Lindsey Mead, Editor/Author, ON BEING 40(ish)
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[0:28]Lindsey Mead is a Princeton and Hartford Business School graduate whose day job is working
[0:32]as an executive recruiter.
[0:33]She writes a popular blog called A Design So Vast.
[0:36]Don't miss her recommended reading list.
[0:38]It's pretty awesome.
[0:39]She's written for a wide range of publications from brain magazine to have post and writes
[0:43]frequent book reviews.
[0:44]She's the editor of the collection of essays on being 40-ish, which includes contributions
[0:49]from other podcasts.
[0:50]Guess the mine?
[0:51]Like Jill Cardman and K.J. Dell and Tonya, as well as notables like Lee Woodruff and Sloan
[0:55]Crosley.
[0:56]Lindsey lives with her husband and children in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
[0:59]Welcome Lindsay to Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[1:02]Thank you for having me.
[1:03]Can you please tell us, nurse, what your amazing collection of essays, which is called
[1:08]on being 40-ish, is about?
[1:10]Yes.
[1:11]It is about the experience of turning 40, being in one's 40s.
[1:14]There are contributors who are older than that, so I personally think of it as a broader
[1:17]exploration of basically a particular season of life, which is 40s broadly, but midlife
[1:23]for women.
[1:24]What made you want to compile all these essays?
[1:26]What made you want to tackle this topic?
[1:28]I've always written a lot about age, but it's kind of a way to get into thinking about
[1:35]the seasons to write word for it.
[1:36]So I always written posts every year on my birthday trying to capture kind of where my
[1:40]life is.
[1:41]And actually, so I have a long time relationship with a former editor at Simon & Schuster
[1:46]who's now actually working on her own book, but her name is Christine Pride and she had
[1:51]the idea.
[1:52]So she came to me, actually.
[1:53]Oh, no way.
[1:54]Yeah, it was great.
[1:55]I mean, it was pretty nascent.
[1:56]She's a little bit younger than I am, but also in her early 40s and said, you know,
[2:00]what would you think about doing this?
[2:01]And so we together kind of fleshed it out.
[2:04]And you had never written another book.
[2:05]I've written two books, but they're on the floor there.
[2:08]I've never written anything that's embellished now.
[2:11]I mean, other than online and essays, but no books.
[2:13]No.
[2:14]So this is like a big project to start.
[2:15]What did you think?
[2:16]Were you excited?
[2:17]Like, tell me.
[2:18]She said, do you want to do it?
[2:19]Let me hear the story.
[2:20]Yeah, she called.
[2:21]She and Brettany, who's my agent, who's also a close friend, know each other when they talked
[2:25]about it.
[2:26]And it felt a little bad.
[2:27]I don't know what the word is.
[2:28]It was like, it just kind of fell into place.
[2:29]It felt very like it was meant to be.
[2:32]So, you know, I was immediately on board of the topic.
[2:35]And it actually feels now, it feels like there's a little bit of sort of like, guys,
[2:40]the energy about midlife, in my opinion, maybe it's just because I am in midlife.
[2:43]So, you know, it was pretty smoothly.
[2:45]We talked a lot about what we wanted the collection to look like and be about.
[2:50]And then we brainstorm contributors and reach out to them and sort from there, it kind of
[2:54]rolled out.
[2:56]So, what was it like for you to turn 40?
[2:59]Like, is this when you were younger and you thought about life when you were 40?
[3:03]Is this what you thought it would be like?
[3:04]It's a great question.
[3:05]I often have often said for years that my life is exactly like I planned it and nothing
[3:10]like I imagined.
[3:11]I love it.
[3:12]That's awesome.
[3:13]I mean, the actual experience of turning 40 was really sort of, you know, a non-event,
[3:17]actually.
[3:18]I mean, I remember the day I turned 40.
[3:19]I went, I picked my kids up a camp, which is like a hell of a drive over the bridge to
[3:24]the cave and driving them home.
[3:25]I did all this laundry.
[3:27]We had dinner at home and I was like, it's just a really regular day.
[3:30]And that was great.
[3:31]So, I guess I would say it's exactly like I thought it was going to be, but also totally
[3:35]different.
[3:36]It sounds really abstract.
[3:37]No, that's, that's, I relate to that.
[3:40]You actually, I'm going to read a quote you said in the book.
[3:42]You said, I love hearing Alice and describe her 40s as her favorite decade because I feel
[3:45]the same way.
