144: The Power of One
In a perfect world, we always do our best. But, our capacity for "best" changes on a day-to-day basis. On some days, doing our best means jumping out of bed and absolutely crushing the day! On other days, doing our best means that we rallied just to get out of bed. And, that's OK. When we're in the slog - when our "best" is degraded - it can be helpful to identify a single, small challenge for the day; a challenge that can be accomplish and celebrated. This technique is what Carol calls the "Power of One".
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Transcript
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[00:00:00] Highlight
[00:00:00] Carol: Like, day to day changes, situations change. You do the best you can with what you're given in the moment. And I've realized that a lot over the past year. You know, my life has been up and down a lot. A lot has changed, but there's been a lot of victories.
[00:00:14] Intro
[00:00:14] Carol: Alright, so today is episode 144, and we're gonna talk about The Power of One, which is interesting, because there's two of us, but, you know, you can pretend there's one, I guess. Anyways, but, as you can tell, I'm back again, so I think it's only fitting that I kick us off with Triumphs and Fails,
[00:00:51] Carol's Triumph
[00:00:51] Carol: and yeah, gonna go with a giant win, I have made it across the country, and in one piece.
[00:00:58] Carol: So,
[00:00:59] Ben: Very exciting.
[00:01:00] Carol: Definitely a win, adjusting to the new area, to the time, I had no idea elevation was going to kick my butt,
[00:01:09] Ben: can can you remind people where you are?
[00:01:12] Carol: Yeah, yeah, so I was in Georgia, south of Atlanta, living at about 300 feet of elevation, I am currently... towards the middle, actually I'm near Tucson, Arizona.
[00:01:23] Carol: And, where I'm staying at right now is like 2, 500 feet elevation. And when I actually move into my house, the house I'm going to be staying in, when I move into it in a couple of weeks, I'll be close to 4, 500 feet elevation.
[00:01:36] Carol: So
[00:01:37] Ben: you're so you're not in your house right now?
[00:01:40] Carol: no, no, my in laws bought a winter house here when they found out we were moving here.
[00:01:44] Carol: So they bought a winter house here. So we're at their winter house, staying here for a few weeks of vacation. and then we're gonna move into our house on October the 2nd. So yeah, so we're here. Our stuff's here. It's not at our house, obviously, so we're living in, you know, in Ma's house with everything.
[00:02:03] Carol: But, yeah, we made it. And the only thing that went bad was I destroyed my phone, but I got a new one, so.
[00:02:10] Ben: What happened to your phone?
[00:02:12] Carol: I probably dropped it too many times, and I picked it up and the screen just shattered. So, rather than trying to replace it, because all my tools are, you know, waiting to be unpacked.
[00:02:22] Carol: So I'm like, I'm not even going to attempt to try to work on this phone. I'm just going to give myself a pass and buy a new one. So yeah, I bought a new phone.
[00:02:29] Ben: All right. That's cool. Well, congratulations on, on getting the move, let's say 99 percent done. Very exciting.
[00:02:35] Carol: Yeah, yeah, exciting, and, successful. So that's me. Called it a triumph. So what about you, Ben? What you got? Oh,
[00:02:42] Ben: Well, I want to know a little bit more about the, just the general atmosphere over there. Is it, what's the temperature like? So, so at the time of this recording, this is September 11 right now, just to give you the sense of the season. What is, what is Arizona like?
[00:02:56] Carol: Oh man, today it was 110 degrees. Yesterday was 111. I spent all summer at our old house. You know, we had a pool and I was by the pool, you know, a lot, swimming with the dog, constantly outside doing yard work. So in the sun, I felt like a nice amount. I got the dog out in Texas to walk her and five minutes I had a sunburn.
[00:03:18] Carol: Here, I go outside for five minutes, I have a sunburn. So, I have to wear so much sunblock. The UV index around noon is usually 10, and that's just crazy to me that it's 111 degrees, 110 degrees, and we have a UV index of 10 in September. It doesn't feel right. But everyone says it will cool off, but I just don't know when.
