Amanda Stern, LITTLE PANIC
[0:09]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the webinominated podcast.
[0:13]Moms don't have time to read books.
[0:15]Please also check out my other podcast Kids Do Have Time to Read Books.
[0:19]I'm on Instagram at Zibi Owens, and at Moms don't have time to read books, and at Kids Do
[0:25]Have Time to Read.
[0:27]So please follow me, and if at any time you have suggestions, my email is zibiatzibiowens.com.
[0:33]Thanks for listening.
[0:34]Thanks so much to my latest sponsor, the Mermaid Pillow Company.
[0:38]mermaid pillowco.com.
[0:40]They make these amazing pillows with sequins on the back, and positive messages on the
[0:45]front, and they now even make custom pillows, and blankets.
[0:49]It's an amazing company, and if you enter the code Zibi, Z-I-B-B-Y, you will get 10% off,
[0:55]which is super cool.
[0:56]So please check them out mermaid pillowco.com.
[0:59]I'm excited to be here today with Amanda Stern.
[1:01]Amanda is the author of A Little Panic Dispatches from an anxious life.
[1:05]A memoir about her undiagnosed childhood panic disorder that takes place in New York City
[1:09]in the Eden Potts era.
[1:11]She's also written The Long Hall and 11 children's books written under pseudonyms.
[1:15]She's the founder of the Happy Ending Music and Reading series, which was a multi-disciplinary
[1:19]literary event series that took place at Joe's Pub and Symphony Space in New York.
[1:23]Her work has appeared in The New York Times, New York Times Magazine, and The New York
[1:26]Times Book Review among many other publications.
[1:29]She also writes the little panic blog on her website.
[1:31]Amanda currently lives in Brooklyn with her dog busy.
[1:34]Welcome, Amanda.
[1:35]Thanks for coming on, mom.
[1:36]Don't have time to read books.
[1:37]Thanks for having me.
[1:38]So can you please tell listeners what Little Panic is about, although it really kind of
[1:42]tells it from the subtitle Dispatches from an anxious life, but that's only a small piece
[1:46]of the puzzle.
[1:47]So tell us about the book.
[1:49]Sure.
[1:50]So Little Panic is a memoir about growing up with an undiagnosed panic disorder and Greenwich
[1:55]Village in the 70s around the time that Aton Pates went missing.
[1:59]And it's about how not knowing what was wrong with me shaped the course of my entire
[2:05]life and the ways in which the adult of my life tried to go about figuring out what was
[2:12]going on with me and in their attempts to figure that out inadvertently, can I curse on
[2:18]you?
[2:19]Go for it.
[2:20]Fuck me out.
[2:21]Yeah, there you go.
[2:23]And I love how you did it because you started the narrative when you were very, very young
[2:27]and went all through the school age years.
[2:30]But then at the same time you had a more present day and I kept waiting for them to meet
[2:33]up.
[2:34]I'm like, when are we going to meet?
[2:35]I can't wait to see what would happen.
[2:37]So it was really neat how you did that.
[2:38]Oh, thank you.
[2:39]I thought what made you write this book and the acknowledgements you said you avoided writing
[2:43]the book for a decade and then it took you four difficult years to write it and then even
[2:47]at the end you were like, thank god I'm done.
[2:48]I never want to see you again.
[2:50]Yeah.
[2:51]So is that how you felt?
[2:52]What made you?
[2:53]It sounded like you had to do it even though you didn't want to.
[2:56]I did.
[2:57]My body was like forced me to do it.
[3:00]Essentially what happened was I was working on my next novel.
[3:03]So my first novel came out in 2003 and then I started to write that was the long haul
[3:09]and then I started to write my next book and it was about intelligence testing and
[3:15]took place in the 50s up town and it was about a group of psychologists who were trying
[3:21]to come up with the most comprehensive intelligence test known to man.
[3:25]They decided to test on all the upper east side school kids and it was about how they inadvertently
[3:32]fucked them up.
[3:33]And so as I was writing it I was like this is very familiar and I mean obviously I knew what
[3:39]I was doing but it didn't feel honest and it just it wasn't working in some fundamental
[3:47]way for me.
