Tara Schuster, BUY YOURSELF THE F*CKING LILLIES
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens and you're listening to the award-winning podcast.
[0:12]Moms don't have time to read books.
[0:14]Please sign up for my newsletter at ziviowens.com.
[0:17]For updates on podcast guests and lots of live events.
[0:21]Hi, everybody.
[0:22]I hope you're having a nice Thursday.
[0:24]I hope you enjoyed this following podcast.
[0:26]And I also hope that this week you've had time
[0:28]to check out my new website called wefoundtime.com.
[0:31]And you can also access it on ziviowens.com.
[0:34]But it's a collection of original exclusive essays
[0:37]written entirely by guests who have been on this podcast.
[0:40]Moms don't have time to read books.
[0:42]And this week's five essays are by Gretchen Ruben,
[0:44]Claire Gibson, Alyssa Altman, Nicole Keer,
[0:47]and also one for myself.
[0:49]And each week we'll have different authors
[0:50]writing about things that moms might not have time to do
[0:53]but that they somehow found time to do.
[0:55]So it's intended to be a little respite fruit
[0:58]from the rest of your life while you just read
[1:01]and consume great new content in a new way
[1:04]while we're all stuck at home.
[1:05]It was not supposed to be a stuck at home publication
[1:07]but hey, why not?
[1:08]We're all here.
[1:09]I hope it helps you and I hope you like it.
[1:12]So let me know and look forward to more essays
[1:15]each week from different authors.
[1:16]Also, don't forget to watch my Instagram live show today
[1:19]from 11 to 12.
[1:20]I'll have new five new authors on four or five, mostly five,
[1:24]each day and they have great interesting things to say.
[1:27]So please check it out on at ziviowens.
[1:29]Excited to be interviewing Tara Schuster today.
[1:32]Be a Skype who's the author of by yourself,
[1:34]the F-C-K-I-N-J, Lillie's and other rituals
[1:39]to fix your life from someone who has been there.
[1:42]That was all the title by the way.
[1:43]She is currently the vice president
[1:45]of talent and development at Comedy Central
[1:47]and is the executive in charge of Lice Out
[1:49]with David Spade.
[1:50]She was formerly the executive in charge
[1:52]of the Emmy and Peabody award-winning key and peel,
[1:55]midnight and numerous other shows.
[1:56]Her plays have been performed
[1:58]at the International Fringe Festival.
[2:00]Her writing has been featured in The New Yorker
[2:02]and Forbes Online.
[2:02]She currently lives in Los Angeles.
[2:04]So welcome, Tara.
[2:05]Thanks for coming on mom's no time to read books.
[2:08]Thank you so much for having me.
[2:10]Can you please tell us nurse what your book is about?
[2:13]Yes.
[2:13]So my book is the story of how I re-parented myself.
[2:19]And sort of what that means is I grew up
[2:23]in a really neglectful household
[2:25]where things came to die.
[2:27]The plants, the pets, Iggy the iguana was just a goner
[2:32]because nobody knew what to feed iguanas or that we should.
[2:36]And it was just chaos.
[2:39]So by the time I was 25,
[2:42]I was just like this mess-direct disaster of a person
[2:46]suffering from chronic anxiety and depression
[2:50]which felt really physical.
[2:52]Like it felt like I was living in a headache
[2:55]and I felt like I was living in a panic attack.
[2:58]And on a good day,
[3:00]this would reduce me to sobbing on the subway
[3:04]or falling apart on a random person's stoop.
[3:07]And that was a good day because it meant
[3:09]I had held my, can I curse or no cursing?
[3:13]I think go for it.
[3:14]I can not curse, it's fine.
[3:15]Okay, it meant that I held my shit together at work
[3:19]if I was crying on a random person's stoop
[3:21]as opposed to in my cubicle.
[3:24]And this would have, I think, kept going on
[3:28]had I not hit rock bottom at 25
[3:31]when I drunk dialed my therapist on my 25th birthday
[3:36]threatening to hurt myself.
[3:38]And that next morning, I played back the voicemails
[3:43]that she had left me.
[3:45]And when I heard the worry and her voice,
[3:48]the concern for my safety, I got really worried.
[3:52]I realized this is not a sustainable life.
[3:55]I'm not going to make it if I don't make some radical changes,
[4:00]but how do I move forward?
