The Hobby We Forgot to Have

This week we accidentally got philosophical.

We’re talking about the weird emotional crash after a fun trip with your best friend, the mental load spiral that somehow starts at 7am on a monday, and the very real moment emily used chatgpt instead of texting a friend for emotional support.

Also:

• cold plunges (emily hated it)
• why moms desperately need hobbies that don’t “produce” anything
• And toddlers publicly humiliating us in bathrooms

Plus our very first listener voice memo and honestly… it delivered.

If you’ve ever stared into your fridge feeling emotionally unsupported by a package of ground turkey, this one’s for you.

Follow along on instagram @wait.same.pod

Key Takeaways

• motherhood mental load isn’t always loud — sometimes it shows up as heaviness, fatigue, or feeling emotionally “stuck”
• moms often struggle to do things purely for enjoyment without turning them into another task, goal, or obligation
• AI can genuinely lighten certain parts of motherhood, but it also raises questions about privacy, dependence, and emotional connection
• toddlers are deeply committed to embarrassing their mothers in public settings
• sometimes the most healing thing is simply hearing another mom say “same”

Listener Submissions

Email your voice notes to waitsamepodcast@gmail.com

OR

DM them to us on Instagram:  @wait.same.pod

Transcript

Kendall Gavaret (00:00)
So yesterday I had to take Owen to Target to get a birthday gift for a party that his sister is going to this morning. He insisted on buying a or he

didn't insist but he like really wanted to buy this Mario

characters set that and he's never seen anything Mario or whatever. So I let him buy it or bought it for him and we get home and he starts playing with it. He plays with it all night, which is great. And then he gets into the bath and he's talking about the characters and he goes, Papa, Mommy's Bowser.

Emily Gorrie (00:21)
Okay.

Kendall Gavaret (00:48)
Do know who Bowser is, Emily?

Emily Gorrie (00:50)
I do, it's the one Henry kept going, scary, scary, scary.

Kendall Gavaret (00:54)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bowser is the bad guy. The giant dinosaur bad guy. And I said, excuse me, why? And he, of course, had no answer. So that made me feel real great

Emily Gorrie (01:45)
Hi, should we do a quick catch up?

Okay.

Real life is life-ing heavy this week. We had a couple of days where Seth went on a work trip and then you pair that with having spent five days with your best friend the week before and it does not feel as fun.

Kendall Gavaret (02:15)
100 % yes it's like the yeah like the harsh reality I was gonna say the cold plunge because we did like a sauna in a cold plunge but it's kind of the cold plunge of

Emily Gorrie (02:28)
Yeah, you know, people like

cold plunges. You included. You seemed to like it when we went. That being my first time, maybe we're all just gonna dive into cold plunges right now, was kind of awful. I...

Kendall Gavaret (02:43)
I was really

proud of you though.

Emily Gorrie (02:46)
You know, there's so much, thank you, there's so much noise on the internet right now about cold plunges and I don't really know what to think because I haven't done my own research on it. I've just been kind of like letting it percolate in this space around me. And you get like two camps, people who love it because it's like super invigorating, you know, really brings you into your body.

yada, yada, yada, like, you you feel mental clarity after, right? I think you'll have to maybe share a little bit more why you like it. And then you have the camp of people who are like, it wrecks your nervous system if you're already in a state of fight or flight. Because you're adding totally pick your poison. I've picked mine.

Kendall Gavaret (03:27)
Yeah, but so does like parenthood. So. But like her, no, and

I, I know I have heard that noise too of like, and I think also there's like conversations out there about it's good for women and like as we certainly don't need to dive into this, but like.

I think as women, think we often know that there's less research done on women's health than there is on men's health. And so like, I have seen some information out there about like, if it even makes sense for women to do cold plunges. ⁓ I mean, there's a part of me that's like, ⁓ Amy Poehler swears by it. Okay, great, me too.

Emily Gorrie (04:11)
Yeah.

I mean, she's rocking this life, so she must be on to something.

