📋 Episode Summary
Emily is visiting her parents, sorting through more than 40 years of books, tools, and garden supplies, including an oar that hasn't touched water in a very long time. She's also baking apple pie from the trees her dad has tended. So she's been thinking about legacy.

For this episode's "do again," Emily brings back the Quarterly Questions conversations from Season 1. They loved the habit of regular check-ins. They just never built a way to return to them, and the six quarters since have included the deaths of Emily's brother and Marc's dad. From there, Emily and Marc wonder why excuses got such a bad name, trade report cards for compass checks, and talk about organizing a planner around values instead of roles. Emily explains why tidy roles never fit her life, and what a co-working space has taught her about crossing a threshold into work.

The conversation is reflective, honest, and playful, with a haircut compliment and an accidental drive through Delaware along the way. They end with the questions each of them is carrying forward: What do I want? What do I need? Is this mine to do? And, for Marc, am I being fully me?

🔑 Key Takeaways
• Creating a check-in practice is the easy part. Without a planned way to come back to it, it quietly disappears.
• An excuse can be a way of not owning what was yours to own. That's different from naming what was out of your control.
• Treating reflection as a compass check instead of a report card turns pass/fail into course correction.
• Simple questions bring clarity: What did you want? Where are you? What's the gap?
• Building your weekly or monthly planning around values, not only roles, keeps what matters in front of you.
• Roles rarely separate cleanly, especially for people whose work and caregiving overlap.
• "What do I want?" and "What do I need?" can feel selfish to ask, but you can't pour from an empty cup.

🗣 Quote Highlights
• "We like to create things, and if there is not a very good process in place to revisit them, then we will not." – Emily
• "I really want to get an A someplace." – Emily
• "If values are that central to me, why not orient my life around them?" – Marc
• "Sometimes together means doing things that support each other, not necessarily being physically present." – Marc
• "That's not even my ball to catch." – Marc
• "What do I want? What do I need? And is this mine to do? If I say it really fast, it'll sound like one question." – Emily
• "Am I being fully me, or am I just being mono-me?" – Marc

🧰 Tools & Mentions
• Still Figuring It Out, Season 1, Episode 9: Quarterly Questions, Part 1 — the first of the two original conversations this episode revisits. https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/show/35d59fa5-fffe-4892-9f2e-24382bb92ee3/id/35518200
• Still Figuring It Out, Season 1, Episode 10: Quarterly Questions, Part 2 — the second half of that conversation. https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/show/35d59fa5-fffe-4892-9f2e-24382bb92ee3/id/35518575
• Emily's Concord Leadership Group blog post about her dad and the apple trees — the legacy story that opens the episode. https://concordleadershipgroup.com/20576-2/
• Suzanne Stabile — the Enneagram teacher behind the question "Is this mine to do?" https://www.suzannestabile.com/
• FranklinCovey weekly planning — the weekly compass Marc now organizes around his values. https://www.franklincovey.com/
• The Highlands Ability Battery — the assessment that reminded Emily that high and low scores sit on a continuum, not a pass/fail scale. https://www.highlandsco.com/

👥 Who Should Listen
• Married couples who work together and want a rhythm for checking in
• People who love starting new practices and struggle to keep them going
• Planner and journal people looking for a way to keep their values in view
• Parents and caregivers whose roles never fit into neat boxes
• Leaders and coaches who give generously and forget to ask what they want or need
• Anyone carrying more than is theirs to carry

🎺 That Music!
Special thanks to Lexi Moreno, Caleb Pitman, and Zoe Czarnecki for the original music.
Lexi Moreno – composing / mixing / mastering / guitar
Caleb Pitman – composing / mixing / trumpet
Zoe Czarnecki – bass

📋 Episode Summary
Emily and Marc start where they always do, with what's on their minds. For Marc, it's the systems we live in and the stories he was told about them. For Emily, it's a Leuchtturm1917 journal with six pages left in the middle, a brand-new one waiting on her desk, and the surprisingly big question of how to begin it.

From there they return to values, picking up a thread from Season 1, Episode 11. They talk about renaming budget categories so they reflect what you care about, the credentials that act as signals for ourselves more than for anyone else, and what a calendar reveals. Marc realizes his calendar is already full of values placeholders: working the polls on election days and blocking monthly reading days. Emily names those reading days for what they are, a Sabbath pace with an intentional learning bent.

The conversation is reflective and gently playful. They share their personal values lists and end on an idea that stops them both: abundance isn't somewhere we're going. It's where we are.

🔑 Key Takeaways
• Labeling budget categories with your actual values (like "hobbies") makes the numbers more meaningful and more likely to get attention.
• Some credentials and signals are mainly for ourselves; they help us show up with more confidence and authenticity.
• You can see your real values by looking at where your money and your time actually go.
• For self-employed people, time is the inventory on the shelves, so how you spend it is a values decision.
• Rest, reading days, and "artist dates" aren't indulgences that need justifying; they refill you, and often everything else improves.
• Abundance can be a present reality to live from, even in seasons of scarcity.

