The audacity of nonlinear ageing
Aka, the case for doing everything at the wrong time
“All my life, I've either been too early or too late for things. I was never right in step with my peers,” Sari Botton, the founder of Oldster Magazine, tells me from her home office in New York.
“I feel like I've been doing everything at the wrong time.”
I, too, am perpetually out of sync. Well, mostly on the “too late” side of things.
The last decade of my life is a prime example.
I was too old when I got married (my age: 35; my high school friends were in their 20s), too old when I finally became editor-in-chief of Women's Health (my age: 39; a former colleague had told me years before, “If you’re not the editor of a magazine by 30, you’ll never be”), too old when I had my first MMA fight (my age: 32; that’s about the time fighters usually start implementing their retirement plan) and too old when I became a mum (my age: 39; according to the medical world, it was a “geriatric pregnancy”).
This pressure to conform to society’s timeline is a theme that Sari delves into with her Substack, Oldster. As Sari puts it, Oldster "explores what it means to travel through time in a human body at every phase of life."
“I'm using the term ‘oldster’ in a tongue-in-cheek way and a subversive way,” says Sari. “I'm taking this former slur and using it to normalise ageing, to destigmatise ageing, and I'm going to show that it's happening to everyone all the time.
“We are all the oldest we've ever been. Whether you are 10 or 90, you are the oldest you've ever been. And so you feel old, even when you're a child. So that's what I'm exploring.” Sari herself is 59 (58 at the time of the interview) but says, "internally I'm more like 10 and a half, 11."
After publishing many perspectives on ageing, from ordinary people to high-profile authors, like Elizabeth Gilbert, I wanted to hear how she, as the founder and editor of my favourite Substack, felt about the topic. Here’s what she said.
Lizza: You start each Oldster Magazine questionnaire by saying you’ve been obsessed with what it means to get older since you were 10. What made you first think about that at such a young age?
Sari: At my 10th birthday party at a bowling alley in Long Beach, New York, my uncle arrived, and the first thing he said to me was, "Well, you'll never be one digit again”. It had not occurred to me that I had just passed through a portal, and I couldn't go back. I actually got very emotional. I think I probably cried. Well, I cry easily, and I definitely cried even more easily when I was young. But, something big happened, and I didn't know it was going to happen, and I didn’t have any say in the matter. It made me realise for the first time that this happens throughout life: you pass through these milestones and you can't go back. And some of them are exciting – you invite them, you welcome them – and then others are not.
“People say it again and again: once they've gotten to know themselves, they don't have any time to waste on things that don't matter to them.”
All my life, I’ve either been too early or too late for things. I was never in step with my peers. I got divorced from my first husband when I was around 26, 27, and all hell broke loose. I'm 58, but I don't really feel like an adult most of the time. I also didn't have kids, and I think that bypassing parenthood contributes to my feeling. But so many of the people who take the Oldster Magazine questionnaire say the same thing, that there's a part of them that's arrested at a younger age.
Lizza: Has your perception of ageing changed over the different life stages, or have you always felt like you’re not experiencing the milestones at the right time?
Sari: No, I've always felt out of step. I've always felt like I was doing it wrong. There's an anxiety in me about doing things wrong or at the wrong time. That’s what sparked my curiosity about other people's experiences of getting older and led me to launch Oldster. That curiosity is always alive in me. So every Wednesday, I run questionnaires, and on Mondays, I run personal essays by people about their experience of being whatever their age currently is. And then every other Friday, I do a roundup of interesting things I've read that are related to ageing, and I alternate them with open threads where I tell a story from my life, and I ask people about their experience that's similar to mine. Through each week, I'm learning more through other people's essays, questionnaires, and responses.
Lizza: What have you learnt about ageing through these stories?
Sari: I've learnt so much. One is that it's quite possible for life to get better later. People keep telling me that, showing me that. On my 58th birthday, I posted an essay with an intro about how anxious I am about turning 60 in two years. And so many people wrote in the comments to tell me that their life really took off after 60. Some of them said that after 70, all these great things happened. They were able to change partners, change jobs, enjoy hobbies. They were able to know themselves better.
