Newsletter 129: The Downside of Enjoying Your Twenties Is Being Too Old For Your Children

I’ve decided to start putting some of the best newsletter essays here on Medium, so more people can read them. You’re still better off just subscribing. This one is from October 2018. It’s one of the better ones we’ve run. Though I always worry it scared Tom Scocca.

Tom Scocca is such a brilliant writer and editor that I’m actively intimidated by him. I mean this in an actual physical sense: When he worked at Deadspin — in the years after I left — I used to stutter and stammer when I saw him when I’d stop by the office. He’s perhaps most famous for his On Smarm piece from 2013, as well as the only Gawker obit that mattered; he’s been around so long that Daulerio interviewed him for The Black Table back in 2004. Part of growing up is accepting the realization that even though you have dedicated your life to doing something you love for a living, there are other people have done the same thing that are simply better at it than you are. Tom Scocca helped lead me to this acceptance.

But he wrote a piece this week that still has me wrecked. It’s titled “Your Real Biological Clock Is You’re Going To Die,” on his new site Hmm Daily. You should click that link and read it right now. The basic premise of the piece is that as one gets older as a parent, and you start moving through the actuarial…