[3:50]A couple other people had read it and they were like this is wildly ambitious and you
[3:56]know you're tackling these topics that you may know something about but only one aspect
[4:03]of it.
[4:04]So I realized yeah yeah it's not something about it just wasn't working for me.
[4:08]So I started again and a different novel.
[4:11]I just started writing a different novel and this one was me, a memoir about me as a child
[4:18]and coupled with a fictional story about diagnostic testing.
[4:25]So I was just very I was dancing around this topic that I somehow knew I needed to
[4:31]write but was afraid to do it.
[4:34]So what I didn't said was I thought well I'm just going to keep going on the second
[4:37]novel and I'm going to cheat on all of these projects and write my own story down privately
[4:46]and just get it out.
[4:47]And so I love that you perceive it as cheating and like you're the one in charge of all
[4:52]the projects.
[4:53]I know but they're we have you have a relationship with them.
[4:56]Yeah.
[4:57]You know I understand.
[4:58]Yeah.
[4:59]It's just such a funny way to think about it.
[5:00]No really every time I'm if I have a project and I'm leaving it for a week I feel guilty.
[5:03]I'm so sorry I'm going to have to leave you going to be alone.
[5:07]Here's some hummus and crackers.
[5:09]I just you know I develop a real relationship with the project.
[5:14]I did feel like I was cheating on it and I started to write my own story out and I had
[5:18]all this material this source material that I had wanted to work with in the first novel
[5:25]which was about all the evaluations that I had growing up from diagnostic testing.
[5:30]So I wanted to use this source material.
[5:32]So for the my own story that I started to write out I used all the source material and
[5:38]started to create the sort of collage piece and I just got really into it.
[5:44]I wrote about a hundred pages of it until I realized a wait a second.
[5:49]I think this is the project.
[5:51]So I showed the first hundred pages to my agent and he said this is the project so that
[5:57]is how I you know found my way to writing the real story and being honest about it and
[6:04]everything felt it just it felt right it felt like it was something that I could I could
[6:09]manage and it wasn't overly yeah yeah yeah like get overwhelmed talking about it.
[6:16]It's a lot you fit a lot in there and I loved it now it makes sense to me because I was
[6:20]going to ask later why you had included the pages of the reports that you had gotten about
[6:25]yourself yeah and now that you're talking about it this way you know there were a lot of
[6:29]scenes from all the testing yeah it made total sense within the context of the book so
[6:33]I wouldn't even have known that that's how it had started yeah it all started because
[6:37]of this folder that my mom had given me well I didn't even know existed when I was in
[6:42]my third issue she handed it to me said do you want this folder and I said well what
[6:46]is it and I opened it and inside well there were all the tests results and all the evaluations
[6:51]for my entire childhood.
[6:52]And part of what you keep saying after you do every single test in this book is like I
[6:56]don't know how I did again right like I did I get that answer right or not like this
[6:59]feeling of sort of unfinished yeah unsettling test taking for your whole life yeah it was
[7:05]really unresolved yeah I mean so just for the listeners so I ended up taking I was sort
[7:12]of sent on a 10 year testing Odyssey and I underwent all these different series of IQ tests
[7:18]from ages 11 to 19 which is not 10 years but I'm rounding up and I never knew why I was taking
[7:25]the tests I never knew what the results of the tests were I didn't know what the diagnoses were
[7:29]and so I didn't know that my mom was receiving these evaluations and so when she handed
[7:36]me the folder at 35 and said you want these I was like this is my the answer to my entire
[7:41]life is in your hands were you were you angry I was I was well I I wasn't angry when
[7:47]she gave me the folder because I hadn't looked through it yet I mean I knew what it was
[7:52]but I hadn't read it so I brought it home and it was only once I started to read them
[7:56]that I became angry because every single evaluation mentioned anxiety and it took me a while
[8:04]to reconcile that you know that account of a miss it well how did they miss it or to me it was
[8:13]more not how did they miss it it was it felt intentional you know because I was angry so when
[8:21]you're angry you sort of misapply some of your thinking and so I was reading it and and I was
