Annabelle Gurwitch, YOU'RE LEAVING WHEN?
[0:01]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:06]I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology,
[0:12]which you should run out and buy called Moms Don't Have Time to Accarantine Anthology.
[0:16]I'll proceed to that book, go to COVID-19 Vaccine Research.
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[0:29]And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram, ad-Zibi Owens, and my website is Zibi Owens.com.
[0:34]Okay, now back to this amazing podcast.
[0:38]Annabelle Gerwich is the author of You're Leaving When Adventures in Downward Mobility.
[0:44]She's the New York Times best-selling author of the memoir I See You Made an Effort,
[0:49]and wherever you go, there you are. Annabelle is the former host of TBS's Dinner and a Movie,
[0:55]with essays appearing in The New Yorker, New York Times, Wall Street Journal,
[0:59]and more. She makes regular appearances on PBS NewsHour, Real Time with Bill Maher, and NPR.
[1:05]A finalist for the third prize for American humor writing,
[1:08]she is one of the most recognizable female humorists, giving insightful and inspiring talks
[1:13]on finding humor in life's challenges, the redemptive power of storytelling, aging,
[1:17]and Jewish and humanist-themed messages. She frequently serves as MC for charitable events
[1:22]and offers storytelling, comedy, and memoir workshops.
[1:25]Welcome Annabelle, thank you so much for coming on Moms. Don't have time to read books.
[1:29]I am so happy to be here, and to get a chance, talk to you, Zibi, and also I'm looking at your
[1:35]fabulous bookshelves, which seem to be color-coordinated, which just represents a tremendously
[1:42]aspirational aspiration, an aspirational aspiration of mine.
[1:47]Well, honestly, I'm looking at your bookshelves as we were just discussing, and
[1:52]inside me, what I want to do is jump through the Zoom, take them all off the shelf,
[1:57]and really do it all for you. I don't sit well when everything's not lined up, so
[2:04]everybody works the way they work. Yeah, in my mind, I'm the kind of person that has a very
[2:09]organized bookshelf. In my mind, I have a lot of things that I am not actually in reality,
[2:15]and in fact, that is the subject of this new book, making peace with some of that.
[2:23]This new book is fantastic, and I just want to say how excited I was when I got this advanced
[2:28]copy whenever that was. I feel like it was forever ago because I read all your books. I love what
[2:32]you write. I love your writing style. I've been reading you since you've been, I don't know,
[2:37]I've just been following along with you, and I was thrilled that now I'm doing a podcast
[2:40]to be a book coming at them. There you go. Thank you so much. You know, I so appreciate that.
[2:45]I started, you know, this is my second career. I'm on my career number, I don't know,
[2:50]17 or something, you know, like everybody, right? I've reinvented a thousand times, but I spent,
[2:57]you know, many years acting and then hosting TV shows. And the thing is, is I've always been such
[3:03]a very just reader. And I really taught myself to read, to write from reading. And the thing is,
[3:12]I really am started writing when I started on NPR as a commentator. I really, my goal was to write,
[3:20]to reflect the life that I wasn't exactly reading about, you know, my, in my, again, like in my
[3:29]imagination. I mean, I love Nora Efron. I mean, she, she set the bar for, I think, women,
[3:37]and, well, I mean, look, look, she's beyond a female writer, but just sort of reflecting women's lives,
[3:42]you know, with, I mean, she's such an amazing writer, but I never have lived in like that life of
[3:49]Nora Efron, the amazing life of Nora Efron. So I was like, well, where can I reflect the life of
[3:55]women who, you know, reinvent 17 times, who, you know, maybe the hem of their pants is being
[4:02]held up with duct tape one day, you know, like, what about the mom who, you know, who accidentally,
[4:09]you know, locks her keys in the car while she's got her baby, which happened to me a thousand times,
[4:15]you know, when my kid was little or just, you know, the sort of, I don't want to say low rent,
[4:21]because I lead, you know, a vastly privileged life compared to a lot of people, but, you know,
[4:27]the financial insecurity of women's lives is something that's been really important to me to
[4:33]reflect. And also the precarious nature of identity and, and just of our existence, that's been
[4:40]something I wanted to reflect. And, and so I'm just so really happy that you've been following
[4:46]along, because this book is like the chronicle of this next place in life, which turns out to