[4:02]I don't have any mentors to go to,
[4:05]I don't have parents I can ask,
[4:07]I don't even know how to change a vacuum cleaner filter.
[4:10]So like how exactly am I supposed to change my life?
[4:14]And I also kind of felt like I shouldn't feel this bad
[4:18]that in a lot of ways I was privileged,
[4:21]I had gone to really good schools.
[4:23]And my parents had gone into credit card debt
[4:25]to keep me in private schools.
[4:27]And I had student loans.
[4:28]So I went to a really good college.
[4:30]And I was always really good at work.
[4:32]That was where I shined, but I was just so bad at life.
[4:36]But that next morning, I decided it really didn't matter
[4:39]if I should or shouldn't feel this way.
[4:41]The only thing that was real was that I hated my life
[4:44]and wanted a new one.
[4:46]So I kind of wondered what would happen
[4:49]if I re-parented myself.
[4:52]What would happen if I became my own parents
[4:55]and I gave myself the nurturing I never had?
[4:59]And what would that look like?
[5:00]And since I had always been really good at school,
[5:03]the very first most natural thought I had was,
[5:07]well, let's build a curriculum,
[5:09]let's build a curriculum of self-care.
[5:12]And so I started at a Google Doc
[5:14]where I put in all the questions I had
[5:18]that I wanted to learn the answers to like,
[5:20]what are values?
[5:22]What are principles?
[5:23]What are vegetables?
[5:25]Like, what are they and which ones should I be eating?
[5:29]And I just attacked that Google document.
[5:32]I read a lot of memoirs as self-help.
[5:36]I think all memoir in a sense is self-care and self-help
[5:41]because it is the story of how people kind of make sense
[5:44]of their lives.
[5:45]I followed any advice I heard,
[5:48]like anything, even stuff that sounded to woo-woo,
[5:52]like starting a gratitude practice or journaling.
[5:55]I thought journaling was just for broken narcissists,
[5:58]not for me.
[5:59]And five years later, I had a 600-page Google document
[6:04]and I was calm and stable and happy,
[6:09]which is, I cannot describe what a shocker that is to me
[6:14]that I am content with my life
[6:16]and not trying to run away from it anymore.
[6:20]And that was sort of when I realized I had a book in me
[6:24]that I had an offering,
[6:26]something I wanted to share with other people
[6:29]because I think there are a lot of us out there
[6:31]who think we should be fine.
[6:33]And so we just repress any negative feelings
[6:37]because we shouldn't feel that way.
[6:39]But the truth is, that shit just comes back up
[6:42]like over and over and over again.
[6:44]You know, I write in my book,
[6:46]that what you do not deal with,
[6:48]deals with you always.
[6:50]Like it becomes the soundtrack to your life.
[6:54]And so I thought if I could through stories
[6:57]and through my own kind of insights, help others,
[7:01]then that would be something meaningful
[7:03]and that could be something that I could put out
[7:05]into the world.
[7:06]And so that long ramble is what the book is about.
[7:10]That was great.
[7:11]Are you kidding?
[7:12]That wasn't a ramble.
[7:13]That was perfect and it was very articulate
[7:15]and that was more than what the book was about.
[7:17]That was the heart of the book right there,
[7:19]which was fantastic.
[7:20]Thank you.
[7:21]So let me redo this one passage if you don't mind
[7:24]which speaks to sort of what you had started to talk about.
[7:27]You said this is in the self-hatred sort of part
[7:29]before you developed your new plan.
[7:32]I feel ashamed that sparks in my belly creeps up my chest
[7:35]and sets my heart on fire with hate.
[7:37]I hate myself.
[7:38]I hate the things I do.
[7:39]I hate my body.
[7:40]I hate this double life of being good at work
[7:43]and bad at life.
[7:44]So just take me back to that moment a little more.
[7:47]No, I still like the therapist.
[7:47]Take me back to that place.
[7:49]No, but what did it feel like
[7:51]and how aside from hitting bottom,
[7:54]like what did feeling like that inspire you to really
[7:57]just tell me about that quote.
[7:59]It's something about it.
[8:00]What did you tell even hearing it again?
[8:02]You know, it's funny.