🗣 Quote Highlights
• "This wasn't just an inevitable maturation of human society. This is a confluence of very specific choices and events." – Marc
• "When I have an idea, it could be an idea that doesn't need any action really for two years, but it's still more important than the thing that's on my list, like make a dentist appointment." – Emily
• "I don't think people really care that I have an ACC. What I think they care about is that I'm a really good coach, and they will become more themselves after working with me." – Emily
• "Our inventory is our time. The shelves of our store is time." – Marc
• "It's a Sabbath pace, even though it's a very intentional learning pace." – Emily
• "I'm not doing this to be productive. I'm doing this because I'm a human and I'm refilling myself." – Marc
• "If I really believe abundance exists and is where I'm operating from, it's where I am. It's not where I'm going." – Marc

🧰 Tools & Mentions
• Still Figuring It Out, Season 1, Episode 11 — the values episode that inspired this conversation. https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/show/35d59fa5-fffe-4892-9f2e-24382bb92ee3/id/35462985
• Leuchtturm1917 dotted journals — Emily's notebook of choice for keeping her life and ideas in order. https://www.leuchtturm1917.com/
• The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron — the source of the "artist date," time set aside to do something that makes your heart sing. https://juliacameronlive.com/
• B Corp certification — a business structure Emily and Marc have considered for Concord Leadership Group as a signal of their values. https://www.bcorporation.net/
• International Coaching Federation (ICF) — the professional body behind Emily's ACC credential and the regional gathering Marc describes. https://coachingfederation.org/
• Dirty Laundry on Dropout — the show Marc hears every time Emily asks, "What's on your mind?" https://www.dropout.tv/

👥 Who Should Listen
• Coaches and solopreneurs who find business numbers uninspiring and want them to connect to what matters
• Married couples who work together and want their budget and calendar to reflect shared values
• Self-employed professionals who feel guilty taking time for rest, reading, or civic commitments
• Paper planner and bullet journal people facing the blank first page
• Leaders weighing whether credentials and certifications are worth it, and who they're really for
• Anyone trying to live from abundance instead of scarcity

🎺 That Music!
Special thanks to Lexi Moreno, Caleb Pitman, and Zoe Czarnecki for the original music.
Lexi Moreno – composing / mixing / mastering / guitar
Caleb Pitman – composing / mixing / trumpet
Zoe Czarnecki – bass

📋 Episode Summary
Emily and Marc welcome Dan Joslyn-Siemiatkoski: Marc's college roommate, the best man at their wedding, an Episcopal priest, and director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College. The three of them laugh their way back to Gordon College in the 1990s, from a prep-school locker room tip to a very specific forest green Jeep Grand Cherokee, before Marc asks what Dan was trying to figure out in 1995.

That question opens a warm and honest conversation about vocation. Dan chose academic training before ordination because he wanted more grounding first. Now, in his dream job at a Roman Catholic university where he can't serve as a priest on campus, he is still figuring out what his priestly ministry looks like, along with what an empty nest and parenting adult children will mean. Marc reflects on missing pastoring and on a friend's reminder that the call doesn't leave even when the title does.

The episode closes with Dan's new book, Resisting Anti-Judaism: Practices of Christian Solidarity, and a clear, generous explanation of the difference between anti-Judaism and antisemitism, along with why a faith that leads to curiosity beats one that is small and fragile.

🔑 Key Takeaways
• Good preaching rests on knowing the scriptures, your context, and your people well, and on having only one thing to say.
• A calling can stay alive even when its shape looks nothing like what you planned when you started.
• Parenting never really ends; it changes shape, and the empty nest invites a new phase of a marriage too.
• Dan distinguishes anti-Judaism (religious bias that sees Jews as incomplete) from antisemitism (a racialized hostility that sees Jews as a permanent threat).
• Solidarity isn't zero-sum: practicing solidarity with one group prepares you for solidarity with others.

🗣 Quote Highlights
• "It's been a virtual friendship for many, many years." – Dan Joslyn-Siemiatkoski
• "I realized, oh, being ordained is more than just Sunday morning." – Dan Joslyn-Siemiatkoski
• "You need to know the scriptures really well. You need to know your context really well. You need to know your people really well." – Dan Joslyn-Siemiatkoski
• "Once a king or queen in Narnia, always a king or queen in Narnia. It still gets me, because the call is still there. It's just the shape that looks different." – Marc
• "None of them is anxiety-inducing, per se, but it's more like curiosity: where am I going next?" – Dan Joslyn-Siemiatkoski
• "Solidarity prepares you for other forms of solidarity as well." – Dan Joslyn-Siemiatkoski
• "I felt a real sense of call towards spiritual directing, and I was like, what is the deal? You have to be 35? That's so old! And now at 50, I'm like, oh, that helps so many people from being harmed by the zeal of a 20-something." – Emily
• "So much nicer to have a faith that is expansive and leads to curiosity rather than one that's small, really small and fragile." – Marc

🧰 Tools & Mentions
• Resisting Anti-Judaism: Practices of Christian Solidarity by Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski — Dan's new book (Fortress Press, November 10, 2026). https://www.fortresspress.com/store/product/9798889834021/Resisting-Anti-Judaism
• Dan's website — his writing, speaking, and work in Christian-Jewish relations. https://www.danieljoslyn-siemiatkoski.com
• Dan's Substack — the newsletter Marc signed up for the night before recording. https://substack.com/@danieljoslynsiemiatkoski
• Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College — where Dan is director and Kraft Family Professor. https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/centers/Center-for-Christian-Jewish-Learning.html
• Renovaré — the spiritual formation movement whose small groups Dan, Marc, and Emily shared in college. https://renovare.org/

👥 Who Should Listen
• Pastors, priests, and Christian educators who want to notice and resist anti-Judaism in their preaching, worship, and teaching
• People discerning a call to ministry, or wondering whether to get more grounding first
• Former pastors and ministry leaders whose calling now looks different than they expected
• Parents of teens and young adults heading toward an empty nest
• Anyone curious about Christian-Jewish relations explained in plain, human terms
• Old friends who've kept a friendship alive across decades and distance

🎺 That Music!
Special thanks to Lexi Moreno, Caleb Pitman, and Zoe Czarnecki for the original music.
Lexi Moreno – composing / mixing / mastering / guitar
Caleb Pitman – composing / mixing / trumpet
Zoe Czarnecki – bass