Crow's Feet: Life As We Age

Boobs, Belligerence & Belly Laughs from Amy Sea

• Crow's Feet • Season 2 • Episode 9

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“I never planned on doing this in my 50s,” says humor writer Amy Sea about Breast Stories, her online publication on the Medium.com platform. It’s dedicated to all things related to breasts, from cancer to breastfeeding. On the podcast, she talks with host Warren Turner about her publication and how she uses humor to figure herself out. When you hear Amy Sea read her work, you’ll laugh knowingly about all the quirky things haunting our minds when we can’t sleep at night. Read more of Amy Sea’s work on Medium here or visit the publications she writes for Muddy-Um, Contemplate and Breast Stories.

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Amy Sea:

The people you go in with just a funny group of people that go into the water together in January, and the goal is to go as far as we can. And every time I go in, I feel like I won some epic battle because the water is like between 32 and 35 right now. So you get out and you warm up and then you go home and anything else is possible.

Voice Over:

This is Crow's Feet, a place where we ponder the question, Are these our golden years? Or does aging just suck? Well, yes, getting older is not for the faint hearted. But aging also brings wisdom and humor, a finely tuned perspective on life. In our podcast, you'll meet writers and others rethinking our later years, people who inspire us to reimagine our future.

Warren Turner:

My name is Warren Turner. I am the host of today's episode of the Crow's Feet podcast. And my guest is Amy Sea. She's a top writer, editor and publisher on the writing platform, Medium. Medium carries a wide variety of publications, and Amy is involved with several of them including Crow's Feet, MuddyUm, a humor pub, Contemplate, and Breasts Stories. We will link to all of those in the show notes. But tell me Amy, how do you keep all your publications straight?

Amy Sea:

MuddyUm was the first one that I joined in. Contemplate is the sister pub of MuddyUm, when it's not quite funny enough. You go to, I go to contemplate. My favorite thing about MuddyUm is our Monday morning meetings at 10am. We show up and we have these raucous, hilarious meetings that sometimes are all business, but where everyone just bounces off of each other. And you're like, it's another one of those tribes. I'm here with these funny people. How did we find each other? You have the same thing at Crow's Feet, I imagine. You think how did we find each other. But it's just as group of people who's always funny. And Breast Stories was because I wrote a story I think that was titled, If These Breasts Could Talk, about a woman in Iowa City, who'd had her breasts removed. The story got so widely read, and I got so many comments, I couldn't believe it. And my friend, Andrew, who I work with, said you should do a breast pub. So I thought, sure. And then Amiee Gramblin, who's done a lot of publications, did a zoom with me for two hours and told me how to run a pub, which was so generous because I didn't even know her. In Breast Stories, breast cancer stories. trans stories, like ownership over women telling their own stories about their bodies has been so mind blowing, and beautiful. It's like another tribe and yours. Can I say one thing about Crow's Feet? It's not easy turning 50 in this culture of ageism and writing for something where people write past a certain age, embraces aging. And I feel like I can lean into aging and love it and embrace it. Because writing is how I figure myself out.

Warren Turner:

Speaking of writing for Crow's Feet, do you have anything that you would like to share from some of your Crow's Feet essays?

Amy Sea:

I wrote a piece called You've Been Warned:. Nothing Good Happens in Your Brain after 12am. And it was kind of comparing late nights and wee hours for when you're young versus when you're getting older. And here's just an

excerpt from that:

When you're older, the wee hours present other troubles. If you wake up to pee at 3am It's your kidneys. If you wake up at 2am It's your negative thoughts. Your mortality, dying alone. Your life is more than half over. Have you actually lived? Money troubles, relationship troubles, family troubles, your most troubled kid? Your kids relationships with each other. Global warming. Money. Unresolved issues. A weird conversation you had with someone that day that's making you feel insecure. Negative thoughts. Is your partner having an affair? Money. Why was everyone looking at you that way at work? Did you do something wrong? Or are you becoming paranoid? And no one gives a shit about you? Are you sick and you don't know it? Why can't the dog live as long as you do? Why hasn't the doctor called you back yet? Did you turn off the oven? Are you sick and you don't know it? But you're sure it'll kill you. Why are you still fat even though you barely eat anymore and you exercise all the time? Are you invisible? Is the front door locked? What if you sleep through a fire because you're so tired? Why do you feed her?