Kendall Gavaret (04:23)
really is but I like I do honestly I don't even love it for like the health benefits of which I do believe that there are but I love it for like the mental benefits of like and I think for me it's like pairing it with a sauna because you sit in the sauna you sweat out everything

Emily Gorrie (04:43)
Mmm.

I did, thank you.

Yeah.

Mmm.

Kendall Gavaret (05:17)
I can't explain it other than like a serotonin rush. It's, I feel so much clearer headed and light and optimistic afterwards.

Emily Gorrie (05:21)
Huh.

Huh, I definitely didn't, I did not experience that, but maybe I have to like, I don't know, climb Mount Everest to like reach that. I don't know. Like to me, feels like, as we were talking, I was like, okay, the mental strength it would need to take me to do that is almost like, I don't wanna do that. Like I am literally, yes, but I'm literally,

Kendall Gavaret (05:34)
That was not your experience.

I mean, you did it.

Emily Gorrie (06:00)
mentally navigating so much stuff in my day-to-day right now that I'm like, do I really need to give myself another opportunity to mentally prove to myself how strong I am? Nah, I got it. good. don't know. But I like the, I do like that kind of on the other side, rush of just like,

vibrancy that could really, if you can get there, I imagine it like helps you kind of like move your way through the day with a little bit more ease or like a little bit you're holding yourself differently at the end of the day. I don't know.

Kendall Gavaret (06:44)
Yeah. See, for

me, it's like, I totally understand that. And for me, it's like I have a extremely overfilling plate. And the way that I think some in some ways, like the way that I self care through that is creating moments for myself where I pretend nothing of my overfilling plate exists.

Emily Gorrie (07:11)
Mmm. Mm-hmm.

Kendall Gavaret (07:13)
And that's like, honestly, we've talked about this too, but it's like part of why I love reality TV is like, there's something about, my husband says like,

he doesn't understand how people yelling at each other is calming, which like totally fair and valid. For me, there's something of like, it just creates this space where like all of the stuff on my plate isn't mentally front and center for me. And that's like a little self care moment.

Emily Gorrie (07:29)
Hahaha

Yeah, yeah.

Totally, I get that. You know what my sister said to me the other day? She goes, I think you need a hobby.

And we'll dive into this with technology in a second, but they're always listening. So of course, get people on threads talking about hobbies. I'm like, how did the algorithm give me this? This feels strange. But she's like, I think you need a hobby, something that you do that doesn't have an end goal. Because she's like, you do so much. You're taking care of the kids. You're taking care of the house, making dinner.

cleaning, you're building a business, you have friendships, you're pouring into your relationship, you're trying to do self-care, you're journaling, you're trying to exercise. All of that has an end goal to either show up for somebody else or show up to support myself in a way. She's like, I think you just need a hobby that just is. I was like, that's interesting. And she's like, take an hour and d-

do. Like for me, walking was that for a while, but now I think too much when I'm walking.

Kendall Gavaret (09:00)
Like sometimes you have the dog or you have your son. Like it's not always just you.

Emily Gorrie (09:03)
Yeah. Or I'm listening to my

book club book. And it's not just I'm listening to my book for fun. It's I'm listening to the book because I my book club meeting in three weeks and I'm nowhere near getting close to the end of the book. So even now reading a book feels like I have like a deadline and an agenda. So that has kind of lost its ⁓ ease to me a bit. So I don't know. Maybe that's the ponder for the next week.

A hobby with no end goal.

Kendall Gavaret (09:35)
I mean, honestly, I think we should probably have this conversation is, I don't know, main topic, but like, something we talk about another time, because I feel like I have so much to say about.

how I wasted my 20s. And not even my 20s, like, well, I guess, I don't know, how old am I? Yeah, I guess by my 30s, I like had a kid. But like, I feel like the pre-kid life.

Emily Gorrie (09:56)
Right? Agreed.

Yeah.

Kendall Gavaret (10:14)
In retrospect, feel like I like wasted and I work with all these people who are in their mid late 30s who are like dinks. And some days I'm like,

Emily Gorrie (10:26)
Mm-hmm.

Kendall Gavaret (10:32)
Take advantage of it. I want to grab them by the shoulders and be like, have a hobby. Take advantage of it. Yes, get back online and work at night just for fun.

