The fall and restart of an audio storyteller
Goodbye 2023, cheers for small victories. I swear I learned the lesson.
Live from Bogotá
It's time to write out loud. I haven't written for a while because I've been changing cities, now I'm living in another place in the United States. This year passed me by like a train. It started with me being part of an international award-winning team and ended with me writing from my parents' house thinking “This will be the last time I will see the screen for a while”. I need a time out, I count the minutes to set fire to a doll that says 2023 to whom I can say "Goodbye, goodbye, I swear I learned my lesson and please don't come back ever again".
This is my last look in the review mirror. Thank you, thank you for reading.
—It's like I'm shaking an apple tree and life is throwing me an orange —I told my Wushu teacher, drinking a beer and listening to jazz in a Savannah park.
It was the end of the summer. I had been laid off from my dream job a month ago and I was reading "The Artist's Way" with my friend Laura, sharing our grief. In that book I found “the apple-tree quote” and it became like a mantra for me. My boyfriend would send out portfolio and job application emails every day, sacredly, until eight o'clock at night. I would run around looking for letters of recommendation to maintain my visa status while crying at night thinking, “What could I have done better?” With over two international award-winning series in my portfolio, I would seek out colleagues and ask them for a new job, but no news.
—Are you going to squeeze the orange hoping it becomes an apple? —my teacher replied.
The question also had to do with the fact that earlier that day, my boyfriend was finally offered a job: in Houston.
—Texas?
Same question every time on the other end of the phone line. I felt like Bernie Sanders in Joe Biden's inauguration.
I mean, it's all very nice but please leave me here, I don't want any more changes, I don't want to make friends, I don't want to start over, I don't believe in this. I want to squeeze the orange and turn it into an apple.
—We are leaving on Thanksgiving. If you are ever in Texas, come visit us.
On the phone, my friend Tanaya asked me to explain the Latino saying "A caballo regalado no se le mira el colmillo". It was not the dream option, it was the best option we had, so we went for it. One night I opened Google Maps over Houston and put the destination to the test: I typed in "podcast". 5 results. Then I typed in "radio" and 15 stations came up. "Wushu" 20 schools, "Colombian restaurant" 4 results, and "direct flight to Colombia" 3 results in the general search engine. ChatGPT showed me 4 universities with creative writing programs.
—Girl, you’re the sauce —said my friend Josephine —the rest is pasta.
This was the year of the fall of a hero called Podcast Industry.
Act 1: Tech companies announced cuts in advertising investment in almost all digital media.
Act 2: Spotify fired 600 people in January and more than 1.600 over the year. NPR fired 10% of the staff and WNYC also fired people even when the union gathered 3.000 signatures to support executives’ cuts instead of firing journalists. Fernanda Santos offered her resignation as editor-in-chief at Futuro Media Group to save her colleagues' jobs. Mia Lobel, former director of content at Pushkin Industries recounted the executive decisions that ended in three rounds of layoffs.
Act 3: A bailout was expected, but never came. Layoffs continued on small and large scale. By December you no longer know which colleague has a job and who doesn't.
The problem can be summarized as follows: the podcast (narrative, above all) was financed by advertising and production on demand. When the tech companies decided to stop investing, the business came to nothing. Audiences were never charged and there was no opportunity to monetize listening on platforms (Spotify, Amazon). Rarely the audience was turned to communities to seek more revenue there. Even podcasts with millions of listeners were canceled overnight.
Underlying the bitterness of layoffs is frustration. Take away corporate security from an industry made up of humanists who always practice beyond expectations and this is what happens:
Arte de Laura Chow Reeve
Still, in the last three months of the year, podcast listenership grew more than ever. broke records. 130 million of people in the US have listened to at least one podcast in the last month. As a Slate report says: "Maybe there were just too many podcasts with expensive talent that could turn a profit?"
Honey, you’re the sauce, the rest is pasta. It seems like somehow, the answer has to come from ourselves, the podcasters.
I set up my new office, hung up my headphones again, and worked on two freelance projects that I loved. Little by little I reclaimed my confidence. I refuse to say “it was for the better” or “Here begins a new adventure". Because the truth is that all the changes challenged every one of my principles and that was a devastating process. Now I value myself more than my salary.
The most important lesson of this year:
One loses one's job. Meaning: the contract of selling your time and talent in exchange for a fixed salary. You lose that sacred intangible of routine. And the teamwork. The desk, the chair, the email account, and the title on the resume.
But the craft is a different animal. It is not lost because it never belongs to you. What you do, for example, storytelling, is more of a quality, especially a practice. It only ends when you stop.
No one can take away the skills you've gained, the happiness of your triumphs, or the ideas that can still change your life. I will never forget what it felt like to finish writing a series, the adrenaline rush of seeing a finished ProTools session, the magic I felt every time I interviewed or the sacred moment of writing out loud. The work you do is not just the finished product but you getting stronger. That's the real magic of the craft. Stories transform the one who tells them.
What I wish the most is to continue this practice and if you are in a moment like mine, I wish you to continue. It's a beautiful verb, it indicates that you don't start from scratch. Start with the need to understand your productive moment. Keep up by planning periods of rest and periods of sociability. Conquer, day by day all that you are that is not your job, as easy as it sounds to say it and as impossible as it sounds to apply it. And continue, because your craft belongs to you, to all the edits you've made, all the scripts you've finished, all the meetings you've pulled off, and to whoever listens, even if you've never met them. What is constant is what you do and the way you do it, no matter what happens, will always be yours. Continue.
This year I learned that work is just one way to express my talents.
At the end of this year I come out stronger thanks to the mutual commitment of friendship.
Thanks to my friend Laura Hernández, who completed with me the nine weeks of the "Artist's Way" and read this text on Christmas days. To my beloved Nilsson, who never stopped making me laugh and repeating to me that it is worthwhile to continue in this. To my family, who loves me. And to my colleagues, with whom I learned that practice is also cultivated through bonds.
Before we left Savannah our Wushu teacher invited us to dinner at his house. There we toasted with unfiltered sake. Weeks later I got the same bottle in Houston and brought it with me to Bogotá. On the last day, before traveling, I reviewed my notes and found a new idea:
One believes that one has to be something, then do something, and then get something. A word by coach Nancy Sun. The truth is that you don't.
You do something and suddenly that little something proves what you can be, and then you get inspired to get more things. You get motivated to do more and so you move on. It's the little acts that make the difference.
So this end of the year I celebrate hanging in there and taking care of myself, every day. Here's to the wonderful things I'm yet to discover. In the world and myself.
Today here's to the small victories. And to you.
See you on the other side of the river.
From left to right: Nilsson, David, Hao Hao, Laura, Ysabella, Hung Tse (Jack) and Carolina at Savannah's roomie farewell dinner. One of the happiest moments of the year.