Warren Turner:

Yeah, I love that. Let's talk more about your humor writing. Maybe see how you do it? Like, what is your approach? I think people would be very interested in that.

Amy Sea:

When I was younger, and I wrote short stories, and fiction, and essays, I always wrote on the top of the page,"make funny," because I always felt like I was being too serious and too intense. And I just wanted to lighten up. During COVID, I found Medium. And I thought I would try it again. Try to be funny. And so I started writing some funny pieces. And Susan Brearley who's the editor in chief of MuddyUm, who is also a collector of funny people said, You're really funny. Can you send us more stuff. And I started challenging myself to only write funny things. Now my process is I get mad at things. I get agitated by the world, I get mad in line at Starbucks, I don't like traffic, I have a lot of things that piss me off. So one thing I realized about humor is the first draft is what makes you mad. The 12th draft is getting to the joke. So a lot of times now, I start with a mad I don't try to start with funny. Sometimes I'm lucky and I do, but then I just keep writing and writing until I find the joke. So it sort of enables me to not only lighten up as a human being, but to find the funny in any scenario. So I just keep writing and writing it. And one thing that Susan also taught me was, before I got better at finding the humor was,"Who are you making fun of What's the joke?" The rule is for us as we're always punching up, not punching down. So we're not making fun of people whose lives are not going very well. We're making fun of politicians and movie stars, not that they have perfect lives. But you want to make sure that you know, like I was writing a piece once and she goes, "Are you making fun of old people?" I said, "No, I'm making fun of aging." But then it made me realize I wasn't there yet. I had to keep working on it. I hadn't figured out how to introduce this joke to the reader in a way that made it palatable and actually humorous. So it's both a life lesson to me on how to be kinder, and find more humor in life. And the writing lesson on having to turn something out, transforming it from one thing into another thing.

Warren Turner:

I read that your goal in life is to transform your repressed anger into life altering humor. That's fascinating. Can you tell me a little bit more about yourself?

Amy Sea:

A lot of my life has been about collecting people I admire funny people, smart people, kind people, sort of like tour guides on how to be a human being. And that's the truest thing about me, how much I love my friends. And right now I'm at a point in my life that I am learning how to be funnier. And I found out how to do it by working on Medium, and MuddyUm. And I just right now, I'm collecting funny people. So that's who I am right now.

Voice Over:

You're listening to Crow's Feet Life as We Age. Today, two Crow's Feet writers, Warren Turner and Amy Sea, talk about finding the humorous side of aging. Don't laugh. There really is one.

Warren Turner:

When you and I were talking before, one of the interesting things I heard was about your experience at Second City where you took improv, I always wish that I had been able to do that. It sounds like that that experience helped you a little bit in terms of your humor.

Amy Sea:

With improv, the main rule is "yes." And it means when you're doing improv someone on the stage says to you, "This is a great boat." And you don't say, "That's not a boat. It's a car." In improv, you say, "yeah, it is a great boat and it's got an incredible sail and it's on the ocean." And you don't say no, it's not an ocean. It's all agreement. It's all agreement. And my husband said, you used to be a no-butter. You'd say no, I would just be more contrary, but after Second City, I tried to be more in agreement. So you integrate so you learn how to always support each other on stage. And in order to support each other, you have to listen to what the person is giving you receive it, say thank you, and add to it. And so it really forces you to a listen and be get out of your own head and see let go of your agenda.

Warren Turner:

If you use that process as you write, I can see where that would be very helpful as well. Hey, let me do a little aside here because recently you have been doing a lot of feature images on Medium at the top of your essay. And you've been getting stuff from a design site called Canva. Tell us just a little bit about that. About Canva. Yeah, and how you how you have been using it,

Amy Sea:

You pay for it monthly, and it gives you images that you can use. But you can also integrate text and filters. And it's like media collage, which I love. Because sometimes when I don't know what is happening in my story, and I, I use a picture, it makes me figure out what my story is. So finding the right picture for your story is huge.