Emily Gorrie (10:34)
Ahahaha.

I know. Do the hobby.

I know. Oh man. Yeah, I feel like we can go down this. There's three rabbit holes right here, I see. We can pick one. We can pick one. Okay, let's, I am glad, I don't even know how your week was. I feel like we just got like totally like sidetracked. Good week? Do you have a nice week?

Kendall Gavaret (10:56)
there's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just roll in.

Emily Gorrie (11:12)
That good? Really good.

Kendall Gavaret (11:12)
Okay, yeah, I mean,

I just think like a week in which I felt overwhelmed by a lot, but I'm doing, I'm like excited, you know, like I have ⁓ my first two mahjong events on the calendar.

Emily Gorrie (11:18)
Mmm, yeah.

Woohoo, very exciting.

Kendall Gavaret (11:35)
is exciting. Two different

locations too, which like the second one is this oh my god like adorable store that when I walked in I was like wait this is everything that I would want my own store to be if I ever had a store this is

It's just literal perfection. walked out of there with like two candlesticks and three sets of candles and a trinket tray. It was such a good vibe. so they've been around for just a year. And so they're trying to just get people through the door. so...

Emily Gorrie (12:05)
Yeah, of course. Feeling the vibe.

Mmm.

Yeah, I love it. It's exciting. Okay, some exciting things, but a lot goes into it.

Okay. Let's switch into the bulk of what we wanted to talk about then. So earlier, I think I mentioned, did I mention? I don't know. I'll mention it now. The heaviness of this week, right? Transitioning out of being with you for five days and then transitioning back into real life and then having to like go into the week knowing I was going to be on solo parenting duty for a couple of days. I felt like Monday and Tuesday were so

Kendall Gavaret (13:00)
you

Emily Gorrie (13:18)
heavy, like I was very emotionally heavy. was almost anticipating what was coming. I was feeling like, almost like this let down of fun and excitement and back into reality. And I was so heavy. Like I had a headache, my body felt really sluggish, I was exhausted. been having this crazy fatigue sometimes. And I think it's mental and I kept, I started to journal.

which is one of my favorite things, by the way, to do to kind of get clear on what is kind of percolating mentally for me, like what stories am I buying into, like where am I placing meaning? And I just got to the point where I was like, I think I'm trying to over.

process, like figure out. I was like grasping on the figure out. Like I needed to know why this was happening. And then I just said to myself, fuck this. I need to get into my body. I just need to get into my body. So I put the journal down. haven't looked at it in like three or four days because I just needed to stop like trying to figure it all out. So my point of sharing this, I did definitely did not go to cold pledge.

Kendall Gavaret (14:27)
Yeah. So you went to cold plunge.

Emily Gorrie (14:33)
I feel like my body, I would have lost feeling in my body and then how would I have gotten into it? I couldn't feel it anymore. Literally those 45 seconds were so numbing.

Kendall Gavaret (14:36)
you

you

Emily Gorrie (14:46)
It just, I'm not really sure that's where I wanted to go, but okay. So my point of sharing this with you is I took it to chat GPT and I said, and I'm going to pull up my, my thread because I thought it was interesting. So I said, ⁓

I want to do something to get myself out of my head and into my body. What suggestions do you have? And of course, you know, being Chad, he's so great, really thoughtful, you know, it doesn't need to be a huge reset. You know, the, let's find the fastest way. So validating, like, you know, he knows me. And what I thought was really cool is he gave me like, if you feel this type of emotionally heavy, or if you feel stuck or if you feel

Kendall Gavaret (15:17)
extremely validating of you.

