most of the habits that I think about doing or not doing do relate to screens. Screen time? Yeah. Now that I'm thinking about it, because I'm like, I should walk my dog without my phone.
Elise Hu (04:32):
Oh, I didn't know you walked your dog with your phone. Okay.
Doree Shafrir (04:35):
Almost everyone I see also walking their dog in my neighborhood- Has a phone? ... is also on their phone. That
Elise Hu (04:41):
Is so funny. I wonder if it's like a West Side Midtown, Central LA bit difference. That's so funny. Yeah. Or it could just be a person to person different. I don't have that many thoughts in my head. And so I totally zone out during when I walk the dog. I love that. I don't even have a memory of it.
Doree Shafrir (05:06):
Oh
Elise Hu (05:06):
My God, that's amazing. I love the dog. Lately with dog walking, it's just mud maintenance, like looking out for puddles. I do think you can pay a lot of attention to the actual sidewalk and grass and nature if you don't have your phone. There's that. Totally. You would get that benefit out of it.
Doree Shafrir (05:29):
Totally. But I do think that in situations where I'm not looking at my phone, whether it's in the shower or washing the dishes or whatever, I do come up with ideas and have thoughts that I don't have when I'm just staring at my phone. So that is something that I would like to work on.
Elise Hu (05:57):
You are like an echo of Rob, because Rob is just like you in that when he gets up in the night, he reaches for his phone and I am awakened by a little orb of light in the bed. And I'm like, "Are you not sleeping through the night? What is going on? " And because now suddenly I'm not sleeping through the night because there's an orb. There's like a light emerging and he'll sometimes make like a pillow fort so that his phone light doesn't affect me. But I'm sort of like, dude, or you could just not pick up your phone,
Doree Shafrir (06:29):
Could do that. So my phone sleeps in the kitchen. So I'm not on my phone, but I am on my iPad, which I don't think is that much better. It's on dark code. They're still. It's not
Elise Hu (06:41):
Great. Yeah. What about you? I realized towards the end of 2025, this is such an obvious one, but I basically drink no water, especially first thing in the morning because I'm off and I'm out the door and I'm often just stopping at Starbucks or stopping at some coffee place for iced tea. So I drink a lot of tea and it gets me through the morning, but I'm not drinking just water and I'm probably super dehydrated. I remember a doctor, not my OBGYN, but an OBGYN friend of mine, she was like, "I'm so bad at drinking water that my pea is the color of Guinness."
(07:27)
Oh dear. So I'm not at that level. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I really, I think it could be really good for everything to just hydrate better. So I do want to change that habit for sure. But we were talking in the mini about an animating question of the year, like a New Year's question, and my New Year's question has to do with doing things with more depth. And so I think I don't know which habits that will apply to more ... I don't know exactly which habits that's going to apply to, but I just think even thinking about it is going to probably change some things.
Doree Shafrir (08:04):
We will link to the original New York Times article that these questions were in because the rest of them are also just sort of interesting to contemplate. I also like this one. Is there anyone you need to forgive in 2026? But we can all think about those on our own time. And we are going to get to our chat with Laura Danger, but before we do that, just a reminder that you can visit our website, forever35podcast.com. We have links there to everything we mentioned on the show. We are on Instagram at Forever35 podcast. Our Patreon is patreon.com/forever35. We do our weekly casual chats, our monthly pop culture recommendation episodes. We have ad free episodes. We have a Forever35 questionnaire. We are also doing new for 2026, casual chats on video. So you can watch us and listen to us. And we will also be doing quarterly live casual chats.
(09:06)
We did one of these in the fall and it was super fun. I think everyone, we had a couple technical issues, but we got there and everyone had a really good time, I think. So we'll be doing more of those. We plan on doing those quarterly. So join us at patreon.com/forever35. And you can also join the Patreon as a free member and get our newsletter. So you can do that as well. And please call or text us at 781-591-0390 and email us at forever35podcast@gmail.com.
Elise Hu (09:40):
After the break, we are going to have our conversation with Laura Danger, who is a licensed educator, facilitator, and domestic equity advocate, as Doree said at the top of the show. She's been working with the Fair Play team, Fair Play, which was the group started by Eve Rodsky and has been interviewed in all sorts of magazines, In Style, Business Insider and others, as an expert on weaponized incompetence and inequity within partnerships. She's also very online. You can find her online @thatarnchat. She is a mother of two, a gardener, an audiobook enthusiast, and a neighbor who believes care is a collective responsibility and a powerful force for change.