[8:29]so obvious it's all right there why did they ignore it that was my the way that I processed the
[8:35]whole thing and it took a little while to realize no they were they were looking for something and
[8:40]we didn't have the language you know to talk about it then no one really had the vocabulary people
[8:45]weren't constantly saying their kid had ADD or you know panic and anxiety disorders we just wasn't
[8:52]you know in our conversational you know palate so I got over it but I was angry yeah originally
[8:59]it's really hard to believe that it's not that long ago I mean it's really not it's just right
[9:04]I mean to me it feels like I mean I feel like I'm you know a thousand so it does feel like a long
[9:10]time ago but yeah it wasn't that long ago the interesting thing is that while it feels like it
[9:17]feels like it was so long ago that when I was writing this book I thought is this relevant anymore
[9:23]it's so dated I feel so dated oh my gosh but I really felt well right but I didn't I didn't
[9:30]know that because I hadn't been going around yet to schools and talking to schools and talking
[9:35]parents and I was writing in a bubble inside of this like void and Fort Green Brooklyn in my
[9:41]apartment with my dog and so there was a bit of I was slightly mortified writing it and feeling
[9:47]like this is so obvious everyone knows this then but when I started to go to the schools and
[9:54]was talking to parents and they would tell me things about what they were doing
[10:00]I realized, wait a minute, what so much time has passed
[10:05]between the time I was a child and now,
[10:07]and we haven't learned how to do this?
[10:10]I thought we had the language to identify the issue,
[10:14]which we do, but we haven't yet come up with the way
[10:17]to address it at home or to resolve it in our families.
[10:22]So it's just been a really, really interesting dynamic
[10:28]to feel sort of ashamed and dated
[10:30]and then going into the world and be like,
[10:32]oh wait, you don't know this.
[10:34]Right, doesn't it feel kind of validate
[10:36]like that it was worth sharing the pain
[10:38]that you went through has some greater good?
[10:40]Absolutely.
[10:41]I'm helping all these people out there.
[10:42]Oh yeah, that's amazing.
[10:43]That feels amazing, but it also breaks my heart.
[10:46]It breaks my heart, that it has taken this long
[10:48]that I am now an adult.
[10:50]I'm no longer a four-year-old child who's suffering,
[10:54]but a four-hundred-year-old adult
[10:57]who is now dealing with all these other kids
[11:01]and parents who are in the exact same place
[11:03]and it just really breaks my heart.
[11:05]And then had you known earlier that you might have been
[11:08]able to avoid some of the more self-destructive type things
[11:10]that you pick up in the book?
[11:12]Probably, well, there's like self-medicating.
[11:14]Totally self-medicating, right?
[11:17]How you had to cope because there was no other way.
[11:19]Like I feel like a lot of kids and things that I'd used
[11:22]to turn, I mean, drinking or drugs or whatever,
[11:24]you had to like find a way out.
[11:26]Yeah.
[11:26]And now everybody is medicated.
[11:28]So it's, you know, although I'm wondering
[11:30]about the correlation of drinking and drugs now
[11:33]has it gone way down because of...
[11:34]I doubt it, those medications, so maybe it's not,
[11:37]I don't know.
[11:38]I don't know, but I do think that so many kids,
[11:40]so it's interesting that so many kids are medicated now
[11:43]and yet that we still haven't taught our parents
[11:47]and our teachers how to address the problems
[11:51]that they're being medicated for.
[11:52]So what do you think parents and teachers
[11:54]should be doing differently?
[11:55]Like what's the most, some of the more egregious mistakes you see?
[11:58]I think some of the most egregious mistakes I see
[12:01]are removing obstacles from your children's life
[12:04]in order to make things easier for them.
[12:06]Essentially, when your job as a parent is to teach your child
[12:12]how to be in reality, how to face reality,
[12:15]how to live in the world, and how to bear face
[12:19]and overcome obstacles.
[12:21]And when you're removing the obstacles for your kids,
[12:23]you're taking away a fundamental life skill,
[12:27]they're not learning.
[12:28]So that is something I see over and over and over again.
[12:32]And what's that name for it?
[12:33]It's snow plow, parent, is that it?
[12:36]So I just read that recently and I thought,
[12:38]that's pretty apt, but it's become a real phenomenon.
