Episode 79: New Year’s Special

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Does anyone else have a sort of holiday fatigue right now? Like it’s great that we get that yearly reminder to spend time together and see people we care about and who care about us, but we have crammed a lot of into the space between Halloween and New Year’s Day. And then it’s Valentine’s Day like immediately after. We don’t get a break.

Or is even the thought of Valentine’s Day just particularly exhausting for me because on one hand I’m single but on the other hand discounted Valentine’s Day candy. Which, okay, I recognize I’m tettering a bit into the whole ‘not like other girls’ phenomenon, but seriously, some candy producers put a little extra effort into their candy for that holiday beyond just the color and shapes. Or that’s a placebo effect. But a very powerful one. 

I am very clearly rambling. Because it is not the time for that conversation. We’ve still got the New Year celebration before any of that is relevant. 

And as tired as I am, these celebrations look like they’re going to be pretty good. I mean, we’ve had some horrible things happen and will likely continue to happen. But there’s still some good to be had. Both the retrospective of the past year and the lineup of the upcoming year… Well there’s… there’s hope. And things that look pretty okay.

In particular, 2020 looks like a great year for podcasting. And that’s coming off of the indie podcast momentum in 2019. There have been a lot of shows being launched in 2019 or even finishing up a great season, and there are a lot of releases in 2020 that I’m really excited for. So for the last Miscellany Media Reviews episode of 2019, actually the one that kind of straddles the two years, I thought it would actually be fun to have a double feature: one of a podcast that launched its first season and finished it in the past year and another of a show that’s going to go live in early 2020. Which would make this episode kind of like a two for one special. Maybe even a three in one if you count the chance to support indie productions.

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Hi. It’s M. Welcome to Episode 79.

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So I know this is not my first time talking about Dart, a microfiction audio show from Enfield Arts about life in the gig economy. Okay, well you have some grief and fear mixed in there too. It’s a lot of ground to cover for a microfiction show. Oh and by microfiction, I mean it’s the sort of eight episode first season that you can plow through in the morning during your commute or before a meeting. The latter is from experience, and the former might not be as advisable as I first thought. 

Basically, Dart is a story told on a very limited set of roads: the set of roads a driver for a food delivery app would frequent. And while that much time on the road is not without its more obvious perils, Dart brings it up a couple notches. Or brings it up to current day? It might depend on your perspective.

But okay, I should explain and unpack some things. Dart is both the name of the podcast and the food delivery app that serves as a sort of docking point for the story. As an app, it’s a typical product of the gig economy. If you can’t do something or find yourself unable to do it, you can ask a stranger to come do it for your for an amount of money that is probably not enough but you don’t want to think about that because you’re underpaid too. Welcome to the gig economy. 

The issue of pay put aside but still insight. The appeal of these apps for the drivers is still kind of obvious. It’s a way to get extra money quickly in case your paycheck comes up short or if you are between things. Not even just between jobs, but like, you made a hard break from the life you knew before while still not knowing what comes next for you. And that might seem unwise but sometimes the choice isn’t yours. Sometimes your life is the thing that breaks rather than you making the break, and you just have to pick up the pieces of whatever is left. Which may not seemingly be much but could also be everything. You don’t know right away.

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I have talked about Dart before. Back when it was a new podcast and I only had a few minutes of content to go off of. Back then, I was struck by the sense of montemum the story clearly had and the very modern under-pinings. It featured life in the gig economy, not just in the details but in the character of the story, and I guess literal main character as well.

Dictionary.com has “Existential” as the word of the year, and sure, there’s different organizations that have their own choices, but the fact that it comes up at all is pretty telling because realistically, this is not the sort of word that would ever come up in conversations. Unless someone is trying to look impressive. Or a certain… eh type of plant is involved.

Or you’re panicking. Somewhat. More likely. 

Up until recently when current events have forced the larger questions about who we are and what our purpose is. But while it’s happening more en masse as of late, it’s always been possible that sudden shifts in your current life could force these questions onto you. Or specific forms of them. Like who am I without this thing or in this current state? Who do I want to be? What should I be doing? What should I devote myself to?

Most appropriately for Dart would be the question of, in the absence of that particular person or thing, what am I?

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Throughout the whole first season. There is a mystery. We don’t know what it is, and our lead character Jenny doesn’t know either, but she’s used to that situation whereas we might not be. It happened all the time in what must feel like another life to her. It was her life and then everything went awry. 

But now she finds herself in a very familiar situation. And she still is the person she has always known herself to be. Because some things will never change, I guess. Ourselves included. Unless we will that change. We might be transitioning between points in our life, but we are still who we are.

Without spoiling anything, I will say this: there is a powerful message to Dart. This whole idea of “we are who we are, specifically beings that can endure challenges we may still fear.” In times of such things that we are fearful are, be they big or small, the promise that our strength will carry us through is an important one. The idea that we can endure our challenges in pursuit of our higher missions or investigations or whatever we are doing is one that we often have that does still require a sense of validation. 

