How to Start the Conversation with Your Partner About All the Sh*t You Do with Fair Play Facilitator Zach Watson @realzachthinkshare

Ever wondered how societal expectations influence the distribution of emotional labour and mental load in your marriage? You're in for a treat! This episode features our insightful guest, Zach, a previous math teacher and Fair Play facilitator, who enlightens us on the profound impact of invisible labour in our lives. 

Getting personal, we share our own experiences and offer practical advice on improving relationship dynamics, such as the significance of regular check-ins and open discussions. Zach shares opening with us about the nitty-gritty of mental load, its importance in parenting and gender roles, and the urgent need to dismantle toxic masculinity. 

Ah Ha Moments

• What is the mental load? How is it different from emotional/invisible labour? 
• Zach and Alyssa were separated in 2019 at the time, and he had NO idea he was adding to her mental load - your partner might not know either.
• If you talk about the mental load at home in the context of how your partner might carry the weight of financial responsibility - they might get it!
• When sharing memes or reels with your partner, give some context.

Wrapping up, we can't stress enough the power of meaningful conversations and sharing resources to kickstart your own. Tune in now!

Watch on Episode 31 with Zach Watson on YouTube

Mentionables:

Zach Watson - Recovering Man-child - Content creator and men's domestic labor and mental-load coach, putting out free educational content to improve men's abilities to articulate and implement equity in their home.

Go to Zach's website 

Follow him on IG

Chapters

• 0:00 Exploring Mental Load and Gender Expectations
• 11:23 Improve Relationship Communication Through Sharing Reels / TikTok's
• 17:40 Language & Emotional Labor's Importance
• 32:11 Remote Work and Parenthood Integration
• 36:14 Podcast Interview With Gratitude and Appreciation

Transcript

Kayla Huszar: 0:00

Welcome everybody back to the Chill Like a Mother podcast. I am so excited to have Zach here with us. We met, ironically, followed him for a while on Instagram, first because I love his content, and then I didn't even know he was a fair play facilitator until we ended up in the September monthly hours that we all get together. So, zach, can you kind of like lead us in with why you love fair play and why you're creating such amazing content for men and women?

Zach Watson : 0:27

Thank, you, yeah, so the majority of what I create is educational short form 90 second videos trying to educate mostly men that women end up sharing with men about in a better way to divide up domestic labor, which I learned through fair play, as well as just a better understanding and how to differentiate and understand how to wrap your head around what mental load is and what emotional labor is. And I think, since I discovered fair play, since I started talking about it and I realized that as a math teacher, I realized how it took me a while until I started having these like words, that I started realizing how much I was doing as a math teacher and how relevant it is to so many relationships out there and people start resonating with it and they wanted more, so I gave it to him.

Kayla Huszar: 1:23

Amazing For anybody who doesn't know in your words what is the mental load and invisible labor.

Zach Watson : 1:30

So mental load, I think, is best articulated with examples. Mental load is the thing that keeps you up at night, is the thing that you're still ruminating about. I think a lot of people get mentally confused specifically with domestic labor. I think mental load can be applied to literally anything. It's that, that that clapping monkey that's in your head all day, all night long, with your profession, with the work that needs to get home, that with really anything that you are accountable for, you're responsible for or you have significant emotional, like attachment to the outcome of.

Kayla Huszar: 2:07

And how does that then play out in the lives of parents or people with young children or even thinking about becoming parents?

Zach Watson : 2:17

So from the, I was trying to calculate the other the other day, the number of comments of probably red room probably somewhere between 50 to 100,000 comments that I've combed through over the past two years and I think that what I've seen in them and these podcast episodes and all the mom creators and in guy creators that I follow, a lot of women bear the emotional labor of Making sure that the child is safe, making sure that the home is a certain way, and they know that society will judge them based on what their home looks like and how their parents, how their kids come out and the behavior of their kids and the cleanliness and the dressed, how well they're dressed, and I think, because of that pressure that society is unjustly put on them instead of both parents, and so I think that women then carry the brunt of okay, well, I'm going to get judged for this.

