Five Lessons I learned from podcasting while parenting in a pandemic
I decided to host a podcast when I was 7 months pregnant with my second child in 2018. I gestated the show’s concept and my audio editing skills while I finished growing my son in my belly. In early 2019, I spent all postpartum freetime writing episode outlines and re-recording my first episode so many times that I no longer hated the sound of my voice, but was rather numb to it. I launched my podcast on February 4th, 2020. I was full of hope and naivete as I hit publish on the first three episodes of my shiny new show. During the Dark Ages of March 2020 I had released my entire backlog of episodes without creating weekly new shows as I had originally planned. Instead, I spent all my energy hoarding toilet paper, working my day job while simultaneously wrangling my two toddlers and managing my feelings about suddenly being in the same space as my husband for 37 hours a day.
The first lesson that I learned during this trying time was to take a Timeout. I did this with my children when I was on the verge of losing my mind. I also did this with the show when life got to be too dang much. I took the entire month of April off from podcasting. I wagered that losing the 7 regular listeners of my new show was a risk I was willing to take considering the state of my ever-teetering-sanity.
Then May rolled around and I realized that I was less likely to survive the new Soap Opera that we all found ourselves in if I didn’t continue my passion project. So the second lesson that I learned was: keep going. Self care and taking a break is important, but that is entirely different than giving up. Producing the podcast and connecting with other parents and birth workers actually kept me afloat when I began to get lost in the sea of loneliness and the unknown.
This brings me to the third lesson that I learned: connection over correction. This is a parenting adage and it also describes the evolution of the goal for my show. I first started the podcast to share parenting hacks and all of the wonderful things I was doing right as a parent. I thought that I could save the world one parent at a time by gingerly informing them that they knew nothing and were doing it all wrong. Turns out that I was wrong. Providing tips on how to buy baby gear and advice on how to avoid plugged milk ducts will not make the monumental responsibility of parenting any easier. (However, my plugged duct advice is top notch and I recommend that you listen to me about that if you ever find yourself in that predicament.) Now I focus on connecting with experts that might just have a solution for your particular problem and the two of us can provide proof that you aren’t the only one going through that issue. I have laid down my how-to-sword and instead I share my own personal stories about my parenting wins and foibles. This usually ends up teaching the lesson that I hope to get across, but with a more humble and approachable ethos.
The fourth thing that I learned in the last year while podcasting with screaming children running around in the background was to not take myself too seriously. I am a recovering perfectionist. Now I stand on the fulcrum between producing a good enough sounding show that it isn’t painful for the audience to listen to and acknowledging that I am not Ira Glass and my production quality does, in fact, reveal that. I have laughed many times at the adorable things that I have said in the show. Like that one episode that aired on March 16th, 2020 where I encouraged listeners to stay sane during these next couple weeks! Lol...a year later.
Finally, I have learned as a podcaster-parent-pandemic survivor that my time is valuable and my surroundings are distracting AF. Therefore, the fifth lesson that I learned was to ask myself: is this how I want to be spending my time? Once I started googling: how to market your podcast, I found myself parenting, podcasting, moderating a Facebook group and maintaining a newly minted Instagram account for said podcast. This led me to learning graphic design, TikTok video production, newsletter writing and blog creation. I was getting a migraine from following all of the shiny objects! I realized one day that I was spending so much time on these other activities that I was falling behind on actual podcast creation and that is when I began to ask myself: what do I want to spend my time doing? Do I want to be a Facebook Group Moderator or a parenting podcaster? Do I want to be a Clubhouse Room Founder or a parent who podcasts? Asking myself this question weekly encourages me to evaluate the time that I spend working to ensure that they are aligned with my goals and values.
To wrap up: I learned a lot of lessons during this past year and at the end of the day I have decided to both keep being a podcaster and to keep being a parent and to do the best I can with both pandemic or not.