You know, the older I get, the better I know myself, which allows me to make better choices. I realised after [publishing] that post, I was actually living it. I'm actually having a better life at 58 than I've ever had. So why am I afraid of getting older? That’s one of the things that made me want to start Oldster: there's some anxiety there. And why do I have it? I think it's a part of living in an ageist culture.
Lizza: Yeah, and I think that’s what attracts me to your publication. [Like you] I work in the media, and there aren’t many stories out there about older people doing great things. People in media are suspended in their 30s or 40s, and I love that you’re telling all these different stories.
When I was in my 20s, my co-workers in their 40s kept telling me, "Oh, your 40s are much better than your 20s, 40s are awesome." That made me feel better about getting older. And now that I'm in my 40s, I'm searching for stories of people doing cool things in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and it has made me realise that there's so much … Life is for exploring and following your passions, and that doesn't need to stop as you get older, no matter what society tells us.
Sari: It's true. But society does keep saying it. You know, I've encountered ageism on the job front. Fortunately, I'm making my living now running Oldster and another Substack called Memoir Land, because I can't get a job. It's so silly because I'm the best me I've ever been as a worker and as a thinker. I know more now. I'm getting older, but I'm not unwell. I'd be great on someone's team. And so, there's that dichotomy of the culture, really: as soon as you hit 40, you're passé, you're old news. But really, [life] just keeps getting better.
I published a questionnaire by 86-and-a-half-year-old Eve France, who is the mother of Kim France, a Gen X icon and [former] editor of Lucky magazine [in the US]. Eve said that the last 25 years of her life have been the best. What enabled this was that she took the time to really get to know herself in her 50s. She put the work in, you know? I feel like I'm doing that too, and so maybe life will be even better for me going forward. I also learnt that a lot of older people are having sex late in their lives. And then there are others who welcome a decrease in sex hormones – they like not being distracted by desire. There’s a range of possibilities, and they're all potentially enjoyable. They're all potentially good.
Lizza: Like you say, the key is knowing yourself. I’ve also been concerned about getting older since I was 10 because hitting a double digit felt really old. I think I was in my early-30s, when I asked myself, “What is it about getting older that makes me so anxious?” I realised it was because I wanted to do all these things, and I felt like I was running out of time to do it. And so, I said to myself, why don’t I just go do it? And that helped me find peace with getting older. But since having a child, I haven’t been as brave. So, for me, it’s about redefining what that is again.
Sari: And I think that as life shows you new phases, new challenges – like becoming a mum – you're going to have to redefine what matters to you, what makes you feel like you. And the older you get, the more you'll know yourself, and the more you'll be able to say, “You know what? That's not me. That's not genuine to me. I tried that on, and it's not me.” You have less time, and you don't have time to waste on the things that don't feel genuine to you.
Lizza: Yes, that’s another thing that really comes through in Oldster. And it makes me think, if that’s what I’m going to learn in a few decades, maybe I just apply that now. Try to anyway.
Sari: Yeah, you can. You can. It's really good. I learn from every person's questionnaire. There's always one nugget of information. It’s like, “Maybe I could apply that without having life show me, you know, without a tragedy happening. Maybe I could start paying more attention to this or that.”
Lizza: What do you imagine 80-year-old Sari to be doing with her days?
Sari: Well, I hope 80-year-old Sari can slow down a little bit because I'm working so hard right now. Part of the reason I'm doing so much is because I love everything that I'm doing. I'm very excited to publish other people's voices and interrogate ageing, but I'm doing a lot, and so I hope that when I'm 80, I will have slowed down. I hope I'm still creating. I hope I'm still writing. I hope I’m singing and still drawing with crayons. I have so many boxes of crayons. I just did a 30-day art habit through artist Wendy MacNaughton, who has a newsletter. [80-year-old Sari] will not going to be playing golf. That's not who I'll ever be.
Lizza: Not on the agenda.
What’s one thing you’d like society to understand about getting older?
Sari: People can get better with age. There are a lot of misconceptions about older people and their limitations. I'd like the culture to revise its stance on older people, give people more of a chance when they're older, and not write people off so young.
Cheers to nonlinear ageing.
Until our next 3am Huddle
Lizza x