Doree Shafrir (10:28):
All right. We are going to take a short break and we will be right back with Laura. Laura, danger. Welcome to Forever35. We're so happy to have you. Thank you.
Laura Danger (10:45):
Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Doree Shafrir (10:48):
Well, as you may or may not know, we start off all of our conversations with our guests by asking them about a self-care practice that they have. So is there something that you do right now that you would consider self-care?
Laura Danger (11:02):
I want to say the good news is I do lots of things, but one of my favorite things to do is I have a routine of walking every morning. I live in Chicago and I thankfully can walk my kids to school and I can walk to the grocery store and I can walk to get coffee. And so my husband and I go on, if it's nice out, like a mile and a half walk every morning, and if it's rainy, we'll just do some blocks.
Elise Hu (11:30):
Oh, that's great. Yeah. I mean, I feel like it was transformative for our lives when we finally moved into a house where the kids could walk to school. I mean, it's such a
Laura Danger (11:40):
Luxury. It's so good. Yes.
Elise Hu (11:41):
Yeah. And I'm going to miss it when more of them go to middle school, and that's not going to be the case.
Laura Danger (11:48):
It really is a luxury.
Elise Hu (11:49):
Yeah. Well, why don't we just start from the beginning and have you talk a little bit about yourself, your family and your own journey to what you kind of specialize in these days, which is fighting for more equitable partnerships and families.
Laura Danger (12:04):
I am lots of things. I'm a Chicagoan. I am a wife to my partner who I've been with since I was 20. I'm 37 now and I have two children. So I'm a mom. My kids are in fourth grade and first grade, and I am a former classroom educator. I did the thing that so many people do, which is fall into making motherhood and partnership a lot of my identity. And around 2019, 2020, freshly a parent of two, I hit an absolute wall of burnout and moral injury, and I really got serious about changing how I showed up in my partnership at work professionally as a parent. And I've spent the last several years sharing about that, advocating for that, and writing a book about that.
Elise Hu (13:13):
And if I recall correctly, you left your job as a classroom teacher around the same time that you kind of hit your emotional bottom. Is that right? I
Laura Danger (13:23):
Did, yes.
Elise Hu (13:24):
What motivated that decision to leave the classroom and what do you miss about it? Because I'm sure there was something really special about being in a classroom with kids that aren't your own too.
Laura Danger (13:34):
I do miss it. I miss a lot of elements of it. And as I'm looking to the future, I'm actually really trying to figure out how I can bridge some of these gaps. So teaching, especially as an elementary educator, there is a lot of overlap with the care work that we do at home. And anyone who's ever around other people's children will know that they say your name eight million times a day, and then to come home and hear my kids say my name a million times a day, it was really overwhelming and the demands ... I mean, teaching is always demanding. Motherhood is always demanding, but through the excessive demands of the first year or two of the pandemic, the closures, the loss of childcare, we were really all being asked to put our basic needs aside to keep the world running, to keep the economy running.
(14:35)
And the students weren't getting their needs met in the classroom, the adults weren't. Everyone was just struggling so much. And honestly, being a remote teacher really put me in the households. I was in the households with my students. And I saw these families in a new way while I had a baby and a toddler. I was just trying to keep them quiet while I did classes behind me. And it was such a terrible revelation of how undervalued all of that work was. I was really rock bottom. I was like, "Something's got to give, and if I'm going to survive this, I've got to take a huge risk here and I've got to burn it all down." That's what I did.
Doree Shafrir (15:31):
Can you talk a little bit about how all of this led to your book, No More Mediocre: A Call to Reimagine Our Relationships and Demand More?
Laura Danger (15:42):
Yeah. So I say, if anyone is going to know who I am, they probably know me from talking about weaponized incompetence. And it's all sort of the same climax of a moment where we're all in our homes and we're all finding the only connection we can find through our phones scrolling TikTok. And I kept seeing the same thing over and over again, these couples comedy jokes, these ha ha ha, isn't it so funny that dads do nothing and wives do everything? And even though she has COVID, she's keeping the household together and he's in the bathroom for 45 minutes, I feel the crunch. I'm watching women in my life leave their careers because it's just too much. I'm in the homes of my students every day watching them struggle. And then I see these jokes making light of inequity, which is making all of this worse.
