Episode 53: The Year We Lived

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A year ago, I sat down behind a microphone with a lot of ideas about how life works. I knew there were names for many of the things I wanted to talk about. There were theories, philosophies, and plenty of terminology I could have used to organize the conversations, but I left most of it out on purpose.

I didn’t want to spend a year debating what things were called. I was much more interested in what happened when we actually lived them.

Now, 53 consecutive weeks later, I have something I didn’t have when I started: a whole year to look back on. I can listen to those early episodes knowing what happened next, which is fascinating because the person sitting behind that microphone at the time had absolutely no idea.

I wanted to see what happened when we lived them. Now I get to look back and see what happened.

A Year Looks Different From the Other Side

There is something strange about having an entire year of your thoughts recorded. I can go back to those early episodes and hear myself talking about whatever was on my mind that week, following ideas wherever they happened to lead and wondering about things I couldn’t possibly know the answers to yet. Now I know where some of those ideas went, and that changes the way I hear those conversations.

It also makes me notice something I was pretty intentional about from the beginning. For all the different things we talked about this year, I rarely told you what any of it was supposed to be called.

The second we put a label on something, we tend to decide how we feel about it. We believe it, we don’t believe it, we’ve heard it before, or we immediately decide it sounds a little weird. Before long, we’re arguing with the label instead of paying attention to the idea underneath it.

I didn’t want us to lose the principle in the semantics.

So we just talked about life. We talked about the stories we tell ourselves, changing our part in the dance, side quests, old pictures, gratitude, white feathers, and all the other things we notice when we’re paying attention. I wasn’t interested in telling anyone what they were supposed to think about those things. I just wanted us to notice them.

Before There Was Evidence

The interesting part is that I wasn’t sitting behind the microphone talking about any of this from the other side of it. I was living it right along with everyone listening.

Take the podcast itself. I believed the Motivated Savages Podcast could work before I had any evidence that it would. I didn’t know who would listen, where they would find it, or whether I could keep sitting down every week and finding something worth talking about. I certainly didn’t know that a year later I would be looking at listeners around the world.

I simply thought there was something here worth doing, so I treated it like something worth doing.

Belief gets a whole lot easier once something starts working. When people are showing up, numbers are moving, and you have something tangible to point toward, it becomes much easier to say, “See? I knew this could work.” The problem is that you don’t get that part first.

Sometimes you have to make a move before you know whether it will work. Sometimes you don’t need to know where an idea is going. You just need to do enough to find out.

I thought there was something here worth doing, so I treated it like something worth doing.

This year gave me a pretty ridiculous example of exactly that.

The Idea That Became a Bookstore

There was a time when the Motivated Savages Indie Author Bookstore existed only in my head. I thought it could work, so I built it. There weren’t hundreds of authors waiting for me, and I definitely didn’t have some elaborate master plan showing me exactly what the bookstore would eventually become. I had an idea, and instead of waiting until I knew where it was going, I gave it somewhere to go.

Then people started showing up. One author became a few. Authors told other authors. Readers found the bookstore. People shared it, sent ideas, participated, and helped it grow into something much bigger than the thing I originally imagined.

Less than a year later, the bookstore has more than 800 titles from nearly 500 independent authors. Eight hundred books is a really cool number, but it isn’t actually the number that gets me.

It’s the nearly 500 people.

Nearly 500 independent authors looked at something that once existed only in my imagination and decided they wanted to be part of it. Somewhere in all of that growth, the bookstore crossed a line I never could have planned for.

At some point, the thing I believed in stopped belonging only to me.

That might be one of my favorite things that happened this year.

The Podcast Changed Too

The podcast has had its own version of that story. People around the world listen now, which still feels strange when I think about the fact that every episode begins with me sitting in one place behind one microphone.

I can record an episode. I can publish it. I can share it. What I cannot do is carry it around the world. The people listening did that.

Something else changed along the way too. Listeners started bringing their own stories and thoughts back into these conversations. I would ask a question on Facebook, read through the answers, and find myself still thinking about something somebody had said hours or even days later. Sometimes those answers became part of an episode, and sometimes they became the reason for an episode in the first place.

A year ago, I was sitting behind a microphone talking to you. Somewhere along the way, that changed.

Now we’re having a conversation.

I really love that.

Yes, I Wanted Receipts

Anyone who has spent much time around me probably knows that I love the data. I wasn’t going to spend a year doing all of this and simply decide that it felt like something was happening. I wanted to know.

