Tag Archives: hobbies

Scattershot

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Got back to podcasting with Bryan yesterday after taking a couple weeks off while he’s been in play rehearsals, and other stuff conspired against our regular schedule.

I thought it was a pretty good show; we mostly went over the Oscar ballot and chatted about the movies that we’d seen.

One of the tough things about podcasting for me is sort of similar to the issue that I think I’ve had with the blog in the past: how do you come up with enough material to talk about without being all over the board?  There are times that I feel like the BryGuy show is a bit scattered, but that’s been the nature of program we wanted to do.  I think we’re at our best when we sort of branch off-topic and have some good jokes to tell.

Podcasting is a fun hobby for me, because I always enjoyed working at the radio station in college, and it lets me continue to scratch that itch without having to be too responsible for anything.  The editor/producer in me always wants to critique our work and improve the product, but how much time would I need to do that?  How much better could the show(s) get?  Why should I stress myself out about an activity that’s just supposed to be fun?

It sort of makes me wonder about other people’s hobbies.  Obviously, with every activity a person does, you can either be good, bad, or so-so at it.  I think we’re generally so-so podcasters.  But maybe that’s OK. Who’s judging?

Easy Way Out vs Frustrating Hobby

Had a bizarre sort of set of issues with my home server setup during the course of the day that had me frustrated to the point of wondering if it was worth it to even run the damn thing.  I caught myself thinking, I don’t really need to have my own server.  I could pay for hosting and run something like Google Apps for mail.  Why am I doing to this to myself?

But the real reason is: I enjoy the frustration, I guess.  By the end of the day (before I went to sleep, anyway), I had everything figured out put back together again.  All’s well that ends as such.  I learned a couple more things in the process and might not spend as much time on a similar problem the next time through.

People have asked me more than once how or why I could enjoy all the inherent tinkering and tweaking and troubleshooting that comes along with this sort of setup.  In my mind, they system is never perfect; it’s never working exactly as well as it should.  There is always something extra I could be doing, and that voyage of discovery is what I enjoy and what makes this a hobby.  Make no mistake, it is one that drives me nuts and keeps me up nights on occasion, but I don’t think I’ll actually be selling out to Google and giving up on it any time soon.

… Just don’t ever ask me the same question while I’m the middle of an upgrade (!!!).