Hey, y'all, it's Lauren, and I will jump right to it.
So, like the title of this I don't know mini episode said, I
am going to be putting the podcast on hiatus. I am somebody who hates
change and gets freaked out by it. I assume some of you are like
that as well. So I wanted to just like talk through it, give
a full, transparent explanation, explain everything that I know at the moment,
and just yeah, I don't know. I just I wrestled so hard with
like how to share this, and I feel so awkward doing this. I'm
literally reading off like a bulleted list on my laptop because I want so much
to say everything that's on my mind about it. So yeah, the first
thing, I don't know for how long I want to be honest about that.
It's gonna be going. I'm going to be starting the hiatus at the
end of this month, so there will be two more episodes coming out,
and I am not doing any kind of like a final episode or anything like
that, because I cannot imagine a scenario where I don't do more episodes eventually.
I don't know what that will look like. I don't know if,
like if I bring the podcast back, Like, do do I do that
when I've finally found someone who I feel like they would be a good a
co host and it's like another iteration of it, or do I bring it
back and it's no longer every week because that has been so hard to do
on my own. I don't know, like do I do boratic episodes again?
I'm trying to be like super honest that I don't know answers to these
questions at the moment. But what I do know is that I didn't I
didn't do a final episode because this is not this is not like an an
ending. Yeah, I cannot imagine not doing some episodes during Pride months this
June. You know, there's always like National coming Out Day. I can't
imagine like not releasing something for that. And just in general, like there
are still so there are so many more people who I want to speak to
and more people's stories that I want to tell. I get emails. It's
literally it's just about once a day, or at least once every other day
from people either pitching themselves as guests or usually you know it's like managers pitching
guests. Uh, and just there are so many more people out there who
I want to speak to. So yeah, that's that's on my mind.
Also, I'm so close to three hundred episodes, Like my OCD is literally
not going to allow me to just stop forever. At two hundred and ninety
two, I can't handle that. So at some point I will get up
to three hundred and there will be a three hundred episode. Now I know
there was there was a world where I could have just ended the podcast when
Nicole left, like that would have been a reasonable thing to do, and
at the time that that happened, I was I was not ready to do
that. There was never any question in my mind when she left it that
I wanted it to continue, and so that's what I did, And honestly,
I am so glad that I did, because I have done so many
episodes over the past eight months that are incredibly special to me. There were
also, like so many firsts in these past eight months that were so cool.
As you know, I was so excited to have on the POD's first
ever Furree guest. I had on our first ever Singaporean guest, just like
this isn't officially a first, but in the first five years of the pod,
we had only ever had one intersex guest. In the past eight months,
I've had on two more. So just like the time, the guests
and the episodes that I've done over these past eight months have been like so
valuable and so important to me. And I'm glad that I didn't end it
when Nicole was leaving. I'm I'm proud of like the rebrand of the name,
and I love the logo that my friend did. I revamped the whole
website. I'm so proud of that. So yeah, I if people are
hearing this and like, if you were gonna end eight months later, why
didn't you just end it then? I had no idea that I would be
putting it on a hiatus eight months later, which brings us to why is
Lauren doing this? So the primary two reasons are incredibly boring. The reasons
are money and time. Money. Okay, I want to be transparent,
So Nicole used to do all of the editing. Since she left, I
have had to pay an engineer to do that. I'm gonna shout out my
engineer and give her contact info at the end of this rambly announcement because she
is so incredible and I've loved working with her, and just if anyone out
there is doing a podcast or thinking of starting a podcast, I'm gonna give
her info at the end. But but she needs to be paid what she
is worth. And let me tell you, it is very expensive to get
a podcast. That it is so basically I jumped from five years of Nicole
and I not having to pay anyone to do it to all of a sudden
having to pay a lot of money per month to get it done, and
that it's a lot, a lot more than gets brought in by the Patreon
and ads, and it's it has been. If I'm being honest, I
have taken a financial hit from that happening, which I don't regret. But
that's just that's just the fact of it. Transparency about sponsorships, because I'm
sure you hear like Hello Fresh and like and like Tushi and like these kind
of big name companies and you're like, don't you have enough money? Uh
So, because I'm not like my favorite Murder or like you know, Mark
Marin or anything like that. Those I'm I love those sponsorships. I love
doing. Ads are really fun for me to do. They they don't pay
a lot and I won't give out you know, like specific monetary value.