Emily Gorrie (15:32)
disconnected, disconnected. If it feels like your nervous system is buzzy or anxious, like try these things. And then asked me a question. He was like, okay, so like, what kind of in your head are you right now? Right? Are you overthinking? Are you spiraling? Are you restless? Are you numb? And then I was able to kind of be a little bit more clear. And for me, it felt a lot of like hypervigilance. There was a lot of like, trying not to drop balls, you know, feeling like

overthinking everything, like that sort of stuff. And then he was able to tailor it to me. Basically what I ultimately netted out doing was I found like a acoustic ⁓ playlist on Spotify and I played that and stretched for 15 minutes. So I listened to something that had like a really like calming melody, soothing beat, and then actually stretched my body and I felt immediately the tension like moving from my shoulders.

and the headache dissipating. didn't go away, but it dissipated. it got me thinking, how do we feel about technology in motherhood? Because I liked it in this regard, but I also worry that it's like taking over to an extent. Like where I went to chat GBT, I likely would have gone to you before. You're like, I am losing my mind. You know, like help me like pull out of this. Like how do I pull out? How do I get my body?

I feel like that is, it's an interesting one for me because I like it, like the ease and the expediency that I was able to get in terms of support right there, like immediately, like where's my lifeline? What's my lifeline right now? Was able to like kind of like give me that life raft and get me to more of like a grounded place.

But these robots know too much.

I don't know, it's one of those topics that I feel like I can go down a whole rabbit hole and there's two camps to every, you know, tale and it can be absolutely anxiety driven or it could be like you're fully in. I don't know, where do you stand?

Kendall Gavaret (17:45)
Yeah, it's a good question. ⁓ I mean, I think there's, it is like a fine road, because I feel like there is so much that I genuinely feel like technology, specifically like AI, specifically like LLMs, I think are.

Emily Gorrie (18:09)
What's an LLM?

Kendall Gavaret (18:10)
a language learning model. like a Claude, well Claude's Claude's actually an LLM and another type of technology, but like a Gemini, a chat GPT, et cetera. Like I think, yeah, well.

Emily Gorrie (18:14)
⁓ okay.

Gotcha.

Like a Siri?

Kendall Gavaret (18:29)
Siri isn't really like scraping language models, but what we, think in our day-to-day lives expect or like when we say AI, most of us are, at least most of us like, I don't know, under the age of...

Emily Gorrie (18:37)
Yeah.

Kendall Gavaret (18:47)
22 are probably, or over the age of 22, I'll say, like probably referencing something like chat BT. ⁓ And so like, I think with those, there's so much benefit of like, I think especially being moms who are trying to balance.

Emily Gorrie (18:56)
Yeah.

Kendall Gavaret (19:09)
full plates. And honestly, I've yet to meet a mom who's not balancing a full plate. ⁓ But like for myself as a working mom, somebody who is like, carrying the large majority of the mental load, organizing the house, etc. All of the activities, doing most of the drop offs, etc. All.

Emily Gorrie (19:11)
Mmm.

Kendall Gavaret (19:37)
I think there's so many benefits. Like for me, one of the things that's changed my...

mental load is doing meal prep through or menu planning through chat GPT and it's like Amazing and it's been so helpful like yesterday for instance. I Was like, okay I have 30 minutes between meetings to make lunch for myself and my husband because we both work from home If 30 minutes to make lunch

Emily Gorrie (19:48)
Mmm. Yeah.

Kendall Gavaret (20:10)
and I opened my fridge and felt like completely uninspired. And so I literally chatted chat GPT and was like, give me a quick and easy recipe that I can make in 30 minutes with these like using some of these ingredients, not including like, you know, oils and spices or whatever.

Emily Gorrie (20:29)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kendall Gavaret (20:37)
And like we ended up having a lovely spring corn. Posse like what was it? Corn and pea pasta with ground turkey like it was lovely. And that I probably would have spent at least an additional 10 minutes like spinning over what to make or searching even like I have recipe apps on my phone, which are great, but like scrolling through recipe apps.

Emily Gorrie (20:45)
Cool.

Yeah.

those recipes have like

excess ingredients that you don't really need, but it's like meant to make the dish like exponentially better. Right. And then you don't have them, but like the dish could have done without it.

Kendall Gavaret (21:12)
or that I don't have.

Exactly. So like, I think there's so much benefit to that.

I feel very, I guess like mixed emotions about it in terms of I think it's really great and really helpful and some of those like mom hacky things.

