Anxiety

By:  Ada Z.     

                                                                                  Ada (Right) & Lisa (Left) 

       

       A year ago, I hardly knew what a podcast was.  I had heard of them but knew very little.  When the pandemic occurred, I found myself confronting demons that I had always pushed deep down inside of me.  Eventually, I felt the need to address those feelings and came across a podcast called "SelfHealers Soundboard".  This podcast opened my eyes to so many emotions that I had suppressed over my almost 40 years of life and it became the beginning of my podcast obsession.

        For the past year, I have been on a journey through the podcast world, listening to anything that piqued my interest.  From subjects related to therapy to marriage to health or just entertainment...nothing was off-limits.

         One day, my friend Lisa came to visit me to discuss a paper she had to write for school.  Our conversation went on many tangents and we talked for hours.  Towards the end of our conversation, she said, "We should start a podcast".  It felt like the stars had aligned.

        I have always been a dreamer.  Someone who has a million ideas with zero follow-throughs.  However, this podcast idea actually seemed achievable.  It was exciting and the idea of it made me feel like I had a newfound purpose.

        We immediately decided that we would start this podcast and began brainstorming about all of the topics that we could talk about.  After compiling a list of over a hundred subjects we set the date to record it and hit the ground running! 

        We soon found out that it wasn't as easy as we thought.  We had no trouble talking to one another but when we were done recording the fear set in.  Are we actually releasing this podcast?  People that we know will hear what we really think.  What will they think about us?  Will they judge us?  Will they hate us?  The anxiety of it all was very overwhelming.

        After a lot of back and forth, we figured we had nothing to lose.  If people judged us for starting a podcast then that was their problem.  If someone doesn't agree with something we said then that's ok!  We wanted to share our opinions on subjects and wanted to hear what others had to say.  So...we did it!  We published the podcast and called it Opinion Piece. 

         Then we sat...and we waited...and waited some more.  The listeners would start pouring in any minute now.  We quickly realized that it doesn't work that way.