Zach Watson : 3:22

So I'm going to put in the effort to make sure that you know I'm judged well for it and not negatively judged versus Dads just show up to the park and they're like, oh, what a great dad, right, shut up to the park. That doesn't mean he got them in the car. That doesn't meet. That might have. He could have even sat in the passenger seat.

Kayla Huszar: 3:43

Or pack the diaper bag, or put on the right shoes. Yeah yeah, water bombs.

Zach Watson : 3:48

Yeah, or made sure that there were extra diapers in the diaper bag, or made sure that the cream and the the wipes were filled up before you went. I think that emotional labor that that falls on a lot of women due to the current state of judgment Then translates into okay. So all those things that we just listed are like. I think that's a good example, I think, of emotional labor that the parents go through and that more women are currently bearing than men. So because they're not judged on it, they're not holding onto it versus. I think a lot of men like their careers and if they're an entrepreneur like I'm working on becoming, I know that I that society will be more likely to judge me on how I'm performing financially, and I think guys probably hold a lot more mental around finances. We've seen those tropes of like hey, honey, let me see your phone. Is there anything you want to hide from me? Oh, no, here, check on my phone. Hey, let's open up your Amazon app.

Kayla Huszar: 4:53

Oh no, don't look at that.

Zach Watson : 4:55

Don't do that and it's because I think a lot of times guys are more financially motivated Again, based on, I think, societal expectations of what positive masculine performance looks like.

Kayla Huszar: 5:12

And interesting that you bring this up, because right now in my life we're going through this kind of like gender role switch and I'm working and my partner is unemployed and stay at home dad right now, and the question that I get asked the most often is as he found a job yet is he looking, and how long do you have before he has to work again? Right?

Zach Watson : 5:39

Really and it and it's. I was. I was going to get something a little bit different, but but on the same, like realm yeah.

Kayla Huszar: 5:46

And so it's. It's the. The perceived assumption from other people that's their stories is that I can't, won't, don't, bring in enough to sustain our lifestyle without the predictable income. And so it's. It's a very interesting societal narrative. I think that that we still experience very much as gendered what are expected of women, what is expected of men, yeah, I think it's.

Zach Watson : 6:21

It's a consistently elusive problem that there was this video that went viral. I do edit it on Instagram. It's like 2. Something million and the original is at 7. Something on TikTok and you've probably seen it somewhere because I've seen it stitched by multiple other people. The guy says I don't help my wife, he's the UPS guy. I don't help my wife, do X, y or Z, because I do. My father really do these and I just do X, y and Z. It's not help for them and I thought it was really interesting and I saw myself also annoyed.

Zach Watson : 7:00

See, he got on Good Morning America because of that, and Laura Danger and Abby Echoll kind of, and he himself also called out like there's a problem with our culture, the fact that this got me on Good Morning America, like the fact that I don't know if he said it quite like that, but I know that some of the other careers that pointed that out is like many of us have described that this and women have been describing for a long time. This should be the baseline. This is the baseline, this is what we're expecting, and why is this being celebrated so much? It's less about like us as individuals making changes, but it's like the comments that we put out there. It's the what attention are we gonna pay? And the comment that we're gonna put on the video that's either calling someone out or judging them. It's the people that go to the park and see the guy with this kid saying you're a great dad, with no other context other than that they see them in the park. Those are the small cultural changes that I think we can be slowly influencing. One comment at a time, one interaction at a time, and it's saying being the person on the board.

Zach Watson : 8:14

I'm like wait, why are we having him on our show? Because he talked about what we all expect. Why is this being celebrated? And so, as much as I'm trying to push the needle forward with talking about mental load and creating more palatable things for guys to listen to, I think if you look at TikTok and Instagram, someone called me a thought leader the other day, and it felt really uncomfortable. My ego was very excited, but, like my person was like are we, though? And so I looked up mental load on the search, and it's my face about a hundred times, and then it's a bunch of different women and then like two or three other guys, and so I feel what I'm getting to here is, I feel, bad that I know a lot of guys need to hear it from another guy to understand it and I recognize. That's just kind of where we're at right now.