[00:03:40] Ben: Man. That's, that's intense. So when you left Georgia, what was the temperature in Georgia?
[00:03:45] Carol: I'm 80s and 90s, but
[00:03:47] Ben: Oh, so you, this is, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but 110 even dry is, that's intense.
[00:03:53] Carol: It's doable. I mean, it's actually, for me, it's doable because I go outside Georgia and I am pouring sweat. I am so sweaty here. I walk outside and I'm like, Oh, it doesn't actually feel that hot. Until all of a sudden, I feel like I'm going to pass out because I don't realize how hot it is. So unless you're in the direct sun, it doesn't feel too bad.
[00:04:12] Carol: But I will say one thing we have here. I don't know what they're called. I'm not taking the time to look up the exact name. But we have the cactus, the cacti that look like humans. So it's the big tall ones with the arms that point up that are protected. They are gorgeous. They're so pretty. They're kind of eerie at night when you look at them, but They're very, very pretty.
[00:04:32] Carol: We have several in our yard, so I'll
[00:04:33] Ben: Oh, very cool. Yeah, definitely.
[00:04:37] Carol: But yeah, so now, what about you, Ben?
[00:04:41] Ben's Career Update
[00:04:41] Ben: So just as a, as a preamble, I've been pretty exhausted lately. Carol, I don't know if you had listened to the previous episodes, but I've recently been moved from a full time employee down to a part time employee. I'm currently working two days a week in a transitional period and, still getting my contract fleshed out, but, uh,
[00:05:00] Carol: How long do you think the part time work will be in place for you?
[00:05:05] Ben: I mean, I think the, the offer is indefinite. I think it's more like how long can I afford to not have a full time job?
[00:05:15] Carol: Okay.
[00:05:15] Ben: So I'm going to be looking for work, although I'm going to take a little bit of downtime and actually in that downtime, I'm trying to channel my Carol, my inner Carol.
[00:05:25] Carol: Yeah, you should! I was just gonna say, do like me! Enjoy some time off!
[00:05:28] Ben: You've been very proactive about, self health and self care, and also about advocating for yourself, and, I, so I got the initial contract offer, and I, I haven't fully reviewed it just because I haven't been emotionally, there yet. Yeah,
[00:05:44] Carol: so hard.
[00:05:45] Ben: Already, there were a couple of things where I want to push back and just be like, no, we have to remove this.
[00:05:49] Ben: This can't be in that contract. like, like as an example, there's one little clause. It says something like anything that gets invented while I'm working at the company is property of the company, which like, I understand that that's kind of a standard thing, but. If I'm going to be working two days a week on my laptop for them and not three days a week for them, like, I can't be guaranteeing that everything that I create on this laptop should be property of theirs.
[00:06:16] Ben: That's, that's unacceptable.
[00:06:17] Carol: And they absolutely can remove that because I've had that removed from several contracts.
[00:06:22] Ben: Yeah. I assume it's just boilerplate. And then there was another clause, which just seemed crazy, which was that, if I want to consult for another company, I have to get approval from them first. And I'm like, what? I don't think so.
[00:06:39] Carol: No. The only, the only thing that I will say with that, with the consulting for another company, I have had it changed to be if I consult with a competitor.
[00:06:49] Ben: Yeah, I would be more inclined to agree to that for sure.
[00:06:53] Carol: Yeah.
[00:06:53] Ben: It was too open ended.
[00:06:55] Carol: Way too open ended. Yep, I would not. Like, we, I signed the contract once that they tried getting me to say that, I would refrain from accepting any position after leaving the company for 24 months, period. That had, that had like any. It was basically like, I won't take a job that requires any type of technical knowledge.
[00:07:17] Carol: I was like, so literally I can't take a job like working at a computer, period. Cause this is so broad. I was like, oh, hell no. I was like, you can write in there your exact software and what it is, but I am not signing this. Like I won't go
[00:07:29] Carol: recreate your stuff anywhere. Yeah. Yeah. It's not so good for you.