[12:43]Now it's a real problem, the snow plow parenting
[12:45]and helicopter parenting, all of that.
[12:48]It's so damaging and people don't realize
[12:50]because it feels right.
[12:52]It feels like, well, you feel your best intentions,
[12:57]but there are your best intentions for you,
[13:03]but not for your child.
[13:05]And it really bothers me and upsets me
[13:08]when I see that parents are sort of masterminding
[13:13]their children's reality.
[13:15]I think for some parents, I mean, I can't speak to everyone.
[13:18]I feel like it's this push and pull
[13:20]because you're trying to protect your child.
[13:22]If you see a child and distress,
[13:23]your instinct as a parent is to want to minimize the distress
[13:26]and protect your child, but your whole thing
[13:28]when you went to sleep away camp,
[13:30]like parents are supposed to, like the advice is,
[13:33]don't avoid the things that make you so anxious, right?
[13:37]Like don't, when I was reading like you stayed home
[13:39]from school some days, your mom would like,
[13:40]like you do that, like the advice today
[13:42]would be like, send her to school, right?
[13:44]Like they sent you to camp and you were dying over it.
[13:47]Like did not want to go, felt like your whole world
[13:49]was collapsing and then you went
[13:51]and the beginning was really painful,
[13:52]but you got over it and then you learned
[13:54]and then you had this quote at the end
[13:56]about like how brave you were at the end.
[13:57]You said, at camp I was scared until I wasn't.
[14:00]I went away and didn't come back
[14:01]at the first sign of trouble, which means I am brave.
[14:03]My body made a callous around my feelings
[14:06]and now I know that being scared doesn't mean staying scared.
[14:08]I'm tough enough to withstand anything.
[14:10]I'm not going back to how I was.
[14:12]I am brave now, I'm cured, I am normal.
[14:14]And then a few days later.
[14:16]Yeah, returned.
[14:17]Yeah, all the games are reversed.
[14:18]Well, I think that, you know, there are two parts to it.
[14:21]It's not just that you want to have your kid face it,
[14:24]you know, that you want to eliminate your child's distress
[14:26]and that you want to have your kid face
[14:28]whatever it is that's upsetting them.
[14:30]It's that you want to explain to them what it is
[14:35]that is causing the distress and how they should handle
[14:38]the distress and then you send them in.
[14:41]Right, not blind.
[14:42]Right, not like dumping them into the pool.
[14:44]Exactly.
[14:45]Right. And so I think that, you know,
[14:47]that's another mistake that parents make is they think,
[14:49]oh, well, I'm not supposed to be removing the obstacles.
[14:53]I'm supposed to be throwing them in front of them.
[14:56]And that's not it either.
[14:58]So, you know, with camp, yes, it was a good thing
[15:02]that I faced something, but it was,
[15:05]it was too big a chunk.
[15:07]It was two months away at age eight.
[15:11]I do that too.
[15:11]Yeah, I like never got over it.
[15:13]It's, yeah, and I had a panic disorder.
[15:15]So, you know, so it's, yeah, it's really traumatizing.
[15:18]Yeah, it would be less traumatizing.
[15:21]And it would have been a better experience for me
[15:24]had I gone for one month.
[15:28]And I had been given the tools and the techniques
[15:32]for how to get through it and for how to face something
[15:36]and get used to it and get through it.
[15:38]And it's only when you have the techniques and the tools
[15:41]that you can apply it, but without it,
[15:44]being thrown into something without, you know,
[15:47]any coping skills you're gonna drown.
[15:50]So, I just wanted to say one last thing is about,
[15:55]you know, a couple of parents that I've talked to have said,
[15:58]well, you know, when my kids get worried
[16:01]that they're gonna get kidnapped or I'm gonna die
[16:04]or and I say, well, what do you tell them?
[16:06]And they say, well, I tell them I'm not gonna die
[16:08]and that's ridiculous to worry about that.
[16:09]Nothing bad is gonna happen to me.
[16:11]And that is, you know, that's another huge problem.
[16:16]And it's not true.
[16:18]Right.
[16:19]But you just don't know.
[16:21]So I understand that they want to make their kids feel better
[16:26]but it makes their kids feel worse if they don't know
[16:29]what to do.
