Hello to... a "Goodbye to All That"-Related (FOURTH) Newsletter?

What?! No!!! (Okay, but possibly yes? Definitely maybe.)

Logo designed by Milton Glaser. Via Wikimedia Commons

Only twenty-five days ago, while executing the first of

Wendy MacNaughton

’s 30-Day Drawing Habit exercises, I set an intention to say “NO” more often this year, including to myself when I find I’m inclined to take on too much. I said something similar when I was interviewed by

Lindsay Alexander

.

These declarations were made in the interest of lightening my workload here at Botton, Ink., where I edit and publish three newsletters (two of them magazines mostly featuring other people’s writing that I select and edit, the third of them this “personal blog” as I describe it to people). I thought maybe I could begin offsetting some of the burnout I’ve been kvetching about for years.

My intentions for 2024, visualized in crayon.

Obviously, New Year’s resolutions were made to be broken. So, of course, I now find myself mired in an internal debate over whether to indulge a creative impulse I’ve had—and fought—for a long time, but which some friends and others close to me are encouraging me to go forward with.

Specifically, I’m talking about possibly adding a fourth newsletter to my little media empire (as my husband Brian calls it), this one centered on the subject of my two bestselling NYC anthologies, namely the push-pull that New York constantly exerts on its inhabitants, making it difficult both to stay and go. (Yes, despite the difference in titles, both books are about the same thing, and essentially love letters to the city.)

It’s an idea that pops into my head regularly, and which I pretty quickly nix every time, for reasons both valid and bogus. For example:

Valid: I’M OBVIOUSLY ALREADY DOING TOO MUCH. 🤯

Bogus: The mean, cool kids of Twitter High will make fun of me! They’ll say, Oh, my god, she’s flogging those goddamn books again! When will she stop? Not more of those tedious, formulaic Leaving-New-York pieces! The Didion is the only one you ever need to read! Not more romanticizing-NYC pieces! For Christ’s sake, it’s the literary equivalent of one of those NYC souvenir shops you see all over midtown. (These are all things people have actually tweeted and/or said.)

(I wish I could have conjured, and knew how to draw: an image representing my intention to stop giving a shit what the mean, cool kids of Twitter High think of me. Also, I wish I just knew how to stop giving a shit.)

Despite all that naysaying, both external and internal, in 2023 I considered the possibility of launching this theoretical newsletter even more frequently than usual. Last year marked the 10th anniversary of the publication of the first edition of Goodbye to All That—a book that did so well, Hachette asked me to reissue it with seven new essays in 2021. And this year marks the 10th anniversary of the publication of Never Can Say Goodbye, a book I’d love a chance to update as well. (A conversation about that possibility has been sparked with Simon & Schuster.)

People still very much associate me with those books, and the topic of whether to leave or stay in NYC—and I have the impression that most see it as a positive association, as opposed to what the mean, cool kids think.

In 2019, LinkNYC wifi kiosks blared these quotes of mine, from the books, all over the city, along with other quotes by some of my contributors.

In 2019 these quotes of mine from my two NYC anthologies were posted all over the city on LinkNYC wifi hotspots.

And now I’m preparing to speak in

Blaise Allysen Kearsley

’s “Writing New York: Personal Narratives That Could Only Happen Here” workshop in February, and to be in conversation with New York Times editor Dan Saltzstein about his forthcoming NYC anthology, That’s So New York: Short (and Very Short) Stores About the Greatest City on Earth, at Book Club Bar in the East Village on March 12th.

I mean…I kind of have to do this newsletter, right? To grab the opportunity while newsletters are still a viable option?

I was pretty set on “NO” until I joked about it to a kind friend who’d teased me in an email about how much I’m already juggling with three newsletters. This is a colleague with whom I’ve discussed my burnout, and my need to scale back. I wrote back to him, “At least I didn't start the FOURTH newsletter I was considering, ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’ featuring stories about leaving or staying in NYC.😂” He replied saying that actually, I should do it. He kindly offered to hash the idea out with me on the phone, and I took him up on it.

When I brought it up to Brian, he said, “Oh, yeah, you have to do it!” He added a caveat that I clearly need to hire someone, or someones, to help me. (I’ve already begun offering one-off guest-editing opportunities to colleagues for Memoir Land’s First Person Singular vertical.) Then I mentioned it to my mom in one of our twice-daily FaceTime sessions, and she said, “Sari, of course you have to do this. You’ll figure out how!”

Despite all the encouragement, Libra that I am, I am of two minds—and two hearts—on this. There are moments I get so excited about the possiblity, I could plotz. Alternately, there are moments I feel so overwhelmed by the possibility, I could plotz. I get this charged feeling in my gut, something an old therapist taught me to identify as a “signal anxiety,” a red flag my body is sending up to alert me in some way. Most of the time, “signal anxieties” are telling me I’m in danger of self-abandonment, something I’m prone to. But get this: I now can’t tell which would be the self-abandoning choice: to pass up this opportunity while it’s still a viable option, or to overload myself with it.

🌇 🌇 🌇

Last week, while I was in the city to begin scheming the possibility of the first Oldster Live event, I started leaning more toward “yes” on the NYC newsletter. This shift was due, at least in part, to 1/3 of a (supposedly) 5mg indica gummy that was more like a tab of acid. (Not that I’ve ever consumed a tab of acid, but the experience matched what I’ve heard.)

