First! Ever! Episode! Of my brand-new podcast, Finding the Throughline

...in which Sari Botton from Oldster Magazine shares why she's contemplating selling her beloved clog collection

This seed of the idea for Finding the Throughline: Conversations about the Creative Process, was first dropped by Sari Botton in her Substack publication Oldster Magazine—specifically, it was her Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, in which she asks creatives of all ages to answer the same dozen or so questions about what it means to grow older.

I’m telling you, each time a new Oldster questionnaire lands in my inbox I drop everything and read it immediately. I love that even though I rarely know of the person who is answering the question (although sometimes I do—she’s interviewed Elizabeth Gilbert and Neko Case, for instance), I am moved, enlightened, provoked, and delighted by their answers.

Sari had to be my first interview, she just had to be. And thankfully, she responded with an enthusiastic yes within just a few minutes of my asking her to come on.

Stuff we unpack includes:

• The continuing ed class she took as a 20-something that lead to her personal writing career

• The thing her uncle told her when she was 10 that sparked a lifelong fascination with growing older

• Why she loves Substack—as both a writer and a reader

• The thing about trusting your instincts that Shalom Auslander first told her in 2010 that it took her 10+ years to believe

• The incredible power of writing annoying, non-work stuff down on your to-do list (even if you’re already done it)

• What she does to cheer herself up and clear her head

• Her morning routine (including what exactly goes in her mug)

• Her favorite part of sharing her work with the world

• How she navigates the ethics of including other people in her personal writing

• How her inner critic loves to tell her she doesn’t haven’t permission to write about what she wants to write about—and how she gets past it

• How getting older, and developing arthritis, is making her re-think some things, incluing her beloved wooden clog collection

• Her personal role models

• That thing that just won’t remove itself from Sari’s bucket list, even though she’s trying to move past it

• What projects she’s dreaming about creating next

• The two things she knows she needs to shift (including a great tip for folks with Sephardic Jewish heritage!)

• Plus, Sari’s favorite show, the last book she devoured, her go-to karaoke song, and her ideal dinner (hint: it’s shellfish heavy)

Sari belting it out at age 5, sporting the exact same haircut she still has at 58

Listen here:

Part 1: On the power of curiosity, offhand comments, and writing stuff you’ve already done your to-do list

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Sari’s books:

And You May Find Yourself: Confessions of a Late Blooming Gen X Weirdo

Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakeable Love for New York

Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York

Links:

Oldster Magazine

Oldster’s biweekly Links Roundup

Adventures in Journalism (Sari’s other Substack)

Memoir Land (Sari’s other other Substack)

Sari’s official bio:

Sari Botton's memoir in essays, And You May Find Yourself...Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo, was chosen by Poets & Writers magazine for the 2022 edition of its annual "5 Over 50" feature. An essay from it received notable mention in The Best American Essays 2023, edited by Vivian Gornick. For five years, Sari was the Essays Editor at Longreads. She edited the bestselling anthologies Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving NewYork and Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for New York. Sari publishes Oldster Magazine, Memoir Land, and Adventures in Journalism. And she was the Writer in Residence in the creative writing department at SUNY New Paltz for Spring, 2023.