19 March 2025
hello, bee people…
it’s been a while…not intentionally…life just kind of happened…i had this moment where it felt like i was standing on a shoreline watching two boats drift away…one with my mom…one with my son…not in a sad way…just in a this is what life does kind of way…slow…necessary…inevitable…and in that space in between…i made a choice…i decided to just soak it…if you’ve ever played World of Warcraft, you know…sometimes you don’t fight…you don’t move…you just stand there and take it in…so that’s what i’ve been doing…still doing…
at some point it hit me…this time…this exact version of life…i don’t get it back…i’ve got a teenager about to go out into the world…and an octogenarian mom…and you just never know…not in a doom way…just reality…so i cut everything i could…social media…gone…texting…mostly gone…noise…gone…a very small handful of people can reach me…and if you really know me, you know how to get through if it matters…it wasn’t about not caring…it was the opposite…it was about caring enough to be present…
i think a lot of people understand this now…especially after the pandemic…we all had that moment where the world slowed down and asked…what actually matters…and then it sped right back up again…this was me choosing not to follow it…
but while i’ve been off the grid…i haven’t been gone…i’ve been thinking…especially about Sayonara Cupcake…because when i started this thing…it was chaos…like real chaos…an offhand comment to Andy Ruch…and a week later i had a podcast…no plan…no training…no clue…just vibes and a microphone that probably shouldn’t have been used for anything serious…
Desmond…my producer slash audio engineer slash unpaid intern…jumped in and helped…and like all good friends…he pushed me out of my comfort zone…but we approached things differently…he focused on the technical…i focused on the conversation…and somewhere in there i made a dumb assumption…who wants to listen to me…so i kept trying to shrink myself out of the episodes…Desmond told me that was dumb…he was right…
and then video happened…because my son…clearly the only adult in the room…was like…why aren’t you filming this…and i was like…because podcasts are audio…and he was like…people watch them…cool cool cool…great…now i have to learn lighting, framing, not looking like a goblin…awesome…and just when i finally got comfortable having a camera pointed at me…my best friend Marty casually says it’s brave of me to put my face on the internet because AI can duplicate me now…facial recognition and all that…and because i am who i am…my brain immediately goes…cool…great…love that…absolutely not sleeping tonight…i’m also the same person who has had irrational fears about things like spontaneous combustion…so naturally this sent me into a completely reasonable spiral…which is how we ended up here…with a microphone setup that is wildly unnecessary…like unnecessarily serious hardware that confuses people…is it stopping AI from duplicating me…probably not…i’m sure my face is already out there…but in my head…this became my thing…because i never wanted the podcast to be about me anyway…
so here we are…almost two years in…technology has gotten way better…and honestly…some of the early episodes…hard to listen to…not because of the conversations…those are solid…but the audio…yeah…we don’t need to lie to each other…and i used to avoid going back…like well…that’s what it was…but people said yes to me…early…fast…no proof of concept…and i feel a responsibility to them…to present those conversations the best way i can…
so i’m remastering…episode by episode…slowly…because time is still limited…but consistently…and one thing to note…because Spotify lets me update episodes seamlessly…anything i remaster there will automatically update across Apple, Amazon, and everywhere else pulling from the RSS feed…so those will just quietly get better…YouTube on the other hand…is its own personality…and by personality i mean…it doesn’t let me swap anything…so i may pull the old episodes and replace them…which is fair…because i put exactly zero effort into YouTube in the beginning…like none…we’ve always gotten most engagement from Instagram and Spotify anyway…
and somehow…still…this thing grew…we even got a couple awards from Spotify…which i’m still side-eyeing like…are you sure you meant us…completely unexpected…really cool…a little surreal…one of them was actually about listener retention…like how many people stay through most of an episode…and we ranked really high…which is wild considering some episodes are like three hours long…and not all guests are celebrities…some sure…but a lot are just people…people who love music…people who feel music…people who can sit in a conversation and go there…i think that’s what resonates…not who someone is on paper…but the conversation…that bee people energy…just getting it…
and something i’m really lucky to have in all of this…is Desmond…we don’t see each other often…he’s off doing his thing…isolation tanks…Pilates…living a slightly mysterious life…which still mildly supports my theory he could be a serial killer…but we’ll circle back to that…what i love about our friendship is the understanding…life comes first…always…if something comes up in his world…he handles it…if something comes up in mine…i handle it…no pressure…no guilt…and because of that…the podcast works…we don’t have a boss…no deadlines…we don’t force it…we record when it makes sense…when schedules line up…when the vibe is right…sometimes together…sometimes solo…ideally we’ll get back to a weekly rhythm…that’s the goal…but life happens…and sometimes you choose what matters most…and this time…i chose this season with my family…Desmond had his own things too…including temporarily escaping to America…still suspicious…
but none of that means this goes away…it just means we do it when time permits…when life allows it…when the timing and energy are right…and honestly…that’s probably why the conversations feel the way they do…
so yeah…we’re a little elusive…think of us like a Labubu drop…you don’t always know when it’s coming…no perfect schedule…but when it shows up…you kind of want to grab it while you can…that’s us…we drop when it’s right…when the conversation is right…no forcing it…when it hits, it hits…so if you see something new…jump on it…because you never really know when the next one’s coming…
i also have new episodes recorded…they just need editing…and editing takes time…real time…especially when there are moments that need care…i’ve been short on that lately…but i’m getting there…learning how to manage time again…for this season…and i’ve got some really great guests coming…really great…and i don’t want you to miss those conversations…not because of me…but because of them…
so where does that leave things…i’m still here…the podcast is still here…the conversations are still happening…just at a pace that makes sense right now…i haven’t disappeared…i just stepped closer to what matters most…and now i’m figuring out how to hold both…new episodes are coming…remastered ones are coming…and they’ll come as i’m able to give them the time they deserve…
and if you made it all the way here…like really here…especially if you’ve been around since the vanilla days…thank you…seriously…i joke with Desmond that we probably have like 20 real listeners…and he’s like the numbers say otherwise…and i’m like numbers lie…bots exist…i don’t trust any of it…there are supposedly 11K of you on Instagram and in my head maybe 30 are real and the rest are very committed robots…but however many of you there actually are…the fact that you’re here…reading this…means more than you probably realize…so genuinely…thank you…i'm so very grateful...