The One You Feed - Finding Meaning Through Caregiving, Loss, and Writing with Nickolas Butler

Episode Date: August 1, 2025

In this episode, Nickolas Butler explores finding meaning through caregiving, loss, and writing. At just 20 years old, Nick became his father’s legal guardian after a sudden brain aneurysm — a role he held for 23 years. What began as a family emergency became a long, complex journey that shaped his identity, his values, and his voice as a novelist. In this honest and moving conversation, Nick shares the emotional toll and unexpected wisdom that caregiving can bring, the power of presence, and how life’s hardest roles can also become its most transformative. Nick also discusses his latest novel, A 40 Year Kiss — a tender, hopeful story of second chances, aging, and old love — and how paying attention to real people’s stories fuels his fiction. If you’re navigating caregiving, grieving a loved one, or wondering how to stay open to creativity during hard seasons, this episode offers comfort, insight, and quiet strength.Feeling overwhelmed, even by the good things in your life?Check out Overwhelm is Optional — a 4-week email course that helps you feel calmer and more grounded without needing to do less. In under 10 minutes a day, you’ll learn simple mindset shifts (called “Still Points”) you can use right inside the life you already have. Sign up here for only $29!Key Takeaways:Caregiving and the emotional complexities involved in becoming a legal guardian at a young age.The impact of caregiving on personal identity and life experiences over a long duration.The evolution of storytelling and the importance of listening to others’ stories in writing.The contrast between Butler’s darker previous works and his latest novel, which focuses on themes of love, family, and redemption.The exploration of “old love” and the realities of long-term relationships versus contemporary portrayals of romance.The challenges and nuances of aging, wisdom, and the search for guidance in later life.The personal relationship between the writer and their craft, including the writing process and routines.The complexities of addiction and recovery, particularly in relation to alcohol use.The significance of community and shared experiences, as illustrated through sports and personal anecdotes.The importance of embracing ambiguity and the nuanced nature of human relationships in both life and art.If you enjoyed this conversation with Nickolas Butler, check out these other episodes:How to Embrace the Important Elements of Life with Nickolas ButlerA Journey to Self-Discovery and Sobriety with Matthew QuickFor full show notes, click here!Connect with the show:Follow us on YouTube: @TheOneYouFeedPodSubscribe on Apple Podcasts or SpotifyFollow us on InstagramSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Eight years ago, I was completely overwhelmed. My life was full with good things, a challenging career, two teenage boys, a growing podcast, and a mother who needed care. But I had a persistent feeling of, I can't keep doing this. But I valued everything I was doing, and I wasn't willing to let any of them go. And the advice to do less only made me more overwhelmed. That's when I stumbled into something I now call this still point method, a way of using small moments throughout my day to change not how much I had to do, but how I felt

while I was doing it. And so I wanted to build something I wish I'd had eight years ago, so you don't have to stumble towards an answer. That something is now here, and it's called Overwhelm is Optional. Tools for When You Can't Do Less. It's an email course that fits into moments you already have taking less than 10 minutes total a day. It isn't about doing less. It's about relating differently to what you do. I think it's the most useful tool we've ever built. The launch price is $29. If life is too full but you still need relief from overwhelm, check out, overwhelm is optional. Go to one you feed.net slash overwhelm. That's one you feed.net slash overwhelm.

Surely a writer is thinking about their characters and trying to create authentic composites that are based on psychologically real things. But as you read through a writer's career of books, you also are being drawn closer to that writer. Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinker. have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen

or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. How do you carry a role you never asked for? Imagine becoming your father's legal guardian at 20 years old. For Nicholas Butler, it wasn't just a family duty. It was 23 years of navigating health care systems, advocating for dignity, and losing and then rediscovering a sense of self.

In today's conversation, Nick opens up about the messy, complicated, deeply human experience of caregiving and how that long fight shaped the person and writer he is today. We also talk about his beautiful new novel, A 40-year kiss, a story about old love, second chances, and the richness that only time can bring. It's an honest, at times raw discussion about, love, loss, aging, and the hard-won wisdom of not pretending to have all the answers. I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. Hi, Nick, welcome back to the show.

It's good to see you, Eric. Thanks for having me on again. I really appreciate it. Yeah, you know, I love talking with fiction authors. I don't do it very often, but I enjoy doing it. And you're a wonderful fiction author. And on top of that, you and I, after the last interview, began doing something that I had not done in a long time, which was we sent handwritten letters to each other for a while. And I really loved it. You may not have loved it once you realize what my handwriting looked like. You're like, I just had to write back as if, you know, I had no idea what you said because I couldn't puzzle it out. Your handwriting was fine.

And my handwriting's been accused of being like a serial murderer or something like that. It's very small. it's very precise um yes yeah it's not the easiest to read but it's actually really enjoyable to look at mine looks like a four-year-old who had too much coffee um you know yours is like you said pretty precise anyway listeners didn't tune in for us to talk about handwriting but i did want to bring up writing letters to each other and i found it hard to do because it's just so different than sending firing off a two minute text or a, you know, a three-minute email. Like, it was a different way of engaging. And I appreciated it. Well, I appreciated your letters, too. And I've been writing letters

since I was about 16. One of my, yeah, one of my pen pals and I have been going back and forth since we were 16. I have other pen pals that I've been writing letters to for over 20 years. And I think, well, I know one of the things that I love about it is, just most of the time when I go up to my mailbox, there's nothing in it but junk or bills. Yeah. And to walk up to my mailbox and to get news from a friend, and then I have kind of a long walk back to my house and I open up the letter or maybe I wait until I get back to the house and then I crack a beer, pour myself a cup of coffee, and spend time, you know, reading

what a friend thinks is important or what's happening in their life. it just, it's so apart from the other ways that we communicate. And I hate to say it because, you know, a well, a well-timed text or a sincere text isn't nothing. It's meaningful. I don't mean to take away from that. But when somebody writes you a letter and posts it, it's just, it is more valuable to me. Yeah.