However, this does mean that our own fears and insecurities will get carried over too. But like I said, the idea that change cannot be forced but is still possible. We can become better versions of ourselves, a transformation that existential questioning might lead us to pursue. After all, we still have our sense of duty or other impulses. We might be brave, foolhardy or hurt or lost. We are still what we are. However the insecurities we have always dealt with, wherever they might have come from, are external and are things we can take off of our shoulders if we can in the course of that existential questioning see our true strength.

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And therein lies the core of this show. In the pursuit of this mystery, there is the existentially challenging to modernity, as matters of value and worth become us to answer in the face of a gig economy that even took away the hourly wage aspect of our appraisals that wasn’t great but still gave us something to work. It’s a sort of existential crisis in a context where we actually have to give these answers where we can have no training wheels, external guides, or validation. 

And to couple that with real action, which is hard to do in an audio fiction show but Dart gets it pretty right, further drills the point in. Regardless of what we feel or assume about ourselves, external challenges and demands remain. And as we question what we’ve always known to be true or as we are forced to do as much, we may be pleased to know that we can rise to the occasion or have unexpected help.

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And that is a lesson that is probably going to prove critical to our protagonist in Seren, a sci-fi podcast launching in January 2020. Once again, I find myself trying to put my excitement for an upcoming or newish podcast into words when I literally only have a couple of minutes of content to go off of, but apparently I like the challenge.

Basically, Seren, a production from Nerys Howell, promises to be the story of Seren who is off in space on a largely nondescript adventure. But considering there’s an apology in the trailer with a deep sense of loss, longing, and regret underneath the surface, there’s actually some really critical details here.

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Well, this is all speculation. But I’m getting the impression that our new friend Seren is travelling through space feeling as adrift as she literally is, because you know, space and all of that. She’s in space because she’s got to help terraform a new planet for currently unknown purposes. But I mean, terraforming is a difficult thing that’s often done with a certain type of goal in mind. 

And while I still can’t say why Seren is adrift it probably has something to do with things not going according to plan for her. Maybe she should have been on the earth, maybe she should be on a different planet by now, or maybe it’s not supposed to be Seren on that ship at all. Maybe there was a sort of mistake in getting onboard. We can’t know yet, and we have no chance of knowing until January when the show will begin its run. 

But even with that, it’s not an unfamiliar feeling by any stretch. I mean, I know it all too well. 

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Unexpected surprises, for better or worse. can certainly feel like disappointments in part because you don’t know if it is for better or worse. We earnestly hope and will and imagine one outcome only for everything to veer off that course. Worse yet when we think we were the ones at the wheel who sent the vehicle astray. Even worse yet if we can prove it. Sure, maybe everything will turn out better than you could have imagined, but hey, things could also go the other way. 

It’s the confusion talking, you could say. And hey, confusion is the sort of thing that just talks and talks to fill up the air. And there’s a lot of air. Well, not in space. But in this new life of yours.

And all of that kind of hits home for me. Because it kept happening.Whether it be when the first plan about being a lawyer fell through, or the one about going back for my PhD, or being a traditionally published writer, or working for a major nonprofit that turned out to be full of jerk bags. I think that’s a new term. Open to all of you who want to use it. 

But none of that… None of those plans, rather, ended up happening. Currently, I’ve ended up at a smaller nonprofit where everyone knows we aren’t exactly changing the world, per say, but we’re doing something, and we’re doing the best we can at it. And we all care. And we try to be genuine. Not always with each other, but like, solid 90% of the time. 

And now I feel like everything has worked out. But woo boy, it was a long time coming, I will say that much. I will also say that I feel like I’m on that journey yet again because staffing changes. And I’m sticking around at that job far longer than anyone could have anticipated. And I have a master's degree, which means in part that two different universities have people who devoted a not insignificant amount of time and effort into my development. For what? And maybe it was all a waste. But maybe not. Who is to say?

Seriously who is to say. The answer to that question might actually be somewhat obvious. But recognizing the possibility of its existence and believing it are two different things. The latter can be a thing to develop, and I am excited to see if Seren elects to go down that route.

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But even if it doesn’t, that’s okay. That was all a big if, and maybe I’m jumping into this podcast for the wrong reason. The thing about Seren, though, is that it clearly is taking a deeply personal feeling and incorporating that into the story. Exactly how is not something I should have any say in.

Seren is what I would think of as a baby podcast. It’s an indie podcast run by a very small number of people who are just jumping into this with enthusiasm and not so much experience. And having done that baby podcasting thing myself, I can say from experience that it is challenging and scary and anxiety-ridden process, but it is still rewarding. For both the producer and listener. 

While I still don’t know where the story will go, I do know Seren will be a good podcast because it has a genuine and human undercurrent to whatever the actual story will be. So even if all of my speculation is wrong, I am still excited. Also, just as another fun fact. The showrunner for Seren is also in the Y2K audio fiction show I’ve mentioned before, also to start in January.

So I’m sure somebody’s a little nervous, but 2020 will be a good year. I know it.

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This has been a production of Miscellany Media Studios with music licensed from Sounds Like an Earful. Thank you for listening. If you like the show, please consider leaving a review or checking out our other productions.

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