Q&A with Howard Steinberg

 

 

 

Howard Steinberg is the author of the new memoir Confessions of a Problem Seeker: My Lifetime Journey from Busy Brain to Loving Heart. He is also an entrepreneur, and he's based in New York City. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write this memoir?

A: I just felt an inner calling to tell my story. I needed a creative outlet after a lifetime of distracting myself with business pursuits.

Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: I played with different themes that might be more audience-friendly and then as I started writing I kept coming back to a central theme of how I could never be present to the moment and how my mind was always finding a problem to be chewing on.

 

Confessions signify what I’m sharing is brutally honest and wholly vulnerable. And Problem Seeker is a different way to say neurotic, easily distracted, anxious, etc., but in a specific way that people can see that part in them.

 

Q: How would you describe your relationship with your parents?

A: How much time do you have? Hah! Complex for sure. My dad died young and was just there. Working hard. I wanted him to be proud of me, but I kept disappointing him. We were not close.

 

Both of them were from such a different world and time, there was little room to relate. My mother’s presence was very heavy and controlling. As the only survivor of the Holocaust from her family, she needed to feel seen. From the youngest age, I had a palpable feeling I was there to ease her pain, but resented her for it.

 

Q: What impact did it have on you to write the book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?

A: Well, so much of my trauma was connected to them and their parenting and so much of my survival and resilience was due to them. I could finally acknowledge at the end of the book: “...I didn’t arrive here in spite of them. I’m here because of them.”

Q: What are you working on now? 

 

A: I’m feeling restless. I discovered the writer in me by telling my story. I thoroughly enjoyed the process even when it was hard. I’m anxious to do it again and feeling into what’s in me to share. I think I will zoom into a segment of my journey and write it as fiction, but influenced by true events.

Q: Anything else we should know? 

 

A: Yes. We are all capable of change. It’s hard and it’s nonlinear, but little increments can be liberating and help us find the authentic self that lives within.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb