Doing a podcast is a total adventure. I have had so many people out of the blue tell me that they have been listening to the podcast. It’s a cool feeling and I am still learning how to say thank you after they tell me. I mean it’s a compliment but some of us are just not as good at taking compliments as others.
We are only 15 episodes and I have already learned so much about things I hadn’t really thought about before. I have done a good amount of presenting and public speaking but something is very different about it when it’s being recorded. I think when you are live and presenting things just come out the way they come out maybe you have practiced it and maybe you haven’t but it just happens. When you are recording you have the option to go back and listen and a lot of times this is where people get hung up and things die. I think now about things like inflection and being descriptive and keeping a good pace. I had this conversation with someone the other day about doing the podcast and they were saying that they could never do a podcast because they hated the sound of their own voice and it was just weird to them. Here’s the thing, it’s only weird to you. Unless you have some crazy high pitch or crazy low voice that makes you actually sound weird or different to anyone listening it’s just another voice. I think once you can get over that self created hump of weirdness you will be in pretty good shape.
I had a lot of fun this season telling stories and talking with guests. I am really enjoying doing the podcast alone but I really like the break or bringing guests in. I like reliving and then reflecting on these stories and really thinking about what I have learned and how they have shaped me to become the person that I am today. I bet if you think back there are a lot of little parts and pieces that have helped to shape and mold you. For some people it’s school or their parents, siblings, the military or maybe a job or even several jobs. Every little episode of your life can provide you with things like perspective, or manners, or attributes that you carry with you throughout your life. I talked in one of the early episodes about taking acquired skills with your from job to job and applying them to add value to you and to your position. These aren’t things you can buy or learn about in books these are things that you learn by doing and by having on the job real life learnings.
I just had this conversation with a Grad student the other day about kids that have spend their entire lives in school going from highschool to undergrad to grad school and they are looking for their first job ever when they get out or grad school. This is opposed to kids that go from highschool to undergrad and work in their field while going to grad school. Their perspective is completely different and your frame of reference comes from a place of living and working in that world VS just studying and learning about it in school. I am not saying that it’s worse one way or the other I am just saying it changes they way you see things that how you apply your skills.
I remember in episode 4 when I was talking about how I had the rug ripped out from under me and I worked really hard for this money to buy a moped then I had to sell it because the cops told me that I was too young to ride it so I traded it for a skateboard that was then ran over and smashed by a car. If that had happened to my friend instead of me I wouldn’t have really learned anything from it. It would have been a cool story that I got to witness but at the end of the day it really wouldn’t have affected me very much. However, since it did happen to me my perspective is completely different. I worked hard and laid in the dirt for days to earn that money, I put the work and the time in and in the end everything that I had worked so hard for was smashed to bits. It’s crazy how many times I have thought about that car running over my skateboard. Whenever I see it happen to anyone else I have complete empathy for them and it just breaks my 12 year old heart all over again. 
I think we had some fun guests so far. I was pretty stoked to get to do 2 episodes with Brandon and 2 episodes with Phil. The episodes with Brandon were super fun because as we have gotten older we don’t hang out much anymore. I see him every once in a while when our paths happen to cross but those are few and far between. We had so much fun when we were kids and we learned a lot together. First bands, first jobs, first cars. Lots of firsts. I think I’m going to try to have him on for a few more episodes.
I think having Phil on the podcast was great, that dude is so wicked smart. He knows so many random things and when he shares them you can’t help but to go home and look them up on google. We have had more debates while sitting at vegan breakfast joints than I can even count. I’d like to have him on again too. We talked about our history together which was awesome but we need to tap into his brain and extract some of the randomness and share it with the world. Phil likes to play this game called “do you know how this is made”. He does let you guess a few times before he tells you that you are wrong but it’s still a pretty fun game to play. Here is a quick 6º of separation when I met Phil at that house show in Detroit Brandon was probably right next to me but he was never mentioned in the story when I was talking to Phil. I think they are kind of aquantiencies and maybe friends online or something. It’s funny Phil and I actually went skateboarding just a few days ago actually 1 day after my 41st birthday and we were skating this sweet 4’ mini ramp that’s in Holland MI.
The ramp is like 4 feet tall about 24 feet wide. It super fun to skate. Anyway I hadn’t been on my skateboard in about 2 years so it took me a few runs to actually get my bearings and sure enough as soon as I got a little comfortable I fell and landed on my wrist and broke a few small bones in my hand. I’ve been wearing a brace on my hand for a few days now and it hurts to even type.
This is kind of dumb and crazy I hurt my wrist on Thursday and my band had a show booked already to play on Saturday and I play the show all tapped up and winced the entire time. Was it worth is probably not, was it fun yea of course, should I have cancelled, probably but sometimes you have to hustle the most even with a broken hand. 
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