What Do I Know?

My favorite podcast ended this week. After 16 years, Marc Maron stopped recording new episodes of WTF. I’ve been listening to him twice a week for the past decade. At the start of every episode, he would spend a few minutes talking about what was going on in his life, from the tribulations of cat stewardship to his aging parents and the sudden death of his girlfriend. There was great vulnerability in his interviews, too. As a standup comedian, processing internal and external events by talking them out has been (and continues to be) Marc’s way of life. I won’t go into a whole lot of detail here. There are plenty of recent articles about Marc Maron and WTF if you want to learn more, as well as the recent documentary, “Are We Good?”

What I will say is that at first, I was both fascinated and uncomfortable with Marc’s compulsive openness. By nature, I’m a private person. But what I’ve learned is that writing and talking things out enables me to gain perspective about the things going on in my head and in my life. Have you ever heard yourself talking to a trusted friend or a therapist about some issue and suddenly gained clarity? And the value of discussing one’s challenges in front of an audience is that people who are navigating similar struggles no longer feel uniquely afflicted. We create a sense of community. Our shared humanity provides context for personal experiences, and this helps us all make meaning. No suffering is pointless if it benefits others.

Marc Maron’s work on WTF is inspiring my work here on Wild Ride in other ways, too. Because I have learned from Marc (and others) that there is something unique about expression through the human voice which helps foster connection, I bought a microphone. Over the next few weeks, I’ll start recording myself reading my posts, and these audio versions will eventually be available on Spotify as a podcast. Just so you know, it feels crazy to say that. I have no ambitions for a podcast. Like many people, I don’t like how my recorded voice sounds and think no one else will, either.

What do I know? Often when I’m close to finishing a piece, an idea will suddenly appear and I get goosebumps-- That’s what this post is about! I’ll type a flurry of lines, read it over, hit “Send”, and then panicky regret sets in: Why did I publish that? Did I expose too much of myself? Nobody wants to read that! But I am committed to nurturing this spark of creativity that I believe is part of the transcendent Mystery, and I have devoted my work to inspiring others. This means I must be willing to make mistakes, to risk looking silly, to fail and to try again. And then when I hear from folks who relate to or feel touched by what I’ve written, it’s usually about those very elements that wracked me with doubt.

If you told me even a year ago that I would be doing any of this-- planning a trip to Mongolia, writing about it publicly, creating a podcast-- I would not have believed you. The work continues to surprise me. I’m curious to learn what this expression of creativity wants to be, to see how it evolves. I don’t know where this endeavor is taking me, but I am strapped in for the ride and feeling both nervous and excited.

What do you feel wants expression? How can you give it space to develop?