127 - When something has to give...

Welcome to what is it all for? A podcast designed to help you grow your online business and pursue a spacious satisfying life at the same time. We're your hosts, Jason and Caroline Zook, and we run Wandering Aimfully, an Unboring Business Coaching Program. Every week, we bring you advice and conversations to return you to your most most intentional self and to help you examine every aspect of your life and business by asking, what is it all for? Thanks for listening.

And now let's get into the show.

And I'm here too.

Hey, everyone.

Hello. Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot to ask you before we start recording. I just wanted to say one quick preamble thing to this episode that's not even an episode.

Okay.

One of the things on this travel journey Mhmm. That is very interesting for me is all my new smells.

My lotion is bothering you. No.

No. No. All my new smells.

Will you have new smells?

I've used the same deodorant for like the last 15 years. I can't buy it in Europe. Right. So I've had to switch deodorant. I've used the same, like, Extreme.

Shaving balm, and like that stuff.

Yeah.

I've had to buy new ones.

I know.

It's messing me up.

It's weird. People were asking, I I forget what it was, in a video or something. They were like, Carol,

like, what

shampoo are

you using?

And I was like, whatever I could find in Croatia.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It's very funny.

That's silly.

That was my preamble. And you can see how short it is, because this episode's gonna be super short. Because it's not even an episode. It's more of just an update of why the podcast didn't come out last week.

I know.

And then we're just gonna be on, like, a little bit of a break.

Just a tiny break.

Yeah.

It's gonna be fine.

Like, 8 months.

We promise to come back. And I'm sorry to those of you who really look forward to these episodes in your routine. Like, those of you who are like, what am I listening to when I do my dishes, or when I fall asleep at night. And yes, we know. You those of you listening right now who are falling asleep, we know.

We love caressing your earlobes while you do the dishes. Woah. Woah. What?

Hey. Hey.

With our mouths.

Woah. It got worse.

We don't caress their earlobes with our mouths? You don't think that's what podcasting is?

I do not like that phrase.

Steve Jobs invented podcasting

You would like. If you're

doing a podcasting.

I know.

He was like, let's massage their ear lobes with caressing mouths.

I just think like

That's not a Steve Jobs voice impersonation. It's more just like a tech guy. Theorizing. Theorizing.

I'm picturing you in a turtleneck.

We got it in a turtleneck. We're already

just Off the rails. Yeah. Yeah. Let's so let's tell everybody what's up. You may have noticed last week, we did not have an episode.

And that's because we fully intended to, but literally the past week has been the most hectic and busy of our travels yet.

Which we knew.

And which we knew.

Yeah.

And it's not gonna really let up for the next few weeks. And so we really thought we could, like, get ahead, and we thought we could fit it all in. But ironically enough, for all of our WAIM unlimited members, our coaching session for April was moving through overwhelm. Yeah. And as I'm I'm presenting that, I'm like,

I feel a bit overwhelmed.

Maybe I should Yeah. Point that finger right back at myself Yeah. And take some my own advice. So we had us sit down and we made the advice that we give in the session, which you're getting an inside look here, is something we always do when we're overwhelmed, which is we make a a big ass list.

Big ass list. Trademark.

We see it. We write down everything that's, like, clogging up our brains, and then we go through and we sort it. And we say, what can give? What is the absolute priority right now, you know, what can go move to later, all these things. And so, unfortunately, the podcast in this moment has to take a little bit of a back seat until we can get our feedback under us and be in a place longer than 5 days.

Can you imagine if we were also trying to post on Instagram No. The first time we're traveling?

No. Every time I think about going back to Instagram, I'm like, when? When Yeah. Would I do that? When would I do that?

The really interesting part of this full time travel journey that I think we wanted to share and and I I would love to actually talk to another couple who travels full time just to find out. I have a feeling that the big difference between us and them Mhmm. Is their those folks that you see on YouTube, especially who are full time travelers, like, they're extroverts by nature. Mhmm. So they get filled up with energy by all of the adventure, by all of the changing

Also.

All of the things. It's for us, like, we you definitely more on the introvert spectrum.

But yeah.

I definitely lean lean on the halfway point towards introvert.

Right.

And it's just it's one of those things, like, trying to manage Wandering Aimfully as a business.

Right.

Trying to manage Teachery as a business. Trying to keep our members happy in the community. Trying to keep up with email. Trying to record and think about videos and photos for just experiencing this journey.

Trying to have the experience, trying to rest from the experience.

What did we do yesterday? To,

what?

What did we do yesterday? 4 hours of planning

Right.

From 4

to the next thing. And then on top of that, trying to, like, keep up with our families and, like, work out and just, like, drink water and, like, be a few minutes. Yeah. You know? So, again, this is never meaning to come off in a complaining way whatsoever.