Uh, but just because you're hearing an ad for like months and months,
I get paid one time for for you know, the duration that that ad
plays. So basically whatever, we don't need to get into the nitty gritty.
The point I've trying to make is I was I was operating at a
loss, as I believe they say in the business world, because the amount
that it was costing me to have the podcast edited and engineered every month was
significantly more than I was bringing in from from ads and and the Patreon and
stuff like that. So yeah, I wanted to be transparent about the money
side of things. Uh. The other thing, yeah, is is time
or as as we say in the modern age, bandwidth. Basically, uh,
it is. You'll be shocked to learn it is so much more work
to do a podcast by yourself than with a partner. It's just it's down
to me to do like all of the correspondence book, all of the guests.
It's also just you know, you get used to like working with a
partner and suddenly you're doing it all by yourself. And it's just like even
just like writing episodes, episode descriptions, takes me like so much longer because
it used to be like I'd write a draft and then shoot it over to
Nicole and she'd be like change, change, change change. I'd be like,
oh, great, done. And now it's like no one is giving
me that input. So it's just me like staring at an episode description and
being like is it good? So just like little things that you don't even
really think of until you're suddenly doing everything by yourself. Also, I've,
as I'm sure many of you know, I have not had a steady job
for a super long time since literally like week two of lock Down. I
haven't ad a study job, which speaks to the money part of it.
But also I just started doing I've started a job. It's not my dream
job. It's like it's one of those weird like you log into a platform
and it logs your hours and you do work. But but I'm so happy
to have it. It pays decently, but it is one of those jobs
again where you log into a platform and it keeps track of your hours and
pays you accordingly, and realistically, I need to free up more time to
be able to do it and to get more money, and to God,
willing move out of my apartment this year, which is something I wanted to
do last year and wasn't able to. But yeah, this is all a
long way of saying I need to free up some more time in my life
to do like work stuff. And just also I am feeling burned out.
If I'm being honest, I think that's super relatable right now. A lot
of us are feeling really, really really burned out. Yeah, just repeating
myself, going from five years of having a co host and then suddenly like
thrown into doing it myself has been exhausting in a lot of ways. So
yeah, Flans needs a break. And you can tell because when I start
talking about myself in the third person, it means I need a break.
So that those are the two big reasons. And I'm not giving like specific
like I'll be back on this date and in this format because I want to
be realistic about the fact that I don't know what my needs are going to
be. I want to see like what this job is looking like. And
I'm still applying to like real more real concrete jobs that I want to get.
So yeah, I just I haven't made any of those decisions, but
I haven't made any of those decisions yet, but I am cognizant of the
fact that I need a break and I'm listening to my body and mind and
all that good stuff, and I'm trying to respect that for my own you
know, like health and wellbeing and all that boring stuff. Okay, So
again, I hate change. It freaks me out. I assume you get
freaked out by change if you are anything like me. So what am I
leaving? What am I leaving you with? During this this TBD very vague
hiatus. Okay, So here's some things I want you to know. The
Pods web page coming uppod dot com, which again I revamped when I rebranded,
And I don't want to brag, but I'm like really proud of it
because I'm not a graphic designer or a web designer, but I think it
looks really good. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. The point
is the Pods web page has in episodes link and it that link to take
you to a website where you can search every episode description by keyword. And
I don't know if people know that, but I feel like that's a really
important thing to know, especially if you're a newer listener and you're like,
holy crap, there's almost three hundred episodes. That's a lot. You can
search for specific keywords if you want to find specific episodes, if you've been
listening for forever and you just can't remember, like, ah, what was
that episode? I really love. This is how you do it, search
by keyword at this link. Yeah. So, I just want people to
know that there is a wealth of episodes that are going anywhere that still exists.
If you're a newer listener, this hiatus is a great time to start
at the very beginning. Listen to those episodes. If you've been listening for
forever and you're like, how's it going away, I'm going to go into
the withdrawal and get the shakes, go back listen to old episodes. Yeah.
I Also, I'm going to be keeping the Twitter and the Instagram active.
They will obviously not be as active, but I am still going to
try to highlight things that are, you know, happening in the news,
or let's be realistic, it's me happening in pop culture. If a hot
actress comes out, you bet your ass there's gonna be tweets about that.
