I love podcasting. It’s been a blast. But it’s a huge pain sometimes.
Today I interviewed Penelope Trunk, and it was brutal. She was wonderful. The interview itself was great. But my technology threw every wrench at me imaginable. It was stressful and annoying to duct tape together an episode with all the fragmented sections.
She was cool about it, thankfully, and even gave me twice as much time as originally promised. But it threw my whole day off.
Five minutes before we began I realized I’d never called someone’s phone via Skype, so I did a Google search and downloaded an app on my phone that records phone calls, just in case. I barely had time to enter my info and set it up as a backup.
Then I go to dial her and realize Skype charges for calls to a phone. I had to scramble to enter payment info (thank you Dashlane for quick form completion!). We got started two minutes late, which already had me frustrated. I hate tardiness.
Things were going great for 12 minutes, then the call dropped. We dialed again. It went well for about three or four minutes and then she couldn’t hear me anymore, though I could hear her. Drop. I dialed again and she still couldn’t hear me. Drop.
I frantically grabbed my cell and called her. We proceeded for another 18 minutes on the phone when I realized the app only allowed 20 minutes free and I never put in billing info to go longer. She had to go anyway, so it wasn’t too bad, but still rushed at the end.
I just finished editing four clips into one and adding an intro and outro. It got done, though the sound quality for the second half of the interview was pretty rough, even though that’s where the conversation was best.
In addition to the sound there were several points where I interrupted her in a pretty bad way. It’s one of those things I sometimes do as a host and with some people it happens more than others. She’s confident and straightforward so we kept plugging along, but man, I finished the interview pretty annoyed at the quality of the whole experience I created.
My goal is to make my show really fun and easy for guests. I want them to shine. I want them to come back on the show. I want them to love it so much they forget the time.
Oh well.
I cranked it out anyway and it will go live Monday. The content is great, even if the process wasn’t.
Sometimes I really get in a groove where my daily writing and weekly podcasting and everything else just clicks. I really like what I’m producing and the process. Days like today are a great reminder that, when what Steven Pressfield calls “Resistance” crops up, you’ve got to do your work anyway.
Once it’s done, you can’t look back. Ship it. Then put your head down and start working on the next thing.
Thanks Penelope for your patience!