[00:07:34] Carol: I'm pushing back. And when you're ready, you know, you've got some time, but definitely do, don't sign anything you're not comfortable with.
[00:07:40] Ben: Yeah, exactly. And, and so I want to have a little bit of downtime and my triumph for this week is that in that downtime, I'm attempting to commit to writing a small technical book and,yeah, it's about, it's about feature flags. We've talked about feature flags several times on the show before. I have a lot of feelings about them.
[00:08:01] Ben: I've been using them. Pretty, consistently for about the last eight years. I feel like I have something to say. I feel like I have a perspective that is worth sharing. Question now is, do I have the grit and determination to actually take everything that's in my head, put it on paper and polish it and flesh it out into something that would be meaningful for other people?
[00:08:21] Ben: That's. That's the question mark, but, I'm going to go for it.
[00:08:25] Carol: Well, I'll definitely read it. So, you have one confirmed, you know, reader of this book. So, go ahead and
[00:08:32] Ben: Well, I, I appreciate that. So, it's, you know, every day, I mean, I've only, I only made this decision last week and, every day I wake up and I say to myself, who are you and why do you think you have anything meaningful to say? Which is of course, just the negative speak that, I think a lot of us have, but I I'm.
[00:08:51] Ben: I, I'm embracing, not embracing it, but like I'm letting that happen and then I'm moving forward anyway. I'm like, I'm just acknowledging that that's going to be some negative stuff going on in my head. I don't think I can stop that. I think that's just very reflexive for me. So I'm going to just say, okay.
[00:09:06] Ben: But I'm going to do it anyway, and I might fail and that's totally okay, but I'm going to put in the effort.
[00:09:12] Carol: Yeah. And I am not gonna say you won't fail, but I can say you will have one person buy your book for sure.
[00:09:19] Ben: Thank you. Well, and it'll be exciting to talk to Adam, obviously, because Adam has published a book. I think you even have a copy. I don't have a copy. I wasn't one of the,
[00:09:27] Ben: I wasn't one of the cool people.
[00:09:29] Carol: Here's the thing. I got the copy, but it was one of the things that got destroyed in my move. So I've got to
[00:09:34] Ben: Oh, no.
[00:09:36] Carol: Yeah.
[00:09:36] Ben: your pod of death,
[00:09:37] Carol: In my, in my pod fiasco. Well, I was going to say this. I feel like kind of the book talk is a good segue into, you know, what I want to talk about today, which is, you know, the power of one.
[00:09:50] The Power of One
[00:09:50] Carol: And So I've been doing this thing since we moved, and you know, it's only been a week I've moved, but it was a week moving, like five days traveling across the country, and then, you know, a week before that of staying in like an Airbnb type house, and it's just been a lot.
[00:10:06] Carol: There's been a lot going on. So I've been doing this thing that's just in my head, I've called it the Power of One, and all that means to me is that I just take one little thing and either try to accomplish it or I count any percentage done as a victory rather than needing a full 100 percent done to feel like something's accomplished.
[00:10:27] Carol: So I'm taking it as far as to, you know what, today I made a salad at home and that's healthy and for the rest of the day, you know, we're eating out because I just don't have the energy to cook. I don't have the... The, like, the urge to do it. So I feel like one of the meals, that's a big win. I did one and that's good.
[00:10:44] Carol: With, with working out, I told my husband, like, you know what? I'm like, if I walk in the gym, I'm winning. If I put my gym clothes on, I'm calling that a victory. Because right now, It's just a mental struggle, feeling out of place, missing home, missing my boys. I miss my boys so much right now and James was already gone to college and Peyton was just moving into college, but to feel so far away from them has just been a struggle.
[00:11:11] Carol: So I'm doing this big mental model of the power of one, just meaning that if I can do one thing, one percent, one tick box, just. One up on something, that's a win. I don't need everything and I don't need all of it. So when you were talking about your book and, you know, having the fight that your inner dialogue or like your inner critic trying to, you know, be like, Hey, who's going to read this?