[3:46]This stage of life feels like one long exhale.
[3:49]It's also exhausting and overwhelming more than any other time in my life.
[3:52]I feel pulled thin and like so many people need me.
[3:55]Which I just loved.
[3:56]Yeah.
[3:57]Did you find that the other contributors to your book felt similarly to you?
[4:01]I did.
[4:02]I think one of the things that, you know, in my, I read a lot of memoir and I think that
[4:05]this book is not a memoir, but it's a personal essay and I think one of the great markers
[4:10]of a successful memoir or an essay is that it manages to take the really, really personal
[4:15]and make it super universal.
[4:16]And I always think about Gail Godwin, quote, there's like, you know, the more you focus
[4:19]on the singular and the strange, the more you access the universal and the infinite.
[4:22]So I think each essay actually comes at the question of, you know, basically, we were
[4:27]like right about being 40, you know, and it's pretty broad prompt.
[4:31]So I would say that I do think that some themes emerge and I think that, you know, a lot
[4:35]of people I'm thinking of, KJ's essay about why she can answer the email.
[4:38]I mean, that's clearly, you know, somebody who's got a lot of people leaving her.
[4:42]So yeah, I think my guess, I mean, I haven't asked the question that the other contributors,
[4:45]but I think most of them do feel the same way, even though everybody's lives are different,
[4:49]you know, in terms of, that was important to us also.
[4:52]I was going to say that Christina and I spent a lot of time making sure we had a diversity
[4:55]of viewpoints, not just people of different races and ethnicities and marital situations
[5:01]and sexual orientations and people on kids and people who didn't.
[5:03]And, you know, I think that even with all of that variety, there are some universal things
[5:08]that emerge, which is, you know, awesome in my opinion.
[5:10]I felt like everybody had the same sort of like, this is a time to pause.
[5:14]Like this is the middle, we're stopping for a second.
[5:17]We're reflecting and everybody was like kind of looking around.
[5:20]You know, like I feel like they were like, I don't know, like we're all on like some sort
[5:23]of football fields and everybody's like frozen and looking, yeah, taking stock and then
[5:28]like the game can go on towards the rest.
[5:30]So I don't know.
[5:31]Well, here are some of my favorite quotes from some of the different authors.
[5:34]So Meghan Dom, I hope I'm pronouncing it right.
[5:36]She said, children are life's great time keepers, which was so great because it's so
[5:41]true.
[5:42]Like mark the passage of time.
[5:43]Veronica Chambers said, what I have learned from being a sort of sports fan is a lesson
[5:47]that I have applied really almost daily to the act and art of being in my 40s.
[5:51]It's a game of two halves.
[5:52]Oh, this is like, this is probably where I just got that analogy.
[5:55]It's a game of two halves and this is the thing.
[5:57]No matter what happens, you can't win in the first half, which is great.
[6:01]And then Sloan Crosley, who I love, is she did a whole thing on beauty and said an assessment
[6:05]of my face as it stands now, construction projects that began in my late 20s are still
[6:10]underway.
[6:11]Julie Clam wrote, turns out the reason people say being it grown up is hard is because
[6:16]it is.
[6:17]Which is very true.
[6:18]And I loved Lee Woodruff's essay.
[6:20]She's a really beautiful writer and she talked about her new castor husband, Bob Woodruff
[6:25]and his injury on the field and said, when Bob woke very suddenly one day, my entire
[6:29]aperture on the world had been rearranged.
[6:31]I understood with clarity that there was no perfect age.
[6:34]I had envisioned my 40s as a mostly joyous, jumbled combination of mothering, marriage,
[6:39]work and play.
[6:40]Wasn't this decades supposed to be the wonderful gooey marshmallow center of life?
[6:43]This guy.
[6:44]All these different essays, and this is just some of the authors.
[6:47]I mean, Jill Cargman's essay was great, KJ, Delant, Tony's essay, which was accepted
[6:52]in the New York Times, usually amazing.
[6:54]I just think you really make the reader think.
[6:56]You make us pause and think, which was fantastic.
[6:59]Okay, so you have a full time job, your recruiter executive recruiter, is that right?
[7:03]Yeah.
[7:04]So when did you get this project done?
[7:08]So I have written a lot about when I write, because I got my question a lot, and I would
[7:12]say that the editing of this project was exactly the same, which is to say it happened
[7:16]sort of around the edges of the rest of my life.
[7:18]And I once long ago described writing as the grout between the tiles of my life.