[4:53]be not like a Nancy Meyers movie that I saw. But this would be a great movie too. I mean,
[5:01]to see you with you with the French, what is his name? I'm forgetting his name, your French border
[5:06]in the little sword. Yeah. Yes, you know, like, of course, it's showing like I should have just
[5:09]made that up. I would have been right. Anyway, like that whole scene where you take in a border and
[5:14]you're trying to make a little extra money on the side and your house smells like duck-alard and
[5:19]bacon and it's in your hair. And, you know, that just you write in such a visual way, these scenes
[5:25]that, you know, if you could write like, whoa is me, right? And it could be a sob story, but it's
[5:31]not. It's hilarious the way you write it. Oh, thank you so much. The story is about home sharing,
[5:37]which, you know, is something that so many people have been doing even through the pandemic. And
[5:42]I think this will last after the pandemic as well, monetizing your home to underwrite, you know,
[5:50]my mortgage after my divorce, that seemed to be the best idea. Of course, the idea of taking in
[5:59]borders and becoming a landlady. I mean, I did have this image in my mind, blousey house dress,
[6:05]cigarette and hand, you know, landlady. And the funny thing is, is I love having people stay in my
[6:15]house. I thought it was going to be horrible. Now, the first, you know, the first story of having
[6:21]someone stay there, the French Jean-Luc, who cooked bacon 24 hours a day and smoked weed 24
[6:29]yesterday. You know, it was that story just, I mean, it just was like, you know, it's all
[6:35]copy, right? It just turned into this hilarious misadventure. But even that, you know, I found
[6:43]was something that just took me out of my comfort zone. And I don't even regret that when of
[6:51]course, I've had all these amazing tenants after Jean-Luc's tenancy. But I mean, I just couldn't
[6:56]resist writing about how Jean-Luc, after being a Francophile from, you know, so much of my life,
[7:02]how he took from me my love of all things French, my love of people who are 27 years old,
[7:09]my love of the melancholy. I think I wrote that he taught me that on we is just another way of
[7:16]saying you're a bomber to be around. But it's just, you know, I just, I just try to write these
[7:24]stories that actually like redeem experiences because, you know, complaining would just be too easy.
[7:34]So to find the redemption, you know, in a way, I like to think of the writing and the chronicling
[7:41]of stories and adventures as a way of, for myself, finding every silver lining, you know, because
[7:50]that's the only way to, you know, survive in life without becoming, you know, bitter, which is just
[7:56]so unattractive, sadly. So when you include scenes like, for instance, in the beginning, when you're
[8:03]having coffee with a girlfriend and you didn't know that she was sort of in a financial similar spot
[8:09]as you and, you know, you end up like clutching each other at the end and, you know, really bonding
[8:14]is that the type of thing where like, it was funny that you found some humor in it to begin with?
[8:20]Or were you really just like having a bad day? Like, do you, do you always, are you always able to kind
[8:26]of turn it to see the humor? Is what I'm trying to ask, not very well. No, I think it might be a
[8:32]muscle that I have trained to do this. But, you know, sometimes things are only funny later,
[8:39]but I pretty, it happens pretty quickly for me that experiences translate into humor pretty quickly
[8:49]because that is my coping mechanism. I mean, you know, it becomes sort of a cliche to say that
[8:55]humor is one of the few things that's covered on my health insurance plan that I can afford. These
[9:03]there's no deductible for humor, you know, but it really is the saving grace for me. I mean,
[9:09]there are some things that this is where I always try to really exercise some detachment in my
[9:17]writing. So I'm writing about some really serious things in this book. You know, I am the mother
[9:23]of a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. My kid Ezra, who uses pronouns, they, them theirs,
[9:31]which, okay, that's another chapter in the book. Actually, I wrote a chapter called Free to Be They
[9:37]and Them, right, which is, you know, of course, a nod to Free to Be You and Me, which I grew up
[9:42]on and loved so much, right? But, you know, learning how to do my pronouns. That was so hard,
[9:51]just so incredibly hard. But then, you know, that's something that even as I was going on that
[9:57]adventure, okay, that I saw some humor.