It just is. So. Yeah, I used to write letters to friends all the time. That's, you know, how we communicated. It was the only way ready to do it, you know, if you didn't want to rack up a long distance, Bill. Right. So I want to get into your new book in a few minutes, but I want to hit a couple of other things first. And the first is I'd like to talk about your father because this letter I've got in my hand here, you wrote me like two days after your father passed.

And what's remarkable about it to me is not that your father passed. That's normal for people of our age for that to start to happen. It was the 23 years before that. Can you share a little bit about that? Yeah, yeah. I got to kind of collect myself a little bit. I haven't talked about it in a while. And, yeah, so my dad, my dad had a massive brain aneurysm when I was 19, 20 years old.

And because he and my mom were in the midst of divorce, I became his legal guardian. I didn't know what I was doing. I was, you know, I was still pretty much a kid, but it meant that I had to dissolve his estate. I had to, he was a partner in a company. I had to dissolve his partnership. I had to divorce my parents in court. It's insane. That's insane.

Which was awful. And because I live in my hometown, I've run into the judge who was presiding that day. And they remember it as being one of the most heroin things. that they'd ever seen. My dad, because he was so young when he had the aneurysm, he never fit in at any nursing facility. And in the beginning, you know, he was angry and he was so much younger than the other residents, he would often get kicked out of a facility, which was terrible. And, you know, over time, I got really good at being his legal guardian.

I was really good at it. I was great at talking to staff. I wasn't intimidated over time by attorneys or physicians, and it became part of my identity. And I should say that my dad never wanted this. He used to tell me as a kid, even before I was a teenager, like, don't let me go to a nursing home. He used to tell me, and you or your listeners might not believe this, but he'd say, find a way to kill me. So I knew he didn't want to be in that position. And he was such a lively man.

You know, I talked about it in our first interview. He loved drugs. He loved alcohol. He loved sex. He loved women. He loved life. And to see him reduced to this other state was awful. And then, you know, you'd written me a letter that arrived just about the time of his

passing. And like, I just lost this. I lost my dad, but I lost a huge part of my identity, and I'd come to the end of this long 23-year fight, and I just, I didn't know how else to respond to you, except honestly, and just be like, this just happened to me, and I don't know what I'm, I don't know what I'm doing now. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that is an awful lot to take on at 20 and carry for, for 23 years. what would you say that you feel like you learned what are the hard-earned lessons that came through that that experience well I mean the practical things that I learned are

don't leave your kids a big fucking mess you know and I apologize for swearing but I'm just going to use like the full scope of the English language my dad left me a giant mess you know, he he could have finalized his divorce before this. He could have had life insurance. He could have, he could have had a will. He could have had a health care directive.

He had none of those things. So that means that whether, you know, in my case, I was the one who had to deal with that. But it could have been my mom, I guess, if they were married. That's the practical side of it. I would say the, like, spiritual... emotional side is really complicated. He was not the dad that I grew up with and knew post-anniorism, but something changed in him.

He was a really flawed guy all throughout my childhood, potentially not a very good dad. But he had no filter post-anniorism. So I would come into his room and he would, sorry, like, he would, he'd look at me and he'd be like, you're so handsome like you're so handsome thanks for coming to visit me you're so talented I love you and then like five seconds would go by and he'd like he'd say but you're losing your hair you know I could I could read a newspaper through your hair right now what was so complicated was that I didn't want him to be the way that he was in the nursing home but he was still a spirit and he was

his soul was still there he was and he had changed and that was okay and and he brought you know over time as he mellowed as we all kind of mellow in old age like nurses loved him because he had this different perspective you know and he didn't have a filter so like if so it's tough like right I mean if he had a very attractive young nurse he would say like you look so beautiful or he would make some compliment and sometimes it was inappropriate and that nurse didn't care for it and she had every right to feel that way. But for other people, he said the things that no one else would say. I remember we went to an audiologist appointment in the last year of his life because he was very deaf. And the audiologist came into the room and she was a beautiful

woman. There's no other way to put it. She was just beautiful woman about my age or early 50s. and she looked, I don't know how to say this other than to just be frank, but she was dressed beautifully, her hair, her makeup, everything. I wouldn't have said anything, but my dad said, he looks so beautiful today. And she said, thank you so much. Today is the 25th anniversary of me practicing medicine. And so I think she'd taken greater care with her appearance that day because it meant something to her.

And he said something. He, like, he knew what to say. And so it just gave me a, like, a more complicated, nuanced perspective on life and the moments we have with our loved ones and made me appreciate my mom even more. I don't know what to say. It was kind of a long, long, heavy experience. Yeah.