[8:03]I'm so happy you chose that
[8:05]because I haven't talked to anyone about that particular
[8:07]passage, but it was so raw.
[8:11]You know, I think there was such a particular shame
[8:14]about drunk dialing my therapist.
[8:16]You know, I knew that was not a good look,
[8:19]but was not something somebody
[8:22]anywhere near stable would do.
[8:24]And I felt a lifetime of shame because growing up,
[8:30]I was told pretty explicitly,
[8:32]you're wrong, you're bad, your body is bad.
[8:36]And I get into the book about specific times that that happens.
[8:40]But it felt to me like every cell in my body hated me
[8:47]and was putting a nice sort of like knife in my heart
[8:51]in my lungs and my, like a stabbing kind of pain
[8:56]that turned into a fire.
[8:59]And I thought it was painful.
[9:03]And so even thinking about it now,
[9:05]like I'm welling up a little bit
[9:06]because I have, I have a lot of distance from that moment,
[9:10]but I have a lot of compassion for that version of myself,
[9:13]for the version of myself that just absolutely was miserable
[9:17]and then was adding blame to the misery.
[9:21]And I think that's where a lot of people get stuck.
[9:24]They think I feel bad about this one part of my life.
[9:27]I shouldn't feel bad, which is like,
[9:30]if you're putting a knife in yourself of self hatred,
[9:34]then you really twist the knife when you say,
[9:36]well, I shouldn't hate myself.
[9:38]You know, you do further damage.
[9:41]But I think I had to get that low
[9:43]to be able to climb back out again.
[9:46]And, you know, I genuinely am grateful
[9:49]for hitting that rock bottom and for feeling those feelings
[9:52]because it allowed me to see where my floor was.
[9:56]Like that was the worst I've ever felt.
[9:59]And.
[10:00]I really wanted to describe it to readers
[10:03]because I wanted them to come with me for a second,
[10:06]you know, to go down to the basement
[10:08]and see what scary things were there
[10:10]because we can all face the scary things.
[10:14]We can all feel our feelings.
[10:17]If I could do it, like a completely unqualified,
[10:20]like I'm not a special person,
[10:22]I just was willing to feel it, you know?
[10:25]So my message is you can get through these things.
[10:28]Glen and Doyle says, you know, we can do hard things.
[10:31]We really can, and I wanted to make sure
[10:33]that people knew this wasn't just a la, la, la.
[10:37]Let's go on vacation to Toldoom,
[10:39]so scared journey.
[10:41]You know, that there's some feeling
[10:44]that you really have to do to do the work.
[10:47]Just as a reader, you definitely took me down there with you.
[10:50]I felt like you were so expressive
[10:53]in your writing style and so conversational,
[10:56]I felt like I was literally like sitting
[10:58]with you on the bathroom floor or whatever.
[10:59]And just anyway, which is why it's all the more rewarding
[11:03]when you get to the place that you're at.
[11:05]I presume now, but I can't assume anything,
[11:07]but certainly when you wrote the book,
[11:09]you're feeling pretty good.
[11:10]And I'm beyond impressed that you took the initiative.
[11:13]I mean, I could not do that.
[11:14]I could not like sit there and basically give myself therapy
[11:19]for 600 pages or whatever, 600, 800, what did you say?
[11:23]In a Google book, 600, that's impressive.
[11:26]I mean, and you said there was a quote in the book
[11:28]where it said, as I wrote, it felt like I was receiving
[11:30]DMs from my soul, which I like underlined.
[11:33]And I was like, oh my gosh, that's perfect.
[11:35]Because it's so true.
[11:36]Like when sometimes when you write the thing,
[11:39]you don't even know you're thinking the things
[11:40]until they come out.
[11:42]I mean, is that sort of what you found
[11:43]when you started writing it all?
[11:46]Yeah, you know, so while to the Google doc,
[11:51]the book is based off of my findings in the Google doc,
[11:54]but the book is definitely a more thought-out version
[11:58]you know, the Google doc was just me experiencing my feelings
[12:01]for the first time ever, really.
[12:03]Like not being ashamed of my feelings,
[12:05]not repressing them, but actually feeling them.
[12:08]And between the doc and journaling,
[12:12]what I realized is journaling is the thing
[12:16]that can most quickly build self-awareness in anyone
[12:21]because it really forces you to be present,
[12:24]like the act of writing is an act of being present.