Kayla Huszar: 9:12

Yeah, two things can be true. That's the reality, and we're moving towards this change, right, like this differentiation you made between, like, my person and my ego. Both of those things can be true. You've moved from, or are transitioning from, like creator, thought leader, let's just say it thought leader to working with men who are becoming parents or have little children. And so can you walk us through a little bit for the listener, like, what does that look like?

Kayla Huszar: 9:45

Because I know a lot of my clients who are women, identify as women, are coming to me with the other side of the story. Right, they're coming to me with the. This is what keeps me up at night. This is how my partner is useless or lazy or blind, or whatever words they're using to describe their reality and their perspective and their lived experience with this. They feel the pressure in their bodies, right, and so when you're working with people who identify as male, what are the things that you're enlightening them with? How are you working on the unlearning and the learning and the embodiment of these are the things that your partner is struggling with, and this is how you now step up to the reality of not helping but just doing.

Zach Watson : 10:34

So I'm gonna start off with a disappointing note, which is that all the guys that I talked to are already at least a little bit leaned in. Everyone that I talked to, they decided to book the call with me and I'm talking to them directly because they recognized that their wife has been talking about it for months and or they've been sharing my videos with them and, like they know something needs to change and they want to make that change, or at least they want to hear about the possibility of making that change with me. Yeah, so and then and now now we've pointed out the disappointing part that that's the majority that I've worked with. I think one of the questions that I am Constantly trying to feel that I think I made another video about it. The question is, like, how do I start this conversation with him? He's not listening, he's not hearing it. When people are saying they want to share my videos, but not sure how, and fun, funny enough, I had a call the other day when there was this really young couple she was sharing. She's saying like, yeah, I share videos with him all the time. I was like, you know, have they made any difference? Like I don't watch any of them. They're on the call together and I was like, why not? She's like he she sends me 42 in a day and I was like I Can't tell if you're lying or not. He's like I'll pull up my phone and he pulled up 15 of them from that morning. I think it was like midway through the day, and so what's happening is I'm not calling this laziness, I'm saying, yeah, that we want to do what feels easy and Maybe passive, aggressively, send a video that is really calling them out.

Zach Watson : 12:13

Some of us know that that's probably not the greatest idea. Here's, here's the record. Yeah, definitely share it and start with some context. Hey, this is a video that I saw today. Reminded me of a conversation we had last week, and I'm seeing From what he's saying here that we could. We could make an adjustment so we're not fighting about stupid stuff all the time. I Think if you're putting in a sentence there to contextualize it and not leave them to go to their defensive selves, that's gonna be a great way to to have them lean in a little bit more Again.

Zach Watson : 12:55

And and so the pushback on a lot of people when I say things like this is like we're already doing all the emotional labor. We're already doing all the mental. Why are you giving us more shit to do to get this through to their brains? I acknowledge that's more work for you and I think there's a positive light on the other side of that specific direct task. So that's. That's where I would start is Share content, start the conversation.

Zach Watson : 13:21

I've gotten a couple hundred comments now saying thank you so much for your videos. These have been great conversation starters. We've been able to learn and like move the needle forward by talking about your videos together. So I'm also working on a book and it's it's slowly becoming the sort of the bones for the. It'll be the textbook of my coaching programs with guys. So it's I'm looking at my post-it note notes over here. So Sort of starts with like identifying the problem. Most women have been trying to Like bang their head against the wall, trying to get them to understand that, and I think that's Some. Some guys are not getting it and they're pushing back their defensive. Some guys are getting it and they just there's something missing in communication. So once they kind of get it, we need to look at why it's important and the, the urgency behind that, which is like 50% of marriages are getting divorced. So like this is a very real experience that tons of people going through and I think guys don't realize that we feel really safe once, once we get the wedding ring and I think sometimes it takes something really scary.

