The Loose Connections Recommender #17

On Perspective & Keeping It Even When You're Losing It

I recently launched my podcast, Death Is Not the End, which I’ve been conducting interviews and gathering research for since 2021, so it felt extremely exhilarating to have it out in the world. Like everything I do, its a one-woman-operation and I try my best to make sure I am across everything and taking care of business, but sadly/foolishly/unfortunately, I misunderstood the terms of a blanket license that I purchased for using copyright materials and thought I was safe to use some content that actually was not ok to use.

So I’ve taken the podcast down while I make sure everything is above board and hope to have it back up and running in the next week.

As a musician and independent creator of what the world likes to call ‘content’ (personally I hate that word unless its being used as a variation on feeling happy and satisfied) doing the right thing by other makers of art is very important to me. I’ve witnessed the horrifyingly unscrupulous behaviour of copyright cowboys that make a living from cynically exploiting other people’s work for their own profit and am determined to be fair and ethical in my dealings at all times.

But taking the podcast down felt incredibly huge, disappointing and distressing to me. I felt it made me look unprofessional and careless, I worried I’d lose all the momentum I’d tried to build in my own little one-man show way, I felt bad about letting down the people that had spoken with me. I felt bad, period. I felt like I’d been punched and just needed to lie down on the couch for a year even as I knew I had to leap into action to fix things. But there was one little expression that I’d come across somewhere in my learning how to podcast journey, which was ‘There’s no such thing as a podcast emergency’. Which is so true. Obviously. I mean, when you zoom out and put it in perspective, it’s a laughable concept. So I have adopted this as my mantra, and along with some deep breathing and getting stuck into doing what I can to sort the situation out, I feel a little better.

When things go awry in my life, which inevitably they do, because that’s how life works, I always ask myself if there’s something useful or positive I can do to sort the issue out, and if there isn’t, if I can’t control the situation or steer the ship out of the crashing waves, then I try to just allow myself to roll with it. I ask myself what’s the worst thing that could happen? And would I survive that? And if the answer is probably yes, then I try to embrace a little stoicism and stumble on.

Life is messy and sometimes all you can do is try to keep things in perspective and do your best to do the best you can.

My friend and new Substacker

Jenny Valentish

started thinking about creating her podcast Spirit Levels not long after I started gathering materials for mine, so we’ve been podcast pals for the past couple of years, exchanging hot tips and recommendations and asking each other panicked advice etc. Her show investigates and ‘pressure tests the wellness industry, from the pseudo to the sensible’ and it’s a great combination of deep dives into niche worlds with a rich side of dark hilarity. I really love how they are wearing doctor’s coats as they investigate. In the episode released this week, Jenny and her partner Frank have a conversation with journalist Brigid Delaney who wrote a book on Stoic philosophy and has a very comforting, easy-going, non prescriptive way of describing stoicism that tempts me to want to call myself one, without having ever actually read Marcus Aurelius and the Stoic teachings. Its a bit like how I believed I was a natural ballerina as a child cos I could stomp around en pointe in the lightly blood stained toe shoes my mama bought home for me when she was working as a dresser for the ballet. Anyway, listening to it also helped bring me some extra much needed perspective, so if you feel like that’s something you could use, my Loose Connections Recommendation #17 is to give Spirit Levels a listen.

And dance on friends x