[16:30]And kids really are just asking for life skills.
[16:34]They just wanna know what to do.
[16:35]In the event that something terrible happens
[16:37]and that they're not thrown headfirst
[16:40]into the ocean without a life jacket.
[16:42]All they want is the life jacket that's all they're asking for.
[16:45]They're not saying, you know, I believe you're gonna die,
[16:48]I know you're gonna die, they're just saying,
[16:50]hook me up with a life jacket.
[16:52]That's like, in the book, I felt like you kept getting
[16:55]frustrated with your mom when you would ask her for that
[16:57]and she wasn't giving you what you needed.
[16:58]Right.
[16:59]And you had to be like, no, what do I do if I get caught
[17:02]on my way to the bus, like, yeah, and I don't come back.
[17:05]What should I do with that babysitter who takes me away?
[17:08]Right.
[17:09]Because uncertainty is terrifying.
[17:10]Yeah.
[17:11]You know?
[17:12]And the whole world is uncertain to kids.
[17:15]So I think it's just a parents job to say, here are the,
[17:18]like, six main life skills that you need to know.
[17:22]So you wrote this book, you've also written,
[17:25]like, a million other books somehow.
[17:27]Under, so you used a pseudonym.
[17:29]I did, right, the Frankly Franny series.
[17:32]Why are you using a pseudonym for that?
[17:34]So I am, essentially, I write adult books,
[17:38]which you would know, because I only have two.
[17:40]But in my head, and in reality, I have more than two
[17:45]because I've written many adult books.
[17:48]They just haven't all been published.
[17:50]So I started out as an adult fiction writer.
[17:53]And the kids' books came to me just sort of out of the blue
[17:58]and they were offered to me.
[18:00]And I said, well, I have not anything that I do
[18:03]and I'm not that interested in it, you know,
[18:05]so no, I'm not gonna take on this project.
[18:09]And then they said, well, here's how much we could pay you.
[18:11]And I said, I will get to work tomorrow.
[18:13]So I decided that I would do it,
[18:17]but I would do it under a pseudonym
[18:19]because I didn't want to confuse my career tracks.
[18:24]I didn't want people to, you know,
[18:26]I knew I was gonna be writing two young adult books
[18:28]for this company.
[18:30]And I didn't want people to then think,
[18:32]oh, Amanda Stern, she writes kids books,
[18:35]which is ultimately what ended up happening anyways.
[18:37]I said, people are like, oh, Amanda Stern,
[18:38]you write kids books, right?
[18:39]I'm like, oh, so I did under a pseudonym
[18:42]and then that same editor left and went to Penguin
[18:46]and then called me up and said, hey,
[18:48]we need to fill this niche.
[18:49]And I was like, she said, do you have any ideas?
[18:52]And I said, no, I don't.
[18:53]I don't write kids books, please don't ask me.
[18:55]I don't wanna do this anymore.
[18:57]What if?
[18:58]And I just came up with this idea on the spot
[19:00]and realized, and I kind of do like doing this.
[19:03]So I ended up writing nine books,
[19:06]the Frankly Franny series.
[19:07]And I really loved it, I really loved it.
[19:10]But I, again, didn't want to confuse my readership
[19:15]of six people for Amanda Stern with the larger
[19:20]readership for kids.
[19:21]My question though is I feel like authors need
[19:24]to have a platform, right?
[19:26]You have to like go out and tour and all this stuff
[19:28]and Instagram and whatever.
[19:30]Yeah.
[19:31]How do you have a pseudonym like in this day and age?
[19:33]Do you still use your, like how?
[19:34]Well, I haven't written those books in a long time.
[19:37]Okay.
[19:38]So it was long enough ago that the last book came out in,
[19:42]I mean, 2012, 2013?
[19:45]That long ago.
[19:46]Yeah, but I see what you're saying.
[19:48]Do you think you could do it now?
[19:49]Like could you?
[19:50]I know my own name could someone decide to do that now
[19:53]and pull it off if unless you're J.K. Rowling or so?
[19:56]Yeah, I mean, well, in what way would they not be able
[19:58]to pull it off?
