Mike Bryskier
Substack Author
Mike Bryskier is a humorist and the author of Aging Against My Will, a Substack newsletter of “irreverent takes on aging from someone who’s doing it daily — and not happy about it.” He describes the publication as a satirical survival guide to getting older, written by someone who is not happy about it but is slowly learning to deal with it. The founding principle, in his words, is simple: “I never agreed to any of this”.
A self-described “reluctant senior citizen,” Mike says he still plays baseball and basketball on his “original knees.” He promises readers no inspirational messages and no “motivational BS”. Instead, he takes on memory, mortality, pain, purpose, loss, love and the small victories and humiliations of growing older, all with gleeful mockery.
His writing has a Mad Magazine sensibility. The podcast Oldish: Conversations on Aging in the 21st Century calls his work “a grimace at the perils of aging” that is “very funny in a grim kind of a way.” Hosts Dr. Janet Price and Gregg Kaloust featured him in a full episode.
His recurring series, The Idiots Guide to Being Old, has become a reader favorite, with one installment drawing nearly 40,000 views. More than 2,000 subscribers now follow the newsletter. Recent essays range from “The Oldmanosphere: Notes from the Heated Toilet Seat” to a more personal piece about his father, dementia and a late-life romance. He also writes Monetize This, a newsletter about “the never-ending effort to find new ways to extract money from us.
Other writers who cover aging regularly recommend his work. Fellow Substack author Lisa St. Lou featured him in an October 2026 piece, “Forget Halloween, Nothing Is Scarier Than Aging”. True to form, his LinkedIn profile lists his occupation as “Bum” at “Acme,” near Buffalo Grove, Illinois.