“Letting go of expectations and not trying to beat my previous performance was a huge thing for me.”

Betsy

was photographed by Clayton Hauck at See You Soon during a Keep it 100 session on February 10, 2025

Betsy’s Playlist:

“Home Must Be the Place”

How are you doing today?

I'm great. I just finished my shoot; I'm in a good mood; good music, good lights. Feeling perky!

I love it… Since you brought it up, how does it feel that get hundreds of photos taken of you in a very short amount of time?

I mean it was kind of a blur. I was just looking at the cameraman the whole time doing all these moves with his prisms and lights and stuff, which is pretty impressive. It was a lot of fun. I had a great time.

Awesome. Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Yeah, so I'm a writer. I write for a tech company by day and then do a lot of personal writing on the side. I'm actually working on a memoir right now. Also, I am a runner; I’ve run a bunch of marathons, ran the Chicago Marathon this past fall — just enjoy staying active and getting out and seeing Chicago by running through it.

Tell me a little bit about your running routine. Do you have a routine?

I have no routine right now. I mentioned that I ran the Chicago Marathon this past fall and that is like: you've got your training plan, you've got to hit your mileage, there's definitely a routine of waking up very early to hit those runs. But now I'm just having fun with it. I've got a running group, it’s called Three Run Two. I meet up with them and run whenever I feel like it, so it's actually really nice to not have like the overbearingness of a routine right now.

Are you competitive with your time when you're in the marathons?

No, funny you should ask that. I used to be and it turned me off of running and burned me out and so this past couple of years — I also have a kid, I should mention that — so coming back to running after having a kid was huge, but then just letting go of expectations and not trying to beat my previous performance was a huge thing for me. [So, I’m] enjoying running for the sake of running and not always trying to beat myself.

I love it. I've been trying to get back into running. Now I call my runs, my “explorers,” my exploration, and I don't even care about the pace. I just wanna see new things [and get some exercise].

I'm not so bold as to run without my running watch, but maybe one day.

Can you tell me a bit about the jacket you were wearing during the shoot?

The illustrations on the jacket were hand painted by Small Talk Studio, and it’s all my favorite things. My husband had this jacket custom made for me a few years ago. The illustrations include a stained glass window from my childhood home, our dog Estelle, and Black-Eyed Susans. I liked the jacket so much that I had one made for my husband, with all his favorite things on it. So now we both have one and we can’t wear them at the same time because that would be weird.

So tell me a little bit more about the writing, you're writing a memoir?

Yes.

Can you get into that?

I've been writing the book for the past four years. I'm hoping to find an agent sometime this year. It’s set in my childhood home — an 1871 Victorian in a Chicago suburb whose architect also designed the first skyscraper. The dilapidated mansion was already in rough shape when my parents bought it, and they were attempting to DIY restore the home to its original grandeur. A lot of the book is about my relationship with my bipolar father, who was the driver behind the project.

While it was a pretty amazing place that nurtured my imagination and creativity, the problems just kept compounding. Financial strain, mental illness, family dysfunction, just to name a few. My memoir is about growing up as the home around me was quite literally falling apart. It got to the point where the town where we lived was trying to have my family removed.

What’s interesting is that when I mention I’m writing a book set in my childhood home, many people open up about their childhood homes. Rarely are these sweet and simple stories. I’ve found that people often have complex feelings about these places that have left a lasting impact on them. I heard so many rich and wonderful stories that I started the Home Stories series on Substack to feature them. Some people never want to go back to their childhood homes. Some people can’t wait to go back. And others never can.

I like to ask people about Ai. Are we doomed?

Are we doomed? No, I don't think we are. I mentioned that I'm a writer; and working for a tech company and there is this great fear that Ai, especially LLMs (large language models), are gonna take away our jobs. But I don't think that Ai can't be as creative as we are. Ai can't capture the nuances of the human experience. I think that you can use Ai as a great proofreading and editing tool as a writer. Say you're sending an important email, just be like, “Hey, can you help me find some typos?” And it's great at that, but Ai can't be your own voice. It can't write for you, so it can never take that away from us — is my belief.

All right, cool. Anything else you wanna end on?

Gosh. Try to get eight hours of sleep a night. It's really game changing.

Thank you so much for your time.