Calm your Grits

CYG - Episode 2 Panic Mode

• Joei Allen

Share episode
Joei:

Welcome to Call Your Grits podcast. I'm your host joei Allen. I'm just your average stay at home mom, homeschool mom and wifey Who loves all things sparkly and anything DIY from party planning to interior design, Basically just a crazy Pinterest Mom. Oh, and I've also recently, Jumped into the pageant life because why not I'm a self proclaimed expert at nothing other than hanging on by a thread. I am living my best life, during what I can only describe as my midlife crisis. This podcast is about nothing and everything. So whether you're here because you can relate or for some comic relief, my hope is that you'll walk away learning something new or at least feel a little less weird about the voices in your head and the decisions you've made in your life Welcome back to calm your grits podcast. I'm Joei Allen your host I think this is episode. I have no clue. I've lost track. I'm at the point where I've just been overthinking, I'm on information overload I hit record and figured I would just rant and see if I can make an episode out of this. So we'll see. why rant? Because I just finished editing another episode. So, the first episode, which I've recorded three times. I decided to, uh, Start a podcast, kind of like on a whim, but then I, my, my dumb ass started telling people, Oh, I'm going to do a podcast, do a podcast because I felt like I had enough information and that it wasn't going to take that long and whatever. Anyone can do it, anyone can do it, I'm sure, but it's been kind of a pain in the butt. It's been, it's been challenging to, to say the least. but I also feel like me sharing that is kind of the whole point, behind the essence of this podcast. Like I said, during episode one. I have no clue why I'm doing this, other than the fact that I feel called. I want to work on some things. I shared... I'm pretty sure I can't, I can't even remember what I kept for episode one and what I edited out. Okay, so I'm just going to be real. This is what I've learnt so far. I say, um. Like, you know, so I did it, but they're the, all these things that I didn't even realize I was doing, but you realize when you're editing, I'm like, really, like how many times can I possibly say you know, so I did it. So here we are. I don't know. Apparently a lot, but I guess that's good. Oh, I also say, I guess a lot in case you didn't catch on to that yet. From when I decided to do the podcast, there's so much information out there. So much. But at the same time, there's no perfect formula or step by step way to do it. One of the things that I, I love doing that I think the reason why I love doing is because I'm ADHD, ADD. I don't know what we're calling it these days but some ADD and part of, and let me back up. So I figured out I'm ADHD. ADD when I was young in Ecuador, third world country, many moons ago where ADD wasn't a thing. Now there are so many resources for ADHD, ADD, like everyone knows everything about it. But when I was told that I had ADD or whatever, it was more of a, you're not, you never finish what you start why can't you concentrate? Why can't you do this? and so I think one of my coping mechanisms and ways that I dealt with it because it was embarrassing to not be able to just finish a task or I don't know There were many things that were embarrassing, you know I'd get really excited about starting something and then halfway through it just felt so overwhelming that I would quit. I would stop, but I didn't know why. Anyway, all that to say is thanks to that, I've gotten really good at being organized, at dissecting things. I guess now the term is hyper focus basically that means I'm trying to figure something out and nothing else matters until I figure that out. Because I love being able to learn things, and then dumb it down and break it down for the next person. I don't want other people to feel like that. Especially when I've put hours and hours to figuring stuff out, I really like making it easy. I'm a checklist girl. That's basically where my career became good was I started a new job and I was like, I had no idea what I was doing. Knowing myself and always second guessing myself. I know that if I don't check stuff off, I will sit there and Did I do that? Did I do that? So as I was learning, I was making checklists because, Oh my God, if I would get some kind of quality control, something, I would be so mad at myself. That's when I would say I was like, yeah, I'm ADHD, but I don't necessarily know that that's a bad thing. Like, does God really make mistakes? I mean, I don't think so. I just think my brain works differently and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I don't know maybe for whatever normal is. I guess I'm not normal and I think that's okay. I probably won't even post this episode, but whatever. I was, I had a point. Okay. So once I decided to do this podcast, I went into research mode and it's fascinating. There's so many different parts of it. It's not just turning on a camera. Sitting down and talking my gosh, probably already lost everyone. Oh Okay, so like you and right now I'm like, it's not perfect if it's not perfect I'm not going to do it, we'll see if I do it, as I was researching me, I love researching. I felt like that word was all over the place during episode one. Who cares? As I was researching, I realized, there were so many different pieces to the puzzle of just starting a podcast. Take that back. So there are, I think on YouTube or whatever, you can literally just hit record, use your webcam and start a podcast. But me being the overthinker, perfectionist, perfectionist. That I am, or I've been told I am, I'm overachiever. I wanted to make sure that I did it right. So I wanted to make sure I had the right camera for good quality. By the way, do not go with the cheap one. thing from Amazon. It sucks. I've re recorded, I think three episodes now. The camera I'm using now is a Logitech 4K Pro X webcam. It's better than my webcam on my laptop, the other one was doing this crazy thing where as I was recording, he would just, it would just like focus and refocus and refocus. So even if I got to the point where I could say a sentence without, um, blah, blah, blah, it would still be super distracting because the camera was doing this. Okay. So camera, I guess I finally got that. Then there's the whole software thing. As of right now. I'm using Descript so I liked the Descript because once I'm done recording, it'll upload and give me like word by word, everything I said. And it ties to the camera, so like, if I say, like, like, like, and then I in the text, I just select like, like, like, and hit delete. It also deletes it out of the video. So for someone that has zero knowledge or background with editing any kind of anything, that was one that seemed easiest. Plus after about a thousand videos that I watched that's what most people said was the best one for beginners and dumb moms, whatever. That's the editing after you record. So then recording the episode, a lot of people use their