[00:11:34] Carol: I feel like if you can just say, okay, I hear you, but I'm moving on. That's a huge win. Like that's a victory to me right now.
[00:11:43] Ben: I agree. You know, one of the books, I don't know if I've talked about this on the show before, but one of my favorite books historically is a book called The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. And it's a self help book and, it talks about the four agreements that you make with yourself. And one of the agreements is always do your best, which a lot of people will say, but one of the things that I love about in the book is that he goes on to clarify that.
[00:12:07] Ben: Your best is going to change from day to day, that your best today might be much worse than your best yesterday. But as long as you kind of do the best according to your current capacity, that that's all you can really ask yourself to do. And, and so when you talk about, I made one meal and that's the best I can do today, like at least you put in that effort and you, and you accomplish that goal, I think that's really healthy.
[00:12:30] Carol: Yeah, I completely agree with that. Like, day to day changes, situations change. You do the best you can with what you're given in the moment. And I've realized that a lot over the past year. You know, my life has been up and down a lot. A lot has changed, but there's been a lot of victories. And like today, it was a victory that, you know, I managed to call someone to catch the snake in the backyard.
[00:12:55] Carol: Like, those are wins! Big wins! Side note, we have rattlesnakes here. And they're very venomous.
[00:13:03] Ben: That's pretty scary. I have never lived in a place where I am worried for my life, more or less, from the things that live around me. That's a, that's a very new concept.
[00:13:14] Carol: Yeah, it, it's very interesting when we've had to retrain the dog, so now to go potty, she goes to the door, we make her sit, we do a lap around the yard, then we let her go outside, because we're super hesitant of the snakes and of critters that could hurt her. we have something called Gila Monsters here, and if you've never looked them up, they're like giant lizards that kill dogs.
[00:13:41] Carol: So,
[00:13:42] Ben: That's crazy!
[00:13:43] Carol: Yeah. They're huge, yeah, and they're venomous to dogs. We have toads that apparently can kill the dogs if they eat them. So the toads just happen to love living in our pool right now, so I keep having to put toads back over the fence to get them out of our pool. So it's been a, that's what I'm saying, like one little thing is a victory for me right now because I feel like so much is stacked against me and against my everyday life that any one thing is, is I'm calling it a big giant win.
[00:14:14] The Goal Gradient
[00:14:14] Ben: Yeah, for real. I, I recently, so I was listening to a podcast the other day, the Hidden Brains, one of my favorite podcasts, and, they were talking about this concept of the goal gradient, and it's this idea that between start and end. You have this varying degree of how enthusiastic you are about the thing that you're doing so that when you start, it's, there's novelty to it and there's a freshness and you're very excited.
[00:14:40] Ben: And then as you get towards the end, you can see the end in sight and then you get this re energized feeling that you're, you're almost there and you can really accomplish your goal, but there's this, big meaty section in the middle where it's no longer fresh and you can't see the end and people start to lose a lot of enthusiasm.
[00:14:59] Ben: And, one of the ways that I find that I can try to combat this is using this kind of power of one. Kind of approach that you're talking about, where you can break things down into smaller, accomplishable goals. And that way, instead of thinking about the big hairy goal at the end, you can have the little intermediary goal, something that is visible and feels possible and by accomplishing it, you get that, that kind of high of, of having moved the, the journey forward.
[00:15:27] Carol: Yep. I am definitely a check box girl, so I love having my list and being able to check things off as I go through. So anytime I check a box, it's like cheering and dancing and just happy. So with projects, I've seen that too. And it's a big, giant project. And the goal is just get this thing done, then. I get lost in the middle, like you said, I definitely need very small pieces of work that I can move along to stay motivated or I just lose all motivation.
[00:16:00] Ben: So if I, so if I have to create a Jira epic at work and it's going to be a particularly complex epic, my first task within the epic is usually organize the epic so that just by just by fleshing out tickets, I have something immediately that I can check off saying I've accomplished this. I, I wanted to populate this epic with tickets.
[00:16:22] Ben: I have done that. And that's a celebration in and of itself.