[10:00]and that immediately. But, you know, dealing with parenting of a child who turns out to have
[10:07]addiction, okay, there's nothing funny about that. But the situation, I mean, this is one of the
[10:13]most profound experiences. So in the writing of the chapter, you're doing all the right things,
[10:19]everything's going to work out. I have to, you know, ride this line of, you know, I need to
[10:26]affirm the seriousness of this issue. At the same time, you know, how can I live day to day
[10:34]with this experience without thinking, you know, there's some humor finding, seeing the humor in it,
[10:41]you know, I mean, when my kid, when I discovered that my kid had a backpack full of film
[10:50]canisters filled with weed, which is the internationally recognized sign of, I'm dealing weed.
[11:01]How could I not like be clocking the humor in the fact that Ezra accidentally texted me instead
[11:11]out of their friend with a text that read, I'm so fucked baby. Mom just found my weed. I mean,
[11:21]I'm like, oh my God, you know, it was ridiculous. And then that's a story that actually I published
[11:28]in the New York Times about after they went to rehab and got sober, which, you know, of course is,
[11:36]I'm just so I couldn't actually write this story if that weren't the case, you know what I mean?
[11:41]I mean, that's true. Like it would be impossible to see detachment really if that weren't the case.
[11:48]So I'm so grateful for that. But, you know, I wrote the story in the New York Times about
[11:53]not knowing what criteria to base, whether they were ready to go back to college on. So I came
[11:59]up with the idea that we would do an escape room and we were locked together in a zombie escape room.
[12:06]I mean, you know, it's, you know, it just, it's so, yeah, I didn't do that for the humor
[12:17]purpose, but the idea that, you know, okay, this is kind of ridiculous is, you know, it happens
[12:23]pretty, it happens pretty quickly for me. And I do, I do hope that people when my readers will
[12:31]take that journey with me knowing that I am honoring the seriousness of these issues, you know,
[12:38]it would be, it would be upsetting if people didn't think, I mean, I take, I take everything so
[12:44]seriously that I have to find the humor because I do spend an awful lot of time suffering over things.
[12:50]And if I can make that change and may and see, you know, these, any silver linings, it really
[12:57]keeps me going. So I, I hope it does the same for readers, you know, 100% it's good to use that
[13:04]lens. I mean, humor, as he said, there's just nothing that can change your mood faster than finding
[13:10]something funny about something terrible, right? It's like how you, you know, comedians always say
[13:15]something, there's that phrase like too soon because you just wonder, you don't, you don't want to
[13:20]offend people. And you want to honor these things. And that's, that's also one of my goals
[13:26]in writing about my financial precariousness and financial insecurity. I feel like that's something
[13:33]that's very taboo. And for me, that's what I hope is my sweet spot in writing about just that
[13:41]edge of like, you know, can we talk about this? Because I feel like I'm sort of the anti-Instagram,
[13:48]all my books represent like, you know, it's like, you know, Instagram is like, it's so aspirational
[13:54]people, you know, not to mention any names, but in their long story, holding their babies,
[14:01]that does not look like my life. And fantastic for you, but my life is filled with, you know, a
[14:08]different kind of things. So I, you know, like I included chapter in this book about having the
[14:14]Mona Lisa procedure, which I characterize as having my vagina reupholstered. And, you know,
[14:22]I did that because I had no idea, you know, what this was going to be like to come to my 50s and find
[14:32]things were not working as well as I expected and what could I do about it. And so I really want to
[14:39]just, you know, hit those taboo subjects or things that are not getting on the Instagram feeds.
[14:47]Like the, the dark Instagram or something. Yes. Yes. Yeah.
[14:53]Can you go backwards a little bit? I know you said you had like 17 different careers and all that.
[14:59]But how did you, when did you first start writing and realizing that like you were good at it or
[15:03]that you enjoyed it or that you wanted to sell it and all of that when did that start?
