Cringe with me in my first wannabe podcast

I'm trying be more vulnerable and stuff.

I’m doing something totally not me. A podcast. Don’t expect intro music or an announcer, it’s just my voice.

If you’re wondering why I have this oh-so professional-looking made-in-China mic I bought on Amazon for $35, I had to buy it for a recent podcast I was on. (It’s a travel podcast, more on that below. Update: Here’s the podcast on We Travel There, if you want to listen.)

So after the recording, I had this mic sitting on my desk. It looked so… official like I have my own show or something. Then I saw that Substack has a podcast recording option, and I thought, why not.

The podcast I was on

The podcast is called We Travel There, and will air in January. Once it does, I’ll share it with you so, go ahead, you can laugh at me.

I say that half-jokingly, but seriously, after I the recording was over, I went into a mini-shame spiral. I tend to ruminate and not in a productive way—in this case, I was obsessing over the questions I could’ve articulated better. I thought, wow, some of my answers were really dumb. But then another thought followed. It said, hey, stop that.

Getting out of my cozy zone

Besides being a guest on We Travel There (I had a wonderful time doing it—I don’t mean to complain because the actual process was totally fun!), I’m continuing this exploration outside my zone of comfort.

Even though I’m an avid listener of podcasts, I don’t create them. I get all cringy when I have to listen to an audio recording of my voice.

In general, I suppose I don’t have a track record of being my own advocate. Until a few months ago, I never even shared any personal written material on social media.

I didn’t want to subject myself to judgment and what people would say, or not say. (Is silence a form of rejection?)

But I’m learning to put that nonsense aside. I have this Substack now—a huge step for me. Even asking you guys to subscribe felt sort of embarrassing, but I got over that hump and spammed you guys pretty good. (BTW, thank you for subscribing, and please don’t unsubscribe).

When you really want something, you gotta put aside your fear

Sharing makes me uncomfortable but I figure I’m going to put it all out there anyway in my memoir. Also, this discomfort in sharing but doing it anyway tells me, wow, I must really want this. I want to be an author, publish books and stories, and someday, make money doing it. I’m putting aside my feelings of imposterdom to do it. I think I just made up a new word.

In going with the theme of discomfort, I was recently profiled on a website about women authors and artists, TheHeroinesJourney2016.com. (Warning, my headshot is so freaking large it’s scary.) It is a Q&A-type blog post and some of the questions sort of had me stumped but I enjoyed answering them. The nice man who runs the site reached out to me on LinkedIn asking if I wanted to be profiled. So just like today’s podcast recording, I thought, why not.

Anyway, thank you my dear friends and family for subscribing. I forgive you if you only listen to the first few minutes of my podcast.

Until we meet again next Monday…