Processing creativity and communication

For me, I launched two podcasts within a week of each other in one of the most intense periods of my life. This was very hard but looking back on it, they have been good for me. Whilst I have struggled to keep consistent, they are there to pick up when I have the capacity.

And:

This blog is a good way to process things, the podcasts are great for interacting with others and photography gets me out into the world.

I love Lee’s way of handling this. Lots going on, stress in the world, stress all around. What does he do? Write more and start some podcasts.

Feels very familiar.

I’ve started a bunch of podcasts. 7-8 at this point if memory serves correctly. One of the things I’m always looking for is connection. I want to talk to other people, hear great ideas, build on those ideas, get feedback loops, and just have a lovely time learning and being curious.

But the challenge I face is I get stressed adding extra calls and meetings and events in my life. Scheduling a call to catch up with someone, even someone I dearly care for and want to chat with, is often hard for me. It has nothing to do with the person at all, but more to do with having a hard time adding a planned event in my day that requires coordination with someone else.

So in an ironic way I keep starting podcasts to try and account for this. You see, I love talking to people. But I don’t like phone calls. I love meeting with people in person, but I rarely schedule such things. It’s a dichotomy, and frankly at this point I focus less on the fact that it’s an issue and more on the beauty of making it work despite my weird quirks in this area.

So my podcasts have been ways to encourage connecting with people.

Occassionally friends and colleagues reach out asking to catch up. I want to say yes, but have a hard time fitting those slots into my life.

I’ve been thinking about starting another podcast, purely as a tool to catch up with people I care for and where I want an excuse to reconnect. The closest parallel I can think of is The Talk Show. Gruber brings on mostly recurring guests, usually on a multi-year rotation, and uses the time to catch up, talk tech and life and all kinds of topics, within a 2-3 hour window. It’s also so cool that he’s able to use that as a means of paying the bills.

This is an incredibly attractive idea to me. I’m just not sure if I have the capacity to add something new into my life yet. However, it keeps coming back up every time I pass on a great chance to talk to an old friend. Having something like this would be a great “excuse” to schedule something on the books every week or two.

I’m putting this out there to see if it resonates with anyone else. It’s a bit of a weird idea. But that’s fine. I like weird.

Via LJPUK.