I’m updating my Radio page, I can see myself through it. I get a vague image of where I was headed and my vision of what I wanted to achieve with my show. I liked doing the show. I really liked doing it. It was funny, I thought about walking away from it all the time. It was a lot of work. More than I think most people would realize. I never made a cent from doing it. Even though I had ten thousand downloads for every episode, I never found the satisfaction I sought from it. I never got the feedback I wanted or any monetary compensation for it.
At its height, I was doing five two-hour shows a week. It sounds nice, like a 10-hour work week isn’t bad. That was just the tip of the iceberg though. Websites needed updated daily, social media (twitter, facebook, Instagram) updated, I had to read the book the author would be talking about that night, then I had to go build cars for eight hours. So doing the interviews was the easy part of my day, even though I ran the board at the station by myself. I still liked it a lot.
Until one Friday, I was prepping for the night’s show. I got on Facebook to update it for the night’s broadcast. I had a message. It was from the station manager saying to not come in and I could no longer broadcast for the station. A Facebook message telling me I was basically fired. Not a text, or a phone call, but a Facebook message. Such a weak and pathetic way to communicate that I was done. I was upset. I was angry. I never got any sort of explanation from anyone about anything. Best I could figure was either an engineer at a sister station had an issue with the show content and complained me out of the building or the stance I took over fracking rubbed a higher up the wrong way. Either way, the end result was the same. I lost my platform. I lost my direction.
It did get me a chance to step back though. This had been my primary focus and a somewhat creative outlet for eight years. It was limited creatively as I was not the creator in this world. I was talking to the creators about their creations. As time has moved me further from this painful episode, I can see the lessons to be learned from it. I can see my drive and passion carried me so far for something I hadn’t been, if I’m honest, completely committed to. That dedication took me further than I imagined it would.
That leads me to this. I’m so passionate and invested in my work as a writer that I can’t quit on it. It means more to me than breathing. If I could choose dying or not ever having my book published, I would be in an urn right now. This thing that I’ve written, I need to share it. The things I am writing, I need to have them out in the world. It’s eating at me that it hasn’t happened yet, but I know if I keep on working that it will. I realize that it’s more than just writing, I will tweet, instagram, talk, write, interview, travel, promote my work until I fall over from exhaustion.
Looking the through the reflection of my past I see the window to my future.