[12:27]So even if you're writing about the future
[12:30]or worried about the past and you're writing,
[12:32]you are experiencing those things in the present.
[12:35]So I thought it was gonna be really hard
[12:38]to sort of understand for all of my issues
[12:41]or and just why was I such a mess?
[12:44]But it was pretty fucking easy.
[12:46]Like as soon as I started writing,
[12:50]my soul was like, we were never hugged,
[12:52]we were told we were bad, I'm scared.
[12:55]And I think I now talk, I talk to a lot of people,
[12:59]a lot of people ask me about journaling.
[13:00]I'm like, oh, do I really have to journal?
[13:02]Is that really a good solution?
[13:04]I'm like, yeah, I've been doing it for eight years.
[13:08]I'm not really that disciplined of a person.
[13:11]I just know it works.
[13:12]And do you really do it every day?
[13:14]The gratitude, the practice?
[13:16]I know you say you do.
[13:17]I just want to share this again.
[13:19]Is it gonna annoy you if I say yes?
[13:22]It's not gonna annoy me at all.
[13:24]I'm gonna be impressed.
[13:25]I'm gonna be even, I'm gonna be totally impressed.
[13:28]Yes, I write a journal three pages every day
[13:31]and I end that practice.
[13:33]It's a list of 10 things I'm grateful for every day for eight years.
[13:37]And if anybody wants to be 10 to 20% happier,
[13:42]if you just did a gratitude list of 10 things every day,
[13:46]it makes a huge difference in your life.
[13:48]It takes a couple minutes,
[13:50]but now I've listed 32,000 things I'm grateful for.
[13:54]Or some number like that, like how do you not
[13:58]have a better perspective on your life
[14:00]when you're kind of constantly forcing yourself to do that?
[14:04]And how I approach it, because I've heard a lot of people
[14:08]have said, you must be so disciplined
[14:09]that you do all these things.
[14:11]And I am not a disciplined person.
[14:13]I literally late last night ate a chocolate Bobca muffin
[14:18]out of my freezer because I remembered it was there.
[14:22]It's not discipline.
[14:25]What it is is enthusiasm.
[14:28]I know it works.
[14:30]I'm enthusiastic about it.
[14:32]I like feeling better.
[14:34]And so I really retrained my brain
[14:39]to think about journaling and the gratitude list
[14:42]and my other rituals as enthusiastic, joyful, fun things,
[14:47]not things I had to do, things that made my life richer,
[14:50]not that I was obligated to do.
[14:53]And when you reframe it that way,
[14:55]then writing a gratitude list every day
[14:57]isn't some disciplined act.
[15:00]It's like a fun thing that makes your life better.
[15:04]So that's how I kind of, I'd love to be really like,
[15:08]I'd love for my ego to be like, oh, you're so disciplined.
[15:11]You're, wow.
[15:13]But candidly, it's not where it's coming from.
[15:17]It's definitely coming from my enthusiasm.
[15:19]So can you share what were you grateful for today?
[15:23]Oh, yeah.
[15:24]I mean, in these times, it's become a lot more basic.
[15:29]For me, the things that I keep going back to are food
[15:32]in the refrigerator, food in my freezer,
[15:35]freshwater, my health, the health of my family.
[15:39]There's nothing like a pandemic to show you
[15:42]what's real, what's essential.
[15:44]Maybe a month ago, my biggest concern was,
[15:47]should I or should I not get eyelash extensions?
[15:51]Everyone seemed to have eyelash extensions,
[15:54]and should I have those?
[15:56]And now I am grateful for a friend who checked in on me
[16:02]because she knows that I struggle with inviting depression
[16:05]and she just wanted to put her hand out there
[16:08]and say, how's it going?
[16:10]So those were some of the things on my list this morning.
[16:13]That's so nice.
[16:14]I know, it's so funny.
[16:15]I mean, I feel like before the sulteing,
[16:17]I was like, oh, I should like watch my weight.
[16:20]And I'm like, so annoyed about how this fits
[16:23]and this other thing.
[16:23]And I'm literally like, okay,
[16:25]so the global food supply situation.
[16:28]Yeah.
[16:29]My supermarket's pretty much empty.
[16:31]Where's the food coming from?
