I’ve spent the entire winter, which bled over well into the spring considering spring 2022, for the most part, seemed to be just an extension of the mild, but long winter that had preceded it, moaning about the gloomy weather which really affects my spirits. Now that we’ve got the annual mini-heatwave, I’m not going to grumble about the heat. I’m not built for this weather. It’s a nightmare to sleep in. I’ve sensibly cut my current 15k runs short so I’m not spending longer out in that heat than I needed to (I even had to spray myself with After Sun after yesterday evening’s run). I also bought an unbranded (always) baseball cap, an unusually comfortable fit over the latest emerging BOUFFANT, to protect myself from the sun. Buying it was a no-brainer.
I welcome the blue skies. I just wish the heat wasn’t silly. Anything beyond the mid-twenties falls into that category. You get the topless guys running, cycling, or even just walking the streets, which I find really dumb. Okay, some of these guys are in shape and want to show it off. You wish with these torsos came a humbler persona, but it’s very rare. But a muscular frame doesn’t exclude you from the dangers of skin cancer, surely?
Also, does their posing ever pay off? Do these guys ever find themselves called back by some woman (or man) they may have just walked past? “Stop. Come back. I have to talk to you. I have to know who you are purely on the basis of that exposed sweating torso. I think you’re going to be THE one for me.” If these topless guys were walking around carrying some dog-eared paperback that indicated elite-level grey matter, that’d be something. But I’ve yet to see it. Just as in a riot you never see the bookstores (the few that are left) being looted, it’s unlikely you’ll ever see a topless poseur carrying a book about with them.
Walking around topless in this kind of heat, or any for that matter, is the modern-day equivalent of passive smoking and it’ll be interesting to see what situation these poseurs are in several decades from now on the skin issue front. Skin cancer diagnoses, if I can just stay on this a little longer, will more than likely be trickier than for doctors given pretty much anyone under forty seems to have ink. I follow loads of dermatology accounts on Instagram, and they regularly talk about the difficulties of spotting the emergence of dangerous nevi within some tattoo. It’s a big challenge for dermatologists.
After posting this, I’m going to lie down with my latest read and then work out what to do. Tuesdays are my dead day. With the SW8 café closed, my writing routine is absolutely smashed and I’m all about the routine. I’ve got a visit tomorrow from housing management to finally sign off on the leaking roof that has wrecked the flat and dogged it for years, so there’ll be some pre-visit tidying up, but not too much as I’ll be blitzing the place clean once they’ve gone. I’ll have to work out how many dust sheets I can lay down to protect the carpets (and mainly my OCD-ridden self) from the dirty shoes of the contractor without confirming to them that I am OCD-ridden, and once they’re gone, it’s time for the Shake n’ Vac and the vacuum cleaner to come out.
A couple of days ago I finally released the 400th and final ever episode of my long-running podcast Daniel Ruiz Tizon is Available and I’m glad to have it behind me. It’s liberating. I’ve long felt it was a mistake to have a weekly show. It took me away from too many things I enjoyed and did better, but I’m dogged and the show over the years, not often but it happened, was praised in the right places, even named early on as Chortle’s podcast of the week, admittedly in an era before 99% of the population was podcasting.
But to persist, and the show ran probably closer to 450 episodes when all bonus shows were included, and that’s before I even account for another 500 or so other shows I made that weren’t part of ‘Available’, was a huge mistake. It took me away from the writing. With the stand up going well, that’s also taken me away from my writing. Of course, stand up involves writing, but it’s a different kind of writing.
I want to get back to the writing I love, and I don’t think wanting to be a podcaster is ambitious. It’s a good thing to do if it works and you have an audience, which I never quite had, but even then, on the list of creative ambitions, I will always argue it should be low down. It needs to serve the bigger work that you do which is why I kept my show going for so long. Except because the audience wasn’t growing, that strategy never worked for me.
This might seem as graceless as Boris Johnson’s resignation speech, but while it was nice to get a few tweets acknowledging the show’s passing on Sunday night, and a few shares, it was way too late for that. The show needed that social media engagement every week and I rarely had it.
It’s something I’m good at. I find a good indie show that deserves support and I’ll highlight it on social media. Obviously, I have that insight as a cliched struggling indie creator to know how difficult it is for those shows, but I do wish that listeners of these small unheralded podcasts could grasp that. Don’t take the work for granted. Don’t wait until it’s too late to show these podcasts the love and support they need.
Being frank, I do think that’s what happened with my show. It was pointless continuing. There was no listener engagement on a weekly basis. The show’s doomed features inviting listener participation became the stuff of legend (at least in my own head) and every week was just another nail in the coffin of a podcast I’d never really loved doing outside of the live 2014-15 live radio era on Resonance FM. I need an audience to connect with to make me feel like I’m not going through the motions and every week with the podcast, that’s all I was doing.
Whatever time is left for me, I want to chase those audiences, whether it be on stage or through my writing. I want the audience I feel my work deserves. I’m done with audio and it’s the right decision. It’ll free up my time to write and also help me, I hope, to enjoy my Sundays and Mondays more. It was a slog to produce and it was work I was no longer prepared to put in for such miserable download figures.
I always said I’d review the podcast when I finally steered it to its official 400th episode, and with several friends advising me now was the time to kill it off, I was able to make a very positive decision for myself. If I can now navigate my way through several serious situations in my personal life, then that free time could be used to get my creative work to a wider audience in a better and more enjoyable way.
That is a good thing.
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