The One With No Article

The strawberries taste like strawberries. The snozberries taste like snozberries. This is the Music Makers podcast where I read things out loud to you and then offer my unqualified opinions on them. So I know the whole premise of this show is to read an article and then talk about it, but rules are for breaking. So on this episode, there's no article.

It's just gonna be me talking, and here's why. In the last episode, I said that the next episode, the one you're listening to right now, would feature an article called take your life back or don't. And when I listened to it again, I found it to be really negative and really kind of a downer, really aggressive. And I didn't like it, and so I didn't wanna play it. I thought the premise was really good.

The premise was think about your life 10 years ago. Think about all the excitement and ambition and all the optimism you had, And think about your life now and kinda see where the 2 don't line up and see if you can regain some of that optimism and start trying to capture some of those things you had dreamed about doing a long time ago. But the way it was executed was just not what I wanted, not what I wanted this show to be like. And so I decided to axe it. So instead, this is gonna be a meta episode.

This is gonna be a meta episode where I take a second to talk about the show itself. And I don't wanna bury the lead, so I'll tell you right up front that I'm going from 2 days a week down to one day a week. And there are a couple of reasons why, and I think some of them are pretty good. The first one is obviously time. It takes a lot of time to put this together.

It takes time to find the articles. It takes time to reach out to the authors and ask them for their permission. It takes time to record it and to do the commentary and then to do all the editing. That takes a lot of time. And I really enjoy doing the show.

It's been wonderful for me. I've got to hear from some really cool people. I've got to talk to some really cool people, but there are other areas where I wanna spend some of my limited time. We all have limited time, and we just have to decide how we're going to allocate it. Something else I've been thinking about is I want each episode and each idea to really have a little more room to breathe.

I want each idea to be able to ruminate in your mind a little bit longer. If I come out with an episode twice a week every week, you only have a couple of days to mull over each topic before I'm hitting you with another topic. So while it helps my download numbers, it makes me feel really good if I have 2 episodes every week. I actually think it's better for the show if I do 1. But, really, the best and most irrefutable reason for me to go to 1 episode per week is because I can, and so can you.

This is a side project. I can do whatever I want. If I wanna quit altogether, that's fine. It's a side project. I did something.

I put it out there. I did it for a while. I stuck with it, and then I decided to quit. That's the beauty of side projects. That's the beauty of creating a thing and putting it out there.

You put it out there. You get some feedback. You change it or you don't, and you keep going. And now that I've done this for a couple months, I've realized it's better for me to do 1 instead of 2, and so I'm gonna do 1 instead of 2. So let that be an encouragement to all of you who are thinking about starting something and thinking, well, I don't know if I can do that forever.

You don't have to. Just get started and put it out there, and I guarantee you it's gonna change in one way or another. But you'll never know how it's gonna change until you just get moving. You are not contractually bound to continue doing the exact same thing with your side project or your hobbies or whatever. Just try something.

And if you don't like the format, change it. And if you don't like the hobby, quit. Try something else. It is, after all, your side project. It is your hobby.

It's like that article we looked at already, how to blog and not care what anyone thinks. If people are mean, block them. If they don't like what you write, who cares? Move on. So that's it for this episode.

If this is your first episode that you've listened to, sorry. Sorry for all the naval gazing. You should listen to some of the earlier ones. They're much, much better. If this is not your first episode, well, I hope you like the new schedule.

And please send me an email. Let me know what you think about the show, the things you like, the things you don't like. That would be super helpful to me. You can reach me at aaron@musicmakers.fm. It's always nice to hear feedback.

And until next time, here's that music that we all love so freaking much.