It's just that most of what you see in the travel content space is all the highlights and the glamorized versions of it. And we're 2 people who wanna share the transparency of everything. And just for you to know, it's an amazing, like, life changing thing that we're doing, and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the entire world. And it's hard. And it's challenging, and sometimes things have to give.

I was also gonna say something that I think I think that's an interesting observation about maybe the extroverted

Yeah.

People, like, leading more toward that. I think also a lot of those people, their main income source is the content itself. Yeah. So when they go out and have an excursion, for example, that is they're gonna turn that into a video, and that is their revenue stream. So every ounce, it's like double doing double duty.

It's like they're having the experience, and they're almost working on their business at the same time. For us, our business exists without the travel aspect. So there is no double duty when we go do an experience. It's only taking time away from those things. So it's a little bit of a heavier or more complex balancing act.

And the other part of it too is we could sit here. We could try to fit in an episode in between, but 2 things are true. Number 1, you know, we always like, I have to prioritize my mental health above all else. I've learned that lesson the hard way too many times, and I hope that by me doing that and me taking care of myself and sharing that with all of you listening, it it empowers you and gives you permission to when you feel yourself at the brink of a breaking point, you do the hard decisions to to pull back as well. I hope that it, you know, kind of lets you know that somebody else is there with you.

And also, we don't like to phone it in.

Yeah. So

it's like we could give you a half hearted episode just for the sake of posting on Thursdays, but that's just not our MO. So

I have a very silly metaphor to kind of wrap this

up with because we're not doing

a very long episode here. Imagine that your life is a game of playing Jenga.

Okay.

And when you're, like, your batteries are charged, and you're feeling good, when you go to pull out a new Jenga block Oh,

you're just so steady.

So steady.

So steady.

But where we were a week ago, it's like imagine you just jumped in a 30 degree, body of water Mhmm. And then you had to come out and pull a Jenga piece.

And you shiver it.

You're like, and you're gonna knock the whole thing over. So what you do is you go, what can give? And and in that game of Jenga, you go, I'm gonna warm up. I gotta warm up. I'm too shaky right now.

So for us, that's we're not gonna record a podcast. Yeah. It's a thing that we don't like to not do. But especially because we love sharing the stories. Like, we're not sharing on Instagram, and the YouTube videos come out, like, a couple weeks later.

So we're sharing on our email list a little bit. We are sharing the most real time within the wandering and play community, which, like, it make because I think part of the fun of doing this travel adventure is

sharing it. It is. For

sure. And so not having this outlet to relive the stories, like, I'm so excited to talk about some more of our stories, some more of our destination. Stories. And and just, like, have to, like, wait until our bodies warm back up until we can grab another Jenga brick. So, yeah.

We're just we're taking a pause from pulling out Jenga bricks.

Mhmm.

We're we're gonna come back here in a couple weeks. We're not gonna set a specific time frame on when we're gonna come back. Right.

But it's not gonna be It 9 months. It's 6. It's not Listen to me. It's less than 6 weeks?

2025, I'm thinking.

It's more than 2 weeks, and it's less than 6 weeks. Okay?

I think 2025 would be a great year for us to come back. Sure. Because they

My past is gonna come back with a vengeance.

No. 25? Okay. No. A couple it'll be a couple weeks.

Yeah.

I know. I'm kidding. But, like, just the idea of 2025 really sent me into a spiral all of a sudden. It's far.

But not that far.

It's not far.

It really isn't. So I think for this episode, we're gonna wrap up there. Keep this short. And kind of the point of sharing this because we're also, like, about to go get lunch, and then we have to pack up, and we're getting ready to leave to go to a place tomorrow. Like, barely had time to fit in just doing this.

Also,

we're in an entirely different country than the last time

we talked to you. But the reason why we wanted to record this episode is just to let you, listener, know if you're in a place in your life where just something has to give, let that thing go. Like, let that thing get for a while. It's not like a forever thing. Like, we're not stopping the podcast.

We're just going we have to focus on everything else that we listed out so that this trip doesn't have to be a tumbling block of Jenga bricks. And then we can't keep doing it anymore because we've fully burnt out.

Absolutely.

Alright. I think that's it.

I miss them already.

The listeners. Yeah. Their earlobes. Oh, yeah. You miss caressing their earlobes.

Hey, hey, hey. What did I say?

Our mouths.

I don't think in this day and age that's appropriate.

I think it's okay. It feels okay on my earlobes.

It would. You you want people to cross your earlobes, but everyone needs to decide that. Exactly. Okay. So why would you want that?

Oh, I don't know. Maybe I do. Let's try it.

But we gotta go, guys. Gotta try some stuff.

We'll, we'll see you in a couple weeks. Thank you so much for sticking around. We appreciate you. You know, that's it. Okay.

Bye. Okay. Bye.