So you're about two years coming up on two years on. Have you been able to enjoy and appreciate the lack of that strain? Yes. Yes. Yeah. I mean, God, I loved my dad, and I was proud of being his guardian and his advocate. But I'm a novelist. like if I could show you around my office right now, it's a mess, right? Because this is my

artistic place. It's filled with notes and books and art, all just to say, my brain isn't really hardwired to be somebody's accountant and paperwork person. And that's what I became and I hated it. I hated it. So I'm glad to be done with that. I'm glad to be done with the sort of argumentative jujitsu that I was always doing with either lawyers or physicians or nurses trying to advocate for my dad but being a good human being to them because I know how difficult health care is and knowing that my dad's at peace is a good thing. You know, he never wanted that. So that feels good. But, you know, like, I'm grateful that you asked about him but he was my dad you know and uh and i i loved him even though he was flawed and even

though he he put me through all that stuff so yeah well thank you for sharing thank you for sharing i i want to talk about it because i think there's a lot of people uh listening we're in that state you know a lot of listeners are in that stage of life where you know you start to care for a parent that role reverses it it reversed for you very early You should have had many more years of it being the other way around. But for most of us, if we're lucky enough to get old and we're lucky enough that our parents are still around, that role reverses. And it's a different, difficult, and often also rewarding thing. Yeah.

I mean, you see how frail we all are. Or you experience how wonderful it is to be fully cognitive. You know, there's a whole self-help industry based on living in the moment and all the people in our culture that are distracted and don't appreciate what they have. That's never been my problem, Eric. I mean, since my dad's aneurysm, like, I very much live in, I am pretty much always dialed into the moment. I'm tremendously grateful for what I have. Yeah. Not my problem.

You know, feeling that kind of gratitude. Like I've seen and experienced some horrible things. I wonder if that being dialed into the moment has something to do with being a novelist. Because you have said in interviews elsewhere that as a novelist, you're always watching and listening. Right. So by nature, what you're trying to do is take in what's actually happening. You're set to present mode awareness because that's sort of your default. Do you think that's part of it? Yeah, it's hard to say whether it's sort of a, I think it, whether it's a chicken or chicken or egg sort of thing. I think the way that I'll respond to that is by saying that the longer that I go on in my writing career, the older that I get, I really pay attention. to the stories that people tell, like when somebody is telling me a story about their life or even a joke or whatever it is, I tell young writers, like, you could be polite and be sort

of like passively listening to those things, or maybe you think that person doesn't have anything to say, or maybe you think their story is boring, or you don't care or you're distracted, whatever. I tune right into those moments because what a human being is trying to do is explain to you where they've come from and what has formed them as a human being when they share a story with you. I think as a novelist, we receive more of those stories because people know intuitively that we care about storytelling and we care about stories. We care about a good story. So, yeah, increasingly I've just, I've just been listening, you know, and appreciating people's stories and appreciating that they trust me with their stories.

One of the things that I've heard artists talk about writers, mainly poets, different people, is that sometimes they end up with this slightly too self-thing happening. One is paying attention to the moment, but the other is already recording it, thinking about how to transform it, how does it become a poem, how do I say, you know, they're in this dual mode that sometimes doesn't feel good. Do you have that, or you mostly, you just kind of record and then later process and think about it from an artistic perspective? So I'm not always convinced that the story that somebody is telling me is going to be the story for me to write, or is necessarily a great story. I just am tuned in because, as a human being, they're trying to, they're really trying to share

something personal about themselves and who they are. That said, after I hear a good story, I will spend a long time sort of processing it. You know, that was true. Godspeed. It's true in a way of a 40-year kiss, though the story is kind of, uh, came. about differently. But in the moment, I'm not really torn between, you know, myself as the novelist and myself as the listener. I think I'm pretty good and quite sincere when I'm there listening to somebody's story. So the new book does come out of hearing a story, which we're going to get

to in a second. Yeah. But I'm curious, the last book, Godspeed, was kind of a darker novel. You know, it's about greed and consumerism and addiction, and it's a darker novel. This novel is, I mean, you said yourself that this novel is a very positive novel full of love, family, second chances, redemption and kindness, which I would second 100%. It is that. Are you making a choice about what type of novel you're writing? Do you know partway in what type of novel you're writing? or is there just a story in an idea and you're just unfurling it and it goes where it goes?

So the first thing that I'll say is I've been super fortunate in my career to be able to follow the stories that I want to follow. And oftentimes that has meant real hard left turns away from whatever the prior book was. The book before Godspeed is called Little Faith, and it's a very earnest exploration of, of religion and faith and belief, then you go to Godspeed, which is this very, very dark meditation on late stage capitalism and greed, as you were discussing. The 40-year kiss is, again, just a huge left turn. Publishers hate that because it's really hard to market somebody like that, you know. And that bears out, like in my publishing history, too.

I've had a number of different publishers. But the thing is, I'm not making a widget. I'm trying to create art, and I'm trying to tell a story. And so I don't really care about whether it's easier to market this or not. Like, when I was in the early stages of trying to figure out how to tell a 40-year kiss, I knew that my prior publisher probably wasn't going to know what to do with it. But I also feel like as I get older, and the more writing that I do, sometimes the cosmos will offer you, Charles Bukowski said, the gods will offer you chances, know them, and take them. And I had just received this amazing story.

Now, I could have chosen to do nothing with it and just write another dark sort of literary thriller, which surely my publisher would have picked up. But then you get away from art and you start. getting into selling a commodity. And as long as I can avoid doing that and just make the art that I want to make, that's what I'm going to do. So I don't know if I answered your question entirely, but I like, I find it really, I don't find it very interesting to do the same thing every time. You know what I mean? And I think I'm not going to like talk about the artists that I really love and respect who do different things every time because I don't want to be seen as like sort of lumping myself in with people that are no doubt much more talented

than me. But I can tell you that the actors that I really care about, the writers that I care about, even the painters that I really care about. The musicians, too. I know you love Bob Dillon. I mean, Miles Davis, those guys, I mean, are all over the map. Of course, yeah. I mean, they're going to do what they want to do. And I think that's what I want to do. for as long as I can do it. Look, there may come a time in my literary publishing career where somebody's like, dude, you can't keep doing this. We're not going to publish it.

