Another week off!

The week of April Fool’s presents a peculiar problem for me. Each week, I gather a lot of stories together, things which are often considered fringe or sketchy, and I try to give them their fair due. But in a week when people are falling all over themselves (particularly news organizations!) to deceive and pull pranks, the minefield of stories is much harder to navigate, has to be read much more closely in order to avoid missing the “obvious” pun or twist that makes the story obviously a hoax.

I don’t mind laughing as much as the next guy — but I despise being made the fool.

So, I avoided the issue this year by just not doing a show the week of April Fool’s Day.

Although… Truth be told that isn’t my only reason for not doing a show…

Putting together TWS is about a 10 hour process. It takes between 5 and 7 hours of article reading, about 1-2 hours of organization, a little over an hour and a half of recording and editing (achieved by the fact that I really don’t edit much at all), and an hour or two of composing show notes. I’ve done it for over a dozen years, working late into the night on Friday nights to be ready for broadcast on Saturday morning. I’m so used to it that no matter how little sleep I’ve gotten (often ~4 hours, sometimes as little as 2 hours or even none at all), I somehow manage to get up by 7am on Saturday and be on the air with the first hour of my 2-hour timeslot (a music hour; look for the show notes of the music I play over at Encaffeinated!) at 8am. I usually compose the show notes while the 2-hour timeslot is going on air, sometimes just finishing the show notes as the episode is over on the air, so that I can post it for download before I head down to the Farmer’s Market for samosas and fresh produce.

But sometimes, I get busy. Or I get tired. Or both.

I’ve been doing the show for such a long time, it’s hard to imagine not doing it. But every time I take a break, I start to think: “wow, I’ve got so much more time” – although I usually find ways to fritter away that time anyway, rather than doing something really useful with my life. 😉

I’m going through that sort of crisis again, right now.

Should I continue? Is it worth it?

Is there a way to make the show easier to do?

Is it really that hard to do?

I’m an over-achiever by nature. I can’t really stand half-doing something. I either do it well, or I don’t do it all. (Cleaning is one of those things that I wish I did well, as I tend not to do it until crisis time…) It’s hard for me not to do the show as intensively as I can — but other areas of my life have suffered.

I can feel my internal censor clawing away at me, deleting sentences I might say here.. I don’t talk about myself on the show for a reason: the show isn’t about me; it was never about me, never should be.

But if I don’t do it.. who will?

I don’t do the show for an ego boost – heck, if I wanted an ego boost, I would never look at my subscriber numbers, never be in radio at all – but I gotta know that it matters.

On radio, I’m broadcasting an old episode of the proto-show (Expresso!) which lead to TWS. I like to look back at where I was to figure out where I’m going next. The show originally aired on April 7, 2001, and it’s quite different from what I do now. I’ve always collected the same amount of material, but back in those days it was all organized on the morning of the show, and I put in music breaks to give me time to reshuffle. It was all part of the live production that I used to do, which was both exhilarating and daunting. Shortly before I started podcasting I started producing everything at home, which meant I didn’t have to be coherent that early in the morning after a night of working on the show.

Still, I sometimes miss the musical cues. I would look in the CHSR music library for song titles that matched a story – even dubiously – and play them at semi-random as I worked through the stories.

All told, it was very much “college radio”. I think I’ve come a long way since then, but nostalgia has gripped me at the moment…

I’m not sure what prompted this extended commentary, aside from the fact that my energy is restless, normally consumed by creating witticisms to accompany the list of articles.

I don’t think I’m stopping the show permanently. I can barely take a break from the show, have considered it many times and even taken extended leave. But I come back, because I love it, because I’ve done it so long, because I really love the excuse for reading the material.

But if anyone has any suggestion about how to make it better — and hopefully, easier! — then let me know, will ya?

Oh, and tell a friend or two. I need to do more promotion, but I barely have time to do the show itself.

New show next week! (I promise.)