🎙 Did I set myself up to fail? Part One
Postscript to the "Do you miss podcasting?" failure autopsy series
Catch up on part one, part two, and part three of the “Do you miss podcasting?” series first . . .
‘We share our lives with the people we have failed to be,’ [wrote] the psychotherapist Adam Phillips. When we fail, we mourn those unlived lives — the loss of something we never had and never were, except in our imaginings.
. . . We feel like failures when we fall down the yawning gap between our aspirations and our achievements. Worse than plain disappointment, failure exposes our dreams as dead ends. It is a mortifying reckoning with the complacent fictions we have built around ourselves.”
—Joe Moran, If You Should Fail
Zooming in on the moment I decided to “go pro” on podcasting at the end of 2020, I can examine my inner voice as if it were a single strand of fine hair. The thought was not robust, full of texture and personality; it was soft, nearly invisible, a wisp of my imagination.
Upon closer inspection and with the gift of hindsight, I notice something new: the strand has a split end.
Did I set myself up for failure by attempting this feat at all? That depends.
How far back do you rewind the clock? Perhaps none of the choices I made in pursuit of this goal mattered, because the choice to pursue it at all was flawed from the start.
As previously mentioned, I succeeded in numerous life-giving, soul-filling, spirit-warming ways—including producing a body of work I’m incredibly proud of—just not at the one particular goal to earn a living doing what I loved most (lol 😭).1
While my business had other bigger and more viable revenue streams, this failure autopsy process has been meaningful because podcasting was closest to my heart.
The first three posts explain many nuts and bolts surrounding why I failed to achieve financial liftoff. But there’s at least one aspect I failed to unpack: the moment I made the decision in the first place. (Don’t say I didn’t warn you about being an unreliable narrator/CEO.)
If you currently have a podcast (or ever did), you might have read the entire series while screaming at the computer, berating my hopeful, naive, idealistic 2020 self. I imagine something along the lines of,
“I COULD HAVE TOLD YOU THIS WOULDN’T WORK, YOU IDIOT!!! What a stupid, misguided, ridiculous goal to attempt! Anyone could have told you it would be nearly impossible to earn a living through podcasting alone; it was your ignorance-is-bliss delulu fantasy that it could be done at all. You have no one to blame but yourself!!! And now you’re here whining about how it failed?!? GIVE ME A BREAK!!!
Oh wait, that’s not you?2 Just my inner critic? They’ve been having fun lately doing the “I told you so” dance. And why shouldn’t they?