And then I have to make some other choices. But I just feel like if you write the best story that you can write and that you're passionate about, things are going to work out. So tell us the story about where a 40-year kiss came to you as an idea. Yeah, yeah. Well, I was, I guess, about two, three years ago, I was at the bar of the Tomahawk room in downtown Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, one of my favorite bars in Wisconsin. I was working a Sudoku puzzle. I was killing time, minding my own business.

And there were two folks that were seated very close to me at the bar. They were like, I'm going to say mid-60s, late 60s, something like that. I was initially paid them no attention whatsoever. or they were just other people at the bar. Until I heard the man say to the woman, I still dream about the nights we had together. I dream about kissing you. May I kiss you?

And I immediately started blushing. I had this sense that something magical was going to happen. Got my phone out, started kind of surreptitiously taking notes, you know, date, time that I was there, things that were being said. And I didn't really expect much of this kiss. Like I just, I guess I imagine. like one of my aunts and uncles kissing or something like that, what does it look like, you know, I thought it was going to be like a polite chase kiss on the cheek. It was not.

It was really passionate and long. And when they kind of dishing, and I'm blushing, I'm blushing even more like as this is happening. And then the romantic interlude kept going. He kept saying really sweet things to me. And what became evident was I think they had been together in some capacity, like 40 years prior, it was unclear to me whether they were high school sweethearts or college sweethearts or if they'd been married, I didn't know, but that he really regretted them separating. And now he was putting all his cards on the table in an almost desperate sort of way, which I don't find desperation to be attractive, but this was kind of endearing. And then after 10, 15 minutes, they walked out of the bar and I just thought,

holy shit like I think this is a I think this is a novel you know and I just knew I just I didn't know those people but I instantly felt for them and was kind of cheering for them not kind of I was totally cheering for them I think I knew in the back of my mind that I wanted to write another book about Wisconsin where I'm from and and I like doing different things so I thought well I think this is going to be like a literary, you know, love story. And I'd never done anything like that. And that sort of was tantalizing to me. I just followed my gut. It was a fun book to write. I mean, you know, I mean, one thing that I think we're all feeling, and I can say this in kind of an apolitical sort of way, but I think it's a pretty anxious, angry time in America. And I didn't

really want to put out another book like God. I'm very proud of Godspeed. Godspeed's a good book. book and you know make it turned into a movie at some point but it is i didn't really didn't really want to like write another book like that because when i write a very dark book then i i have to live in that dark world and this gave me an opportunity to live in a you know a hopeful romantic kind world for a little while yeah it it is all those things and yet it also it covers a lot of emotional ground and it covers a lot of nuanced and difficult situations. I guess a good novel does that, right? I mean, if your characters were just happy the entire time, it wouldn't be much of a novel, right? So they certainly, you know, they go through their share of stuff

as even though it is ultimately, as you said, sort of redemption, kindness. It's a sweet book is the way I would put it. And I say that in a good way. Yeah. You say that you like the idea of old love. You say maybe because our culture seems intoxicated and fatuated with quite the opposite, with new young love, spray tan, Jim Hard, and about as romantic as a light beer commercial. Talk to me about old love. Well, I guess the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about that comment is going to a wedding. And at least here in my part of the Midwest, there's a moment where all the married couples get on a dance floor and somebody says, like, okay, anybody who's been married for less than five years step off the dance floor.

Anybody who's been married for less than 10 years step off the dance floor. They get 20, 25, 30 until you're left with one couple that's been out there for 50 years. and you think about that and it's not easy to be married you know you go through ups and downs and as well as you might know your partner you can never know them completely and people have health problems and when you have children that's a you know another complication and uh you can't predict for money and jobs and all these sorts of things and um you know you see a light beer commercial or you watch some rom-com and there's there's like no consequences to it yeah you know it's just completely disposable and you think about those couples that have been together that long and

as an observer you can't even scratch the surface of what those two human beings have shared together and how well they know each other and what sacrifices they've made for each other and as a novelist if you have two choices right about the you know the beautiful couple in their early 20s or right about two people in their mid-60s. Like, it's not a choice for me. So. Yeah, yeah. You say this, I'm just quoting this from the book.

I'm just going to read it. It's a paragraph. So marriage really isn't about romance, especially at our age. Marriage is about the day-to-day. Marriage is about steadiness. Marriage is a partnership. Marriage is hundreds, thousands of days without passion. Just groceries and bills and sickness.

and heartache and oil changes and snow that needs to be shoveled and bunions and missing reading glasses and appointments with the cardiologist or maybe the endocrinologist or the podiatrist. And we read that and it sounds on one hand awful. Right? I mean, part of me is like, well, okay, maybe. And yet there is, there is a beauty in that. there is something deeper and truer about that. And this is not to say that all marriages should endure, that people should stick together

for all time just to, I mean, none of that. And there is something when it works that is beautiful about it. Yeah. And that is truly sort of can be non-self-serving. Yeah. I mean, look, I'm a romantic, right? I love romance inside the context. of a marriage and um i wouldn't want to be in a marriage that wasn't romantic on some level

however anybody who's been married for any amount of time knows that the real stuff is what are we going to have for dinner tonight or how are we going to pay this bill or you know my body doesn't feel right should i call the doctor and uh those things that that's the stuff that matters, you know. You were asking me difficult questions about my dad, you know. I mean, there's the Hollywood movie about fatherhood or, you know, taking some canoe ride down a river or whatever with your kid and like that, like that's all fatherhood is.

