Ignorance can be a beautiful thing. Awash in bitchery, I believed that some of the individuals running podcasts and websites were,well…not HUGE intellectuals,I assumed it should be fairly easy to set up, even for a know-nothing like me. This was false. So much work, so much effort and I had so many disasters. I do have a special place in my heart for Asha, the support desk chatbot, who must be human as she referred to my failures as “learnings.” She was a beacon of hope for me. I created a whole website with the (mostly) idiot-proof GoDaddy websites for dummies tool, but then realized I couldn’t do all the things I wanted to do. It was difficult, I’m sure, for Asha to break the news to me that all those cool plugins I had been reading about would only work on a real website, not the Girl’s First Website thing I was using. We shed a tear together, and I moved on to WordPress.
Meanwhile, Todd and I began recording the podcast, using Audacity, described as “easy to use.” There are so many ways to go wrong recording voice, no one should EVER describe this kind of tool as easy to use. It’s just disheartening. Luckily, I found Katie Steckley on YouTube and she guided me through the first steps. But here’s the thing no one tells you about Audacity or any other digital audio workstation (DAW, SEE! learnings). You must mess around and screw it up a bunch to learn how to do it at all. Remember that thing I said? at the beginning? About ignorance? Yeah…sometimes it’s not beautiful. Sometimes it allows you work hard, recording good material, and not listening to it closely with headphones because it sounds great on the speaker. Then later, so much later, we listened to it with headphones. Lord. Sometimes ignorance is a gut punch.
My husband has begun referring to our recording as “lo-fi” and “homemade.” He thinks the website looks professional. He is absolutely fine either way. He just wants to get the material out. He believes we will get better, and it’s ok that the first recording is…not great. I am not my husband. Much of the podcast was recorded without a pop filter, and I have spent HOURS removing popping P’s on Audacity. With limited results. I could do this kind of thing for weeks. Part of me wants to start all over but I would also like to stay married. It’s a problem. Of course, I will repair it as best I can, and some of the repairs will create new problems that I have to fix. My learnings will continue, and as my ignorance is one area decreases, I will find vast plains of ignorance yet untilled. I never knew that podcasting would be an exercise in humility. I’m grateful for that particular ignorance because I don’t know if I ever would have started this venture without beautiful ignorance.