Hello! My name is Deanna and I help people create great podcasts. There’s actually no tip in today’s newsletter, as I’d just like to share a bit about my journey with podcasts.

Lately, I’ve been struggling to figure out how I want to spend my time. I was first introduced to podcasts in college by my then-roommate and he had mostly introduced me to tech podcasts like The Talk Show with John Gruber and Accidental Tech Podcast. For a good while I listened to a ton of the shows that Relay.fm had launched, as well.

Eventually my number of podcast subscriptions ballooned to somewhere around 70 (which was way to many, even for someone who listened at 1.5x). If you asked me to pinpoint a specific podcast episode that I loved, I couldn’t do it. That said, if you ask me what movies or books or even episodes of a TV show I loved, I could certainly rattle some off. So it got me thinking about my relationship with podcasts.

Once I started editing podcasts on a more regular basis and accidentally made a career out if it (trust me, it was not in my plan to freelance), my listening habits changed. I had to stop listening to certain podcasts because I became hyperaware of things that should have been edited out or audio that wasn’t even attempted to be cleaned up. It usually ended up making me mad because it almost always was in podcasts that I know had a budget for producers and/or editors. I’m not talking about DIY shows here. And don’t even get me started on the podcasts that don’t get edited.

I also just burnt myself out on how many podcasts I was trying to consume. Right now, I have over 30 episodes in my Overcast queues and I’m at the point where I may just declare bankruptcy on all but a few. Several of the shows I listen to release 2-3 episodes per week and they’re usually all over hour-long episodes. I would say I only really have about 10 shows that I’m actively subscribed to and I can’t even keep up with those most of the time.

Sometimes it’s because an increase in work makes it harder to want to listen to podcasts after editing all day. But mostly it’s because I think we’re just being inundated with too many things now. I think I’ve been quite clear in this newsletter that I’m tired of the grind that comes with working in media, which is what podcasts are now. They’re no longer just people having conversations for fun. Podcasts are part of press tours now. They’re how people get daily news. Sure, there are plenty that are just for fun, but they’ve ballooned into much more than that.

When it comes to work, which for me is the production side of podcasts, I unfortunately don’t have the luxury of slowing down. The truth is, a lot of people either don’t have budgets or they just don’t want to spend the money on editing. At one point, I had to edit around 10-15 episodes per week just to barely crack making $60k that year. It became a numbers game that never worked in my favor.

Even as I’ve shifted into video editing for podcasts, my pay certainly hasn’t reflected that. I’ve had multiple video podcasts that required same day turnaround and I’ve had friends tell me I need to charge a rush fee, but the truth is, if I do that, they’ll either say no or they’ll find someone else.

So I’ll be honest, my relationship with podcasts has gone from something that I absolutely loved both working and listening to and turned pretty sour. I still have some shows that I like listening to, but more often than not, I find myself reaching for books or movies to consume in my down time. Don’t get me wrong, podcasts are still great for walking or doing chores around the house, but I can’t recall the last time one demanded my full attention.

Maybe by saying this, I’ve given some of you a reason to stop reading this newsletter, and if that’s the case that’s totally fine. I get it. My relationship with podcasts isn’t in a good place right now, which does make it harder for me to do this newsletter. A lot of shows or networks just feel like content farms at this point. I went to The Ringer’s website for instance and counted over 150 podcasts. Yes, some are retired, but a lot of the ones that aren’t are putting out multiple episodes per week. I say this as someone who has really been enjoying a few of their podcasts lately, too.

I’m not quite sure where this leaves me. Last year I lost several of the podcasts that I work on and a few were ones that I enjoyed and actually paid well. It’s not even that I don’t want to work on them anymore, because I do, I just want how I work on them to be different. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to not want to have to edit 15 episodes per week just to make a living.

With all of that said, I also don’t know yet where that leaves this newsletter. I tried doing a podcast in conjunction with this and it ended up not working out quite the way I wanted. I thought writing about podcasts would offer a different angle to spark my passion for it again, but so far it really hasn’t. Maybe it’s just hard to enjoy much with everything going on right now in general. But I dread working on a political podcast 4x per week and that might honestly be what’s sucked the joy out of this the most for me.

So what do you do when the thing that seems to affect your mental health the most also happens to pay the rent?

(I’m sure the answer is go to therapy, but that unfortunately won’t fix the daily horrors.)

Let me at least attempt to end this on a positive note, though. The good news is that I’m finally getting clarity on the types of podcasts that I want to work on. So maybe this is just my break it all down and start over again year. I don’t want to give up on podcasts, I just want to slow down and have more than 2 hours to turn around an hour long podcast.