🎧✍🏼 I started a podcast
🎧✍🏼 I started a podcast
🎧 I'm going deeper and building out the world of The Comma Project - and this is the next step
Welcome back to The Comma Project, a place for leaders and seekers.
Here, you and I ask the questions that matter.
Comma is a window into the story of one human’s pursuit of more aliveness and crafting a life of significance. It’s an offering of perspective, connection, and perhaps even some wisdom sprinkled in.
It’s where you and I are in the process - of seeking, and becoming - together.
I hope you enjoy - and if you do, I’d be grateful if you pressed the little ❤️ button at the top left corner of this piece, and shared it with a few people you think would also enjoy it.
Reply to this email and let me know what you think.
Cheers,
Devin
TL;DR
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I started a podcast
What am I even doing here?
Does any of this make sense?
Does anyone care besides me?
Will this ever be able to support me financially?
Am I wrong?
Is this all frivolous?
Am I delusional?
This is just a sample of the questions that haunt me in this chapter of my life.
They weigh me down, distract me, and poison my ability to stay present and grounded.
They sap my energy, power, and sense of agency.
They hold me back, like shackles chained to my ankles, as I walk out this process of seeking, and becoming.
I endeavor to craft a life, and a Life’s Work, brimming with a greater felt sense of aliveness. One that authentically expresses the most core parts of what matters to me, and connects me with and serves those who believe what I believe, and care about what I care about.
A vital part of my process involves this world that I’m seeking to build, for fellow seekers in pursuit of truth. The ones who are also crafting their own life, rich with aliveness and significance.
This is the world of The Comma Project.
A space for authenticity, depth, connection, meaning.
For curiosity, creativity, and wisdom.
For story.
For humanity.
It involves you - and me - together.
It’s more than it seems
Why do those questions haunt me? This is just a newsletter anyway, right? Just words on a page. Why so serious, dense, intense?
Because it’s not just a newsletter.
It’s so much more.
It’s my life.
Not in the sense that I used to believe, when my perception of my identity, worth, and the magnitude of my success or failure as a person was determined by my job title.
It’s my life in the sense that Comma becomes alongside who and how I become.
I strive to build The Comma Project as an extension of who I am at my most core, authentic, fundamental level.
As my own process goes, so goes Comma.
Comma is an offering - my offering - of perspective, connection, and perhaps even some wisdom sprinkled in.
It’s an invitation to join in my process of forging my own path, and crafting my life in harmony with the things that matter to me.
Comma is rooted in the belief that one man’s story is every person’s story. That if I share the stories and insights - mine, as well as others - that guide me along the way, they just might matter to you, too.
Said another way, Comma matters to me simply because I care. Because it matters to me.
Perhaps the simplest way is best.
Perhaps no other explanation is needed.
So, I started a podcast
Why?
Several reasons.
#1: Obsession
I’m obsessed with podcasts.
I love them. I listen to about 2-4 hours of podcasts on any given day.
Podcasts are human. They naturally bolster story, depth, and nuance.
Listening to podcasts is one of my favorite ways to share in perspective, connection, and wisdom. I learn so much from them.
Connected with stories of other seekers, I often feel less alone, less crazy, and more affirmed in my vision and dreams. These stories bolster me in the face of those haunting questions that chase me down.
As Comma’s own #1 follower, obsessed and passionate about the stories and ideas that you and I explore together (it is an extension of my process, after all), I crave a Comma podcast to go even deeper.
#2: Intuition
Beyond logic and rationale, a podcast simply feels like the next right thing.
The idea and vision of extending my work through Comma into a podcast is accompanied by a steady, invisible pull in my gut that I’m learning to identify as my intuition.
Again, in simple terms: it matters to me, and I want to.
Perhaps no other explanation is needed.
#3: Fear
The idea of creating a podcast scares me. It ramps up the volume of those haunting questions.
It’s an act of vulnerability, putting myself out into the world. And doing so at the very earliest stage is even scarier.