[16:33]How do I know I'm going to get any more of it?
[16:35]Like, right.
[16:37]I mean, this is the kind of thing where we can,
[16:42]I feel two ways about this moment.
[16:44]One is I don't love,
[16:46]I've seen a lot of posts on Instagram that are like,
[16:48]this is like the time to fix all your routines
[16:52]and do self-reflection and introspection.
[16:55]And I agree.
[16:56]You know, I think this is, I think self-care in a crisis
[16:59]is mandatory because just like in the airplane safety videos,
[17:04]you know, you really do need to put on your oxygen mask
[17:07]before you can help anybody else.
[17:09]So I do think that's really important.
[17:11]But I think we don't need to put any pressure on ourselves
[17:15]to do pandemic perfectly.
[17:18]You know, there's no like, you don't need to pick up
[17:22]a new habit and lose weight.
[17:25]Like, people have been talking about like,
[17:26]I'm going to get be so jacked by the end of this.
[17:29]And I just want to gently remind people
[17:32]we didn't ask to be in this situation.
[17:35]This isn't a productivity vacation.
[17:37]There's a very real threat.
[17:40]And I think we need to feel those feelings
[17:43]and feel that people are not safe and people are unwell,
[17:48]not to be overwhelmed by them, not to just throw up
[17:50]our hands and lie on the couch and watch love as blind.
[17:54]But to recognize that this is not normal, you know,
[17:57]but that there can be some learning from it.
[18:00]Like, I didn't know about the food supply.
[18:02]I didn't know that my medication comes from China.
[18:06]I didn't know, like, there's so many things about my life.
[18:09]I didn't know until this pandemic showed me, you know?
[18:12]I don't know if you feel the same way about it.
[18:14]No, I feel exactly the same way.
[18:16]Yeah.
[18:17]I took so many things for grantives
[18:19]that they would just be available, right?
[18:21]Like, right.
[18:22]Yeah, I mean, I called the pharmacy.
[18:23]And I'm like, I know that all these different medications
[18:26]for everybody in my family are not due for a couple.
[18:28]Like, just FedEx them to me.
[18:30]Anyway, don't wait for that insurance.
[18:33]Because like, I felt like I didn't know if the pharmacist
[18:36]would still be in business.
[18:38]I didn't know if FedEx would still be working.
[18:39]Exactly.
[18:40]I mean, it's these are like, you know,
[18:42]but people have to live on these medications.
[18:45]So I don't know.
[18:46]And then I think like, what if everybody else?
[18:48]I mean, not to use this podcast for my list of worries.
[18:50]It's like, what if everybody else's medications run out?
[18:55]What's everyone else doing?
[18:56]You know, what if all the doctors
[18:57]to come to this and then what?
[18:59]And yeah, so in other words, yes, I, you know,
[19:01]and also I think I must be following like completely different
[19:04]people from your own Instagram
[19:05]because nobody I follow is like trying to get jacked or anything.
[19:09]Like my first feed is like all like writers being like,
[19:12]I can't get any work done.
[19:13]And I can't focus.
[19:15]And then like moms wanting to tear their hair out
[19:17]and things like that.
[19:18]So I probably need to exchange some people to follow
[19:23]because I need a little bit more of the reality
[19:26]because like the most of the people I follow are like,
[19:29]how to be your most productive self in a pandemic.
[19:31]And I'm like, that is so off base.
[19:35]Like, like, yes, you know, I've come up with some goals
[19:38]for myself.
[19:39]And one thing I do think about is who do I want to be
[19:43]on the other side of this?
[19:45]How do I want to come out of this?
[19:47]How do I want to remember my time in this?
[19:50]You know, do I want to have just been worried
[19:53]and press pause on my life for however many months?
[19:57]Or do I want to be somebody who was...
[20:00]the resource to other people who found some joy,
[20:03]still found something that could be excited and happy about.
[20:07]Because there's nothing like this moment
[20:08]to say that there is no more time guaranteed,
[20:12]not to be really bleak,
[20:13]but this reminds us of our mortality.
[20:16]And so, yes, we're in this horrible place,
[20:19]but what joy can I still find
[20:22]while acknowledging that the chit has hit the fan?
[20:26]You know, but that's even the message of the book.
[20:29]You know, I had a really traumatic, started life,
[20:33]and that's always gonna be true.