So I watched. I paid attention to what happened when I tried something new, what people responded to, what grew, what stalled, and what went absolutely nowhere. I watched the podcast numbers, website traffic, bookstore growth, search activity, and all the other little signals that could tell me whether something was actually moving.

I wanted receipts.

There is a pretty fantastic moment when the evidence finally catches up to something you believed before you could prove it. Suddenly, you’re no longer operating entirely on an idea. There is something sitting in front of you that wasn’t there before, and you get to have that wonderfully satisfying thought: Oh snap. This might actually work.

The evidence came later. The participation had to come first.

I’ve had a few of those moments this year, and they’ve been incredibly fun. They’ve also taught me something I think is much more important than the numbers themselves.

Plenty Didn’t Work

Not everything worked. Not even close.

Some ideas died almost immediately. Others received far more of my time than they deserved. There were things I really wanted to happen that simply didn’t, and there were plenty of moments when the numbers gave me absolutely nothing exciting to look at.

That belongs in the story just as much as everything that worked.

Nothing about this year has convinced me that I can control what happens. There are too many variables, too many other people, too much timing, and too much life happening outside any one person’s control for me to believe that.

What this year has convinced me of is something much simpler.

My participation matters.

There is a difference between believing we can control every outcome and recognizing that our choices affect what becomes possible. I don’t need everything I try to work in order to know that showing up, trying, adjusting, paying attention, and trying something else matters.

If anything, the things that didn’t work made that lesson more believable.

Fifty-Two Conversations Behind This One

There are now 52 podcast conversations sitting behind Episode 53, and one of my favorite things about having that archive is knowing that the recordings haven’t changed, but we have.

Something you heard six months ago may sound completely different today. A conversation that didn’t mean much to you when it was released might stop you in your tracks now simply because you’re hearing it from a different place in your life.

That is one of the things I love about stories, books, podcasts, and even ordinary conversations. Sometimes the words stay exactly the same while we become someone capable of hearing something different in them.

The recording hasn’t changed. You have.

So if you’ve been listening all year, go find an episode you remember and listen again. If you found Motivated Savages somewhere in the middle, wander backward. If you’ve never listened before, don’t worry about starting with Episode 1. Scroll until something makes you stop, and see what you hear from where you are now.

I Still Don’t Have All the Answers

Remember the white feathers?

I still don’t know what they mean, and I’m okay with that.

I don’t think curiosity requires a verdict.

After 53 weeks of talking about life, I still have plenty of questions, and I hope I always do. I didn’t start this podcast because I had life figured out. I started because I thought there were interesting things worth noticing, talking about, and exploring.

A year later, I still do.

What has changed is that I’m a whole lot less interested in waiting around for proof before I find out where something might lead.

I don’t think curiosity requires a verdict.

That feels like a pretty fitting place to end Year One, because after an entire year of conversations, I don’t think the point was ever to arrive at one giant answer.

The point was to pay attention while we lived the questions.

So Here’s the Dare

There is probably something in your life right now that you think might work. It could be an idea you keep returning to, something you want to build, a change you’ve been considering, a story you want to write, or something you simply cannot seem to stop thinking about. You don’t know exactly where it will lead, which makes it very easy to keep thinking about it instead of doing anything with it.

You don’t need to know the ending yet. You don’t need a five-year plan or some guarantee that everything will turn out exactly the way you hope. You just need enough curiosity to make one move and see what that move gives you to work with next.

Go get the evidence.

Not because everything you try will work. This year certainly didn’t teach me that. Do it because you cannot know what might happen if you never participate in the first place.

What’s the thing you think might work? Do something with it. I dare you to find out.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to come back here a year from now and see what happened?

Year Two

Fifty-three consecutive weeks have given me something I didn’t have when I first sat down behind that microphone: evidence of a year actually lived.

There is a bookstore that once existed only in my head and now connects hundreds of independent authors. There are people around the world listening to a podcast I record from one little spot behind a microphone. There are conversations that started with something I was wondering about and came back carrying your stories. There are ideas that worked better than I imagined, others that changed shape along the way, and plenty that went absolutely nowhere.

That was Year One, and I’m grateful for all of it.

We have a whole year behind us now and another one sitting in front of us. I have no idea what I’ll be able to say when we get to the other side of this next one.

And I think that’s the fun part.

Let’s see what happens.

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