[00:16:25] Carol: Yeah, like I remember having a research ticket just to go research some software and it took me a week to research everything and I was so tired of that ticket by the end of it. I was like, I need like a story or like a task for every single piece of software I research because just research software, I'm tired of looking at it. So tired.
[00:16:47] Autosave
[00:16:47] Ben: I also, so we'll create a work. We, we often call those kind of a spike tickets. Like you have to do an investigatory spike and, I'm, I don't trust Jira to not crash or, or to not lose my data. So unlike something where like Google docs, where I'm typing and it's constantly saving behind the scenes. The text editor, at least in Jira, is just a big text box.
[00:17:10] Ben: I mean, I think it probably is doing something behind the scenes, but I don't trust it. And so if I'm recording my research, I'm constantly going in to edit the ticket, then hitting, you know, writing a couple of sentences, then hitting save, and then clicking back in to continue editing. Because I feel like at any moment, it's going to lose everything I just typed, and I have to make sure that it's been saved behind the scenes.
[00:17:30] Carol: Yeah, I get that. I don't trust any editor that's on the website or like on the webpage. If it's not open on my machine, I'm not going to trust it to save, so I get that.
[00:17:40] Ben: Yeah, absolutely. I, I mean, half the things that I write online, I will write first in my sublime text editor and then copy and paste into whatever online forum I'm dealing with.
[00:17:50] Carol: same thing. The only, the only exception being emails because they save the draft so quickly that it's always there. But that's about the only exception to it. Everything else goes in some actual application on my computer where I could then just paste it into the website text block.
[00:18:06] Ben: here, here's the, here's just a weird behavioral thing on my part, as much as, as much as I don't trust editors, one thing that does drive me crazy, and I can't tell you exactly why it drives me crazy, but every now and then I'll be using an online editor and I'll go to hit command S just sort of by default, and they'll have a little thing that pops up and says, don't worry, we're saving stuff automatically in the background, and I don't, I couldn't tell you why, but I'm always like, yeah, Don't tell me my business.
[00:18:32] Ben: I want to save it. Like, just let me save it. Don't for whatever reason that just, that just rubs me the wrong way. I can't tell you why it's just a peculiarity.
[00:18:41] Carol: Like just let it trigger the save and move on. Don't tell me you're doing it already. I guess they want
[00:18:46] Ben: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, or even if it just said like, don't worry, we got it or something like that. There's like some language where it's telling me that I don't have to do it. And for whatever reason, I feel like don't tell me I don't have to do it. Just tell me it's done.
[00:19:02] Carol: I mean, it could be worse. It could say, hang tight, we're figuring this out.
[00:19:10] Carol: That one scares me all the time. Hang tight, something's going on. Come back later. I'm like, no, I just did this. I don't want to come back later.
[00:19:19] Ben: Oh so, now, you're in Arizona, sorry, I don't know why I want to circle back to that, but you're in Arizona, on, for military reasons, right? All right. And so how long...
[00:19:30] Carol: We'll be here about a year.
[00:19:32] Ben: Gotcha.
[00:19:32] Carol: So we'll find out in about two months where we go after this. So we're not for sure if we'll go further west or back east or somewhere in the middle or even in the U. S., but we'll find out hopefully by December where we're going after this.
[00:19:49] Carol: It could be, you know, Hawaii. It just depends on where there's jobs out for my husband. Hawaii, San Antonio are two of the big places, which we don't know what he would do in San Antonio, but it's one of the places for his job.
[00:20:01] Carol: So, yeah, don't know. We'll figure it out in a couple months.
[00:20:05] Carol's New Job
[00:20:05] Ben: Speaking of jobs, I know you had gotten that React government job, but you had deferred starting it. Has that started or are you starting that soon? What's the deal there?
[00:20:14] Ben:
[00:20:14] Carol: Oh yeah. Good question. So actually I start September the 25th. I pushed it out a few weeks just to give my husband and I some time to kind of air quote vacation during the move. So he's off work until, October 13th timeframe. So we're going to enjoy a few weeks traveling around Arizona, hiking, doing all the fun stuff.