Emily Gorrie (21:35)
Yeah,

yeah.

Kendall Gavaret (21:38)
Remove so much of the mental load, which is good.

Emily Gorrie (21:40)
Yes.

It's so interesting because I feel like if you use it as a tool, right, to help you with certain tasks, the benefits can be like exponential without too much of the fear that it's just going to like run away from you. I feel like we're kind of in the same boat. I'm like hesitant. So Seth writes children's books for

like Olivia and Henry based on like different activities that we do, like different trips we take. He like writes about our journeys, like our... Yeah, they're in Olivia's room.

Kendall Gavaret (22:11)
Do you print them out?

That's so cute! ⁓

Emily Gorrie (22:16)
Yeah, he has them. Eventually, I'm going to get them actually

binded, printed in a book. Right now, they're just on printer paper. But he wanted to put pictures in them. And he was using ChatGPT or Claude or one of those to help him write it. He basically would input it. He input all of his old stories and basically write this in my writing style. And they would write it. But I wouldn't let him. And he also agreed. It's not that I wouldn't let him. We have this discussion of like,

We're not going to put the kids' pictures in chat to make the book. We'll get the writing, and then we will voluntarily then create a layout for it and one by one put the pictures in. Because there is a line of where is ease versus privacy. What's the balance of that? it's an interesting. ⁓

Kendall Gavaret (23:01)
Just your comfort level.

Emily Gorrie (23:12)
Interesting balance. I don't know. I feel like this is not a topic we can dive into in 20 minutes. Like really? And I'm not even sure I want to. It's a lot.

Kendall Gavaret (23:27)
I'm pausing because I'm laughing at myself internally for being very corporatey of saying like, tack on. I recently saw, I think it was.

Emily Gorrie (23:35)
get into the flow.

Kendall Gavaret (23:44)
I don't remember what the publication was, but there there's been some ⁓ kind of research shared recently of or maybe it was like a op-ed from one of the creators of Anthropic maybe like what sectors or kind of like what jobs will AI and like this kind of

evolution make essentially obsolete. And I don't want to talk about that, but I think what's really interesting about it is I won't say obviously, but like not surprisingly, ⁓ motherhood was not on that list of jobs. But to me, that's something that like,

Emily Gorrie (24:17)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kendall Gavaret (24:42)
is you want to talk about jobs that aren't going to be replaced by AI. AI can be supportive of us as we've just like talked about in our journey of motherhood. But I think especially you think about like the little kid years, you think about the newborn years, you think about the toddler years, like

Emily Gorrie (24:47)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Kendall Gavaret (25:08)
I think the thing about machine learning and AI is that truly it's only as good as kind of like the inputs that it gets. So I do think for our kids, when they get to middle school, high school, they probably are going to ask AI more questions than they are going to ask us, which like, that's going to be a whole thing we're going to have to navigate.

Emily Gorrie (25:17)
Mm.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Interesting.

Kendall Gavaret (25:38)
But I think about like

Emily Gorrie (25:38)
Oh, yeah.

Kendall Gavaret (25:41)
the love of a mother, the like nurturing part of motherhood.

Emily Gorrie (25:49)
can't be replaced. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed.

Kendall Gavaret (25:49)
It can't be replaced. And that's

really interesting to me. Like at least it makes me feel a little like, not reassured, but I think it feels more able to be navigated. This kind of next frontier.

Emily Gorrie (26:08)
Yeah, maybe that will eventually

change. mean, there's so many.

advocates and creators now who are trying to change the narrative really actively around how motherhood is viewed, right? it's, you everything that we like see these days of like, you know, ⁓ if motherhood was paid, right? You know, moms would make, you know, X amount of money, hundred and something thousand dollars to whatever it is, you know, annually.

And that's valued on minimum wage, which is how current society looked at the roles that we play. It's the bare minimum. Somebody's got to do it, yada, yada, yada. So it's interesting when you look at that in terms of what roles are being replaced by technology, who's being

switched out. ⁓ I don't know, it's interesting when you like think of all that and like how we're starting to like shift the narrative a little bit on like what is necessary, what's valuable, and what it means for society.

