Over the past few months, I’ve been hoarding photos taken from various locales because I had every intention to tell you all about it. I wasn’t necessarily going to suddenly switch formats and turn this site into a travel blog. Nay – my ambition was to share my love of travel, as well as explore the healing and inspiring aspects of adventure. Travel is a recharge that can teach us so much about the ideas and lessons that inform our stories and art. It can nurture us and encourage us to grow, and it’s one of my personal favorite ways to learn about people.
HOWEVER, a doorway to elsewhere opened, and I stepped through. Then I stumbled. Then plummeted.
It wasn’t a bad fall. Rather, it is turning out to be its own adventure, albeit one that’s eaten up more time than I intended.
Some months back, I convinced myself that I could keep up with my weekly comic reviews, maintain a monthly inspirational newsletter, write up a bi-weekly post on the homesite, and still crack away at both my next novel series and comic script. It was ambitious, but we kind of have to be, right? As creative people, “ambitious” is in our nature.
Boy, was I way off.
It started with the podcast interviews. I did one, then another. Then I went all in on a paid Zoom account, and it spiraled from there.
I record an interview every other week now, and on weeks when I don’t have an interview, I’m recording regular podcast episodes. My wife took notice a couple of months back and gave me a mic for my birthday. How prescient that gift turned out to be.
I also started a new job a little over a month ago.
Together, these two life changes disrupted my schedule, and I’m still struggling to get back on track. But that’s life, right? When isn’t life throwing a curveball, opening a new doorway, or switching up our schedules? Sometimes a change can be terrible and propel us into territories that we wished existed solely in our nightmares. Other times, a change can drop us down a rabbit hole and land us on new terrain that maybe we should have been exploring all along.
Before each interview, the hair on my arms stands up. I think of all of the ways an interview could go wrong. Dead air. An enraged interviewee. Or worse, an interviewee who ferret out my amateur interviewing skills.
But like everything, I do it anyway. It reminds me of writing — or any creative endeavor. For whatever reason, us creative types, dig deep within ourselves and pull something out of us, then plop it onto a page, a canvas, a soundcloud library, etc. We give it to the world, then hope the world doesn’t judge us too harshly. Because it’s a piece of us. It’s something ingrained with a bit of ourselves, and we’re letting it wander out into the sometimes harsh and sometimes beautiful world.
This past month or so, interviews have been my creative detour. I will continue to do them because the people I interview genuinely inspire me. But I want to get back to this writing thing. Everyday I don’t write, I hear a voice deep within me demanding that I release it.
I’ll oblige it soon. I’ll also get to posting some travel pics, too.
In the meantime, here are some of the interviews I’ve conducted lately:
Scott Waldyn Writes 