[00:20:34] Carol: And then I start on the 25th.
[00:20:36] Ben: Okay. Very exciting. So you still got some, some adjustment time.
[00:20:41] Carol: Yeah. Which is, I'm really glad I did that because I would hate to be working right now while he's having all the fun without me. Let's be real.
[00:20:50] Ben: By fun, you mean dodging rattlesnakes and poisonous toads.
[00:20:54] Carol: Oh yeah, I mean, I wish you could, okay, imagine if you will, me with my Philips Sonicare toothbrush, hashtag not sponsored, brushing my teeth on the back porch this morning while I let the dog out. All of a sudden, hearing what I thought was a cicada, I'm going, we're not in Georgia anymore. There's no cicadas here.
[00:21:14] Carol: That's a rattlesnake. And I look and go, yeah, it's about six feet from my dog. I scream at the dog who just comes to me and I put her inside and I run inside and I start screaming at my husband. And I'm pretty sure he thought we'd been bit by a snake by this point, but I'm like, get the gun, get the gun.
[00:21:31] Carol: There's a snake.
[00:21:33] Ben: Oh man,
[00:21:34] Carol: gets the soft gun and goes to shoot the snake.
[00:21:38] Ben: with a salt gun, is that what you said?
[00:21:40] Carol: Yeah, with a salt gun we have the Bug Blaster.
[00:21:43] Ben: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen advertisements for this.
[00:21:46] Carol: Yeah, I didn't mean that gun, but we can't really shoot a gun here because they're neighbors and I have no idea if we're even allowed to shoot them, so we just called the line guy and he handled it. He picked it up and kept it, to train his dogs with, but yeah, it was a very interesting moment in my life.
[00:22:04] Ben: Wow. That's intense.
[00:22:07] Carol: Very.
[00:22:07] Social Anxiety
[00:22:07] Ben: So to circle back to the Power of One stuff, I find that I also use this technique in my in, in reaction to my social anxiety, I will, I will, if I have to be around people or if I have to go to an event or I have to even just hanging out with my family, even I love my family very much, but even hanging out with them, I have a lot of social anxiety about how long do I have to be there?
[00:22:29] Ben: When can I leave? Are there going to be people there that I don't know? And I will break that up into steps where if I'm going say to my mother's house, I think to myself, all I have to do is make it to my mother's house. That's the only thing I have to worry about right now. Get in the car and get there.
[00:22:44] Ben: And I'm like, I'm looking at
[00:22:45] Ben: my
[00:22:45] Carol: love that.
[00:22:46] Ben: If, if I, if I leave by seven o'clock tonight, it means I only have to be there for a couple of hours, like no problem. And I start to break that down to the little celebrations. And, that, that feels much more, palatable than trying to say, I'm going to go hang out with my family today, which sounds like it should be a lovely thing, but it's, you know, every, everything social is, is ridden with anxiety for me.
[00:23:10] Carol: So I used to be really good at social settings and my husband even pointed this out this past week. He was like, you aren't dealing with people the way you used to. I'm like, I don't deal with people ever anymore. I am at home with the dog all day. My exposure to humans is the grocery store. When I go to the gym, I keep my headphones in.
[00:23:30] Carol: When I'm around other people, it's usually not an intimate setting. So when I'm on the couch with his sister and she's having conversations, I'm stumbling over my words going, I don't even know how to interact with people. This is so bad. And I think that is one of the downfalls of not working is I'm not, like, I have no interaction with people with the exception of my husband and the dog.
[00:23:52] Carol: So I will be glad to get back to work just to have the calls, the, the answering of emails, helping people on projects and questions just to keep some of my social skills more adept than what they are right now. Cause man, I seem like the biggest loser ever when I'm around someone at the moment.
[00:24:13] Ben: Well, for me, as someone who also has a dog, that's been such a huge value I had of owning a dog is the light social interactions that I can have out in public, kind of keep those skills a little bit sharper than they might normally be,
[00:24:28] Carol: They are great icebreakers, right?