Kendall Gavaret (27:25)
Yeah, and hopefully it validates and furthers that point, right? If we are transitioning into a world where more specialized jobs are what stays, then this is special in many ways. Many definitions of the term special.

Emily Gorrie (27:28)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

Yep,

agreed.

Kendall Gavaret (27:54)
I've gotten quite philosophical today. think I, I think I need something light.

Emily Gorrie (27:56)
Where did, how did we get here? How did we get here?

Okay. I think it's perfect time transition into our first audience submission. Should we hear it? Okay. So for anyone listening, ⁓ we have started to ask for audience submissions on voice notes that you would send your friends on motherhood.

We'll give you an example today of a lovely audience member who shared hers with us. And we want to hear yours too. So keep that in mind as you're listening to this. And if you feel called, hit record and email it to us or find us on Instagram and send us a DM. We want to hear them. So here we go. Let's see. Now my ability to find technology. OK, we are live playing.

Kendall Gavaret (29:13)
you

Emily Gorrie (29:19)
It's a big one. I love that little girl so much and I don't even know her. And I love that mom also. Been there. Holy cow.

Kendall Gavaret (29:29)
you

I just like, I love the relatability of these toddlers making their own narratives and then we're like, no that's actually really embarrassing.

Emily Gorrie (29:45)
Yeah.

I know they haven't like evolved yet. Yeah. Yeah. We bring our own view to it. ⁓ it's so funny. ⁓ gotta love a bathroom embarrassing moment.

Kendall Gavaret (29:49)
It's like the Bowser!

Emily Gorrie (30:02)
was so good. Did I ever tell you about the time that I to dinner with some friends and Olivia came and I was, I took her to the bathroom and then I was like, oh, I'm going to go. And I'm six months pregnant with Henry. tell you this? We're at the Thai place. Okay. And so I'm going to the bathroom. Now you all know when you're pregnant, things are a little weaker. Things are a little looser. It's hard enough as it is to like hold your bladder, get to the bathroom. She's in the stall with me. We're in one of those like big handicap ones.

So she opens the door while I'm mid P stream. There's people there. I attempt to stop my P stream to close the door because of that's my reaction in that. I don't know why that was my reaction. That was my reaction. Now you all know that is hard to do in general.

Kendall Gavaret (30:52)
Honestly, we would have had very different reactions.

Emily Gorrie (31:02)
let alone six, seven months pregnant. ⁓ use your imagination. Didn't stop. I peed all over my pants. And there's a lot of people in the bathroom. Yes. And don't you love it when kids are like, I'm done. Open the door. I'm just going to leave now. I have no qualms about my mother. She's on her own.

Kendall Gavaret (31:12)
⁓ no!

Did she leave or was she just like outside the store?

Emily Gorrie (31:27)
I closed that door so fast. no, she was in the stall with me. Did they leave her out still?

Kendall Gavaret (31:31)
You're on your own kid. I thought you just like

left the stall and you were like bye.

Emily Gorrie (31:40)
No, she went, she was opening it. I had gotten to it before she walked out and was able to like smack it shut. But there's a whole line of people who are looking at me. I don't think they saw anything. I was like hunched over, you know, like trying to pull up my pants and then close the door. Anyway, bathroom stories with toddlers. I felt like I needed to share that one.

Kendall Gavaret (32:02)
I love that story. I'd never heard it.

Emily Gorrie (32:06)
And just so you all know, it

was Thai food and I really wanted it. So I just dabbed my pants off and stayed for dinner.

You're welcome. You're welcome. And if you saw me that night, no, you didn't. No, you didn't. It was great. Right down fine. My friends didn't care. They knew what happened.

Kendall Gavaret (32:28)
this and that's and that's how you

that's how you know true friendship ⁓ if you have if you're listening and you have a moment like this please send us a voice note we want to hear it good bad hilarious ugly please send it in

Emily Gorrie (32:34)
Very funny.

I can't wait. I'm so excited.

All right, I think that's it. Let's wrap up this week. Lovely chatting with you. I miss you. Till next week, we'll be back.