Zach Watson : 14:31

Alyssa and I were separated back in 2018. Looking back, if, like I point to emotional labor and mental load, we're a huge impact. We bought a house. It was my idea to get the house. It was instead of just getting like a nice condo and I was not upholding my end of the bargain around Like getting through that learning curve of figuring out how to work with contractors and getting work done in your house. So a lot of it was falling on her. We are in financial, significant financial strain. It took going through we're separated for about 90 days. We set some firm expectations around how we wanted to be separated and then you know we came back from that saying like okay, let's figure things out. But Mental load was the reason that we were separated and I remember in a couple weeks ago, alyssa was realizing I Don't know what article it was, but she had really wanted to share a mental load article with me in 2019 and she's like I don't know if he's ready to hear it.

Zach Watson : 15:39

This is probably gonna be noise. I don't know if she ever actually shared it. We tried going back and finding the text to see what it was, but I was one of those husbands At some point that was defensive. I think the urgency Existed after that separation. Ideally, the urgency doesn't. Doesn't take a separation or a pending divorce to create that urgency.

Zach Watson : 16:03

So I think I Think with a lot of guys in those first discovery calls, I'm trying to be really blown with them. Like Do you think you'll end up in a divorce in three years if you don't improve this, which is a scary thing to say? A lot of it almost feels manipulative when I ask it, but like that's, that's got to be a real truth. Like you got to create urgency to make those changes. From there, I Think we got to start dismantling toxic masculinity that a lot of us have embedded in us. I Still have a lot in me.

Zach Watson : 16:34

I don't fully know how to get rid of it all. It's always gonna be there, but I think one conversation at a time makes a huge difference. And then from there, starting to define and identify where you're adding mental load and emotional labor for your partner and lastly, implementation and practice. That's that's sort of the framework for it all, and I know your question originally was what does it look like on your side? A lot of what it looks like is the implementation. It's the cons. Every week we're having a call saying how did your Sunday plans Expectations meeting go? What got brought up? What was the downfall? What did you argue about? What needs to be repaired? What new expectation are we working on this week? It's a lot of implementation, practice and adjustment and iteration and how do you find those conversations go?

Kayla Huszar: 17:29

Like you said? The disappointing part is that they're already leaned in, people listening right now who may be resonating that they're identifying some stuff for their partner. What are the next steps? If you know if you could go back to yourself in 2019? What were the words you needed to hear from Alyssa to help you Hear it? You know, because, very realistically, there are a lot of people in silent seething, in contemplation of divorce, in thinking how long can I do this? And so, if you could and if it's too personal, like, feel free to set a boundary with me, like what would you have needed to hear from Alyssa then?

Zach Watson : 18:17

Of question. I'm gonna uh, I don't know if I have an answer for that one, I don't know. You know, sometimes when you talk with like a teenager around habits or good choices, like you just kind of know you're going to say it and they're not going to hear it, and they'll hear it when they're 26.

Kayla Huszar: 18:43

They'll hear it when they're 30.

Zach Watson : 18:45

They're going to hear it when the lesson is far past. Like why did no one tell me this when I was 18?

Kayla Huszar: 18:50

Yeah, we, we, fucking told you, like you weren't listening.

Zach Watson : 18:53

Um, what's what's sad and concerning is I don't, I don't know. I'm sure she was saying things like this.

Kayla Huszar: 19:01

Right.

Zach Watson : 19:02

I know she was talking about mental without that word. I know she was talking about emotional labor without that word. Um, so you know, as I'm saying that, I'm realizing in real time, I think, that because the language didn't exist for that, then I didn't, I couldn't point to it, I couldn't describe it, she couldn't, she wasn't doing a wonderful job articulating. I'm going to pause for that. I'm going to show you something, yeah, so? So I was a teacher from 2014 to 2021 and in 2017 I was working at a school and they had this laminating machine and so we printed out these like I made I wanted, like my own posters. I didn't want those like stupid ones that always see it. Now, I recognize it's probably backwards, but this is Jennifer Lawrence. Um, my mother had bought me the flag for women's suffrage to put up in my classroom and I was a math teacher. So the stats show that about 50 to 51% of women in high school are crushing it in math and then it drops off significantly when they get to college, just because that's kind of. They either don't feel like you know, engineering is a choice, or they don't feel like math is like a route they want to go. But the skills are there, it's just societies like messaging to them that changes things. So I'd put up this poster, um, along with the suffrage flag, to kind of encourage them that, like, no math is actually for you, you can own this topic too. It's not. It might be a male dominated field, but it's not cause we dominate it, it's just cause you weren't given Legos, you were given dollars as a kid, which cut down on your spatial reasoning. Either way.