[00:24:30] Ben: Absolutely, which is also, I get very testy with people, not with people, but at people, if they have dogs and they pass me on the sidewalk with my dog and they like, pull to give us a wide berth, or they like, don't even acknowledge that their dog might want to come over.
[00:24:44] Ben: I get very angry. I'll like, I'll complain to my wife. I'm like, what is, why do they even have a dog if they're not gonna let their dogs interact? So ridiculous.
[00:24:52] Carol: Yeah. Yeah, I do the same thing. I, the only time I pull Ruby to me is if we're passing a dog and I see the owner pulling their dog pretty hard to the side and then I do it out of fear because I'm like, I just don't want there to be a fight or anything. But typically I look, I smile, I nod, and if Ruby gets excited and their dog gets excited, I'm like, oh, I'm like, she's super friendly if you want to let them meet.
[00:25:16] Carol: And almost every time they're like, oh, yeah, yes yes.
[00:25:19] Ben: Yeah. It's the best.
[00:25:20] Carol: Oh, what kind of dog do you have? How old is it? And then that's our, that's my limit of people talking, I guess, for real. And then we go on about our day and we pick up some poop.
[00:25:31] Ben: We, we were out walking the dog like two weeks ago and a woman drove by us and then stopped her car to tell us that she liked dogs and, and then drove away after some more chit chat. And I looked at my wife afterwards, I'm like, that's dog people. That's how you're supposed to do it.
[00:25:49] Carol: So we have a story kind of like that. When we moved Peyton into college, we took Ruby with us to help move her brother into his dorm, and we are in the bottom of his dorm. There's like the common food area, and they have Starbucks, so we're sitting at a table outside just chatting with Peyton. The Starbucks worker comes outside, pets Ruby, asks us if she could please bring her a, Puppuccino.
[00:26:15] Carol: Then comes out, sits on the ground, feeds Ruby the Puppuccino, pets her, takes all the kisses Ruby will get her, and then says, I miss my dog, cause these are college kids, you know? And she's like, thank you so much for letting me play with Ruby. I won't forget this. And I was just like, oh! Oh, it breaks my heart.
[00:26:35] Carol: Like these college kids who have to go off and leave their dog at home, right? Like you've missed that part of your family, but you know, those are dog people. These are people who understand dogs are part of your family.
[00:26:45] Ben: Yeah, absolutely. That's great. I love hearing stuff like that.
[00:26:49] Carol: Yeah. It's so sweet. Yeah, I know. I know this was kind of a shorter episode and not really about tech at all.
[00:26:57] Carol: I just wanted to chat about getting through my day right now and how I'm doing that and how I'm making myself feel accomplished by just doing one little thing at a time and feeling like that's a victory and being happy with myself.
[00:27:12] Ben: I think that's great. And I think this is a, an approach, a strategy, a technique, what have you, that we can all employ from time to time. So I think people will appreciate it.
[00:27:21] Carol: Aww, thank you!
[00:27:23] Patreon
[00:27:23] Carol: Alright, well if we don't have anything else, this episode of Working Code was brought to you by... Puppies, you should love them all and stop and let them be friends with each other and listeners like you. If you enjoy the show and you want to make sure we can keep putting whatever this is out to the universe, you should consider supporting us on Patreon.
[00:27:44] Carol: Our Patreons cover our recording and editing costs and we couldn't do this every week without them. Special thanks to Monte and Giancarlo.
[00:27:52] Thanks For Listening!
[00:27:52] Carol: So we, uh.Ben and I are, if you can't tell, a little mentally done with the week, so we're going to skip the after show, and we hope you guys know that we still love you, and Adam will catch you back up on one of those soon, because he won't let you go long without one. But we'll leave you with some homework, so why don't you head on over toworkingcode.dev/review, and leave us a review if you enjoy what you're hearing. We try hard to, to be here for you guys and be honest with you, so let us know what you think.
[00:28:24] Ben: Yeah. thank you everyone. We'll catch you next week. And until then, your heart matters.
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