A few weeks ago I made a blog post about Reddit. Recently, I received an email from someone responding to a post I made on Reddit, personally encouraging me on my podcast concept. As I go through daily life, my brain is always on alert for new ideas which may be pertinent to my podcast. Not quite obsession, but perhaps a sort of positive paranoia in the sense that I’m constantly looking out for opportunities. Paranoia, obsession, ambition, who can really tell the difference? I’ve been so in my head about this project that it startled me to see someone else talk about it.
When this person reached out saying “a lot of podcasts are very similar to each other, so I like that yours is unique. I hope you get a listener base,” I was astounded by how much those words impacted me, taken aback they were from a complete stranger who’d taken time out of their day to write me. This one little message pushed me to take a step back from the day to day grind and look at some of the positive feedback I’ve received from others.
Much of the feedback has come from people I’ve interviewed, complimenting the questions I’ve asked. As a student who’s always loved learning, complimenting my questions was probably the highest form of praise anyone could have given me.
When I started Hustlefizz, I was determined to write about both the highs and the lows of starting a project. I’ve found it significantly easier to write about the lows because they seem so glaring, yet I’m trying to get better about acknowledging the highs, rather than dismissing them. With past projects and achievements, I’ve often found during highs, I simply feel relief rather than pride, simply grateful that something isn’t going wrong, grateful I don’t have to “fix” something that’s threatening to derail my whole plan. This time around, with my podcast, I’ve gotten much more adept at “playing it by ear,” rather than having a concrete plan, and I am determined to write about the good parts.
In the future, when I look back at these blog posts written by this twenty-year-old version of me, I want to remember the highs of this podcast, the way it attracts people who seem to “get” me, “get” what I’m interested. But, most of all, I want to remember how much genuine joy my podcast brings me. And, right now? I want to savor the first time (and hopefully not the last) my ambition has felt freeing.