[7:23]And actually, I keep coming back, and it was like a random analogy, and I think it makes
[7:27]so much sense, because not only is it around the edges, but it holds everything together.
[7:31]So I would say the editing of this was the same experience.
[7:33]So I'd edit and write in the mornings.
[7:35]I'd edit and write at night.
[7:36]If I have half an hour free in the middle of the day, but it's definitely something that
[7:41]is not my full time occupation, writing or editing, and that's actually, okay, a lot
[7:46]of people have often said to me, oh, you should quit your job and write full time.
[7:49]And the truth is, for me, having this other life in financial services, frankly, is actually,
[7:56]it's hard for me to imagine not doing that.
[7:58]And I think it's super additive to, for me personally, it's to who I am and how I think
[8:03]about the world.
[8:04]So I can't imagine not doing it.
[8:06]And tell me a little more about your blog, a design so best, and how you came up even
[8:10]with the name and the content.
[8:12]You know, I started on a whim in 2006, which is crazy how long ago that is.
[8:17]Grace and Whit were one and three when I started the blog.
[8:20]And it was definitely a part of me that wanted to capture them.
[8:23]I was aware even then that I was not able to remember.
[8:26]I wasn't going to remember everything, which is totally true.
[8:29]The title comes from probably my favorite quote, which is from Louis Orgrix, the Mango Palace.
[8:34]And there's no such thing as a complete lack of order.
[8:37]And so I finally designed so vast it appears unrepetitive up close, which I find very, very
[8:42]reassuring.
[8:43]And so honestly, I picked that kind of on a whim.
[8:44]I mean, it was bad.
[8:45]I probably should have called it Lindsey Meade, that kind of was like, where I'll back
[8:48]that.
[8:49]So, you know, originally, I wrote a lot about them and then as they got older, I wrote
[8:53]less about them.
[8:54]And so I would say it's changed a little bit over time, but I've always struggled with
[8:58]the elevator pitch of what my blog is about.
[9:00]And I've been told many times I need it better.
[9:03]Oh, stop.
[9:05]That's like saying, you know, you have to tidy up with the bow, the things that are
[9:08]going on in your mind on an average day.
[9:10]Like, it's just not that neat and perfect, right?
[9:12]It's like the things that you feel passionately about, they don't always get so perfectly
[9:16]packaged, I think.
[9:17]No, that's true.
[9:18]So I mean, I guess if you had some sort of specific intention for the blog.
[9:22]No.
[9:23]Yeah.
[9:24]And I feel like that's what makes it more relatable too.
[9:26]It's like, I mean, people want to intake information about lots of different things.
[9:30]It's not like you only go online to read, well, anyway, I'm rambling.
[9:34]But yeah.
[9:35]And you've also written so beautifully about your father and even on Instagram and just
[9:39]marking each date that passes and I'm so sorry for his loss.
[9:43]And sounds like you were so close and his love of poetry really, you know, seeps through
[9:48]into you.
[9:49]Have you found that writing about that helps about his loss or?
[9:52]I definitely have.
[9:53]I actually worry I'm a broken record writing better too much.
[9:56]It's been like, I should be over this by now, but I'm, you know.
[10:00]never gonna be ever.
[10:01]I have written a book about him already.
[10:02]It's about a 250-page book, and it's about maps.
[10:05]And if one of the themes in my life in his life,
[10:08]as he was very interested in maps,
[10:09]he had a lot of frame maps on the wall
[10:10]and collected badecker guide books.
[10:12]And it was just, I've written before
[10:14]about sort of this fundamental belief in the map
[10:16]that he had and my eulogy talked a little bit about this.
[10:20]And so the book was about him and about his influence on me,
[10:23]but also about kind of what happens
[10:24]when you come to the end of the map,
[10:26]which for me was always like living according to,
[10:29]you know, whatever the next great achievement was.
[10:31]And he once said about me when I was about 18,
[10:33]that my biggest strength in life
[10:35]was doing just well enough to get to the next hardest thing.
[10:38]And I was super offended at the time,
[10:40]and it was like, he's totally right, you know?
[10:41]And the problem is once you've had your graduate degrees
[10:44]and had your children, it's sort of like,
[10:45]there's no obvious next breath ring.
[10:47]So that's what that book was about.
[10:49]I would love to write more about him.
[10:50]I've often thought about revisiting that, but I don't know.
[10:53]We'll see.
[10:54]Well, I love that essay that I read the other day
[10:55]with especially with other quotes of poetry,
[10:57]and I don't know.