[20:00]without having any sort of back story
[20:02]or not going on podcasts or not going to book tour,
[20:05]not having an Instagram with their pictures,
[20:07]and I feel like there's so much surrounding
[20:09]each author that I meet.
[20:11]Everyone has their own kind of face of the brand
[20:15]that is themselves the author,
[20:17]and that's like essential to sales and how much.
[20:19]Followers, you have, I don't know,
[20:20]I just get the business of it.
[20:23]Yeah, I think, I don't know,
[20:25]because I honestly have written so many kids books,
[20:27]and yet I don't know that market.
[20:29]I don't know anything about it,
[20:31]except for, I sounded like I was Canadian, just there.
[20:34]I don't know anything about it,
[20:36]but I did do press for it.
[20:38]I wanted it.
[20:39]Yeah, I went on a book tour for,
[20:41]you're so not invited to my but Mitzvah.
[20:43]Right.
[20:44]I did stuff for Frankly, Franny.
[20:46]I don't think we had podcasts when-
[20:49]Okay, that was the silly question,
[20:51]I was just kidding.
[20:52]No, it's absolutely all.
[20:53]It's unsancely at all.
[20:53]I just think it's a different market.
[20:57]That age don't listen to podcasts.
[20:59]I don't know.
[21:00]I got away with it and I'm happy about it.
[21:02]I had so many more questions,
[21:04]but we're almost out of time.
[21:06]There was a picture of you on Instagram,
[21:07]speaking of Instagram,
[21:08]wearing headphones and saying you were doing
[21:10]a secret side project.
[21:11]Yes, so tell me, can you tell me anything?
[21:13]I'm not sure if I'm allowed to tell you,
[21:15]so I'm going to.
[21:16]Great.
[21:17]So I've been hosting a book podcast
[21:21]called Bookable, where I interview an author,
[21:25]and we do sort of a deep dive into a book,
[21:28]into their book.
[21:29]And so each episode is sort of doing an X-ray
[21:32]of like the DNA of the book and giving audience,
[21:34]the audience an idea of the soul of the book.
[21:38]And it hasn't launched yet.
[21:40]I don't know when it's going to launch.
[21:42]I don't know where it's going to be hosted,
[21:44]but it's being produced by a company called Loudtree Media.
[21:48]Now I'm really going to get in trouble.
[21:50]Maybe I can delete this if you really can't say it.
[21:53]I'll check out the words,
[21:54]but if he's like, if he's going to fire me for it,
[21:57]then I will delete it.
[21:58]No, it's fine.
[21:59]Well, I don't get paid that much, honestly,
[22:01]but we still don't want you to get fired.
[22:02]You're right.
[22:03]So anyway, yeah.
[22:04]So it's a book podcast.
[22:07]I'm interviewing authors.
[22:08]I don't know when it's going to launch,
[22:10]and it's been a whole lot of fun.
[22:12]The podcast or the best?
[22:13]They're the best.
[22:14]The greatest thing I've ever done in my life.
[22:16]I'm like having the best time.
[22:17]Well, you're very good at it.
[22:18]Oh, thank you.
[22:19]I'm sure we'll get out of two.
[22:21]OK.
[22:23]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors,
[22:26]particularly in the memoir space?
[22:29]Yes, I think I do.
[22:31]I mean, I have advice.
[22:32]I have to say yes to that question.
[22:33]I think I do.
[22:34]I have advice for authors in any,
[22:37]that I meant I meant particularly to memoirs.
[22:39]It doesn't have to be to memoirs, but I just...
[22:41]I have advice to all writers.
[22:43]Great.
[22:43]Let's take a look here.
[22:44]OK.
[22:44]My advice is, why two pieces of advice,
[22:47]one, if you really feel in your soul
[22:50]that you're a writer, if this is what you have to do,
[22:53]if someone asked you whether you would write,
[22:56]even if you knew you would never get published,
[22:58]and your answer is yes, then you're a writer,
[23:01]and you have to keep writing no matter what,
[23:04]and you are never to give up.
[23:06]You have to just keep going.
[23:08]If you're a writer, you write no matter what,
[23:11]and you do not give up.
[23:12]That's my big piece of advice.