Zach Watson : 20:56

I had this epiphany the other day. So the quote is could there still be a lingering habit of trying to express our opinions in a certain way that doesn't offend or scare men? And it's, that's a. I thought it was an important quote because she was the highest paid actress in Hollywood at the time. If we're to rephrase that using some of the language that I now know, I would say so could there still be a lingering habit? Why are we still putting in emotional labor to not offend men? That's the. That's the question, um, because we deserve it. We don't. We shouldn't need this to do this emotional labor anymore, and so I think it's honestly a language barrier, uh, not in the traditional sense that we know it, of a different, like foreign language, but mental load, emotional labor, domestic labor, invisible labor, um, decision fatigue.

Zach Watson : 21:57

When you start introducing those things into your home, when you start introducing those things into your world so that he can and this was again the video I got a lot of negative feedback on when you can start letting him own that word too and not have it be just around domestic labor, but have decision fatigue and mental load be also something that he can associate with his work. He can start understanding and embracing, oh, that feeling of how I need to send a quote to a customer and I need to follow up with IT about this thing. You know, I need to do X, y and Z for my colleagues. That's all mental load. And if we can identify that, that's mental load. And it's also mental load to set up the appointment for our kid and make sure today I just I came from getting suppositories from Walgreens because she doesn't take down oral meds and making sure that those are on deck because she's been running a fever and we were about to run out this morning making sure there's childcare because we can't bring her to daycare. Today, when we can start associating the mental load that they're experiencing at work and also start seeing it at home.

Zach Watson : 23:15

I think it's just the language introduction into the home that probably would have made a huge difference and I think, again, I didn't have the language for it. But I think I started taking on emotional labor and mental load of what it was like to have a child during pregnancy by being sober with her. I tried taking on not doing things that I know she couldn't do. So, for example, we were about to go on a field trip to Six Flags and I told her that morning I was like Haley's, I recognize like you wouldn't be able to go on a roller coaster so I won't be going on them today, even though I love roller coasters. And in that moment she was like no, I need you to go on that roller coaster so that I can live vicariously through you. So I think there's a lot of moments where women are saying like I want to live vicariously through you, please enjoy that. But at the same time, I think, because I was doing some of that work, I was purposefully putting mental load on myself to start appreciating what her body changes were going through. It was a not loved series, but I might have to do it again just because it was.

Zach Watson : 24:24

Some people found it to be absurd, but I have like 17 ideas for what you can do when your partner is pregnant to for lack of a better word, like method act your way into doing some of the emotional labor and mental load that they do. So take your favorite fitting pair of clothes, put them in a box and hide them, and hide them with the clothes that she won't be able to fit into for however long. Don't eat sushi. Don't drink alcohol. Don't smoke. If she can't be taking more than ibuprofen, or not even taking ibuprofen, also, don't do that.

Kayla Huszar: 25:02

Hold meds, allergy meds, like some of those. For some women, they have to stop taking their ADHD meds, which comes with its own side effects and no more contact sports.

Zach Watson : 25:17

So something aggressive that I did was I put on weight vest during that and I put a sweatshirt on in the heat of New England summer and I didn't take it off because I knew that Alyssa was not able to regulate her temperature the way that she was normally able to, and so I just forced myself to sweat underneath that because I was like she doesn't have that control, so I'm gonna force myself to have that control and small things would happen. When I went to take it off, I also had a little fanny pack with a five pound weight in it. So I'm 6'5". I typically bound up stairs three at a time. I couldn't do that because it would whack me in the area and I was like, oh, she probably kind of waddles up one stair at a time. So now I'm gonna do that. So I think, just improving our awareness, using new language, trying to take new actions, to start bearing some of that labor. I know that wasn't quite the question that you would ask, but I think that's my best answer to it.