No, I mean, for me, fatherhood was, and being a son was literally hundreds of appointments and sitting in waiting rooms with my dad and feeling. nervous for him and feeling, you know, sad that he was confused as to where he was and and feeling good that I was there with him and, you know, grateful to be there with him. So, you know, in the context, the paragraph that you read is a character who's in, I think, her early 70s and her own partner is not healthy. I think she's kind of reporting on what her life is like, too. And so it's sort of important to understand, too, that like my feelings about love or marriage or romance or intimacy are my feelings, not necessarily those of my characters, too.

You said something there that I think is important, which is, you know, feeling good about yourself for being there with your dad. And my experience with caretaking really of any sort is it's really hard. And one of the things that makes it better is to recognize that indeed we are living. when we're doing it according to some value that we have. There's a reason we're doing it, because we don't have to do it. We're not forced to do these things, but we do them because they represent some value.

And, you know, when Jenny and I were taking care of her mother who had Alzheimer's, we would, you know, a sort of a dry, dark joke, but we would just talk about how, like, you know, you hear people talk about living according to their values as if it's this great thing.

Sometimes it's a giant pain in the ass. Right? Like sometimes it just, really sucks but what redeems it at least for me is tying it back to that is connecting the dots back to why I'm doing this instead of feeling trapped or that I have to do this but that I am I am making a choice and it may not feel like a choice because of how I'm wired up but it still is and and that always helps me when it comes to the difficult things is why am I doing it Yeah. Well, and you, you know, you learn things, of course, while you're in that process. Like, my dad didn't, how do I say this elegantly? How do I say this at all? He wasn't really aware of what he was saying or doing, okay? It's possible, Eric, that if he was sitting, if he was still alive and,

he was somehow sitting beside me maybe like two years before his death, you might just think he was a older guy in a wheelchair, and you might not really be able to detect his cognitive issues. It's possible that you could detect or that maybe you would know something was totally out of place. My point is that he didn't really know that he was teaching me anything, right? He was just kind of happily going through life. But what I learned from him during all those appointments was that he kept his sense of humor. He didn't know that he was keeping his sense of humor, but he had one. And I remember, like, there was a follow-up appointment to that audiologist appointment, and somebody was looking in his ears, and they were like,

my God, there's a lot of wax built up in here. And he said something along the lines of, I hope you have a stick of dynamite. And it got a big laugh out of the physician and the nurses. And, you know, it's stuff like that. It wasn't like, that comment wasn't for him. I realized that he was making all these comments to make it easier for the other people and to break the ice so that they would treat him like a normal person, you know? And so I think about lessons like that. I also think that my kids know the battle that I went through with my dad. They know I didn't give up on him.

And I'm not asking them to take care of me for 23 years. I wouldn't ask anyone to do that. But I didn't give up on my family, you know. And it's like my dad was the easiest dad to have, but I kept fighting for him. I hope they take whatever they want out of that. You know, it's not that they have to do that for me, but they better do it for their mom, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. I have an audiologist story. Actually, I think it makes it into my book, which is still a little ways from coming out. But congratulations, by the way. I mean, I don't want to skip over that. Like, it's a big deal to write a book and good for you. Yeah. Thank you. But it's an audiologist story about Ginny's mother, who we were taking care of, who had dementia. And it's sort of the opposite of your dad. It's not her being on nice or happy behavior. It's her being absolutely appalling to me and everyone. And again, I don't blame her. I mean, she had Alzheimer. She had dementia. I'm not going to go into it, but I have my own audiologist's story, just sort of the other direction, but still a learning experience for me for sure.

I just want to hit on some couple other aspects of the book as I went through it. You know, I kind of read it. I was reading it. Part of me is like, I actually need to turn this into an interview. So I probably should highlight a couple things that jump out to me beyond just like losing myself in a good novel, which is my favorite thing to do. But you said something that I thought was funny at one point. You said arguments are rarely aired out in public in the Midwest, but rather bottled up and later uncorked behind closed doors. and optimally in hushed tones, even whispers, if at all.

Arguments are often won by silence or even oddly apparent capitulation. That made me, as a midwesterner, I mean, I think we can consider Ohio Midwest. That made me laugh, you know. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I was, my dad's people are from the East Coast, and partly from the Ohio coal country. but a lot of them ended up in the Boston area and the way that they those butlers approach family matters is very like they almost like confrontation is almost like a sport

for them you know like I don't think they take it personally they're just yelling and swearing at each other and that's part and parcel of life or whatever when I started to date my wife and learn more about her family I thought and again excuse me I just thought who the fuck are they these people. Like, they never argue. They never raise their voice. They don't call each other out on their stuff. I just couldn't understand what was happening. And then a few years went by and I realized, huh, like, that they're successful as a family. I don't mean successful monetarily. I mean they stay together for the most part. They raise good kids. They go to work. They're part of their

communities. And it was just this very interesting, you know, dichotomy between kind of subcultures in America and how we go about our daily business, you know. I listen to a lot of sports talk and I'm always fascinated by the difference in East Coast because primarily what I suppose what I hear is like East Coast sports personalities and how they communicate versus the Midwest because oftentimes in the East Coast it just seems like they're just screaming, you know, which is not really a virtue here. Are you saying that your family was more the arguments are rarely aired out in public arguments are won by silence and capitulation. I understand what the Midwest is. I understand what the East Coast, the more yelling. What were your wife's people doing?

