My Last Eight Thousand Days with Lee Gutkind

We have no way of knowing how many days of grand living we’ll be gifted. We’ve certainly become inured to the reality that life discloses our experiences moment by moment in real-time and it is up to us to determine how we choose to finesse all the “whatisness” life brings our way. <br />In this authentically captivating episode of Aging GreatFULLy, we welcome the founding editor of Creative Nonfiction magazine, and architect of the genre, Lee Gutkind, author and editor of more than thirty books. He’s appeared on many national radio and television shows, including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Good Morning America, and National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. Even before Lee Gutkind was spotlighted in Vanity Fair Magazine in 1997 as “the Godfather behind creative nonfiction” he was its most active advocate and practitioner. In 1991, he founded Creative Nonfiction, the first and the largest literary journal to publish narrative/creative nonfiction exclusively. All the while, Gutkind continued to practice what he preached, immersing himself in diverse worlds for months and years and producing dramatic and intimate creative nonfiction books about subjects as rich and varied as the motorcycle subculture, child and adolescent mental illness, baseball umpires, veterinary medicine and organ transplantation. <br />However, his latest writing endeavor wasn’t looking outward into the lives of others, but instead inward, towards his very own. Undertaking perhaps his most difficult and challenging work to date, Gutkind took to the task of writing his own memoir, My Last Eight Thousand Days: An American Male in His Seventies. In his revealing, candid and vivid portrait of aging, Gutkind examines aging like we’ve never seen before. And while the words on the pages are his experiences, thoughts and stories, having read them, I feel they may relate in some way to to every listener, as Gutkind has managed to unearth the truth on aging like only he can. <br />A must-listen, wisdom-infused episode that is full of fun, beca