[15:08]So I started my really my only thing I wanted to do was act growing up. And my goal was to
[15:16]appear in off off nowhere near Broadway shows where you had a pretty good chance of sleeping with
[15:23]the majority of the cast. Now, I tamed that goal. Actually, what to do as it turned out. I mean,
[15:29]I just just wanted to act, you know, be an actress. And I was so fortunate to have that
[15:38]youthful confidence to, you know, move to New York, go to NYU, drop out immediately,
[15:44]be getting starting work in theater. And so I had that career and I was on a soap opera for gosh,
[15:52]for three years. And just funny at that time, you know, one of the things that I think is so strange
[15:58]about the time we live in right now. This pandemic is so isolating. And it's hard to see my own
[16:04]child is 22 now, not have the benefit of the kind of community that I built as in my early 20s. And
[16:14]that is one of the subjects of this book is is also the, you know, community is again. One of those
[16:20]things that I think is so important. In lieu of vacation home, I have friends, I've invested in
[16:29]friendships instead of real estate, yay me. But I was so, I mentioned that because I'm so excited.
[16:37]My book is launching with very dear girlfriends, you know, one of the first events I'm doing is
[16:44]with Marissa Tomei, who actually I met when she was on a soap opera and I was on a soap opera. And
[16:50]when there was a lot of camaraderie in that acting world. And that's something I really loved and
[16:55]thrived on. And that was my first career as an actress doing theater TV shows and eventually
[17:01]dinner in a movie. But during that time, I started as a commentator on NPR completely by accident
[17:07]because I had acted in a Harry Shearer from this is final tap movie and mentioned that I was
[17:13]a fan of NPR and I wanted to be a commentator. And they thought an NPR that I was writing
[17:21]my dialogue on and my copy on not necessarily the news on HBO. I was the news anchor. I wasn't
[17:27]writing it and I didn't tell them I wasn't writing this satire. And they hired me, you know,
[17:34]I just didn't correct that misconception. And that was my first opportunity as a writer. And I just
[17:41]was such a voracious reader and I was reading essays. I was reading SJ Perlman. I was reading
[17:46]nor efron. I was reading David Rackoff. And I and David Sedaris and I just love that writing. And
[17:57]that's what I wanted to do. And I was so lucky to have that opportunity. And that was really when I
[18:02]started writing. And then I ended up being fired by Woody Allen from this playoff Broadway. And
[18:10]then edited my first book, which was the collection of essays about being fired and
[18:16]using humor to rebound from that experience. And that really set me off on this path of taking
[18:24]things that were in the cultural zeitgeist. Because it really, I don't really interest my,
[18:30]I'm not that interesting. I think what's what I have is a purview by which to write about the
[18:38]experiences that everyone else goes through. You know, I lead, you know, I think a pretty ordinary
[18:43]life. I'm a mom. I'm a working mom. And so I'm just using my own experience. I'd like to say I
[18:51]use memoir to write about my own experience in things that are in the cultural zeitgeist. The
[18:57]funny thing is when I started writing this book and I subtitled adventures in downward mobility,
[19:03]I was actually worried that, you know, maybe my experience as someone who was experiencing
[19:09]financial insecurity wouldn't be relatable to my readers. And I know idea, you know, who could
[19:15]foresee the pandemic and the economic impact and how actually, you know, even more timely,
[19:23]this would become, by the way, of other careers though, just just to say this is so nutty.
[19:29]I am that person who like in the early 80s, I was making a line of jewelry in my studio apartment
[19:38]with a hot glue gun taking apart jewelry that my grandmother had given me, combining it with stuff,
[19:45]I was buying it thrift stores. And I ended up with a line of jewelry at Burger of Goodman's.