[23:13]My other piece of advice is that if you're
[23:16]the kind of writer who hates writing,
[23:18]and only likes having written, please don't say that out loud.
[23:25]That's it.
[23:26]That's it.
[23:27]I can't.
[23:28]It just kills me when writers say that they hate writing.
[23:31]I don't do that very much.
[23:32]Oh, I hear it so often.
[23:33]Really?
[23:33]It drives me a berserk, yeah.
[23:36]They're like, oh, I hate...
[23:37]And I don't know if it's just that they want to quote
[23:41]Dorothy Parker.
[23:43]So they're saying, you know, I hate having written, I love...
[23:46]I hate writing, I love having written, but I can't stand it.
[23:48]I'm like, well, this said, no one is making you be a writer.
[23:51]Right.
[23:52]This is your choice.
[23:53]This is your privilege, like it's an absolute privilege.
[23:56]And like, no one is going to...
[23:58]It's not like going to the gym.
[23:59]Yeah, no one needs to be over the run.
[24:01]Right.
[24:02]I'm not crying for you because you hate writing.
[24:06]You know, this profession that you have chosen
[24:08]that you get paid little for, and you must have some other
[24:12]comfort in your life to allow you to do this.
[24:15]Like, I'm not going to feel bad for you.
[24:16]So stop saying it.
[24:18]Okay.
[24:19]I hope everybody heard that.
[24:20]And, you know, drink a lot of coffee.
[24:23]And then I didn't ask what's coming next.
[24:24]You have the podcast coming next.
[24:25]Are you writing another or you're working another book?
[24:27]I am.
[24:28]I started another book.
[24:29]It's a novel.
[24:30]I'm trying to write...
[24:31]I don't know what to call it.
[24:32]It's crime-ish, suspensey, and it's like a literary crime novel,
[24:38]I say right now, but in nine months I'll be like, it's for kids.
[24:42]So yeah, I'm doing that.
[24:43]And then I'm doing the book podcast.
[24:46]And I'm also...
[24:47]I've started speaking at schools and organizations
[24:51]and workplaces about anxiety and mental illness.
[24:54]And I'm also...
[24:55]I also started a blog called The Little Panic blog
[25:00]on my website, AmandaSturn.com.
[25:02]And that's been amazing.
[25:03]I love that.
[25:04]It's so much fun.
[25:06]And also I discovered there's a place on my website
[25:09]that says site statistics.
[25:12]I just discovered that on Instagram.
[25:14]I have a 19-year-old show me.
[25:16]And she's like, did you know you can see it?
[25:18]Did it act?
[25:18]It's like, no way.
[25:19]Wait, on Instagram?
[25:20]You can see it's a little bit of a lot of, like, how many men
[25:23]and women and women?
[25:24]What?
[25:25]I'm going to show you when we turn this up.
[25:26]Oh my God.
[25:27]I know.
[25:27]It's like mind-blowing to me.
[25:28]Yeah, it's like, I don't believe it.
[25:29]Well, every day I'm like, refreshing on my...
[25:32]And I'm like, 180.
[25:33]That is going to play your mind.
[25:37]Yeah, so it's pretty great.
[25:38]It's all good.
[25:39]Awesome.
[25:40]Yeah.
[25:40]Well, thank you for sharing your story.
[25:42]It was super well written, really valuable.
[25:44]And just, it was a labor of love, and you could tell.
[25:47]And I'm really glad you did it.
[25:48]Thank you so much.
[25:50]Just as one person reading it.
[25:51]So thanks for coming on mom's time to read books.
[25:53]Thanks for having me.
[25:56]Thanks again to my sponsor, Mermaid PillowCo.
[26:00]Mermaid PillowCo.com slash zibby.
[26:04]And her code zibby for 10% off.
[26:06]Thanks so much.
[26:06]Check out those really awesome giftable pillows and blankets.
[26:09]Thanks for listening.
[26:10]To mom's don't have time to read books, you can follow me on Instagram at mom's don't
[26:14]have time to read books and at zibby Owens and my new podcast at Kids Do Have Time
[26:20]to Read.
[26:21]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[26:25]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.
[26:29]Thanks for listening.
[26:30]You can always email me at zibby at zibby Owens.com.