For a little while now, I've wanted to try a podcast.
Less a declaration than just an honest feeling. Now and then I'd vaguely picture myself in front of a mic, talking to someone about something. I want to try — but I haven't been able to start. Right now I'm sitting just short of that line.
Let me write the honest part first. The tool isn't finished yet. I don't know whether it'll work, either. So this isn't a "done, here it is" report — it's the first entry in a log, writing down, just as it is, how it feels at the moment of starting.
After turning 40, I felt I might have something to say
Why now? The trigger is probably age.
When I was young, I thought, me, talk about anything? I had no real track record, so speaking in front of people felt presumptuous. But after turning 40, my feelings shifted a little.
I can't put it well, but I started to feel that somewhere in what I've built up, there might be at least one story worth handing to someone. Nothing grand. The things I've thought about on the floor of making things, the times I hesitated, the times I got it wrong. Not correct answers, but maybe of a little use to someone. That modest a sense of traction.
And so the "I want to try" I'd kept putting off finally stepped forward, just a little.
The catch is how hard it is to talk alone
But there's a wall I want to be honest about here.
Talking alone, continuously, is just hard. Sitting in front of the mic with a script, the words don't keep coming the way I'd imagined. A gap of silence makes me anxious, and without someone to nod along, the talk doesn't roll forward well. In my head I should be able to say much more, yet alone, somehow, I get stuck.
The will is there. But solo talking is hard. I stayed stuck between those two for quite a while. To be honest, "someday I want to do this" was turning into "I can never quite do this."
So I decided to build the tool first — can I make a partner to talk with?
So I thought: before I worry about the content, maybe I should first create a state in which I can talk.
To fill in the difficulty of talking alone, I'd build the podcast-support tool first. Concretely, the challenge is this: can I make a partner to talk with — a voice to bounce off? Something that nods, takes in a bit of what I say, and draws out my next line. With a partner like that, maybe the talk would roll even on my own.
Let me be clear about this. It's not that I "made it." Whether I can make it — that's exactly what I'm taking on right now. Whether it'll work, I still don't know. Far from being finished, I don't even have the conviction that this approach will hold. I'm testing it. That's the stage.
The one thing I care about is keeping hold of the tool with my own hands. Even if I lean on a new kind of power to fill the gaps, I want to be the one who decides what I want to make, what kind of partner I want. With about that much resolve, I'm moving my hands now. Though I can't promise anything.
This, too, is to grow
Finally, let me write the most candid part.
Honestly, it's less that the podcast itself is the goal, and more that taking on what I can't do seems, in itself, to stretch me. If talking alone is hard, I'll try building a tool to get past it. Somewhere in that process, I'll probably change a little. Half of the "I want to try," really, is made of that hope of growing.
And surely it's more fun to eventually talk with someone than to grind away alone. Wanting to make a partner to talk with might, unexpectedly, be the flip side of that loneliness.
So, for now, I'm building the tool first. It's still partway. When it's finished — no, including whether it gets finished at all — I intend to keep writing down, here, as far as I've come. This is the first entry in that log.