I can't not do that. Yeah, I will try to let y'all know
when you know former guests have like projects or exciting things happening. So yeah,
Twitter, Instagram still active, you will still be able to reach me
through there. You will always be able to reach me through the Gmail,
which is coming out pod at gmail dot com. Also, I've said this
on previous episodes, but it's worth repeating. I want y'all out there to
know I read everything that comes in. Some of you have written the most
beautiful, just like lovely stories, like some people have told me they're coming
out stories, or just written like a quick thing to be like, Hey,
this podcast is meant so much to me, and I want you to
know that I read every single one of these. I do not reply to
all of them. I try, I genuinely do, but it it is
so hard because there's also all the emails for the guests in organizing, there's
all the logistical emails, So I am not always able to honor all of
the beautiful, non time sensitive, nologistical emails that come in. And sometimes
I do this thing that I imagine a lot of you can relate to,
where something is so meaningful and beautiful and like emotional that I'm like, oh
my god, And you know, I read it at like three in the
morning or whatever crazy hour I'm up, and I'm like, oh my god,
I need to, like I need to set aside time to like really
reply to this and do it justice. And then I never end up doing
it. I assume we've all been there. It sucks, but I want
to be honest about that. But the reason why I'm saying this is because
I want you to know that if you write me something, it is not
just like going out into the ether. So if there's ever anything you need
to get off your chest or you want me to know, or just like
you're not out to anybody and you want to you have to tell somebody,
you can tell me. It will get read. The Instagram thing is weird
with the frickin Twitter tube to a lesser degree with that hidden folder. But
when I do remember, I check that hitden folder, So even if it's
like something like that, I will eventually read it. And the ones that
go straight to Gmail, I read all of those. And it's just important
to me that you know that. And again, I'm so sorry that I
am not able to personally reply to everything, but just know that your words
are getting read and they are really just like deeply, deeply important to me
and I'm so grateful. Okay, couple other things, going back to my
bulleted list on my laptop. Oh oh this is big. Okay, if
you are a patron, please cancel your membership. I cannot take money from
you while I am not putting out new episodes. That is not right.
You may have also noticed since I started doing the pod solo, I stopped
mentioning the patreon at the end. I always shout out the patrons, but
I stopped being like, hey, go here if you want to give money,
because I was painfully aware of the fact that Nicole and I were very
well intentioned but not good at keeping up that patreon. And I never rebranded
the patreon to have the new name or add new perks or anything. I
just it was we bit off more than we could chewt. It was overwhelming,
and so when I took over as the only host, I no longer
like pushed it because it didn't feel right to do that. And now that
I'm going to be taking a hiatus from episodes, I absolutely do not want
y'all who are still patrons giving me money while I'm not putting out new content.
I'm not closing the Patreon because it has like outtakes on it, and
I am now that I'm doing this hiatus, I am going to post I
have fucking part of my language. I have over a year of outtakes that
I still have not posted. Again. This is one of those things that
it is like so time consuming to get them up on the Patriot and all
this stuff. So there will be new content coming out in the form of
a whole bunch of backlogged outtakes and those will be free to everybody. I'm
unlocking all the Patreon content. So yeah, I will let y'all know about
that via social media when I have mentioned want to got those outtakes posted.
But yeah, stop giving me money. If you're a patron who is still
giving me money, that is important to me that I am not taking your
money while I am not producing new episodes. Let's talk resources. Hell yeah,
so the website comingoup dot com. Uh. The website has a Google
doc of virtual community resources that I started during lockdown and have since like tried
to add to as much as I can. It's a work in progress,
like a lot of things on the website. Speaking of work in progress,
the website also has a media list that is specifically geared towards positive queer content,
So not a lot of stuff on there, or almost no stuff where
like somebody dies or it's a really difficult coming out story that's like painful and
the family rejects them, and stuff that is not the purpose of the media
list. It's a coming out podcast. I want y'all to have positive connotations
for it, for that sort of journey. So yeah, so if you're
interested, there is a media list up there under resources, and a bunch
of other stuff under the resources tab on the website to explore. Also,
I want to let you know about other podcasts that you may or may not
be aware of, other specifically queer female helmed podcasts, since I will not
be doing my queer female helm podcasts. Okay, So there's Bad Queers,
which I really like because it is sort of I mean, they cover like
so much, but sort of their mission statement is it's a podcast for folks
who feel like they're like bad at being queer, which, as I'm sure
you know, has always been my struggle. I feel like I don't fit
any of the stereotypes and all that stuff, and so the two hosts of
Bad Queers feel similarly, and so that's what I recommend. Two Dikes and
a Mic is a very funny podcast. If you are missing my irreverent,
hilarious style, I recommend Two Dikes in a Mic. And as always,
Le's Hangout is just in all timer. A lot of you, I'm sure
discovered this podcast via less Hangout, but if you are, you know,
coming to it later or something, Le's Hangout is one to absolutely subscribe to.