[19:53]So I'm just a scrappy Jewish girl, basically. My friend Melanie Mayron from 30 something made
[20:00]up that phrase for us because she had been an actress and now she's a director and you know for
[20:06]some of us you know we hit these points in our careers where either we're not making as much money
[20:13]as we were or also you know I have varied interests too I think like a lot of us we we're having
[20:20]many careers and so I like to reflect that in my writing and so that's just some of the
[20:26]careers I mean I also you know I perform I mean basically also you my books out of the
[20:31]trunk of my car which is what I'm gonna be doing when my book comes out in March because we
[20:35]don't have live events I'm not I'm not kidding anyone who lives within in the range of my
[20:42]house in Los Angeles I will be masked up with gloves on out of the back of my Prius I'm gonna be
[20:51]like me books because you know scrappy we got to be scrappy in this economy why not you might as well
[20:59]that's amazing it's all just so inspiring because it's like the ultimate making
[21:05]lemonade out of lemons or whatever the expression is right it's like everything you turn into
[21:10]like entertainment gold it's it's really very it's just awesome well just you know I don't know
[21:18]I'm saying thank you I just have fun because I actually have a lemon tree and I persist in calling
[21:25]the output from my tree a crop my every year I have a crop it's basically two lemons
[21:34]but you know I love these lemons for some reason I used to have a used to grow a lot of fruit
[21:41]and this past year I got these two lemons they were each the size of a baby's head they were
[21:47]huge but only two it's like the tree stopped producing it was very stress like everybody's in
[21:54]to that in 2020 I got two lemons for my lemon tree but it's still it's still my crop I harvest
[22:03]my crop it's a little ridiculous but I just you know it's it I do I'm very if you read my writing
[22:11]you will know I'm an anxious person and so I have to find humor it it's really this this
[22:19]you know my my my really big coping mechanisms so I share that gene I might not be as scrappy I
[22:25]think you're a little more flexible than I am but I definitely share the anxiety gene with you
[22:31]and and the desire to have things be funny although I'm not as good I think it's probably turning
[22:36]them into comedy so now that you have this new book coming out I just wanted to know what does
[22:43]your ex husband think about this that's interesting so you know I know it might not look this way
[22:52]but I really try to think a lot about how I portray other people in my books and I think I
[23:06]hope at least that what I've written here I had a very specific goal concerning the divorce
[23:14]and the aftermath I wanted this book to be a reflection on the aftermath of divorce I'm not actually
[23:22]able to really write about that right now I just that's I don't have the detachment to write it
[23:28]and I don't even know that I you know I mean maybe I'll get to that I have to have a certain
[23:33]detachment in order to write about something and so I I tried and you can tell me Zippy if I've
[23:40]succeeded here I really try not to write about the divorce and I didn't want people to and I
[23:47]gosh I'd love to hear from readers about this I didn't want people to hate my ex husband or think oh
[23:56]it didn't I just didn't want to create him as a figure I just don't find anything redeeming about
[24:03]like what does that say about me I think marriage is so challenging and every marriage every happy
[24:10]family is happy it wouldn't well God what is the Tolstoy quote now I'm getting it wrong
[24:15]all unhappy families are like yes you know you could say the same thing for marriages right I mean
[24:21]gosh you know so it was important to me to not make him this like bad guy boogie man character so
[24:28]I've tried to really minimize his appearance in the book and just write about how I have moved
[24:36]on or don't move on how I struggle to do that and because I don't want you thinking about him
[24:43]and for me also the best humor comes from I always like to you know I what's that phrase
[24:50]taken on the chin myself I'm the target of my humor all of my feelings because that's the only
[24:58]thing I really have you know controller I just don't I don't like to set up other people so
[25:04]so in terms of that I mean I mentioned a few things like how I didn't you know the red flags I
[25:10]didn't see like the fact that my ex was you know wasn't really keeping up his end in the household
[25:17]chores and and that maybe instead of looking at emotional detaching from marriage we should
[25:23]really look at how much and look at things like housekeeping as a barometer of a marriage
[25:29]help but that's really my reflection on it I mean I just he hasn't read this book and I don't
[25:36]know how he'll feel I feel I'll also mention you know I mentioned that when I was cleaning out
[25:41]my house you know it's so funny in the TV series divorce Sarah Jessica Parker in the opening scenes
[25:47]of that show you know she struggles over whether or not to keep her ex-husband's golf golf clubs
[25:56]in the house and you know throwing out his you know plaid shirts or whatever like that I'm often
[26:03]writing in reaction to things that I see that wasn't what my experience was I found love
[26:11]letters that I had sent to my ex and then also nude pictures of myself and you know I write
[26:20]in the book about what I did in reaction to that I again like I don't want to write about you know
[26:29]him and his actions it's what you do with it because it's it's just too unattractive so I don't
[26:35]know what I just I I hope that I have you zippy what do you think am I in trouble