My wife's people are very, like, quiet. I would say you could, her family rarely argues at all, or I think like when I'm describing in the book is more related to her family, right? Okay. Like, if, if I saw my father-in-law engaged in a quiet disagreement with his wife, my mother-in-law, and he was somehow able to definitely be quiet and not engage, he would almost, like, steal the energy of the argument away, which is masterful, you know, like, I'm not even going to engage. He said your father would win arguments by simply shrugging. and walking away, not a surrender so much as a refusal to engage. That's more my style. And I was married for a while to somebody who had the East Coast style, which was just like guns ablazing all the time.

And I think our styles drove each other insane because I hated the fighting, the yelling, the meanness. I couldn't stand it. And she hated my just disappearance. yeah you know my my collapse into myself so it was like the it was just the worst sort of we just had styles that did not understand each other and did not play well together i think it's part of the reason why i married my wife i didn't want any part of what i saw my parents doing or my you know i love my relatives and most of them have very long successful marriages so i don't

say this from a point of critique or anything like that but i didn't i didn't want to to argue with somebody for sport. Like, that's not attractive to me. Yeah. But, I mean, I think about a girl I dated at one point in my life, and she definitely liked to argue for sport. And I think, my God, like, what would that, you know, what would that alternative life path look like, you know?

Yeah. I think for some of us, we're just not temperamentally built for it. I mean, I'm not. There's another aspect of the book, a line, an area that struck me. And I don't remember which character was saying that you probably will. I think it was, I think it may have been the main character, the main female character. She says, when you're our age, there's no one left to ask for advice. We're supposed to have the answers.

We're supposed to be the wise ones. And that really struck me. I feel a little of that being my age, but I can only imagine, you know, 20 years on from here. You know, I look at, I look at some. some of the older people in my life and it's like they're dealing with stuff they don't know how to deal with either you think they should be wise at that age and they are and yet you've never dealt with the fact that all your best friends are dying right who do you ask for advice about that like and i just think it points to the fact that we may think we have wisdom and we we can have

some and it's useful and life just keeps throwing new things at you and there's a point where you're the last one standing. Well, I think also paradoxically, the wisest people that I know won't have the answers or won't, how do you say that? They won't claim to have the answers. And like one of the examples that I love to share is when I was at the Iowa Writers Workshop, I took a class with Marilynne Robinson, who's certifiably a genius. was one of the smartest people I've ever been around, fantastic writer. I took her New Testament class on the Bible. And there was a person in the class, I don't even remember who it was,

who clearly wanted to kind of sharpshoot her about Christianity or the Bible. And they asked a very specific question about some passage in the New Testament. And Marilyn just sort of sighed. Like, and she said something like, well, I don't know. There's a lot of things in the Bible. And what I took out of that moment was that she understood that the spirit with which the question was asked was not a charitable spirit. And so she wasn't going to dignify the dumb, mean-spirited question with an answer, right? And I think it's also possible that she didn't have the answer readily available in that moment.

And rather than say something that was wrong, she was so at peace with her own intelligence and values that she just, she just said, I don't know. And the older I get, the more I can kind of relate with that. I mean, I've written six books, writing is all I do. It's all I think about. And when people ask me questions about writing as if I'm some sort of expert, I frequently say, like, I'm still trying to figure this out. I don't know. You know, I don't have the answer. So I think there is something about getting older, being wiser, but not having, yeah, who are you going to talk to about these things?

And also understanding that, like, some of wisdom is just knowing what you don't know. yeah i mean i found that in writing my book which is you know going to fall in the self-help personal advice personal development kind of world which you should have some answers right yeah and yet what i had to keep doing was i mean it's longer than i wanted it to be because my basic answer is always well it depends like it well maybe it could be and i i just had to i at a certain point, I was like, I just can't caveat everything, because then you're not saying anything. But it is my nature. And as I've gotten older, it's become more and more of this idea of like, simple answers are often not correct. There's a lot of nuance. There's a lot of gray area. People

are different. Yes. You know, something that might be really valuable to you might be a disaster area of a piece of advice for the guy down the hall, right? Because we're different. And so I find that more and more. And it's why I have an increasingly difficult time in the world of doing what I do, podcast promotion. And you know, you're kind of trying to get attention. And attention gets drawn by certainty and outrage and controversy. And I just don't have it in me. Yeah. You know, it's just not my, I mean, my whole brand is the opposite of that. Yeah. And so I find it. I find it increasingly difficult in that way. Well, I think you're doing everything right, and I think that's why people are attracted to your show and why you have good guests. And, yeah, I share your frustration. I mean, people sometimes will ask me about my writing process. And I think part of the reason why they're asking the writing process is they're curious about me or my books or how they come to be.

But certainly, there's other people that are asking the questions that are asking it from the standpoint of wanting advice on how to write their own book. And I just sort of say, like, well, this is how I do things, but why would that apply to you? You know, I had a very accomplished teacher at Iowa, a writer that I hold in very high regard, fantastic writer, who said that you should write six days a week. That is not going to work for me or my family. There are days when I'm sad. There are days when I'm lazy. There are days when I've got to clean the house and cook dinner. And I think being a husband and being a dad is more important than being a writer.

So I'm not willing to just like make a rule like that. And it also seems like a very kind of like waspy type of rule, right? It kind of takes some of the magic out of writing and like go to your desk six days a week like you're, I don't know, working at an office doing a normal job. No, I mean, part of what I love is that I don't know where. I don't know where everything is coming from all the time. I'll write a book and be surprised about something, you know. And part of the reason why I might be surprised is that it didn't come at the beginning of the book. You know, I had to keep working on it and just keep, like, wandering through a wilderness of self-doubt and thinking about imaginary people.