[10:58]It's like so lyrical.
[11:00]And people don't know that.
[11:01]I mean, he had PhD in physics,
[11:02]and he was like an engineer and super logical
[11:05]and had this side interest in poetry,
[11:07]which I love.
[11:08]Oh, yeah, so nice.
[11:10]So you say on your website that people find your book reviews
[11:13]also to be more helpful than like anything else.
[11:16]So what do you try to put in these book reviews?
[11:18]How do you do it?
[11:19]Like, what's the secret?
[11:20]Yeah, you know, I was thinking I read your question,
[11:22]and I was like, I haven't written one well.
[11:24]I don't know.
[11:25]I mean, I only review books.
[11:26]I choose my own, right?
[11:28]And so I can only review books that I loved, which is a gift.
[11:31]I don't review, but I don't get told what to review.
[11:34]So I'm able to pick.
[11:35]And so I think that it can be very heartfelt in my recommendation,
[11:39]and maybe people pick up on that.
[11:40]But I don't have any secrets off.
[11:43]I mean, I usually, I'm a big underliner when I read,
[11:46]and no taker, of course, I read mostly from the library.
[11:48]So that's a little tricky.
[11:50]I don't obviously underline library books.
[11:52]But so when I'm reading something for,
[11:53]like, when I read Danie's inheritance,
[11:55]which I knew I was going to review,
[11:57]I was writing in it.
[11:58]And then when I go back to write their view,
[11:59]I usually just flip through and see
[12:01]but I've underline it kind of structured that way.
[12:03]But I'm definitely not like a formal or in any way educated
[12:07]book review, or I just like to talk about books I love.
[12:10]And I'd love to talk to other people about books they love.
[12:12]I mean, it's definitely one of my favorite topics, so.
[12:14]Me too.
[12:15]And you can tell.
[12:16]Well, thank you for this fun.
[12:18]I do the same thing, but I find I often don't have a pen.
[12:21]So what I started doing was just doggering a page.
[12:24]I'd now get to the bottom, and then I have to go back
[12:26]and see which was the line I wanted.
[12:27]I would library books, and then I'd take a picture on my phone.
[12:30]And then what I realized is sometimes it goes by,
[12:32]and I can't remember what a book it was.
[12:34]Yeah, it's just, I guess.
[12:35]I find I go back a lot of times, and I'm like,
[12:37]why did I doggering this page?
[12:39]Like, what did I like?
[12:40]And if I can't find it again, then forget it.
[12:42]You know, like, I mean, obviously I have to forget it,
[12:44]but I'm like, it better be really,
[12:46]it's something that has to have stuck with me a little bit.
[12:49]So that's so great that you actually use a library.
[12:52]I feel like I'm such a supporter of libraries,
[12:54]and I love them.
[12:55]But I find I take out more for my kids,
[12:58]like in the summers or summer, and I have more time,
[13:00]or there's like a little local library,
[13:02]but you really go in and use them, and that's awesome.
[13:05]I put up companies and then I have a lot of guilt about it
[13:07]because I went to buy books, but I used to have a friend
[13:10]who used to work in publishing, and she said,
[13:11]you know, we sell to the libraries,
[13:13]like you shouldn't feel guilty about that.
[13:14]So I use, the Cambridge Public Library is great,
[13:17]is you can order the books,
[13:18]and then they come in to the one around the corner.
[13:20]So it's like my free Amazon.
[13:22]I love the librarians, they have, I mean,
[13:24]that's a great job, in my opinion,
[13:25]they have great ideas, and we talk about books,
[13:28]and I do often buy books, like if I, you know,
[13:30]if I go to a reading I buy the book,
[13:31]or if it's a book I want to have,
[13:33]but I, you know, my dad always used to say,
[13:35]actually home is where you keep the books,
[13:36]and we've been, like, after his dad, you know,
[13:39]we're part of what we're doing, throwing things wet,
[13:41]and he had so many books, and there's a part of me
[13:44]that's very liberated by the library,
[13:46]because I don't necessarily, there's just this stuff, you know?
[13:49]And so I don't know, I do use it, and I love it.
[13:51]I think it depends on the author.
[13:53]Like, where was I, I went to some book reading,
[13:55]and they were like, you know what,
[13:56]it doesn't matter if you read our book,
[13:58]just make sure you bought our book, you know, like, yeah.
[14:01]But I think for other writers, like,
[14:03]they just want you to read it.
