Episode 3: Turns Out, I Need My Own Podcast 

SHOW NOTES:  

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TRANSCRIPT:

Hey, welcome to Episode 3 of I Used to Be Fun. As I said in the intro, I'm Annmarie, and the podcast where we talk about creativity, play, and joy for women in midlife. Or, as I like to think of it, the podcast where I say things out loud that I probably should have figured out by now.

And today is very much one of those days.

I want to tell you about a conversation I had recently. Not with a guest, not with a listener — with myself. Which, if you're like me-- an introvert with a lot of open browser tabs in your brain-- you know is the type of conversation that is both super productive and exhausting.

Here's what happened.

I’ve been feeling fragmented. Scattered. Like I’ve been doing a lot of things and not doing any of them particularly well. I couldn't figure out why everything felt so disjointed when, on paper, it all looked good. All the things I’m working on—the podcast, the fiction, the newsletter, the speaking —belong together. I know they belong together. I can explain exactly why they belong together.

But I couldn't feel it. And for me, if I can't feel it, the explanation doesn't help very much. Or hold it my head – especially when I start to doubt myself.

So I started asking myself some honest questions. And one of those questions was: of everything you're working on right now, what feels most like home?

And I knew the answer immediately.

And then I immediately felt guilty about the answer.

Because the answer was the podcast. This thing. Right here. The conversations, the recording, the whole messy beautiful experiment of it. This is the thing that lights me up right now.

And my very next thought — I'm not proud of this, but I promised you honesty — my very next thought was: you can't say that. The podcast isn't making money yet. The books are making money. The responsible thing is to focus on advertising the Storyhill books and finishing my work-in-progress.

So there I was. The woman who built a podcast called I Used to Be Fun about reclaiming creativity and joy for midlife women — actively refusing to admit that joy wasn’t as important as the practical choice. That what made me the happiest wasn’t as important as money.

I'll just let that sit there for a second.

And I wanted to talk about today, because I know I'm the only one who does this. I think a lot of us — especially those of us who came of age being told that creative work is a nice hobby but not a real plan — have a deeply embedded hierarchy of worthiness when it comes to our own desires.

Productivity is worthy. Profitability is worthy. Practicality is worthy.

But Fun? Joyful? Or Alive? Those are the things you get to have after you've handled everything else. If there's time. Which there usually isn't.

And what's insidious about this — what makes it so hard to catch it — is that it doesn't feel like self-denial when you're in it. It feels like responsibility. It feels like being a grown-up. It feels like you’re doing the right thing at the right time.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to recognize that "the responsible thing" is sometimes just fear wearing a sensible cardigan.

Now I want to be fair to the fear, because I think it deserves a little airtime before I argue with it.

The fear isn't irrational. I am self-employed. I have been self-employed for over twenty years, which means I have also been the person responsible for making sure the lights stay on. That's real. The books are making money right now. The podcast is not, yet. Those are facts.

And I'm not here to tell you — or myself — that financial reality is just a mindset problem you can positive-think your way out of. It's not. It's a real constraint that real humans have to navigate.

But here's the thing I keep forgetting: acknowledging what brings me joy is not a financial decision. It is not a business plan. It is not a commitment to abandon everything else. It's just... the truth. And I had made it so dangerous to tell the truth — even to myself, in private — that I couldn't do it without immediately defending myself against an accusation nobody had actually made.

That's exhausting. That is so exhausting.

I've been thinking about why we do this. Why we preemptively argue ourselves out of our own desires before anyone else even gets a chance to weigh in.

And I think it's because somewhere along the way, a lot of us learned that wanting things — especially wanting things that looked like fun, or play, or joy — was a liability. That it made you frivolous. Unserious. Someone who needed to be talked out of her impractical ideas for her own good.

And so we learned to do the talking ourselves. Preemptively. Before anyone else could.

We became very, very good at being practical on our own behalf.

The problem is that when you do that long enough, you stop being able to hear yourself clearly. You can't tell the difference between genuine discernment — this isn't the right time for this — and reflex self-denial — I'm not allowed to want that.

They feel identical from the inside.

So what do you do with that?

Honestly? I'm still figuring it out. This isn’t a tidy episode with a lesson at the end.

But I will share what I'm trying to do—in hopes it helps you.

I'm trying to notice the moment when I preemptively argue myself out of something — and then pause long enough to ask: whose voice is that, actually? Is that my voice? Is that genuine wisdom from someone who knows me well? Or is that the voice of every person who ever looked at something I loved and asked, very kindly, whether I'd thought about something more practical?

Because those voices are not the same. And they don't deserve equal weight in my decision-making.

I'm also trying — and this is harder — to separate naming what I love from making a plan around what I love. Because I think I conflated those two things. I thought admitting that the podcast lights me up meant I was committing to deprioritizing everything else. But that's not true. I can love the podcast and still show up for the book. I can feel most alive in the recording booth and still send the newsletter. These things are not in competition unless I make them compete.

Saying what I love, what is bringing me joy is allowed to just be information. It doesn't have to be more than that.

So Here's where I landed, at least for today:

I built this podcast because I believe — genuinely, in my bones — that joy is not a reward you earn after you've been responsible enough. That creativity is not a luxury. That the playful, alive version of you didn't disappear; she just got told, repeatedly and in a lot of different ways, that she needed to wait her turn.

I believe that for you.

But, I am, apparently, still working on believing it for me.

And I think that's okay. I think that's actually part of why I'm here, talking to you. Because saying it out loud — even on the days when I can't fully feel it yet — is part of how I get there. And I hope it's part of how you get there too.

So here is the thing I want to leave you with today. Not advice, but a question to carry around with you.

What are you currently refusing to admit brings you joy — because the responsible thing is lives somewhere else?

You don't have to do anything with the answer. You don't have to build a plan around it or justify it or defend it. You just have to be honest enough to say it out loud. Even if you only say it to yourself. Even if it feels dangerous. Maybe especially if it feels dangerous.

I’ve said it, and I’ll keep saying it. The playful, creative woman you're looking for? She's in there. She might take a little coaxing out, but she’s ready to come out of hiding.

Thanks for being here today. If this episode hit close to home, I'd genuinely love to hear about it — you can find me at annmarieboyle.com or on Instagram at annmarieboyleauthor. And if you know someone who needed to hear this today, share it with her.

And remember, you can get my 4-week free email series to help you jump start your adding play back into your life at annmarieboyle.com/thewonderproject

I'll see you next time. Now go play. Or make something—just because you want to.

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