[20:35]I never get to go back and rewrite history.
[20:37]At the same time, it's true that I have found ways
[20:41]to be grateful for that upbringing,
[20:43]that it made me into the person I am today.
[20:46]It gave me a story that I can use to relate
[20:50]to other people who, you know,
[20:52]you really don't have to have how to childhood
[20:54]like mine to read the book.
[20:56]It's not just for people who had a traumatic time.
[20:59]It's for people who absolutely want to make their life
[21:03]a little better and make sure that the routines
[21:06]that they have in their life are ones they actively chose
[21:10]and that serve them well.
[21:11]And I hope it's also for people just to be entertained
[21:14]because I think there's some good storytelling in there.
[21:16]That's my thought on it.
[21:18]There's great storytelling.
[21:19]Like I said, it's so conversational.
[21:21]I feel like, you know, I just went out to dinner
[21:23]or something and I was like sitting there laughing
[21:27]and being like, oh yeah, that's good advice.
[21:28]And so I'm sure others go to the same.
[21:32]Yeah, I definitely wrote it with the reader in mind.
[21:36]At the end of the book, I write a thank you note
[21:39]to the reader thanking them for being with me the whole time
[21:42]because this is so woo-woo of me.
[21:45]But I felt the presence of a reader with me
[21:50]the whole time I was writing.
[21:52]Like I imagine somebody who was right there with me.
[21:55]And so when people comment, you know,
[21:57]this feels like I'm talking to my best friend
[21:59]or this feels like I'm having a conversation.
[22:01]It's because they are like the way that I wrote it
[22:06]was keeping the reader in mind,
[22:08]keeping it a conversation, always trying to be my most honest
[22:12]but also always going to the most vulnerable part of me.
[22:17]Like if I was going to write a memoir,
[22:19]what would be the point?
[22:21]In trying to sugarcoat anything, you know?
[22:24]Yeah. Just I tried to be really real, but also really kind.
[22:28]Kind to myself and kind to the people who appear in the book.
[22:31]And what about your family?
[22:33]What has their reception been to this, to the book?
[22:35]Yeah, it's been interesting.
[22:37]Well, I don't have a relationship with my mom
[22:41]and I feel like it's very important to say that
[22:44]because they know that there are a lot of people out there
[22:46]that have estranged relationships with family members.
[22:50]But it's just about the most taboo thing in our culture
[22:53]to say, I don't talk to my mom.
[22:54]It's like, oh, you should, though, you should call her.
[22:58]Like you only get one mom, you know,
[23:00]that those are the responses I typically hear.
[23:02]And the thing about that is I'm like,
[23:05]well, that's so nice that you can't even imagine
[23:08]why one might ultimately decide
[23:10]that they were better off without that relationship.
[23:13]So I haven't spoken to her about the book.
[23:16]My dad, however, he loves me.
[23:20]I have no question that my dad loves me.
[23:23]And in the writing of the book,
[23:26]it was the first time that there was sort of a conversation
[23:29]about my childhood.
[23:31]And I gave him and my sister the manuscript a year
[23:34]before it came out.
[23:36]So there was, there were time to still make changes.
[23:40]And I said, I have no intention to hurt you.
[23:42]Please tell me if anything in here,
[23:45]whether you're the wrong way or you'd rather I not include it
[23:48]because I love you and I, you know,
[23:50]I want to be sensitive to you.
[23:52]And my dad, to his credit, he said,
[23:56]you know, don't change a word.
[23:58]This all happened.
[23:59]This is the truth that I'm sorry I didn't protect you.
[24:02]And it was the first time we had an honest conversation
[24:06]about my childhood.
[24:08]So it was incredibly healing.
[24:10]So if anything, the book has been really good
[24:12]for my relationship with my dad and sister,
[24:15]who I'm very close with both of them.
[24:17]And then sort of, it helped us sort of suss out
[24:20]some of our issues because now there was a narrative
[24:23]to talk about instead of a bunch of jumbled,
[24:26]traumatic memories, there was sort of a chronology
[24:30]that we could talk about.
[24:32]So great.
[24:33]I'm so glad it's helped in that way.
[24:34]Yeah, me too.
[24:36]I'm very glad.
[24:40]Were you inspired then to write other books?