Kayla Huszar: 26:26

Yeah, yeah, and I actually applaud you in saying I don't know, after I asked you the hard question of what do you think Alyssa could have said, because I think there's a lot of power in sitting in I don't know, and admitting I don't know, because I think you could have come up with a bullshit answer just to placate me, for the podcast, to make you sound good, right. But I think there's a lot of power in saying I don't know, for both genders, especially because we have a limb, a knowledge limb, that we can easily access information from, and sitting in uncertainty is actually a skill that I think needs to be practiced again, because we have access to all of the knowledge and all of the scripts and all of the things that we could say or could do or need to be doing.

Zach Watson : 27:24

I guess I'm glad I sat in that I don't know, because I think I kind of came up with Probably a new solution is just pointing out the value of language there. No one's asked that specific question Like specifically, think about the 2019 period a year before we got pregnant, that was that probably would have been important and I think not to just be like a self-serving, self-pedaling content creator, but I think having it come from a man again I hate to say it, but probably hearing other guys talk about it and it not feeling like your wife is falling into that naggy, naggy BITCH wife like.

Zach Watson : 28:07

Deborah Barone from. Everyone Loves Raymond. I think hearing it from other guys because we're so used to having the Ray Barone be the person that we're complaining to. Oh yeah, my wife's been on my ass about X, y and Z Versus if you're hearing another guy talk about, like Laura Danger pointed out a really good video the other day from Travis and Jason Kelsey. I don't know if you saw that one, but do you know who those people are?

Kayla Huszar: 28:31

No, I don't.

Zach Watson : 28:33

So Travis Kelsey is Taylor Swift's current love interest there I'm the Kansas City Chiefs and Jason's his brother. They're both NFL players and they have a podcast together. And Travis was saying to his brother like hey, you know, you were at this event. You were in like shorts and sandals. That was odd. And he was really dressed up bud. And he was like, yeah, you know, my wife was supposed to bring me jeans. And he's like why didn't Jason bring jeans for Jason? Why was that on his wife? And then he starts going down the answer and then his brother's like laughing at him like you sound like an idiot. And like in that moment we hear him say like yeah, I really can't blame my wife for this one. And so in Laura pointed out, like in the commenter that brought Laura to us, like this is what accountability is going to continue looking like. Is having guys with microphones that guys also respect? Start having these conversations because we're so used to hearing it from these like trope TV show comedy places. We're not hearing it from men that we respect.

Kayla Huszar: 29:43

Yeah, or like sitting around the break room conversation, like my wife was really on my ass this weekend to mow the lawn and do the laundry, and don't I just deserve a break you know, and the other guy goes, well, like man, you go to the gym like five days a week and I know your wife takes your kids to the swimming lessons and I know you didn't go out and buy the pink shirt for pink shirt day.

Kayla Huszar: 30:06

Like and I know they were sick last week and your wife took three days off and you didn't. And again, that person is also partly leaned in right. Like they're, they're coming from it, from a place of that awareness of like. I've been noticing these things in my buddy, in my workmate, in whoever, and I'm actually going to take an opportunity to say like hey, man, I don't know, your perspective is real great on that.

Zach Watson : 30:32

Yeah, I think getting getting called out by our peers is a huge part of transformation and I think the huge opportunity I had that most, most guys are not going to have is I had 50,000, mostly moms on TikTok watching my every move, holding me to a really high standard as I was sort of showing my experience on paternity leave, and I learned a ton from combing through those comments and like seeing what the feedback was, as well as my first viral video, realizing like how incapable a lot of people thought father was for being able to take care of his kid from 7pm to 3am during my my night shift while we tried to get Alyssa sleep.