[14:04]Like, because, you know, that's what people feel so touched
[14:07]when you take the time to read it.
[14:08]Like, they've spent so long writing it.
[14:09]I definitely care more about reading it.
[14:11]Like, when people come up with me and say,
[14:12]they read my blog, it like makes you want to cry.
[14:14]It's much more about the reading,
[14:16]and the reading than the buying book.
[14:19]Yeah.
[14:20]That may be why I haven't published a lot of books,
[14:21]so it was.
[14:22]No, stop.
[14:23]That's really funny.
[14:25]So do you have any interest in trying to revive?
[14:28]Well, you see, you mentioned you might want to revive
[14:30]the one about your dad, but starting to write another book
[14:32]or, yeah, mining the blog for some other.
[14:35]Yeah, I mean, I think about this all the time.
[14:38]I would love to write it.
[14:39]And I feel a little bit like a frog,
[14:41]because it was like, congratulations on your run.
[14:43]I mean, I had to be part of this.
[14:45]I feel like this is my baby, but I didn't write the whole thing.
[14:48]And that's why it's so beautiful,
[14:49]because everybody else is writing and so great.
[14:51]You are a total fraud.
[14:52]You're an imposter.
[14:53]I'm going to hang out now, forget it.
[14:56]I do think about lots of things.
[14:58]I got to the tube.
[15:00]I wrote the one book about maps in my dad.
[15:01]And then the second book I got very close on
[15:04]was a book about Grace.
[15:06]And it was called Wonder Girls.
[15:07]And it was about parenting a daughter in adolescence,
[15:10]basically preteen.
[15:11]And I remember I went for a walk in there my house one day.
[15:14]And I came home and I wrote this like page and a half
[15:16]about having walked past the playground
[15:18]where I used to take her as a child
[15:20]and how the weight of everything that was gone
[15:22]was so over while I leaned back against the fence.
[15:24]And I wrote this whole thing in a one page, right?
[15:27]But and I remember sending it to Britney
[15:29]and she was like, well, we might have sang here.
[15:31]But you know, I realized that the expectation for disclosure
[15:35]in a memoir is really high.
[15:37]And ultimately, people pass in the book.
[15:39]I mean, it was not picked up.
[15:40]So I'm not sugarcoating.
[15:42]But it also made me realize that part of a reason
[15:44]people passed was she's been told and I realized
[15:47]there's certain things about my daughter.
[15:48]I'm just not going to write about.
[15:49]And so if that's what's necessary to write a memoir
[15:52]and I believe it probably isn't necessary,
[15:54]I don't want to do it, right?
[15:55]So I guess the answer is I've loved to write a book
[15:58]and I have ideas.
[15:59]I've basically been told that once you've put
[16:01]something on a blog, you're not going to sell it
[16:02]because you get it away from free.
[16:04]So the idea of sort of aggregating the blog is very appealing.
[16:07]And I've printed every year and it's like that many pages, right?
[16:10]It's so big.
[16:11]It's have a bookshelf.
[16:12]But I don't think that could turn into a book.
[16:14]So I don't, and I'm not very good at fiction.
[16:16]I'd love to write fiction, but I'm not good at it.
[16:18]So I don't want to answer.
[16:20]I don't really, fundamentally, I'm not interested
[16:22]in uncomfortable writing about myself.
[16:24]And so therefore, if you don't want to write fiction,
[16:26]or if you're not good at fiction, you don't really
[16:27]want to talk about yourself.
[16:28]It's a little limiting.
[16:29]So I feel like you could have just summarized
[16:32]how I feel about writing in general.
[16:34]Like, if I can do like 1,000 words about what
[16:37]I pick, but I pick what goes in, right?
[16:41]Well, that's the thing about blogging, right?
[16:42]Or essays, because it was really in aha for me.
[16:45]Because several publishers came back and said,
[16:49]she needs to go deeper or like, where's
[16:51]her husband?
[16:51]And I realized, you know, I'm happily married.
[16:54]I just choose not to write about that, you know?
[16:55]Or I just don't want to write about X or Y in my daughter's
[16:58]teenage life.
[16:59]And so yeah, and I realized when you're a blogger or an essay
[17:02]is you can pick.
[17:03]And people of all, I don't know if people say this to you.
[17:06]People say to me all the time, oh,
[17:07]you must be, you're so comfortable being vulnerable.
[17:10]And I, you know, the truth is, I don't really feel that way
[17:12]because I can pick what I was sharing about, you know?
