By now it's safe to say that I won't be making any more (but you can still listen, at least for now!) so I'm writing this post-mortem to remember what I learned from this endeavor. First, the good things: I met interesting people and had fun talking with them! That was my primary goal and I achieved it, so that was great. But my secondary goal, to build an audience by getting people to share it with new listeners, did not go so great.
Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful for everyone who listened to the show, and the few who followed up to tell me they enjoyed it. And I'm super grateful to the interviewees who took the time to sit down and talk with me. But otherwise, I got practically no engagement by the metrics needed to make a podcast successful--not a single review, even by my guests (no hard feelings, and it turns out this is pretty typical).
Even that was no problem while I enjoyed the process, but eventually the novelty wore off and it didn't feel worthwhile any more. Each episode took around an hour to record and maybe two hours to edit and post online. Three hours doesn't seem like much, but that turns out to be practically all my free time for a week, and I didn't love it enough for this to be my only hobby. Plus I wasn't just worried about wasting my own time, but my guests'... if nobody was going to listen, what was the point of recording?
Anyway, ultimately it was all too much so I quit. I was conflicted at first but now I'm confident that this was the right decision. In conclusion, it was fun while it lasted (and I stuck it out longer than average: most podcasts don't last more than six months before shutting down). I guess I'll keep on starting new projects forever and never stick with anything long term! (Except for my wife, my kids, my house, my pets, my day job, my craft job... you know what, maybe I do have enough going on already after all.)
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