Audiowork

As my finger steadily improves, and my doctor at last feels assured that I'm not going to lose the first two knuckles (which, apparently, was a possibility; though this was not relayed to me until it ceased being a threat), I have learned to type with nine fingers, again without having to look at the keyboard.  We must adapt to survive.

For months now I have debated the practicality of creating more podcast, acknowledging that I have no one with whom to chat.  I've listened to hours of people talking alone and it is always an effort.  The worst is people mumbling about themselves (as I'm doing now) and taking ten minutes to get to the point ~ which is almost always a class in how to be Captain Obvious where it comes to advice.  People talk too slow or hedge their opinions far too much; I get awfully tired of a podcaster who thinks enough of himself that he's going to make 200+ audio recordings of his own voice, but still feels the need to repeat some version of "your mileage may vary."  Personally, I'd like to think listeners are smart enough to figure that part out for themselves, and not think they're duty-bound to believe all that they hear.  I know that no one hesitates to tell ME that they disagree, without my giving permission.  Somehow, it only reminds me how desperately these podcasters want to be liked.

I have had more time to explore and experiment with the sound of my own voice, since I haven't been able to type which much ease of late.  I'm unsure of my voice and of my content.  I'm sure there's little chance of anything I have to say being popular.  My chief concern is that I don't run out of things to say after the first 8 hours.  Any such content, popular or not, will have to remain free ... but I do hope to use a podcast to draw in new followers and Patreon supporters, just as anyone else does on the internet.  I worry, however.  I've found that when I start talking passionately about D&D, my dissatisfaction with the state of play and with the content I encounter from other websites and the game's production company simply boils out of me.

I'm not sure why I'm so angry.  I suppose because I'm being told to believe in the blatant abuse of the game I love, or that I'm told that disrespecting the intelligence and free will of players should be business as usual ... and because I know that this is propaganda that's been disseminated for decades by the company.  I'm just as furious that cheating and lying to people has been used as a promotional tactic to sell the game to children, who have grown to be adults ~ who now defend this as a legitimate DMing approach.  The philosophy has become so pervasive now that parents raised to be these players are now teaching their own children that cheating with dice and manipulating the game's rules ad hoc are perfectly fine.  What sort of children are we raising?

This is not the only problem I have with the company's agenda.  I want to create a podcast with a positive bent, but I don't know how to silence myself entirely.  And because disparaging the company ALSO means challenging the myopic belief system of those grown-up children who fell in love with the company's products than with the game itself, I once again find myself in a place where any podcast I might put together will be as despised as I was when I first started blogging.  People, on the whole, have gotten used to me now.  They may not like me, but they read me, because they know there will be content here.  A podcast, however, means reaching out to a lot of people who have never heard of me, and pissing them off.  I hesitate to go down that road again.

But, I'm still me.  And the solution to the dilemma is to admit that I'm not going to produce a podcast that censors myself.  Which means, engendering enemies and swallowing that as need be.  I'm thicker skinned today than I was in 2008; and I think a podcast gives less opportunity for detractors to directly piss on the material presented.  Yes, people can go make their own content slamming me, but they can't slam me inside my content or on my page; and no advertising is bad.  There will always be people who hate us.  And there will also be those who appreciate what we do.  That is the first rule of the internet and of real life.  However many enemies we will make, we also have the power to gather together a family who will support our cause.  It does well to remember that.

I hope to have a preliminary episode up in a few days.  It isn't going to be great, but it will be authentic.  If we look at anyone producing quality content right now, we know their early stuff lacked the polish of their present work.  I have to believe that I have the capacity improve also.  I've already learned a great deal about audio in the last few years.  At this point, I've just got to leap forward, and stick with it.