[26:44]I don't know I just I I have an ex-husband and so I just have a particularly like my radar is up
[26:50]for what people say and what are people allowed to say and can get away with or can't and so I
[26:57]think maybe I just had a heightened sensitivity to those scenes right but like when you were
[27:02]talking about how much stuff he left behind and how you like didn't you send him an
[27:07]envelope full of like his nail clippings or whatever you found in your bedside table and you were
[27:11]like he didn't really appreciate that or I didn't get a thank you note bag or something
[27:14]you know that was not my finest moment and I I thought that specifically because yes I I realized
[27:24]and you know it's something I actually I didn't manage to work into the book this exact phrase
[27:29]but you know there's that phrase skin in the game and I realized that this dust that I found in
[27:37]his side of you know the bedside table on his side of the bed all this dust and I realized oh my god
[27:44]he left this it's like he shed his skin and he left it in the house and I put it in an envelope
[27:51]there were also nail clippings it's true and the nude you know and the no I did I send the nude
[27:57]pictures back I have to reread that yeah I think I did I think you kept I kept I know I kept
[28:02]actually I did keep the pictures but I sent back this dust and nail clippings and I included that
[28:10]because that's terrible no what he should do I mean it's a reflection on me you know that I didn't
[28:18]just you know throw it out and yes my ex never mentioned it very acknowledged getting this
[28:26]envelope it didn't even say like this is you know I think you left this you know it was just disgusting
[28:32]and I I did do that and I did write it yeah it seemed like he had packed an overnight bag and just
[28:39]got away everything yeah you know maybe men are different or maybe my ex was different and again
[28:46]it's sort of I hope it's the rough it's it's the aftermath but it's not a divorce book and that
[28:53]was really I didn't mean to know of course I know but it's just interesting because I really
[28:58]labored over that and in the end when I ended up doing Zibi was I went through the book specifically
[29:05]like to count how many mentions I had of him and then I even took some things out that I
[29:11]some of my favorite things but I just felt like okay too many mentions you know because
[29:17]ultimately it's like a book is kind of an algorithm of math of you know of like how much attention
[29:24]in and it's kind of number a numbers thing you know of how much attention I give to each subject
[29:30]so you know I had even more stories of home sharing but then I took some of those out because
[29:35]those were going to dominate the book and so in some sense it's I always look at a book of essays
[29:42]like a puzzle you know of numbers while there's this much attention on this subject and it was
[29:48]really fun for me to include there's a couple of chapters that are really sort of more big
[29:54]think chapters of the chapter on resistance to retail therapy
[30:00]That was a chance for me to write about how women are sold, the bra, the bag, the brow,
[30:09]the bath that will change everything. I mean, that's kind of something I'd love to do these
[30:15]cultural essays. And then there's a chapter where I skewer all those wish fulfillment,
[30:21]fantasy movies about women who are prescribed the island cure or the man cure. These kind of
[30:29]fluffy films. And so in order to get that stuff in, you know, I have to balance the other
[30:36]stuff. And I've never really convinced I get it right. You know, I mean, there's this writing
[30:42]a book is always kind of break your heart. I didn't realize that before I started writing.
[30:48]You know, I don't know what I mean? Like it just, there's always something that doesn't make it
[30:53]in there. There's always that wonder, did I? Oh, I hope I didn't, you know, I hope I didn't portray
[31:00]my ex in any way that is more negative than how I portrayed myself. Because that's just not attractive.
[31:11]And, and there's always some issues that I realized later. Oh my God, I didn't, I didn't get that
[31:19]which is I guess why I keep writing more books. I keep trying to, there's just, you know, there's
[31:24]always more stories. And when I was growing up, I grew up in Florida. And I used to love to peel
[31:31]sunburn. This is so embarrassing. But, you know, it's a predictive like if like, you know, your
[31:38]sunburn and it's peeling or like paint peeling. I love to peel away layers. And it just never ends.
[31:46]So that I guess that's why I just keep writing books because there's always, there's always more
[31:51]layers that I haven't gotten to in the last. Maybe I'll send you some, some glue or rubber cement
[31:56]because that's very good for peeling as well. I love that. Okay. Okay. I have stockpiles of this for my
[32:03]kids in the next year. So if I get to cleaning out, I'll send some your way. Well, everyone in America
[32:09]cleaned out their closet during the pandemic and accept me. And that's actually, you know, a chapter
[32:15]the book is about what you get left left with after if you've been married and your spouse leaves
[32:23]and your kid goes off to college and your parents die. And then in my house is just like, as I
[32:28]write in the book, it's like one of those sediment maps, you know, of the crust of the earth and all
[32:34]the layers. This is, this is what I'm living with. I'm not sure if I'm ever going to clean out
[32:41]those closets until I move. I just, even this pandemic hasn't been enough to get me to do them
[32:51]match the life changing magic of Marie condo. It's never, and then they just fill up again anyway.