[24:42]Like do you think you'll want to write more books?
[24:43]Now that you've done this one?
[24:45]Hell yeah.
[24:46]Nothing has ever felt more natural to me
[24:48]than writing the book, even when it was horrible to do.
[24:53]I do not trust any writer who says that writing is fun.
[24:58]Like it's a lot of things.
[25:00]Fun was, I was not one of the words that I would apply to it.
[25:04]But it was really a very natural, great experience.
[25:09]And so I'm working on the proposal for the kind of follow-up
[25:13]for this book right now.
[25:15]That's awesome.
[25:15]In isolation, that actually is what I'm trying to accomplish
[25:19]in this isolation time.
[25:21]We work on the thing that feels good and natural
[25:24]and kind of tune out everything else that's going on.
[25:26]And then you can get back to, you know,
[25:29]what do we do, do you reference?
[25:30]I can't remember.
[25:31]Love is blind or something.
[25:33]Yeah, exactly.
[25:34]You're king or, you know, any of these Netflix shows
[25:38]that everybody's talking about.
[25:39]Well, and can you just talk briefly about the process
[25:42]of writing it, like how you fit it in
[25:44]with your job at Comedy Central and all the rest?
[25:46]Yes, you've asked my favorite question
[25:48]in the entire world, which is a process question.
[25:51]Are most authors like that to most authors
[25:53]want to talk about process?
[25:54]Because I love process.
[25:55]Nobody has said that's my favorite question.
[25:58]So I'm thrilled to finally have someone say that.
[26:00]Thank you.
[26:01]Yes, process is my favorite question
[26:04]because I think it demystifies writing.
[26:07]And I'm all about demystifying anything
[26:10]that looks like a big and scary and overwhelming.
[26:14]So my process in writing this book
[26:16]is obviously I had this 600 page Google box
[26:19]and many, many journals full of,
[26:23]I mean, essentially brain garbage.
[26:25]You know, my journaling is not eloquent.
[26:28]In fact, you know, it's very ranty
[26:31]and if I'm hung over, it's like very scroll out.
[26:36]So it did not have the makings of a book for sure.
[26:39]But when I said about writing it,
[26:42]I decided that the only way it was gonna get written
[26:46]was if I wrote it in the morning
[26:47]because that's when my brain is the freshest,
[26:50]but I'm not a morning person.
[26:52]And I have to be at my corporate job
[26:55]where I'm an executive at Comedy Central.
[26:57]So it's like, it's a serious full-time corporate job
[27:00]where I go to an office and I work for the man.
[27:03]It's a fun man.
[27:05]It's actually a woman, but it's like a fun place,
[27:08]but I just want people to be very clear
[27:11]that I am not a full-time lifestyle blogger,
[27:14]which is no shade to that.
[27:16]It's just I have no flexibility in my day.
[27:19]So I tricked myself 20 minutes at a time
[27:24]to wake up earlier and earlier and earlier
[27:26]until I got to about 6.40 a.m.,
[27:29]which I also don't have kids.
[27:32]So that was helpful on this,
[27:33]but I would get up at 6.40.
[27:35]I would journal for 20 minutes.
[27:38]I'd make myself a cup of coffee
[27:40]and then I would sit down at my desk
[27:42]and time myself for an hour.
[27:44]And that's when I would work on the book.
[27:46]And there was no Instagram, no Facebook, no online shopping,
[27:50]no texting, zero distractions, everything off for that hour.
[27:56]And then when the alarm went off,
[27:57]I was free to go on with my day.
[28:00]I think one of the reasons I knew I was a writer
[28:03]was because I felt an incredible guilt
[28:06]if I didn't write every day.
[28:08]Like I felt bad and I just figured
[28:11]probably not everybody feels bad if they don't write.
[28:15]This is probably a sign that I need to be doing this.
[28:18]So I would do that every morning
[28:20]and then on the weekends,
[28:23]Saturday, usually from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m.
[28:27]I could kind of go over bigger chunks.
[28:29]So like looking at like how does this essay work
[28:32]with this next essay?
[28:34]And you know, some Saturdays,
[28:36]it would have to be all of Saturday
[28:38]and all of Saturday night when I was getting close
[28:41]to having drafts, like whenever a draft was due,
[28:44]I would have to have like a much longer sprint.
