The veteran host, who bowed out after a 33 year run hosting talk TV, is having a good time growing out his beard and not giving a f**k. In a pretty deep interview with Whitefish Review, Letterman had some s**t to say about how being a late night TV host skewed his priorities and he’s glad he’s done with it.
“I’ll be 69 next year and I’ve been doing this for 33 years. What did I want? Like you work until you’re a hundred? So there’s a lot of practical reasons why a person wouldn’t miss this.”
He admitted feeling like his work was much more important than it was while he was in the thick of it due to existing in a constant swarm of feedback, and is glad to be able to take a step back, let go of his ego, and relax.
“…because of this introspection, you believe that what you are doing is of great importance and that it is affecting mankind wall-to-wall. And then when you get out of it you realize, oh, well, that wasn’t true at all. It was just silliness. And when that occurred to me, I felt so much better.”
On top of a lighter lease on life and a load being lifted off his shoulders, as a TV personality he wasn’t allowed to have a beard, so Letterman’s living it up in true lumberjack style.
“I had to shave every day, every day, for 33 years. And even before that when I was working on local TV. And I just thought, the first thing I will do when I am not on TV is stop shaving.”
You do you, Letterman. You do you.