(16:39)
And I started taking these viral videos and talking about them and really taking them at face value and pointing out like, no, this is faking it and getting out of something and this is shielding yourself against accountability. This isn't funny. And I was really pissed off and that's where my platform on TikTok first and then Instagram really grew and really shifted my education work into this more adult focused and more diverse role. And that's when I started to write this book. And yeah, so it's out in 2026 is the year of no more mediocre.
Elise Hu (17:21):
Tell us how you define weaponized incompetence. You kind of painted a picture for us.
Laura Danger (17:26):
Doing a bad job on purpose to shield yourself against accountability. Doing a bad job on purpose to get out of something, to force other people to do something for you. It could be being willfully ignorant, willfully careless. And what it really does is it puts the other party, it puts someone else in a position of having to overfunction or overcompensate, or else they face a consequence. And oftentimes that is emotional backlash that's going to happen, or it could be really the kids are neglected. That's how I define it.
Elise Hu (18:05):
How did you notice this showing up in your own life? And then how have you resolved it if you have?
Laura Danger (18:11):
Yes. Okay. So it has mostly shown up in my life professionally.
Elise Hu (18:17):
Like the group project problem?
Laura Danger (18:20):
Yes. Yes. And I feel like we've all been in that situation before where you're in a really tough spot because if someone else isn't pulling their weight, it's going to look bad on you and you're going to face the consequence. You're going to get punished at work, passed over. And this is often a gender dynamic at home, but it's very much a gendered dynamic at work too, where expectations are not the same for different parties. It's also a racialized dynamic.
(18:55)
It's really a dynamic of power and accountability and whose comfort we are supposed to or encouraged to protect. We're socially conditioned to, again, protect the feelings of or not see men as capable or competent at home. We think it's funny when they're not. That's what all of these viral videos and these hashtag couples comedy tropes really reinforce is that men are dumb dumbs and we really shouldn't expect them to know what to do at home. And so if you do expect them to do something or you get upset when they fail, it puts all ... You're the nag, you're the miserable shrew.
(19:35)
You're totally ... All of your righteous anger gets downplayed. So what do we do about it? If I feel ashamed that I am really dropping the ball pretty regularly, I have to deal with that and communicate about that. I would be using weaponized incompetence if I lashed out at my husband for mentioning it or if I expected him to overcompensate for me without asking for help or giving it a good try or being creative. So it really is, I think the way out of weaponized incompetence or the alternative that lets that thrive is creating a culture of creativity, accommodating for yourself, not taking the default cultural standard and instead meeting your needs. But if someone is using weaponized incompetence on you, you are not going to be able to convince them to stop. They have to do that.
Doree Shafrir (20:36):
So we're just going to take a short break and we will be right back.
Elise Hu (20:47):
It sounds like you're answering this question of what we do about it if we are the ones that are using weaponized incompetence,
(20:55)
But what if it's happening in our homes and it's our partners, often male partners and cishet families that are the ones who are using it, essentially saying like, "I can't go shopping for shoes or something like this because I never do that. " Or some task or I think your book talks a lot about like mental and cognitive load and the sort of kin keeping and maintaining of friendships and maintaining of social bonds and making sure that you see other couples or other families or friends regularly, that's often an area where heterosexual men aren't taking the lead in their own families. So if, so flip that question around, if it's somebody in your home, someone else in your home, either your partner or say your teenaged or grown child who is using weaponized incompetence against you, how do you make a shift or begin to make a shift in your own family unit?
Doree Shafrir (21:52):
And just to piggyback on that, if you're saying that the person who's using weaponized incompetence, it has to come from them, I mean, what's the incentive for them to change? Yeah,
Laura Danger (22:03):
What's in it for them?
Doree Shafrir (22:05):
Yeah. It's been working for them.
