Introducing
Perfect Off Paper

A six-part serial podcast coming June 2026 from Sara J. McElroy

Podcast cover titled "Perfect Off Paper" by Sara J. McElroy with a photo of the author, a smiling woman with brown hair, on a notebook paper background.
A woman with long red hair wearing a blue blazer and white blouse smiling while holding a blue microphone in her right hand, sitting at a wooden table.

I'm Sara McElroy, former CMO and The Wall Street Journal's poster woman for pandemic career burnout.

After making a bold leap from corporate and landing a book deal, I was certain I had successfully reinvented my career and was finally building a life that felt like me.

But something in me wouldn't let me write the book.

As my book deal collapsed, everything else did, too.

Health.

Finances.

Relationships.

Home.

A complete unraveling of what I thought made for a "perfect on paper" life.

And I finally had to reckon with a truth I'd long been avoiding: somewhere between the life I was living and the story I was telling about it, entire parts of me had gone missing.

I've come to believe that the truth of being human always exceeds the story we can, or feel safe enough, to tell about ourselves. 

Because the person is greater than the resume.

The life is greater than the obituary.

And the human is always greater than the paper.

Perfect Off Paper, coming June 2026, is a six-part serial podcast about borrowed stories, unexpected unravelings, and what happened when I stopped forcing my life to fit the paper.

A smiling woman with long red hair wearing a coral blazer and white top, sitting on a beige chair in a bright room with a desk, a microphone, and some books and plants in the background.

As Featured In…

The Wall Street Journal logo
The cover of The Wall Street Journal magazine, featuring a textured orange background with white text.
A circular blue logo with the words "the LIST" and an orange checkmark.
A black circular background with the white lowercase letters "abc" centered.
CTV News logo with colorful circles containing the letters C, T, and V above the word 'NEWS' in large blue letters.
Close-up of the FOX logo in black and white
CBS logo
NBC logo with a colorful peacock feather design above the black NBC letters.