iPhones because apparently the camera is great. I personally could not figure out how to do that without it taking up my entire memory in my phone and then the quality was not great. So I wanted a software that I could just hit record and then it stored it in the cloud, whatever the cloud is. It's not, all I know is it's not on my computer, so it's not making my computer super slow and it's not on my phone. So. I went with squad cast, which I just figured out that it wasn't part of the Descript. I started looking at like how long ago these videos were recorded because I was getting, I was finding a lot of information would contradict itself. I realized that I was watching old videos but finally got it together I get it now. So to record it's going to be twofold. One is squad cast, that is now part of the Descript. So I went ahead and signed up for a year, um, subscription. Yeah, a year plan so I was like, okay, might as well use Squadcast. But then I didn't realize that it could not record two videos and two microphones at the same time. I prefer to do interviews, on this nice couch and I actually, I did a whole interview with my friend Vickie and it never recorded and I'm so mad because when we were done with that interview, we both felt like that was good. We're like, man, we should start a podcast together, but it didn't record. So that sent me down another rabbit hole of trying to figure out like, okay, so how do people record with someone in the same room? How do I control my microphone and me talking and yelling? I really don't know What the technical terms are so I'm going to use squad cast since I already paid for it for remote interviews, you create a session and you share the link just like you would with zoom. I haven't tested it out yet. My sister Shana recently started a podcast. She's published several episodes now, but that's great because I can call my sister and be like, what is happening anyway? So we're going to jump on an interview. So back to the software to record, I'm using Squadcast for solo and remote interviews. And then I landed on Riverside FM apparently that's the best software for in person interviews that gives you all these different tracks, is that what they're called? So that way you can separate them out and fix the"gain" I had no idea what gain is. I still don't know that I fully understand what it is as of right now. But anyway, I'm going to use Riverside. But the pricing for Riverside it's limited to five hours. As of right now, if I actually do this, and actually post, I'm going to most likely use Riverside for in person interviews, I don't even know that I'm going to do in person interviews until I launch the podcast because right now as I'm recording this, I'm ready to quit. I'm ready to back out of this. Like, okay, it was cool. I learned a couple things. Let me pack everything up and send it back to Amazon. We'll see. I don't know, maybe I'll feel better after this rant, oh, the microphone don't even get like right now I got so excited with this microphone and it's got this nice little arm thing, but I don't like how you can see, I feel like that says Moana and I did end up just going the cheap route through Amazon. And just finding a microphone, I want to say it was like 50 bucks When I first recorded my first few episodes. First takes of my first episodes the volume was pretty low, but I think I've figured that out there's a button here. I read the manual and I I don't know. We'll see as of right now. This is what I'm using headphones I have I've tried a bunch I have so these And I have a white pair again,, I went the cheaper out with this I feel like part of me was like, are you even going to do this? Why are you going to spend all this money on all this equipment and then quit or not even get to the point where you actually launch it and post it. But anyway, so, but the thing I don't like about these is I look, it looks, it looks stupid. I feel like, or maybe, maybe I'll get over that. Who knows? But I feel like I'm like, Hey, Mr. DJ, like. I don't know. I don't like them. So I went with these. So if I do my hair, then you can see it. But then the first episode, the third take. I was looking at it and my hair is all crazy. I'm my biggest critic. I man rant over, no, I'm not going to rant not over lighting. I did have pretty decent lighting already I had a ring light and based on like shadows and stuff like that. I'll probably end up getting like a soft light, but I felt like, okay, this was enough for now, then the backdrop, There's only so much I can research and waste my time with, without even knowing if this is going to stick, and I mean that in the sense of if I'm going to keep doing this, or if I'm, first of all, if I'm actually going to get to the point where I launch it, which I think what I'm going to use for that is I'm going to do YouTube podcast and then I'm going to use Buzzsprout. I haven't gotten to the point of uploading that so I really can't give much feedback other than when I was watching videos on how to do it. It seemed like Easy ish one. I'll let you know. I'll do a follow up, maybe, if I post this episode, that probably means I've at least jumped in and actually created the podcast, not just sat here and recorded it myself talking and cringing over, over everything. But I will do a follow up to this if that day ever comes. What else? I feel like there's more. So the camera and the quality, everything's like 4k, 4k. But then when I actually went to try to record 4k, it didn't work. It doesn't let me do it. So I still need to figure out a little bit more about that. And then another thing that I really struggle with is I know I can edit out sentences. It takes forever to type out what I'm going to say. And then I feel like it's dumb because I'm sitting there trying to read it and say it, read it and say it. So I feel like there should be some kind of happy medium where I can just put bullet points and not lose track of the session or what I'm, or what I'm trying to say. Because it gets to the point where I've, I've written it. I've thought about it. I've said it like 10 times and I don't even remember, If I already said that if I'm repeating myself and yes, I can go in and I can edit out a sentence or like 10 sentences, but then I struggle with, I like this part and I like this part, but now they don't make sense saying this right after I deleted out a whole squirrel Joei rant where I went off on something because it seemed relevant. I had the topics I was going to talk about down before I even fell down rabbit holes of figuring out like how to actually record and all of that. But I feel like because I've had them down for so long now I'm second guessing them and I'm just like, is that even a topic that people want to hear about? So, have I ranted about enough things? I think I have. So that concludes this rant. This episode And that's a wrap as always. I would love it if you would subscribe and follow me on all the social media thingies. Thanks again for listening to another episode of Calm Your Grits podcast until next time. Bye.