Laura Danger (22:07):
I've worked with a lot of women whose partners will be doing this. They will be really competent and thriving at work, able to coordinate meetings, able to whine and dine a client in order to show up for them, remember their kids' names, but somehow can't do that at home, can't put the effort in at home. I've seen that. If you're being put in that position, then the only thing that you can do is focus on yourself and that would be figuring out what are my needs and are they getting met, keeping yourself and your family safe. And a lot of times what it has looked like is trying out something like Fair Play, giving it the good college try and introducing systems like that. Let's meet once a week, let's get the invisible out here. And a lot of times people are thinking, "If I sit my partner down like that, it's going to become a huge fight and emotional explosion." That might be a good time to open up your own bank account and think about plans of how you can survive and thrive, maybe not in that relationship if it's possible.
(23:23)
Thinking about a safety plan, because every expert that I have talked to has agreed that this is a behavior that causes harm. If you have named it and you have told the person who is doing it, that it is causing harm and it continues to happen, it is costing you something that is an abusive, corrosive, harmful behavior.
Elise Hu (23:46):
I'm listening to what you're saying, and I think some people might be a little bit shocked to hear it if they're very comfortable in their relationships and comfortable in their relational dynamics. Do you feel like some of your work has actually led women to leave their partnerships? A hundred percent,
Laura Danger (24:01):
Yes. And they haven't left good ones. Nobody is coming to me and saying, "Oh, I really regret it. Oh, you blew up my life." Never. I have had people approach me in my life, I'm out at a store, I've had someone approach me and be like, "Oh my gosh, I really appreciate you talking about this. I thought I was crazy." Or, "My mother-in-law was telling me that all I needed to do was give him a chance to learn and kind of be softer about my approach." Yeah, kind
Elise Hu (24:37):
Of kill the messenger vibe instead of addressing the actual root problem.
Laura Danger (24:43):
Yes. And I know people who have stayed and done it because of financial reasons, because there is a companionship element or there are reasons that they do stay. However, they have shifted to acceptance of the situation and then keeping themselves safe or again, starting the bank account, getting the degree, figuring out what this is going to look like safety-wise down the road.
Doree Shafrir (25:11):
For people who might be in newer relationships where the dynamic hasn't quite settled yet, but they want to kind of head this off at the pass,
Elise Hu (25:23):
As
Doree Shafrir (25:24):
It were, how do you suggest navigating that with a partner?
Laura Danger (25:30):
What I wish I would have known is that there is room for balance at the beginning and talking about what the invisible labor is, acknowledging it, both of you getting involved from the jump and establishing your opinions and your norms and your expectations as you build. And I think a great example of this is so many people I know get into a partnership and they say, "I want a family and I want both of us to work or I'll stay home and you work and then we'll trade." That's really great to say that out loud, but you need to know the details. What do you mean we're going to have a family? Where is the money going to come from? If are we lose housing, what's going to happen? The cost of childcare is massive. When are we going to change places? There has to be more imagining, visualizing, really being explicit about what you mean by an equal partnership.
Elise Hu (26:36):
Yeah. I like the clear communication. I do follow the thinking of St. Brene Brown in that clarity is kindness.
(26:46)
I also think though, and just to turn the lens on women and moms, is that I think there's a lot of women because of the way we're socialized that sort of tend to overfunction. I know a lot of friends who, when their kids were very small, were like, "Oh, I would never go out of town and leave my kid with my husband for the whole weekend," because we almost have a socialized assumption that they might not be capable. So I also think it's really important for women in these partnerships to trust and let things let their partners sort of learn and be willing to go away and be willing to have other people do things differently than we might. And so that's another part of it. I don't know if you addressed it in your book, but the part of it in which we can be feminists in our own home by doing less is another way to approach it.
Laura Danger (27:47):
Absolutely. And I love that you talked about this overfunctioning because it's like system wide. As mothers are expected to hold up the entire world, hold things together and be the stop gap when there is no childcare, when it's really hard to get the social, our needs met, mothers end up stepping in or are forced to step in. It's like systemic weaponized incompetence. And the other part of it is our partners, regardless of gender, should be welcomed into these practices and these spaces and this labor. And even our little nuclear units are not enough to meet all of our needs. And so I love that reframing of even our friendships really matter, the chosen family or the family of origin can really matter and creating those networks of care that expand just beyond you.
Elise Hu (28:45):
This kind of gets to the third part of No More Mediocre, which is your more affirmative vision that gets to a place that's better for all of us. And it really hearkens back to a lot of indigenous cultures and the ways that we used to live all around the world, just community centered and having a village. And so I'd love for you to talk about what your recommendations are there in community building for more systemic ripple effects.