And then something comes up, you know, so I don't know. Right. And what's interesting about that is the person who writes six days a week, that's probably, the exact right strategy for them. It is, yes, yes. It's that way in that we're just different. I mean, I would, you know, I think back to working on coaching people. And I'm like, some people, what they need is for me to say, hey, you're being way too

hard on yourself. Like, we need to dial that down a little bit. Yeah. Someone else might need me to turn the accountability lever up, you know, and to think that the right thing for each of those people is the same is really problematic. There's an old story of a Buddhist teacher named Ajan Cha who was asked by a student and the student said, I hear you giving us different advice. And he said, well, you know, if I see somebody walking along the edge of the road way over to the left and they're about to fall into the ditch, I'm going to

say, go right, go right. But if I see somebody on the far right of the road and they're about to fall into the ditch to the right. I'm going to say go left, go left. And I, you know, I think that speaks to what we're saying here that, you know, answers are different depending on where you are and who you are and what stage of life you are. And I mean, things that I've needed at one point in my life. I've absolutely not needed at other points in my life. I mean, it's just, it's interesting. Yes. And yes. And our culture, you know, you gestured at this very, very well a moment ago. But like, look if you're again i apologize but if you're seeking wisdom in a fucking 15 second soundbite on instagram yeah okay i don't know i don't know how that's gonna yeah that that's the

i guess that's the wisdom that that you want and and it's not it's not really hard one uh so good luck you know what i mean it's this really strange thing i see happening on social media with all of this stuff because on one hand mental health has just come like all the way out the closet just all the way into the mainstream and has just talked about all over social media and part of me is like well that's a really good thing like that's progress that's the people are interested in it they're talking about it and yet to your point a lot of times 15 second sound bites or certainty in these ways can end up being very damaging for people and so a lot of psychologists are sort of looking at this and they're like well there's this good part but then there's also this

part that's just skimming the surface of pretty deep waters, you know, and that can be dangerous. Yeah. So in the book, the main character is somebody who drinks a lot, has always drank a lot. It was part of the problem with the very first marriage with this woman. Now he's back with her all these years later. And drinking is still part of his life. And at some point, I don't think I'm giving too much away. he starts to recognize this and try and really work with it.

What caused you for that to be part of this character and then for them to begin to wrestle with and address it and end up in a recovery meeting? And was it a conscious choice or was it just that's how the character emerged to you? Well, I think there's a couple things going on there. One is that after those people left the bar and I felt inspired to imagine their lives or their story, I had to begin to think about who they were as real human beings inside the bar, where they may have come from, what their lives were like, and then construct fictional characters out of that very tiny composite.

What seemed interesting to me was that they chose to meet at a bar. And in Wisconsin, we joke about drinking Wisconsin, right? Like 10 of the drunkest counties in America are in Wisconsin. We drink a lot. And it just seems psychologically realistic to me that between these two characters, that as a young man, he may have sabotaged their relationship with his drinking. Okay. So I'm thinking about the characters.

I'm thinking about what I saw in real life. That plays a part. Another thing that was playing a big part was during COVID, my drinking got out of control. I think, like, I thought it was, you know, I knew that it wasn't just me, but one thing that's been healthy and edifying as I've been promoting the book is just hearing other people talk about their drinking during COVID, too. But, I mean, I remember early days of COVID, my wife and I would, you know, maybe we'd try to split a bottle of wine. Maybe we wouldn't finish it, but we'd have a couple glasses of wine together. And then suddenly we were finishing a bottle of wine.

And then I was going to the liquor store and buying half a case of wine. And then at some point, I'm going to the liquor store kind of every five days to buy a new case of wine. And it wasn't because my wife is such a drinker. Like, she was always drinking a pretty healthy amount of alcohol, like a glass of wine, maybe, or maybe not at all. It was just that I was doing it. And my dad was an alcoholic. Alcoholism's in my family. I, after COVID was really asking myself questions about, am I an alcoholic?

Can I keep doing this? Am I in control? I think one of the things that Charlie, one of the main characters in the book, expresses that I feel is that I love alcohol. I love the way it tastes. I love the way it makes me feel. I love the way that it gives the world a sort of magical quality. I love bars. I love talking to people.

I love listening to music when I'm drinking. When I'm thinking about it right now, for some reason, I'm just thinking about a really cold gin and tonic and how much I love that or a beautiful glass of red wine. And so I wanted to work through some of my own issues, too. And I think that's one of the things. about, you know, following a writer's career is that, yes, surely a writer is thinking about their characters and trying to create authentic composites that are based on psychologically real things. But as you read through a writer's career of books, you also are being drawn closer to that writer. And I want to believe that there's enough of me in my books that you can

be like, yeah, I bet Nick Butler likes to drink, or I bet maybe Nick Butler struggles with his own drinking a little bit. So, yeah, those things were definitely at play. I kind of felt that, you know, as a person who ended up landing on the no alcohol train in life, you know, the writing about it, I still can recall and feel, you know, like, I mean, nobody becomes an alcoholic and then ends up needing to be abstinent who doesn't deeply love it. You know, that embanky, you know, that ambivalence, I think, is at the heart of it for everyone, right? For people who have addiction, we talk about now being on a spectrum, from very severe to less severe. So let's say those of us on that spectrum, it's hard. It's hard to figure out, you know, it's hard to figure out