Warren Turner:

We've been talking about your writing and your humor and such. But you're also what I think of as a swimming freak. You go out and jump in the cold water. So talk a little bit about your whole swimming thing.

Amy Sea:

Well, it's funny, Amiee Gramblin, who's a rock star in Medium, recently said to me on one of my swimming pieces, this is about writing, right? So it is, it's about swimming, it's about writing, and it's about life. So like swimming is my, I consider it living metaphor for how I'm figuring life out. It's where all my demons happen. So I both swim in the lake, and right now it is January 24, and I swam in the lake yesterday, January 23. And there's snow on the beach. And I show up. And there's this tribe of people, some of them are biking through the year. They show up on their bikes, they don't have cars, the other ones have electric cars. They've been in the Peace Corps, they design Lear jets, just great scientists, just a funny group of people that show up to go into the water together in January. And the goal is to go as far as we can. And every time I go in, I feel like I want some epic battle because I have to get up at between 4:30 and 5:15. I have my coffee on the burner that I have to turn on my stovetop espresso, I heat that up, I make a cup of tea for my after-swim, I have a gallon of boiling water, collapsible bag, which I'll put my hot water in. After I get out of the water, after the cold water, because your feet are so cold, because the water is like between 32 and 35 right now. So you get out and you're freezing. So you put your feet in hot water, I put on this giant fleece poncho, my hat and you warm up and then you go home and anything else is possible. The people you go in with like you. Just there's something about walking into freezing cold water when it's still dark with these people. And it seems like you could be walking off the earth. And you feel your skin prickles, and it burns, but it's other people with you, you'd never do it alone. And you're looking at each other and you're sometimes you're swearing sometimes you're breathing. And when people come out, their legs are so red, they look like they have sunburns. And we have a couple people that are still swimming a distance in it. I'm just going in and hanging out there as long as I can stand it. Yeah, that's the open water swimming that we do. Hopefully till we can't do it.

Warren Turner:

It made me think when you were talking about the way that swimming affected your thinking and your feeling and your sense of okay, now I can just about do anything with the rest of my day. You know, there's a lot more that we can talk about. And I want to make sure that we've covered everything. Is there something else that you might want to add or talk about that we haven't covered?

Amy Sea:

When I was thinking of my final thoughts. I was thinking now that I'm in my 50s, my life is funny people, swimming people, making new friends, writing, editing and telling people that I run a publication called Breast Stories, which people always make me repeat. They say, breasts, what? And I say Breast Stories and they... And it's like having a name someone can't pronounce they make me keep saying it. So I go. It's about boobs. And that's really funny. I never planned on doing that when I was in my 50s. So that's it.

Warren Turner:

I've read it from a male point of view. Sometimes it's demystifying, you know, your stories on the people who have who have written for breast stories. It helps me a lot at this time. Our niece is going through an experience of breast cancer. Wow. I guess Breast Stories has helped me understand that better. And so I really appreciate that. I read at least one of your stories every day because it's a writing lesson for me. And I hope that will help my writing as I go along.

Unknown:

Thank you Warren.

Warren Turner:

My guest has been Amy Sea. Our executive producer is Nancy Peckenham. With editing and sound engineering by Rich Halton ,additional support was provided by a team of Crow's Feet writers, including Lee Bentch, Jan Flynn, Nancy Franklin, Elizabeth Allen, Melinda Blau, Jean Feldeisen, and Cathy Gilbert. Our original theme music was written and recorded by Rand Bishop.

Voice Over:

Thanks for joining us on this episode of Crow's

Feet:

Life as We Age. Don't miss any of our great stories. Subscribe to Crow's Feet wherever you get your podcasts. And be sure to tell your friends and family to give a listen to and leave a rating or review. You can read more Crow's Feet stories online @medium.com, forward slash, crows hyphen feet and check back next month for a new episode. So until next time, remember to savor every moment. As Marshall McLuhan said, there are no passengers on spaceship Earth. We are all crew.