[28:47]But I wanted to write a book
[28:49]and the only way to write a book was to make time for it.
[28:52]And so I just made time in my current schedule
[28:56]instead of getting overwhelmed by, you know,
[28:59]I need to move to the country
[29:01]and I can't have this job and do this thing.
[29:04]I probably couldn't have written the book actually
[29:06]without the job because the job gave me stability
[29:10]and security, which Adam Grant, do you know,
[29:14]do you know what?
[29:15]Adam Grant wrote, give and take.
[29:17]He's a fabulous author and he was voted
[29:20]the number one professor at Wharton many times over.
[29:24]And he writes in his book originals
[29:26]that having structure in one part of our life
[29:30]gives us the sort of leeway to take a risk in another
[29:35]and he thinks the structure of my job
[29:37]and needing to be somewhere and having that
[29:41]gave me the room to take a big creative risk
[29:45]in writing the book.
[29:46]Yeah, that makes sense.
[29:47]Was that a adequate process answer?
[29:49]That was the best process answer I've ever heard.
[29:54]Yay, I needed a gold star for today, thank you.
[29:59]Thank you for that, Paul.
[30:00]Sorry.
[30:00]Any time.
[30:03]Well, thank you so much for sharing all of this
[30:05]and for your book and for your openness.
[30:09]And even just that you want to take your life
[30:13]and how you've figured out a way to reset yourself
[30:16]and how willing you are to share that with other people
[30:19]to help them, too.
[30:20]It's a really great.
[30:20]It's a true gift.
[30:21]So thank you.
[30:23]I'm half of everybody reading it, and I'm sorry.
[30:25]It's sort of come out during this time
[30:27]where there's not enough events and forums for you
[30:30]to be celebrated.
[30:31]But hopefully, when everybody gets out of the house,
[30:33]again, they'll be continuation of the tour.
[30:38]Exactly.
[30:39]I've definitely had to reframe this.
[30:41]I really hate when people call this the new normal.
[30:44]I'm like, no, it's not.
[30:46]It's the temporary circumstances that we're in.
[30:49]But I'm not going to accept this as the new normal.
[30:53]And I'm excited to celebrate it when I can.
[30:56]But I will say that it's been really amazing.
[31:00]People have reached out to me and have said,
[31:03]like, thank God I have this book in this particular time.
[31:07]It's a real comfort to me.
[31:09]And so in a weird way, in the timing sucks
[31:12]in terms of my own ego and getting to do fun things around the book.
[31:16]But in terms of the goal that I ever had, which
[31:19]was to make people feel less alone,
[31:22]maybe this was the perfect time.
[31:24]So or at least that's how I'm reframing things in my head
[31:28]so that I don't go crazy.
[31:30]I need you around here to reframe things
[31:32]from me on a regular basis.
[31:33]I need an on-call reframor.
[31:37]Anytime, anytime, that's like the muscle I've
[31:40]worked out the most is reframing.
[31:42]So hit me up anytime.
[31:43]I'll reframe something for you.
[31:45]Perfect.
[31:46]Perfect.
[31:47]All right.
[31:48]Thanks so much for coming on Mom's time to read books.
[31:51]Thank you so much for having me.
[31:53]If you've been listening to Mom's time to read books
[31:55]with Zibi Owens, please make sure to sign up
[31:58]for my newsletter at zibiowans.com
[32:00]to get more updates about episodes like these
[32:03]and also lots of live events.
[32:04]Thanks again for listening today, everybody.
[32:06]And don't forget to check out wefoundtime.com.
[32:09]And it's also available on zibiowans.com as a tab.
[32:12]But also, wefoundtime.com, check out the essays
[32:16]and go to Instagram at zibiowans
[32:18]and check out my Instagram Live 11 a.m. to 12 p.m.
[32:22]Every weekday, Monday to Friday,
[32:24]during this quarantine where I interview four to five
[32:26]authors live for a few minutes each, please check it out.
[32:29]And thanks for listening.
[32:30]I really appreciate it.
[32:31]You can follow me on Instagram at Mom's Don't Have Time
[32:34]to Read Books.
[32:35]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[32:38]for the Sound Editing.
[32:39]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[32:41]for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.
[32:44]Thanks for listening.
[32:44]You could always email me at zibiowans.com.