Ugh. One of those, huh?

My excuse is such: in early February I embraced a few big ideas that manifested as a spoken audio project, which very much looks and acts like a podcast at the moment.

Big ideas, you ask?

First, I have been playing with sound, music, recording, and an array of other tools and toys that are burning a hole in my soul looking for a purpose. 

Second, I looked at the conformity of what I should be doing and making as a so-called commercially viable product and said to hell with that, I just want to make what I want to make.

Third, I realized, and you may have seen me write about this a few times already, that stepping away from posting and participating doesn’t make the terrible stuff go away, it just leaves a gap that is destined to be filled with political, vapid, or algorithmic slop.

In other words, I was motivated to step up and start making more, posting more, and participating, but in a way that suited me. The result so far has been me dabbling in a new podcast-like project, and likely one that will not sound like nor look like the hundred other podcasts in your feed. 

…or, so I hope.

Big ideas, small project, and a vast shift towards a new perspective… and if nothing else, you can listen to me now, too.

Start small.

Start with the achievable and work your way up.

I have been planning this novel-length audio production, writing words, making scripts, composing music, mixing sounds, and—nothing firm has been done yet.

The big project is simply too overwhelming.

Oh sure, I see the forest, but I can’t seem to plant the trees. It all feels like I’m jumping into a new plan, a new skill, a new concept without knowing if any of it will even work—and more importantly if something critical will fail. And the result is paralysis incarnate.  

Something smaller has to come first.

In my case, maybe instead of trying to make a novel, I record some audio blogs first. Then maybe after I do that, I work on making a few one-pager short stories into encapsulated one-off samples of what I’m hoping to create on a larger scale. And then, maybe something else, and something else after that, and maybe… eventually, the real thing will fall into place.

I’m sure many great people have achieved great things in one fell swoop… but the rest of us may need to build up our stamina first.