Lee and Ellie help Nicole and me so much in getting the pod up
and running. I found my editor through them, so yeah, I just
huge shout out to let us hang out. Definitely incorporate them into your podcasting
if you do not already. Okay, and speaking of podcasts, here's my
shout out to my phenomenal engineer slash editor. Her name is Avery Severs.
She is a queer woman. She lives in Canada, which is so cool.
You all know that I think Canada is better than America, so that's
exciting for me. Now, if you are somebody who has a podcast or
is thinking of starting one and would potentially like to contact Avery, you can
do that through Instagram. Her insta is at Avery Underscore Severs. That is
spelled a v e r i e underscore s e v e r s.
Honestly, you should follow Avery anyway, even if you are not doing a
podcast, because she posts like really cool burlesque photos and content and it's just
cool to follow cool queer women, especially if they're a Canadian. If you
hit her up on Instagram and you don't hear back, assume it went to
that weird hidden folder I was talking about earlier. You can contact me directly
if you haven't been able to reach her. I don't want to say her
Gmail publicly, just in case, but I do obviously have it so I
can connect you guys if if you're interested. But yeah, she is just
so good. I cannot tell you how hard it was to go from from
having Nicole edit it and like we're just we were for five years in such
a zone with like the way I would give notes and then like she would
like like give her notes, and then it was just like a well oiled
machine, and switching that over was like so scary and hard. And if
you notice like a big jump in the quality of the podcast around November or
December. It's because a buddy of mine was doing the editing for I was
I was paying him, but he he was my editor, and we just
did it work that well together and it wasn't as good. And then finally
I found Avery, and it like, I just cannot recommend her enough.
And it's been so easy to work with her. It's like she's inside my
brain and understands everything that I'm going for with my weird, rambly explaining edit
notes. So yeah, I just really recommend her, y'all. I've reached
the end of my bulleted list on my laptop. There is no doubt in
my mind that as soon as I turn out this recording I will think of
nine other things that I want to say. But that's life. But yeah,
I just want to impress upon you that this was so hard for me
to decide to do this. This podcast is. I think it may honestly
be the thing in my entire life that I'm proudest of. I'm not a
hunter for such sure, but it is. It's up there, and it
might be then I'm one thing I it is. It is in addition to
Piero, the love of my life, And yeah, so it was just
really hard for me to have to acknowledge that I need a break from it,
uh for financial reasons and for like bandwidth, emotional, mental stress,
busyness, all that stuff reasons. Uh, but it's that's where I'm at,
and I want to you know, like take care of myself and keep
putting out quality content. And I never want to get into a place with
a podcast where I like resent that I, you know, have to do
it every week or that it feels like a chore. It has not gone
to that point. I am making sure to stop before I get there,
but it's I am feeling worn out. So yeah, So again, hiatus
not end all, be all. I don't have clear cut answers for uh
if it will come back with like the same regularity or what it will look
like y'all. What if I, oh my god, what if I find
like in a amazing hot girlfriend and then we start I bring it back in
we're co hosting, like anything could happen, is what I'm saying. But
I'm genuinely super excited about the remaining two episodes and again purposely not doing a
final wrap up episode because if nothing else, I am getting to three hundred.
I am not stopping at two ninety two. So yeah, there will
be more episodes. I will keep you all posted on them. Thank you
so much to every single person who listens, whether you like just started last
week and you're like I just started, why the fuck is she putting in
that iatus, or you've been listening for over five years, Thank you.
I am so grateful to you. I adure all of you, and thank
you for hopefully beg you for understanding why I'm doing this. And yeah,
I will still be present on social media and all that stuff, so yeah,
I think that said. God, I'm bad at ending things. Thank
you all for listening, and uh yeah, two more episodes coming at you
soon. Bye,