Trying to start my own podcast

[Jose]

I know this doesn't necessarily have to do with The Mental Illness Happy Hour, but I think the subject is relevant since it's what got us all here, and I've been having some mental issues associated with starting this show. First of all, I hate my own voice and always have. I've never really learned how to speak up for myself, horrible at introducing myself to new people. I'm not a very engaging storyteller, sometimes I feel like it's a chore for people to listen to me. Yet I love podcasts so much, that at the request of a friend to make our own, I jumped at the idea really enthusiastically. After all this time I've spent over the last 2 years listening to shows and silently holding my opinions on them ( save for the occasional irrational outburst on twitter toward a host I may disagree with ), I've felt like it would be a great outlet to make a podcast and I'm surprised that I haven't thought of it sooner. I guess I have an inferiority complex that makes me feel like no one is interested in what I have to say, even though I personally get very deeply involved with and know a lot about the things I love. I just don't have a common bond with many people to talk about them often.

I thought this podcast would be a good way to get some of that conversation started, but over the past month there have been so many roadblocks, technical issues, scheduling conflicts, and simply lack of planning that have made the very idea of doing it anymore such a mess in my head. It's practically taken over my life, it seems, and yet I dread getting on those mic's with the pressure to be 'interesting'. I don't want to let my friends down and call it off after all this effort we've put into doing it. There just seems to be something that gets in our way at every turn. I know that things take a lot of trial and error to get right, but at the rate things have been getting derailed for us, it feels like a sign that it's not meant to be. the only reason I'm doing it is because my friends want to be involved. That just gets me excited to do things, when people want to join in. At this point, I'm really disillusioned with the entire concept of our show. We all sort of promised ourselves that we would do this, and the hardest part in giving it up is thinking of all that time I wasted of theirs. Then again, my only contact I've ever had with them is over the internet, so cutting ties really wouldn't affect anything in my life at all. Knowing that I went back on my word, and that I wouldn't get the opportunity to do something like this again if I called it off is what really eats at me. I'm on the precipice of this new thing where I'm faced with the decision to dive in or bail, and so often in my life I've chosen the latter. I have to think 'what have I got to lose?' even though the possibility of just letting this turn into a trainwreck failure of an idea is soooo appealing. So comforting. I've come to the conclusion that I'll go along with whatever it is my friends want to do, but it's just starting to become too taxing on me, mentally.