Sabbatical Announcement
Welcome to the 75th *bonus* episode of The Positive Fantastic podcast, in which I express my need to exhale for the time being in a Sabbatical Announcement! I’m really grateful that you have all been taking this journey with me for the past four years and four seasons of uplifting interviews with farmers, musicians, poets, ecologists, and other creatives. When I set out to make a podcast, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing except that I was clear that there was a big desire in me to be part of a movement for good news. I have really loved being able to bring you stories of folks who are part of the change we want to see in the world.
I definitely feel called to do more interviews so that I can keep telling these fabulous stories of innovation, conservation, and creation in the future… but my life has changed a lot in the past four years. And, at present, I find myself needing more time to write so that I can express my own creativity. I have four books and several short stories in various stages of development, all of them wanting my fullest attention to progress forward.
As a hope punk podcaster, my intention was to bring you good news about good people doing good things as a radical act of rebellion in a time when the news often leaves us uninspired and traumatized. Instead of trying to be objective, I dove solidly into what feels good to me, subjectively, and I have done my best to share some of those gems with all of you. Now, as a hope punk author, I hope to do the same with my books.
I want to thank all of the listeners who took the time to hear what was shared here. Perhaps you’ll pick up a book of mine in the future and see what love mischief we can get up to together in print form. And maybe someday, after my burning desire to write has been satiated a bit, I will revisit this podcast. For now, I am clear that I am taking at least a year’s sabbatical to pursue literary tangents exclusively in my free time. Being a single mom working full time with many responsibilities in my community simply does not leave enough time for me to do all the things that I want to do. As it is, I scaled back from releasing episodes on the new and full moon to just the Earth’s holy days after a couple of years. And now, a pause for integration suits me very nicely.
Still, the punk thing to do would be to stay open. Maybe an errant podcast episode will come through here and there. I did have a handful of possible interviews that never quite materialized but all seemed very juicy. So, there’s always the chance that something surprising may occur in the next year and years to come. If this is the end though, thank you from the bottom of my heart for tuning in, turning on, and daring to hope.
A special shout out to all the musicians who helped make it possible for each episode to have a theme song, to all the folks who lovingly welcomed me into their homes for in-person interviews, to everyone who has been tuning in, and lastly to me, for daring to do something I didn’t know how to do but wanted to play with anyway.
This sabbatical announcement closes a beautiful era of many season with the podcast. Since recording this little sabbatical announcement, however, I have had an unprecedented number of inquiries for podcast guests. So, perhaps we’ll be back to podcasting again in the future after all?!