[32:56]So don't worry about it. It's not like everything is done. It's like losing weight. It's not like
[33:01]you lose it once and then you don't have to lose it again. You know, it's always going to come back.
[33:05]So don't, don't beat yourself. You do let to that. I, you know, I think, you know, when you
[33:10]also live in a family home. If you have kids, you know, you, the minute, I mean, it's true,
[33:15]the minute you clear out one space, more stuff. Just, you know, it's more stuff crazy.
[33:22]Okay. Last question for you. Like, I mean, I could listen to you all day. Honestly, this is like
[33:26]so fun. But do you have any advice for aspiring authors? Oh, gosh, you know, I teach workshops and writing
[33:32]and I just, I love helping people to develop that voice. I'm just always amazed at people's
[33:43]reflections on life. I'm always encouraging. I mean, at first of all, I think that writing is such a
[33:49]great redemptive act. Whether or not you're published, you're writing for your family,
[33:56]you're writing for yourself. It's a way to reclaim with detachment your experiences in life.
[34:04]There's no writing that is lost to have a benefit, you know, to yourself. You know, so that's the
[34:13]first thing. I, I think it's really important to distinguish between looking for a writing career
[34:20]and just writing, you know, because that's nothing but redemptive to the soul. A writing career
[34:30]is just full of, you know, endless challenges. But look, we live in a time with this opportunities
[34:38]are as big as the worldwide internet, which it might seem like we've made it to the end of
[34:45]in this pandemic. But we haven't, you know, and I am just always astonished at coming upon new
[34:52]writing somewhere. Whether it's in a blog, it's in a book, it's in a magazine, it's just astonishing.
[35:00]And I really take the words of Catherine Mann's field. That's something, there's a line that she
[35:06]wrote that I think about every day. And I, it guides me as a writer and it's what I look to
[35:13]in other people's writing, you know, she wrote, from my life, I write to you in your life. And
[35:21]I think about that line. And I think it's such a profound idea that writing connects us. It's the
[35:30]connective tissue between our lives. And honestly, in this time where we're, you know, I'm
[35:36]sheltering alone and writing other work. And I am still a voracious reader. I'll read, send me
[35:47]readers, send me your blogs, I'll read them. I love it. I just, I just, the way it connects us,
[35:53]I think particularly we've seen in this moment how important it is, this human connection and
[36:00]sharing of experience. It's just so important. It turns out to be, you know, the anchor. And for
[36:08]me, reading and reading has become even more important now because, because of the intimacy that,
[36:16]you know, in the lack of human contact, reading is, is just the most intimate act that I feel like
[36:23]if you are thinking about writing and you have writing, there's someone out there who needs to
[36:29]read your writing. I'm just astonished at our appetite for that. And the human need that just
[36:37]only grows greater for human contact. And what I really consider, even though I write humor to be
[36:44]really sacred thing, a sacred compact, you know, which is why I love and I invite any readers to
[36:52]tell me things that they relate to or to ask me questions because it's a conversation, you know,
[36:57]and so I, I encourage people to bridge that gap, to bring us closer together through writing.
[37:05]I love that. It's amazing. Well, and well, thank you. Thank you so much for coming on mom's
[37:09]no-tentory books. Thank you for all of your books. Thank you in particular for this most recent
[37:13]one. You're leaving wind adventures down the ability, which was fantastic and gave me a much
[37:19]needed lap. I even read paragraphs that led to my husband and I was like, I was like, it's
[37:24]listen to how funny this is. I was like, but you know, it's even funnier if you read the whole
[37:27]chapter because it all kind of like played off each other. So you got to this section and he was
[37:31]like, anyway. So thank you. And I hope to stay in touch. This is really fantastic. I love that. So
[37:38]thank you so much. We'll have a great day. Thanks for listening to this episode of mom's don't have
[37:46]time to read books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens and at mom's don't have
[37:51]time to read books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibi Owens.com and sign up for my virtual
[37:56]book club and meet lots of authors on zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan
[38:00]at Texturesound for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing
[38:05]this fantastic intro and outro music.