Laura Danger (29:13):
I think it's really cool. Some of the people that I interviewed for the book have more expansive looks at what it means to love and be in relationships. And it's really the thesis of the book is no more mediocre doesn't just mean like raise the bar for your partner. It means that we've been oversold on some happily ever after, or if you follow a certain path, you will get your needs met, you will feel fulfilled. And it's not rooted in truth. It doesn't leave any room for quality, for a consideration of how we are all unique and how there is no one right way to do things. I live in a neighborhood where I can walk my kids to school in the morning, and that means that I know the people on my blog Block, I know the kids on my block. When a parent has to go to a doctor's appointment early in the morning, they can drop their kid off on my porch.
(30:07)
They come in and eat cereal and I will walk them. They will get there safely. And we don't even have to be best friends. It's that showing up, shoveling for your neighbor, going to the local stores and not giving all your money away to these big corporations where possible. Every little thing that we do to really show up for our neighbors is intimately interwoven with the division of labor in our marriages or in our partnerships or who we are cohabitating with. It really comes down to valuing quality connections and showing up for each other.
Doree Shafrir (30:43):
Love that. Before we wrap, Laura, we just wanted to talk a little bit about how you really broke out on TikTok. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about what you feel like social media does or doesn't do to help in this effort to change the status quo of women over functioning. Or as you talk about, I think in one of your most viral TikToks, not being the supermom.
Laura Danger (31:12):
Yes. The supermom. Algorithms are wild. They are so wild. When I first got on TikTok in 2020, I think a lot of people who got on TikTok in 2020 really loved the algorithm there because it put you in contact with other people who were like you and you were able to respond back to them. You needed someone to make a comment and you could create a video and respond right to them. And it felt like having a conversation about topics and being able to bounce around. And it was really a beautiful social place to be. And that had a lot of power because it felt like everyone was going, "Yes. Oh my God. Yes. Oh, thank you for saying that. I needed that to be validated for me. Oh, wow. I've thought that and I just didn't know if I was alone." And it can create this really empowering space of validation of other people from different perspectives get to share their voice about it, different looks at a similar topic.
(32:19)
And that is still something that can be really wonderful about social media. And also it can, when the algorithm is not so connective, what it can end up doing is taking rage bait and hot takes and riling people up without encouraging them to do something different. And sometimes when you are too online and too scrolling and too activated, it can kind of cloud the actionable things that you do outside of your online life. You end up ignoring the blurry lines.
(33:00)
My partner might be avoiding this at home. Maybe he's avoiding this thing, not because he wants to punish me, even though everyone online is saying that he hates me, my husband hates me because he won't do this. Maybe that is clouding my judgment and making it hard for me to see how we actually have an attachment wound and we haven't repaired something and I can't see what's right in front of me. So it sort of hammers down this black and white thinking sometimes, but I love it in general. And I think it is so powerful, especially in the space of taking what is super popular and breaking it down and giving additional context of here's what's really going on. It's like analyzing art and that's really just powerful culture changing work.
Elise Hu (33:56):
Fantastic. All right, Laura Danger, thank you so much for joining us. The book is called No More Mediocre and it should be out now.
Laura Danger (34:05):
Yeah. Get
Doree Shafrir (34:07):
It wherever. Well, that was definitely a thought provoking conversation.
Elise Hu (34:14):
Yes. Thank you, Laura, for coming on. Yeah. And I'm so glad that she has this ongoing TikTok too, where she's bringing these things up too, so you guys can follow her at that darn chat if you aren't already.
Doree Shafrir (34:29):
Yeah. All right. Elise, we had some intentions from before the break. So these are like three weeks old, but I think we can definitely talk about how they went for us. We both had the same intention, which was family time. I can say definitively that I got a lot of good family time with my immediate nuclear family and my extended family. And this week we talked about how I don't think either of us really set New Year's resolutions per se, but I do feel like I need some sort of plan for 2026 because 2025 was like such a shit show that I feel like I need something going into 2026 where I'm just like, "This is where I would like to be at the end of the year." Because I never really think like that and I think I need to now. So I hope to do that this week and come
Elise Hu (35:31):
Up with that. Okay. That's great. That's a really actionable intention. Awesome. Thank
Doree Shafrir (35:35):
You.