Kayla Huszar: 31:21

Yeah, yeah, and that's also a narrative that hurts everyone incapable incompetence you couldn't do that, you know as well as the default of thinking that women are taking care of everything at home.

Zach Watson : 31:39

I'm at last point I'll add to this one I know I've talked about it on other podcasts is that I really, you know, being a sales professional, I was grateful to have the guidance and mentorship that last year I was promoted to an account executive role from being a sales development rep. I was, I was a cold collar, I was number one for two quarters straight and the reason I'm saying that out loud is that I made a point to have my kid like on those like team meetings in the morning. I think the beauty that is often lost from COVID was that, because remote work became so normal, having kids and dogs show up in your screen was also really normal. And my teammates got to the point where, oh, he went off camera. He's probably changing the diaper, oh, oh, hi, like they would say hi to my, my daughter. That couldn't you know, didn't know what was going on, but they got to see that someone could be like a high performer and be a very pretty involved parent.

Kayla Huszar: 32:43

Yeah.

Zach Watson : 32:44

So that was. That was my purposeful way of trying to influence some of that culture is like you can be a totally leaned in father and and also crush your number.

Kayla Huszar: 32:55

Yes, absolutely. And so if people want to connect with you, zach, where where do they do that? Can you, can you say your Instagram handle and maybe give us some context in terms of what your most recent endeavor is in terms of helping people start these conversations.

Zach Watson : 33:10

Sure, yeah, so real Zach think share. The one I bought the blue check mark for Xam other account got fished on Instagram and Tiktok is Zach think share. So I work mostly with guys that are either about to be parents or newly or have young children that are looking to make a change. I love working with guys in sales and it can speak a lot of their same language. You can apply for a relationship goals consult. I have both groups that group sessions and one on one. I'm a huge fan of the one on ones and I think we're able to dig deep and make huge changes in your life.

Kayla Huszar: 33:54

Well, I really appreciate you being here with us today and real quick, I've started this new thing where I want to do like rapid fire questions at the end, and so really quickly, what is on your bedside table right now?

Zach Watson : 34:08

It is. I didn't sign up for this. By Dr Tracy D. She also has a podcast.

Kayla Huszar: 34:15

Yes, she's amazing. What do you do for creative outlet?

Zach Watson : 34:22

That's hard because a lot of it is Tiktok. I do try to do some dancing. I have this like this Tiktok account. I don't talk about Zach think share TOO. It's literally just like when I recognize I need to enjoy life a little bit more, I force, I put some music on and force myself to do all the dancing. And we have woods in our backyard and I've been working on building, carving out a path to the pond that's back there that doesn't exist at the moment.

Kayla Huszar: 34:52

Awesome. What is your favorite song to dance to?

Zach Watson : 34:57

Probably Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars.

Kayla Huszar: 35:01

What is your favorite movie?

Zach Watson : 35:05

First one that flashed to mind is Inception. That, or Dark Knight Batman.

Kayla Huszar: 35:13

Yeah, what are you going to do this week to reduce the mental load for your partner?

Zach Watson : 35:19

We have Thanksgiving coming up. We're hosting for the first time this year. She bought a ton of boxes of new cups and plates and stuff so we could actually not have to ask people to bring silverware with us. We're going to be having conversations around what expectations I think I currently expect of me around Thanksgiving and create some really, really solid outline for what the weeks falling up to Thanksgiving look like around food, around cluminous of the house, around what we want things to look like when people arrive Because I know that's going to be a huge source of stress for her and I know that typically I'm not as leaned in as I think I would like to be and so I think really flushing out some of those expectations so that we can be clear on who owns what, who ought to do what.

Kayla Huszar: 36:14

Yeah, awesome, that's so good. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today, and I really appreciate everything that you share, and I will be sure to include all of the show notes for anyone who wants to get in touch with you or follow you or download your freebie. I know you have one about conversation starters, and so I will direct them to all of those things.

Zach Watson : 36:35

Awesome. Thank you for having me, kayla, I appreciate it.

Kayla Huszar: 36:39

Thank you.