[17:15]I mean, I'm aware that I write candidly about certain aspects
[17:17]of my life, but the other ones I've come to are writing about.
[17:20]So I don't feel exposed.
[17:22]But if somebody said you have to write about your marriage,
[17:23]I would be like, no, you know?
[17:25]And so, anyway.
[17:26]You're like stealing what's in my head right now.
[17:28]That's it.
[17:28]You're like literally articulating the same exact thing.
[17:31]Yes, that's right.
[17:32]Yeah.
[17:32]And I just tried to write, I just was talking to you earlier,
[17:35]this memoir I just tried to write, I got the same feedback.
[17:37]Like, wait, you have to write about this.
[17:39]And you have to talk about that.
[17:40]And I'm like, oh, I'm not writing about that.
[17:42]So the reader will be unsatisfied.
[17:44]I'm like, who is this demanding reader?
[17:45]Why do they have to know every single thing?
[17:48]Do they even care?
[17:49]I mean, come on.
[17:50]No, I know.
[17:51]I have not solved that quandary.
[17:53]Let me know.
[17:55]Well, I see, I think you figured it out by doing this collection
[17:58]of essays.
[17:59]So now I might try to copy you because a friend of mine
[18:01]was joking last night.
[18:02]She was like, so what are you going to write?
[18:03]And I said, well, I can't write this.
[18:04]And the camera that I said, I think I'm going to do
[18:05]on being 50-Shucks.
[18:07]So I do feel like, hopefully this is a model that will continue.
[18:12]But to be honest, one of my four kids is 11.5-year-old girl.
[18:15]So I could use your pre-teen insight to be.
[18:20]So I think that grace was maybe time when I started.
[18:25]And it's now she's 16 and a half.
[18:27]I mean, it goes really fast.
[18:29]Well, you said about the playground that brought tears to my ass.
[18:31]But yeah.
[18:32]So do you have any advice?
[18:34]They're all these aspiring authors and bloggers
[18:38]and everybody.
[18:39]What would you tell them?
[18:40]I wrote, I have my notes here.
[18:42]Oh, OK.
[18:43]And I was all caps, right.
[18:44]I mean, I think the only thing, if you
[18:46]want to be a writer, you have to write.
[18:47]And I still have trouble using that word for myself.
[18:50]So I don't really think of myself as a writer.
[18:51]But I've spent whatever 12 years trying to own that title.
[18:57]And I think what makes a writer is writing.
[19:00]I mean, fundamentally.
[19:01]So I think that's my only advice.
[19:03]And I don't personally think that you
[19:05]have to stop everything else in order to write.
[19:06]I really, for me, it's been really profoundly
[19:09]effective to write alongside another or multiple other lives.
[19:14]And so I find it paralyzing when people's
[19:17]advices drop everything into down a red the book.
[19:20]I think that's overwhelming.
[19:21]And so I guess for me, the advice is just start writing.
[19:24]And it's an essay.
[19:26]So I guess that's my overall advice.
[19:27]But I don't feel like somebody who's in a position
[19:29]to give advice.
[19:30]You are like ridiculously self-deprecating stuff
[19:33]I don't think that, well, I don't.
[19:35]In my humble opinion, which means very little.
[19:37]But I don't think you have to have 50 books
[19:39]that a bookshelf, it burns in a world
[19:41]to make yourself a writer.
[19:42]I think it's who you are in your soul.
[19:43]And writing comes out in so many different ways.
[19:46]Like maybe they're poets out there who are like, well,
[19:48]I've never written a novel.
[19:49]So I'm not really a writer.
[19:51]I mean, yeah.
[19:52]It's like, I think you're selling it yourself short.
[19:54]Thank you.
[19:55]Plus, you've contributed this great book,
[19:57]which is the best gift for anyone turning 40 ever.
[20:00]I mean, it should be like, yeah, it's coming on sale February 5, very exciting.
[20:06]Yes.
[20:07]Thank you.
[20:08]All right.
[20:09]Well, thank you for being so open and vulnerable in the ways you chose today.
[20:13]And I know you're writing, and thanks for coming on mom's turn-off time to read books.
[20:17]Thanks for having me.
[20:18]Of course.
[20:19]This episode has been sponsored by Bookhampton, Bookhampton.com.
[20:23]Thanks to Ryan and Steve at Texture Sound for the audio editing and mixing.
[20:27]Thanks for listening to mom's turn-off time to read books.