what works for me, because there are absolutely, I think, upsides to drinking, you know. The way I often think about it, and I think it's important to be honest about this, because sometimes people just paint sobriety in these glowing all the time terms. And I want to be clear, I have, I've been sober 18 years this time. I have no doubt it's the right choice for me. Yeah. No doubt. And there are, there are up moments of drinking, the good moments that my life doesn't get to anymore. That's just true. Yeah. The problem is, in my case, there are so many down moments that the trade-off just isn't worth it yeah the trade-off gets to a point where it's like okay there are moments where you know alcohol does make the world come alive i mean there's that old

movie days of wine and roses and there's a line in it that has i'm not going to get it right because it's i haven't seen it or heard it in a long long time but it's a it's a movie about a couple who become alcoholic together and one of them gets into recovery and they're talking at one point about why, I think it's the woman saying, you know, why she can't stay sober. And she says, you know, life is just so gray to me. But when I drink, it's like all the colors get turned back on. That landed to me. Now, I will say, I don't think life is gray to me, right? I feel like I've figured out in my own way over time how to turn the colors on. But I don't generally know how to turn them up quite as bright as a drink or a joint does. Yeah. I love people

talking honestly about it because I think sometimes people think that the way somebody gets into recovery or the way somebody works on their drinking is by suddenly thinking I don't want to do it and that is never the way it happens it is never

like oh that's really bad for me I'm done with it because it wouldn't be bad for you if it wasn't so good for you on one on some level you know if it wasn't serving some psychological purpose yeah a couple years back my wife and some very, very close friends of ours visited San Sebastian in Spain, and we just

ate our way through the city, drank our way through the city. And there was one night where we absolutely, we were not in control. And we were happily not in control. And it was so much fun. I wish I could tell you, Eric, that I could reach that level of fun without massive amounts of cider and red wine and beer. Maybe I could get there, but I fucking guarantee that I can do it with that. And it was great. It was like we really experienced that city and the food in a certain way. We were, you know, carrying each other through the streets and crying at the end of the

night and sharing, you know, things that we wouldn't have otherwise shared. And I don't know. I think that's one of the hard things about being a writer, too, is that our already the world is too much at times for me, and I think a lot of other artists. And then, you know, you taste a really cold, beautiful beer on a summer day in Wisconsin. And it's not, it's not gray at all. It's like dandelions and afternoon sunlight and, you know, fresh cut hay and grass. And you just, I love it, you know.

I would never guess you sometimes have to question your relationship to drinking. yeah yeah well and and as you know and i'll just say this briefly and we can move on or whatever but like but i'm also i'm going to be 46 this fall and my body's changing yeah and that's part of the reason why i'm asking myself these questions too is like well i i can't drink the way i once did that's for sure you know i don't want to either yeah i actually want to explore this a little bit more in our post show conversation and so listeners if you'd like access to that and add free episodes and most importantly supporting us because we really could use your help you go to one you feed dot net slash join and you get access to this post show conversation

nick and i are going to have in a minute as well as that i want to end somewhere else though which is the book ends with a bunch of beautiful scenes but one of them is the people the characters in the book on a train on a way to a baseball game and I'm just going to read this. The female character is called Vivian, and she says, even though she didn't care for baseball, she perceived that they were suddenly part of a tribe, a people, all moving in the same direction, all unified by common experience. And then there's another sentence or two, and she basically says, you know, a sensation multiplied

by thousands of people, tens of thousands of people. And it's just a beautiful, a beautiful scene of what it's like when you let yourself go into that crowd experience. You know, as a non-joiner to things, my normal thing is to be like, uh-uh. But I've had those moments where I just go, you know what, go with it. And it's so beautiful sometimes. Yeah. Thank you very much.

Yeah, I've been, well, you know, I'm a big baseball fan. I'm a big sports guy. And I've been thinking a lot about how, if you think about it, professional sports is something that's dominated by cities in urban centers. And when you live where I live, which is rural Wisconsin, you feel somewhat detached from that, right? I don't live in a big city. I have to go to a big city to experience baseball played at the level that I want to watch. And recently I went to, I was in Los Angeles for the LA Times Book Festival, and I had a free night. So on a whim, I bought a ticket, went to Dodger Stadium, which is a place I'd always wanted to go to.

since I was a little boy. And I just sat by myself. The stadium was full, but I was by myself. And it was so magical because what I was experiencing was so apart from the place that I live. You know, it was a huge amount of Asian fans, of course, because Shohei Otani plays for the Dodgers. And it was a huge amount of Latin American people, of course, because of Los Angeles. And everybody was completely dialed into the game and so enthusiastic. It was very multicultural, positive.

passionate and after the game was done I got on a bus and I just sat next to a guy and we started talking and I told them that I didn't have any idea how to get back to my hotel and he's like oh I'll take you there and for a lot of people in big cities they would never do that right like that is a surefire way to get murdered but but he took me right to my hotel shook hands said, you know, good night, everything. And I just, I love that, that feeling, you know, I just love that feeling. And I think it's old, it's an old feeling, an old human feeling. Yeah. And I love the positivity. You know, there's so much, there's so much darkness in the world that sometimes people dismiss sports as being stupid or trivial. But it's a release for a lot of

people. And that release is real. People really do need it. Yeah. And I wanted to put that in a book. I mean, I love baseball. I love Chicago. I love Wrigley Field. And I just, you know, as long as I get to choose how I'm going to do my literary career, that's what the kind of stuff I'm going to do. Wonderful. Well, Nick, thank you so much for coming back on the show. It's always a pleasure to talk with you. The pleasure is all mine. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring or thought-provoking, I'd love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do.

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