I am an amateur’s amateur. A beginner. I’ll work to learn and improve, but it still is scary and unnerving to start. I’m the worst I’ll ever be at podcasting, and yet it’s at this point that I must start.
Just like anything, I must start where I am. Growth happens at the edge.
Also, as the Chinese proverb says:
The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.
The second best time is now.
In this beginning stage, I’m inspired by an idea from Seth Godin on what Nike gets wrong.
Seth says that language matters, and instead of just doing it, we should simply do it.
That with a simple switch of language, our whole perspective, and therefore our actions, can change. That just doing a thing discredits our very real experience of the difficulties of doing the thing.
By living via a code of simply doing the next right thing, we honor the significance of the actions we take in our lives moment-to-moment while grounding ourselves in the reality of the lower-than-feared stakes of crafting our lives. It can help us move our visions from hope to action - and therefore closer to the vision itself.
It gets us out of hiding behind a big, distant, dream of the future, and into the attainable impact that an hour, a day, a week, a month, or a year can have on the proximity of what we want to accomplish. As Annie Dillard writes:
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.
This code of simple action is a tool that we have in our belts to face down the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that can so often feel like the cost we must incur to progress in the desired direction of our lives.
And so I started.
What’s the podcast about?
Spoken versions of written essays
For when you’d rather watch (on YouTube or Spotify) or listen (on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts) than read.
Live explorations of ideas
Think of these like extra essays, in visual and audio format.
Sometimes they’ll be piggybacking or expanding on an essay from that week, exploring other facets or textures of the stories and ideas that didn’t quite fit in the written version.
Other times, they’ll be new ideas, like episode #1, sharing more context behind the “what” and “why” of Comma (YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts), or #2, exploring what I learned from volunteering as a counselor at a high school leadership camp (YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts). These will be explorations of ideas similar to those I cover in written essays, but in a live, spoken format.
Conversations
There are many fantastic interview podcasts out there. But so many of them cover topics that sound more like the guest’s bullet point list of impressive, high-status accomplishments from a resumé, or talking points written by a publicist about their new book or product launch than the messy, beautiful, nuanced rollercoaster ride of our human experience.
The best of them come close to the rollercoaster, but from my perspective, the conversation happens from the top of the ride - from a point in time in life when their accomplishments have earned them an invitation to be a guest on a podcast.
As I’ve said, what matters to me is the process. All of it. Including (and especially) the path through the depths of pain and struggle, through the messy middle of growth during the climb, to the peak of triumph - and back and forth, again and again.
The whole of a person and their story matters to me, and that’s what The Comma Project is and will be about. It’s about the process, for stories of those in the process.
So, on the podcast, I’ll have conversations with leaders and seekers who are in the process. We’ll talk about the process.
Because for those who seek, the triumphs are only a part of life - and our process includes all the parts.
This is simply the beginning
If you’re enjoying what you see in Comma, or find it meaningful, it would mean the world to me if you shared it with other seekers and leaders who care about what you and I care about.
I’d also love to hear any feedback or ideas you have about any of this. To some degree, this is all an ongoing experiment.
There are so many great sources of stories and insights out there, and my intent isn’t to be just another one.
I strive for Comma to be a meaningful spark of inspiration, connection, and wisdom - for you, me, and anyone else who joins us.
I’m on the hunt for ways that Comma can innovate, authentically. So, if you have any suggested topics or questions you’d like explored, ideas for new formats, books, podcasts, videos, or essays I’d love, send them my way.
I’m eager to explore any ways to deepen the world of Comma, and I’m all ears.
In terms of the podcast, I’m simply starting.
But in other ways, this has been a long time coming.
I’m surprised to see that this is post 34 in just over a year, and 40 in total since 2020. That’s more than I would have guessed, but nowhere near what I hope to contribute over the years ahead.
There’s a long way to go - but I am excited and energized by what lies ahead.
Thank you for joining me. I’m really grateful that you’re here.
Onwards.
If you enjoyed this newsletter, forward it to a curious friend and tell them which idea they'd love.
Click here to watch and listen to spoken versions of essays, as well as other stories and musings, on YouTube.
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