I'm a perfectionist. I recorded the first three episodes of this podcast last summer. Six months later and they're finally ready for public consumption.
What happened during those six months?
I had to set up a webpage, choose intro music, design a logo, and a number of other little tasks that needed doing. I'd be lying if I said I didn't add many of these chores to avoid finally publishing the website. I wanted everything to be perfect first.
Then I listened to an episode of CBC's Spark podcast. It was about Silicon Valley's culture of celebrating failure. Apparently, they had a saying at Shopify: "If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you waited too long."
I realized that this was the message I wanted to embrace by naming this podcast "The Amateur". While we all want to be experts, it's helpful to remember that "an expert is someone who doesn't want to learn anything new because then he would not be an expert" (at least according to Harry Truman). In other words, an expert is someone who has stopped learning. An amateur is still learning.
For this reason, I feel we should embrace being an amateur for as long as possible because it means we get to keep learning new things. Being an amateur means making mistakes, failing, being imperfect, but it also means improving, growing, overcoming. Amateurs represent unlimited potential.
It's hard to stop being a perfectionist. I'm still going to have to continue reminding myself why I called my podcast the Amateur!
My only regret is that there are a lot of podcasts out there with the word "amateur" in them, so searching for it can be tricky on Apple, Spotify, or Stitcher.
So here are some links if you're interested in subscribing:
I'm pretty set on gardening as the topic of my next episode. Feel free to comment and let me know if you have any ideas!
Thanks for reading, and remember to keep learning - be your best amateur!