This is 58: Podcaster Sam Baker Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire
"Like many women my age I’ve created my own career, partly because I got sick of fighting for the one seat at the table that was afforded us..."
From the time I was 10, I’ve been obsessed with what it means to grow older. I’m curious about what it means to others, of all ages, and so I invite them to take “The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire.”
Here, podcaster, newsletter-er, and author sam baker responds. -Sari Botton
Sam Baker is the creator of hit podcast The Shift with Sam Baker podcast and substack newsletter of the same name. In her previous life she was editor in chief of a several British magazines including Cosmopolitan, Red, Just 17 and Company, and co-founder of the (now defunct) women’s mobile platform The Pool, with Lauren Laverne. She’s written five novels and one memoir/manifesto, The Shift - how I lost and found myself after 40 and you can too.
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How old are you?
58
Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind? If so, what is it? And why, do you think?
Honestly I think now (ish), my 50s, is the first time I’ve felt an equilibrium, at ease within myself. I don’t hanker for a younger age because when I hear people say, their (insert decade here) was their happiest time I feel a little sad because they’re always going to be looking back.
I never expected to be so happy in myself in my late 50s. We’re taught to fear getting older, or to try to deny it. Which is ridiculous when you consider the alternative. I am so much happier than I was at 20, 30 and 40. And so busy—but genuinely busy, not the busy, busy, busy of my youth—I absolutely didn’t expect getting older to be so great, to feel so powerful and strong. Hmmm, maybe “they” don’t want us to know it.
Do you feel old for your age? Young for your age? Just right? Are you in step with your peers?
Young for my age, but don’t we all?
I feel I’ve been out of step with my peers for most of my adult life. I met my husband in my early 20s, he’s 10 years older and had a little boy from his first marriage, so when my friends were raving all night I was hanging out in Pizza Express eating dough balls with a 6-year-old. When I was in my late 30s all my friends were having babies or trying to conceive and I had a teenager in the house. Now they have teenagers and I’m a step-gran. I used to find it disorienting, but now I’m used to it. I quite like it.
What do you like about being your age?
I love love love being my age so it’s hard to pick one thing, but one that leaps out is that people stop questioning your every move. It felt like until my late 40s-ish I was running running running to meet someone else’s deadline. When are you going to do this? Why haven’t you done that? All that has stopped. Could be biology. Could be that I’m no longer listening.
What is difficult about being your age?
The boring physical stuff, for a start. My eye sight, which until about a decade ago was 20-20, is now absolutely shocking. But that’s swings and roundabouts, I guess.
The most significant—and enraging—thing is having to convince the world you still have a right to exist. That you’re just as competent, talented and skilled as you always were, and—get this—maybe more so because of that word nobody seems to like when it’s attached to women: “experienced.” Like many women my age I’ve created my own career, partly because I got sick of fighting for the one seat at the table that was afforded us, I wanted to work on my own terms, but also because I watched countless smart women be discounted for senior jobs because of their age and I realised it was a necessity if I didn’t want someone else to be deciding my fate.
I feel I’ve been out of step with my peers for most of my adult life. I met my husband in my early 20s, he’s 10 years older and had a little boy from his first marriage, so when my friends were raving all night I was hanging out in Pizza Express eating dough balls with a 6-year-old. When I was in my late 30s all my friends were having babies or trying to conceive and I had a teenager in the house. Now they have teenagers and I’m a step-gran.
What is surprising about being your age, or different from what you expected, based on what you were told?
It’s fun! I never expected to be so happy in myself in my late 50s. We’re taught to fear getting older, or to try to deny it. Which is ridiculous when you consider the alternative. I am so much happier than I was at 20, 30 and 40. And so busy—but genuinely busy, not the busy, busy, busy of my youth—I absolutely didn’t expect getting older to be so great, to feel so powerful and strong. Hmmm, maybe “they” don’t want us to know it.
What has aging given you?
Peace of mind. (I mean personally not globally…)
Taken away from you?
The ability to stand on one leg with my eyes closed for more than a few seconds.
How has getting older affected your sense of yourself, or your identity?
I’m not sure whether this is getting older or having EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) in my late 40s, to deal with complex PTSD, but I feel like I’m OK with it all. All of it, no matter how ugly. It’s all there on the shelf in front of me. I guess what I’m saying is that I used to need to look outside to validate myself (and that way madness lies), and now I’m not scared to look inside. I’m OK with who I am. Mostly.
What are some age-related milestones you are looking forward to? Or ones you “missed,” and might try to reach later, off-schedule, according to our culture and its expectations?
I think age-related milestones are part of the reason we’re all so dissatisfied and feel like such under-achievers—do this by this age, do that by the next, and constantly failing to hit them. So, I think what I’m looking forward to most is having fewer and fewer shoulds hanging over me.
I love love love being my age so it’s hard to pick one thing, but one that leaps out is that people stop questioning your every move. It felt like until my late 40s-ish I was running running running to meet someone else’s deadline. When are you going to do this? Why haven’t you done that? All that has stopped. Could be biology. Could be that I’m no longer listening.
