A Year of Giving Zero F’s

Apparently, I had more to say than I thought.

Apparently, I’m going to need a bigger notebook.

Picture it. Northern Virginia, September 2025.

I was at a Hyatt Regency attached to a shopping mall about 45 minutes west of DC. I’d cashed in a free hotel night certificate to give myself a solo writing retreat and kickstart this little writing project I had in mind.

After staring at the first draft of my first essay long enough, I wandered down to the food court in search of dinner. Along the way, I spotted a man wearing a T-shirt that proudly proclaimed, “I love Titties & Beer.”

The chutzpah.

Today, that would immediately become a Note.

I grabbed some Chinese food that turned out to be greasy in a gross way, not a delightfully indulgent way, and headed back to my room.

At the time, my plan was pretty simple: write an essay every other week and see what happened. I wasn’t even sure I had enough material for that.

What started as an excuse to keep writing while I took a break from querying my novel would become something else entirely. It turned out my rom-com of a life, my stories, my personal philosophies, and (especially) my funny observations gave me more than enough to write about.

I’ve already written about how I came up with the name 40 and Giving Zero F’s, so I won’t rehash that story here.

But what I thought I was creating and what it’s actually becoming are two very different things.

I knew almost nothing about how Substack worked. I had no existing audience, so I figured friends and family would make up most of my early subscribers. I followed a handful of writers, mostly famous authors and influencers with thousands of subscribers, and had absolutely no idea how anyone who didn’t already know me would ever find my little corner of the internet.

I really didn’t know what to expect.

Somewhere along the way, though, I stopped thinking of 40 and Giving Zero F’s as just a place to publish essays.

I eventually moved from publishing every other week to every week. I figured out what Notes were all about and, more importantly, started finding other writers whose work—and vibe—matched my own. I discovered that “Midstack” (aka Substack for women in midlife) was a thing, and that everything seemed easier when you could fit yourself into a neat and tidy niche.

But I’ve never fit particularly well into a neat and tidy category in real life, so why should my writing be any different?

Instead of trying to figure out exactly what 40 and Giving Zero F’s was supposed to be, I started giving myself permission to follow the ideas that interested me.

Sometimes that meant collaborating with other writers or jumping onto a Substack Live. Sometimes it meant trying something entirely new.

I launched So I Asked… because I realized that while I absolutely love to write, I also love finding interesting people, asking them questions, and introducing their work to others.

Then Kathleen and I started a podcast so we could talk through some of the ideas I’d been exploring in my essays from our two very different vantage points. We don’t exactly take a point-counterpoint approach, unless we’re talking about our wildly different attitudes toward diet and exercise.

I realized 40 and Giving Zero F’s didn’t have to be just one thing.

And the most amazing part has been watching readers—primarily women—see themselves in my writing.

Some of the earliest responses came from friends and family texting after an essay went out: “Thank you for saying that!” or “That’s exactly how I’ve always thought about it, but I thought I was the only one.”

Sometimes that recognition was about the decidedly less profound stuff. By the time the romper essay came out this summer, I swear I managed to convince at least two dozen women to try them. (Still waiting for my royalties from Big Romper.) My friends still ask me first when they’re considering a jumpsuit after the incident last winter.

And on the other end of the spectrum, I’ve heard from countless women who recognized themselves in the bigger things, too. One that comes up again and again is the guilt that can come with wanting more when your life is already objectively good. Women who love their families, appreciate their lives, and still want things that are just for them—and who wonder if wanting that makes them ungrateful.

Turns out, a lot of us have been wondering the same thing.

The more specifically I wrote about my own life, the more other women seemed to find themselves in it.

So here we are, one year in, and I feel like I’m just getting started. I still have so many things I want to write about, podcasts I want to record, and writers I want to feature or collaborate with.

But I also have a couple of bigger ideas I’ve been kicking around. And in the spirit of not waiting until an idea is perfectly formed before saying it out loud, I might as well share them here.

The small dream: a Zero F’s Gift Shop.

I have a feeling at least some of you might like to sip your morning bevvie from a “Currently Giving Zero F’s” coffee mug. Or carry a tote emblazoned with “Midlife Joie de Vivre.” Or—my personal favorite—try out a temporary tattoo with “Wildly Unbothered” in bold script.

The larger dream: Zero F’s Retreats.

I keep imagining a bunch of us getting together for a long weekend somewhere fun—California Wine Country, perhaps (I could be biased, as I write this on my way to Sonoma). Good food, good wine, lots of laughing, and maybe some interesting conversations about what happens when we stop waiting for permission and start doing more of the things we actually want to do.

With cocktails by the pool. Obviously.

Beyond that? I’m still workshopping it.

But a year ago, I probably wouldn’t have even said the idea out loud.

Giving my F’s to the important things.

Which brings me to the funny thing about spending a year giving zero F’s: I’ve discovered I actually give quite a lot of them.

Because it was never really about not caring. It’s about deciding what matters and pouring my energy into that.

And I care about a lot of things. I care about the big ones: my family, my friends, my career, my writing. I get excited about ideas and care deeply—some might say excessively—about making them happen. And I care about the less important things, too. I think we’ve established by now that I have very strong feelings about good wine and committing to a theme.

But if I’m going to pour myself into the things that matter, I have to be willing to let go of the things that don’t.

And I don’t think I’m alone in deciding I’m no longer interested in wasting perfectly good F’s on counting calories, antiquated fashion “rules,” or other people’s opinions about how I’m supposed to live my life.

A year ago, I was sitting alone in a hotel room with shitty Chinese food, trying to figure out whether I had enough to say to write an essay every other week.

Now the problem is that I have too many things I want to say and too many things I want to build.

Seems like a pretty good problem to have.