How can I get my spouse to do more household chores? I don't like a friend whose company I no longer enjoy. How can I get over my job-interview anxiety? How can I keep it together?
These questions are the stuff of life. Carolyn Hax celebrates 25 years at the helm of her eponymous advice column for The Washington Post this month. The syndicated column can be found in 118 newspapers around the US, including The Dallas Morning News.
For the genre, Hax has been on the job for 25 years, and her sister has been writing for 46 years.
Hax is a force in the self-help industrial complex. America's mother is not. She is more like America's savvy older sister, a tad bossy, quick to point out your blind spots, but compassionate and knowing.
She might never have gotten the job if it weren't for a twist of scheduling fate. Hax was filling in for the day on the Style Plus desk, which ran lifestyle articles. Hax was told by the section editor that The Post was looking for an advice column to attract younger readers.
Hax, who was 30 at the time, said, "What you really need is a snotty 30-year-old writing one of these things."
Hax took matters into her own hands, using questions from the sample column to write her own version of answers, which were immediately sent to the paper's brass. Within a few weeks, she was in business.
Over the course of her career, she has written thousands of columns and hosted hundreds of live chats where she provides hot takes on readers' personal challenges. She is one of The Post's most read authors, according to the paper's internal data.
Hax has both voyeuristic pleasure and moral satisfaction. You get Hax's sharp-eyed observations and often mordantly entertaining counsel when you peer into other people's lives and problems.
Hax told the religious mom that her son is an adult and that her relationship could suffer if he tires of her.
She added that she was deciding this for a grown man.
Hax has a sensitive side as well. Hax said to the daughter who lost her mother to cancer that she will have to feel the pain in waves as the waters start to recede.
Hax has experienced her fair share of tragedies, disappointments, and joys. She lost her mom to the disease. She divorced her husband, Nick Galifianakis, the artist who draws the cartoons for her column, and remarried a childhood friend. They have three teenage sons.
Hax, 55, spoke from her home office in coastal Massachusetts about her career, her life, and the reader questions that still mystify her.
The interview was edited for clarity.
You answer roughly a dozen questions every week in your column. How do you decide which ones to tackle? What makes you think that I have something to say?
There is some sort ofvocation. My reading day is Monday, and I just sit there and read, and if I have a gut reaction, I can either be angry or amused. I just keep reading andCompile a big file of questions when I don't answer it right. I go to that file when I am ready to start writing.
I try to write an answer after I edit the question into a usable form. I put it in a column and then go to the next one. It is an assembly line.
Do you always know your answer?
Sometimes I have to turn it over in my head for a while. I come back to questions in the background when I have something.
Do you ever feel like you are doing the work that a trained therapist should be doing?
Yes. The history of advice columns doesn't include a lot of therapists. It is a new medium. The conversation is put into a column. I have never felt like I had no business doing this.
How did you find your voice?
By not looking for it. One of the things that helped me was that I don't like to write. I do not journal. I do not write poetry. I like to read. I enjoy words. I don't want to generate them myself. I didn't try that hard to have one.
It seems like your job is enjoyable, but I think it is taxing.
It is taxing on the mind. You are in people's problems, and they can be upsetting. I feel very responsible even though I am only talking at the kitchen table. I want to make sure I covered everything. If I miss something the day after it is published, I hear about it from readers. I don't want to be cavalier about these people's lives.
What have these past two years been like for you?
I never lose sight of the fact that I have gotten off easy. I was working from home. I did not lose anyone, knock wood, close to me. My kids, who are all in high school, have lost a lot of experiences. Their world became circumscribed in a way that it seemed wrong and unfair.
I used to get a lot of questions and then suddenly, I got variations of the same question: "I can't do this anymore." I can't see a way out of my house. For a long time, that helplessness and hopelessness was constant. Again, I have to keep in mind that it was not mine.
How did you deal with it?
At the beginning of the Pandemic, I would have panicky moments and rage. I was surprised by that. I was angry. I would have to walk. I would bake something. I am still wearing it.
When you appeared in a gossip column with someone else and were pregnant with twins, some readers were scandalized and you were flogged. What do you think about that?
I don't think about it. Some people think that I left my marriage for someone else. I did not. This was going on for a long time. I reported it all at once.
I made a conscious decision not to counter every accusation because it takes pieces of your soul away. I was able to only say what was going on. The most useful thing that I have learned is that you have to detach yourself from what other people think of you.
I have heard that therapy can be a success if you hear your therapist's voice in your head. Who is in your head?
I hear the readers voices in my head. I think after I come across questions. I went through this before. It did not look like that to me. This person saw it differently, and I will incorporate that into my answer.
What do you think about the nature of the human race? Are we born evil? Are we good people who are flawed?
There are still people who don't know what they're talking about. Even though it has been disproven many times, I still look at what some people believe. I feel like it is part of my responsibility as a writer, as a citizen, and as a human to try to understand other people. Sometimes, I think I am not making any progress.
I think people are trying their best to get through whatever they are going through in life. People were out there hunting and gathering. Emotions and survival are not easy to understand. I give people the benefit of the doubt that they are able to get through. Some people lose their battle with their impulses. We all have them. I don't think anyone is perfect. I feel better about people and my day-to-day life if I look at everyone as trying to figure it out, just like I am.
Do you have any words of wisdom for us after two-plus harrowing years of pandemic, social strife, economic uncertainty, and international unrest?
Staying out of the middle distance can be overwhelming. You will stay on course if you look at the near distance and see what you need to do to get to the end of the day. If you look into the distance, you will see that humanity has been dealing with stuff for its entire run, usually worse than this.
When you try to figure out where you will be two months from now, or if you will ever be able to go on with your life again, or if you will ever be able to go on with your job. Think in small baby steps. You go to the mountains and look at the sky and the stars and realize that you are insignificant. This does not matter. I will be fine.
You have been doing this for 25 years. Are you tired of it? Do you think about retirement at all?
I plan to retire when I am 150 because I am about to send three kids to college.
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