What has been your favorite age so far, and why? Would you go back to this age if you could?
Here, now. And I hope that will carry on, that I won’t need to answer this in a decade’s time and ask to go back to 58. (Crossing everything.)
Is there someone who is older than you, who makes growing older inspiring to you? Who is your aging idol and why?
I’ve spoken to over 200 women aged between 39 and 103 for The Shift podcast and it’s very rare that I come away not feeling lit up by something they’ve said, regardless of their age. But I do find the much older interviewees—the ones in their 80s, 90s and 100s—really energising. Whether it’s Isabel Allende, 81, saying “When they ask me, OK, are you going to pass your torch? No way! I'm going to add other torches with mine but I will have my torch until I die because every torch is needed. I’m not going to pass it, are you kidding?! It’s my torch!” Or Dr. Gladys McGarey, who died aged 103, last month, telling me she didn’t find her voice til she was 93! These women have lived through so much, they’re incredible.
What aging-related adjustments have you recently made, style-wise, beauty-wise, health-wise?
Exercise. I’ve always been a very bad exerciser (blame school), but it became clear in my late 40s that if I didn’t get myself to the gym (or similar) it was all going to go to hell in a handcart. (Also, when I did bother to exercise it was all about weight loss. Now it’s much more likely to be because I don’t want to be weak and stiff…)
The other thing is that I don’t drink anymore. Which is something I never thought I’d say. I started to fall out of love with alcohol in perimenopause but it wasn’t peri that finished us, it was long Covid. I don’t miss it at all, wine in particular, I can’t stand the taste. One glass and I’m nauseous.
Editor’s note: Sam’s not alone in giving up drinking in midlife. Check out this Oldster open thread from January, 2023:
What’s an aging-related adjustment you refuse to make, and why?
If one more person comments on how unusual it is to see a woman “of your age” with “such long hair,” I’ll punch them. My hair has been long (although not always this long) since my early 20s. It wasn’t intentionally a statement, but I guess it is now. There is no way I’m cutting it off.
Also, dying it; I get why people do and I definitely miss my long red hair—now it’s a dodgy sandy colour—but when I contemplated it my hairdresser just laughed in my face. He knew better than me that there was no way I was going to sit still for long enough, often enough, to dye it. (Also, the cost!)
The most significant—and enraging—thing is having to convince the world you still have a right to exist. That you’re just as competent, talented and skilled as you always were, and—get this—maybe more so because of that word nobody seems to like when it’s attached to women: “experienced.”
What turn of events had the biggest impact on your life? What took your life in a different direction, for better or worse?
Meeting my husband. The chances of us being in the same place at the same time, being a decade apart in age and coming from such different backgrounds, must have been a million to one. But we did, and here we are, an astonishing 36 years later. I would never have had the confidence to do the things I’ve done without his belief in me.
What is your number one regret in life? If you could do it all over again, what is the biggest thing you’d do differently?
All the energy wasted trying to make my face fit. What I could have done with all that time.
What is high up on your “bucket list?” What do you hope to achieve, attain, or plain enjoy before you die?
Not so much on my bucket list as on my to-do list. I’ve been working on another novel—on and off —for the last couple of years, give or take. I’ve done a mountain of research (classic mistake) and it’s now stuck all over the walls of my office in an attempt to shame me into getting my head down. If I don’t do it soon, it’ll end up being the answer to your previous question.
I think age-related milestones are part of the reason we’re all so dissatisfied and feel like such under-achievers—do this by this age, do that by the next, and constantly failing to hit them. So, I think what I’m looking forward to most is having fewer and fewer shoulds hanging over me.
Is there a piece of advice you were given, that you live by? If so, what was it, and who offered it to you?
About a decade ago, someone said to me that there was no such thing as advice. “Advice is just somebody else’s opinion.” That caused a real refocussing for me. As a lifelong good girl I’d always bent myself over backwards to do what I thought other people wanted, especially if that person was some sort of authority figure. So there I was, studiously noting every bit of advice I was given, adding it to my backpack and lugging it around with me. Letting the backpack full of other people’s opinions go was the beginning of the end of a lot of things. In a good way.
What are your plans for your body when you’re done using it? Burial? Cremation? Body Farm? Other? And what do you expect to happen to your “soul” or “spirit” after you die?
Cremation. Scatter me somewhere lovely in or around Edinburgh where I live. Then over and out.
Sam you look and sound terrific. But 58 is not old. I’m 75 and not “old”. I just started my Substack, The Final Quarter. Because that’s how I see it. It can be the most exciting meaningful time. Life is a continuum. Age is a construct placed on us. Ageism is a real thing aimed pretty much over 50. Worse as you get older.
58 is an unexpected fucking delight. Glad to read that is so for you too. I feel like my brain is finally decluttered. I can see what I want, love and need. I can ask for help and see where help is needed. And most days I can find my keys and glasses to get to my yoga class which preserves my ability to move my body.