Elise Hu (35:36):
My intention going into break was also family time. Boy, did I get family time? In fact, Rob was making fun of me because Rob was like, "You are becoming that mandated fun mom where you're like, we need to watch a movie. Everybody needs to get in the living room and watch a movie now. We are going to have fun." And he was like, "You don't need to do that. The kids are not in your way. They're just chilling. Why are you trying to make fun happen?Just be. " That's so
(36:08)
Funny. But it's because I have such a limited amount of time where I can give them ... I don't have anything else going on and I can give them a bunch of attention. And it turns out every day of the year and whatever continent you're on, your family is the same family and they have the same personalities. And so this I always have to think about and remind myself when we travel because it's like, "Hey, why aren't you guys more warm and loving towards each other?" And it's like, no, these are the same three siblings they are in LA as they are ... These are the same three siblings in China as they are in LA or in South America as they are in LA. And so I kind of had that misunderstanding or my brain played a trick on me and thought, "Oh, well, we have this time off from school and from work, now we're going to spend all this time together and have a great time." And Rob was like, "They're still the same people.
(37:04)
" So anyway, we did spend a lot more time together than usual, like more meals and no less driving around, but it wasn't like we were a Hallmark movie or something. In fact, it was a lot of just making fun of me. And then, yeah, everybody ... I'm a real unifying force, everybody making fun of mom and my millennial cringe. And then they're all like, "I'm an elder millennial." They're like all constantly mocking me.
Doree Shafrir (37:37):
Oh my God, that's really
Elise Hu (37:38):
Funny. And then my intention, I'm also going to do a very actionable practical intention, which is I need to kind of take a clear look at my finances because at the end of the year is when everything kind of piles up because I'm not a W2 worker. I'm an independent journalist. And then I feel like I'm catching up at the end of the year instead of having a clear idea of what I'm going to make and what I usually spend. And so I'm going to try and like map that out. I know there's lots of tools and things for this, but even just jotting it down generally so I kind of know and if we need to cut expenses, I need to cut those and like cancel subscriptions and all that. So I'm going to try and do that.
Doree Shafrir (38:29):
I love that. All right. This is also the episode where we thank our Patreon supporters at the five and $10 levels. Thank you so much for your support. The show literally could not exist without you. So we are so grateful to each and every person who supports us on Patreon. We hope you enjoy the content there and we would love to have your support at patreon.com/forever35. You also get your name read on the podcast each month as a thank you. So thank you to the following supporters, Jess, Sarah Liska, Fiona Castro LeBrun, Felicia, Justice Byro, Jasmine DeJesus, Christie, Caitlin H, Katie, Ashley Taylor, Theresa Anderson, Nicole Gass, Maya, Barbara C, Amy, Amy Schnitzer, Megan, Shelly Lee, Sarah Buzi, Alison Cohen, Susan Berseth, Melissa McClain, Fran, Kelsey Wolf Donae, Laura Eddie, Jettel Apte, Valerie Bruno, Julie Daniel, E. Jackson, Katherine Burke, Amy Maseko, Liz Rain, JDK, Hannah M, Julia P, Maddie O'Day, Marissa, Sarah Bell, Maria, Diana, S-T, Coco Bean, Laura Haddon, Josie H, Nikki Bosser, Juliana Duff, Chelsea Torres, Tiffany G, Emily McIntyre, Stephanie Germana, Olivia Fahey, Elizabeth A, Christine Bassis, Jessica Gale, Zulima Lundy, Carolyn Rodriguez, Carrie Gold, Anne T, Katherine Ellingson, Kara Brugman, Sarah H, Sarah Egan, Jess Combin, Jennifer Olson, Jennifer HS, Eliza Gibson, Jillian Bowman, Brianne Macy, Elizabeth Holland, Karen Perlman, Katie Jordan, Sarah M, Kate M, Josie Alquist, Tara Todd, Elizabeth Cleary and Monica.
(40:18)
Thank you so much. Again, we're so grateful for you. And Forever35 is hosted and produced by me, Doree Shafrir and Elise Hu and produced and edited by Sammee Junio. Sami Reed is our project manager and our network partner is ACAST. Thanks again, everybody. Talk to you next time. Bye.