My hip and lower back had been killing me that morning, and unfortunately I’d forgotten to pack Meloxicam and Extra-Strength Tylenol, the analgesic combination that helps. Before my orthopedist prescribed Meloxicam for my arthritis, he’d provided me with a medical marijuana card. While I mostly use indica gummies for sleep, occasionally I use them—or portions of them because I’m a ridiculous lightweight—to take the edge off my joint pain, and they work.

Usually I have one or two commercially produced edibles floating around my bag—ones whose dosages are more reliably uniform. This time, all I had were the ones a guy I know makes in his kitchen. I know them to be stronger than he says, so I never ingest more than 1/3 at a time. Based on prior experiences with those, I figured I knew the right dosage for me, and what I was in for, but I was wrong.

My (glorious to me) view from The Hotel on Rivington.

Two hours after I bit off a third of that marijuana leaf-shaped gummy, everything went kablooey. It was Friday afternoon, and I was making my way from my hotel on the Lower East Side to Port Authority, where I’d catch a bus back to Kingston. As I was finishing my lunch of Vietnamese rice noodles with shrimp at Sao Mai on First Avenue, a strange thing happened: it seemed as if the amount of food in the bowl stayed the same no matter how many bites I took.

I started to doubt if I was actually eating, or just imagining that I’d been eating. Hadn’t I just lifted some of the noodles and shrimp to my mouth with those chopsticks in my hand? Was any of it still in my mouth? I might have known if I could feel my mouth, but I could not.

After I paid the bill and left, I realized I couldn’t feel my entire body. I was walking against horizontal snow and freezing rain on a cold, windy day, but I felt nothing. I was relieved to be pain-free for the first time in years, but anxious about essentially being numb all over. (I was uncomfortably numb.)

At some point, though, panic gave way to bliss. There I was, in my favorite place in all the land, engaged in my favorite activity there—just walking, taking in the city’s cityness via osmosis—and all was right in the world. On nearly every block, I collided with my younger self, and all of her experiences. There’s the building where I went to that party and I met that character actor I went on two dates with. There’s where the Palladium used to be, where I met Spalding Gray during the New Music Seminar of 1993. There’s the place where Pennel and I made up after a fight. There’s the storefront that used to be such-and-such, where I got that now threadbare blouse I still love. There’s the place that was Sandobe, the cheap sushi place where my found family of friends in the East Village would convene at least once a week…

I mean, this is what I do every goddamn time I go to the city. I’m a fucking broken record. And I’m not over New York, and probably never will be. But on 1/3 of an intense edible, this standard routine of mine was freaking magical. I realized then that I have so many more New York stories to tell, and that I’d probably also want to find and publish more of other writers’ New York stories. As I was tripping balls through the streets of lower Manhattan, I gave the NYC newsletter idea a resounding “yes.”

That decision made me feel even higher. I was absolutely floating—to the degree that it crossed my mind I might have died and come back as a ghost. (It bears mentioning that we’ve just finished re-watching Russian Doll, which was shot in our part of the East village, for the third time. And that, while the exterior of the building where Nadia keeps reliving her birthday party is on 10th and A, the description of the building—a former yeshiva turned into lofts—matches that of the building we lived in on the corner of 8th and B. )

The subway ride from Union Square to Times Square turned a little Jacob’s Ladder for my taste, especially when the train was held between stations. I was worried about being late for my bus, but then I got to Port Authority and found I had 45 minutes to kill, and no idea what to do with myself. My balance felt off, and I was scared I might fall, so I spent 30 minutes standing stick straight with my back against a wall between Hudson News and Duane Reade, watching people come and go, wondering if I was alive or dead, and trying to decide—given that I couldn’t feel my bladder—whether I needed to pee.

Fortunately I slept off most of my high on the bus ride home. Back at the house in Kingston, Brian hugged me and asked how I was. “Well, I can’t feel my mouth,” I said, “but three hours ago I couldn’t feel my entire body.” Then told him about my little surprise psychedelic trip, and he laughed.

Over dinner I brought up the newsletter idea again, and he once again encouraged me to do it—but to also make sure I can get some help with my work load.

🌇 🌇 🌇

So…am I doing this? I’m not 100% sure, but it’s very much on my mind. I know it’s a good idea. I know I’m good at producing newsletters that people enjoy. I get so many emails from people telling me that my newsletters are among the few they feel they need to open instantly, when they arrive at their inbox. (And yet I’m conflicted about producing another thing I’d want people to pay me for…even though I know it would be good. Even though I typically under-charge for my newsletters. But that’s a whole other subject for another day.)

Let’s just say: If I can figure out how to do this without completely overwhelming myself—naysayers be damned—I will.

In the meantime, I’m toying with titles. The first that came to mind, as I’d mentioned to my friend in that email, was “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”—which was also the name of the reading series Jason Diamond and I cohosted at Housing Works Bookstore three times. Or what about “Fairytale of New York,” after the Pogues song, which was named after J. P. Donleavy’s 1973 novel? Another possible title: “Filthy but Fine,” from a lyric in “New York I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down” by LCD Soundsystem.

The full lyric:

New York, you're safer
And you're wasting my time
Our records all show
You are filthy but fine

I’m not quite sold on any of them. I guess I’ll keep thinking about it all until I know for sure…

---

In other news…

The New York Times has discovered Oldster Magazine. Twice this week I’ve been quoted in the Style section about aging and ageism—first in an article by Callie Holtermann about Gen Z panicking about getting older, and then in a piece by Guy Trebay about Nikki Haley attacking Donald Trump with ageist barbs. It’s brought in a new wave of subscribers, and I’m grateful.