Running so late...

What was LET IT OUT anyway? And now what?

hi! 
In the last 10 years you have:
earned degrees and promotions, gotten sober, bought homes, exhibited art, opened businesses, paid debt, made movies, toured albums, and learned hobbies. You’ve survived illnesses and healed. You’ve gotten married and gotten divorces—maybe both. You’ve lost people, birthed people, and helped people you raised go out on their own…

You are my friends, guests, and listeners of this podcast. Listing a fraction of what you’ve collectively done—made me contemplate how I spent the decade. I dwelled on all I didn’t do, then made a granular list of what I did.

In the last 10 years I have:
…moved to 3 cities and 7 apartments.
…met new friends, lost touch with others.
…had countless crushes, a handful of heartbreaks, and fell in love 3.5 times. 
…started a full time job and left it to cobble together countless freelance jobs.
…published a book, sold a car, bought a metro card, bought a car again.
…lost four grandparents, met gobs of babies.
…traveled alone to Europe, Australia, and Asia using credit card points. 
…and recorded conversations with 427 people. 

In the background of both lists, this podcast has been a place to come talk about it all. I love a good celebration, so whether you discovered this operation today, or have been here since the Obama administration…thank you!

When LET IT OUT turned 10 last spring, I began pondering 3 questions: 

1. What was LET IT OUT?

2. What is LET IT OUT? 

3. What is LET IT OUT becoming?

I attempted to answer these for myself and you. But you honestly may know better, so if you’d like to answer these questions too, you can in the comments (we have those now).

1. LET IT OUT was…
   at the right place at the right time. 

As a typically very slow mover, for once I had the advantage of being an early adopter to a now-saturated medium. 
Back then, when dinosaurs roamed [2013], the medium was so new most people didn’t realize there weren’t gatekeepers on iTunes so anyone could have a podcast on there.

2. LET IT OUT is… in “a middle” & late. 

• “a middle” As a culture we are fascinated by both beginnings and endings, but middles are often boring, long, and challenging. As Kerrilynn Pamer put it in her 2021 episode, “We're so conditioned to love the beginning of something, and we're so conditioned to love the exit. The middle is not sexy. People don’t want to talk about that part in general.”

  Revisiting that episode in preparation to interview her again, I realized LET IT OUT is in a middle. Optimistically Kerrilynn went on to say, “the middle is where you discover who you are.” She references a book, The Messy Middle, which outlines this theory of how we love the launch story—how’d they start? What kind of funding did they get? Who are they? And we love the exit, where it's a success or where it's a failure…

So instead of a new beginning I will remain here with my feet planted, but sliding slightly like socks on a wood floor… to keep moving even though I’m…

• …Late. I have a history of resisting change, especially with technology. When friends had Blackberries, I still had my flip phone; when they had iPhones, I stuck a googly eye sticker on my Razor. But eventually my then boyfriend dragged me to the Apple Store to get my own, since I stole his so often.

  If I’m in route to a party, and realize I’m going to arrive too late, I will usually head home with my hostess gift and wistfully wonder what I missed. But lately I’ve let myself attend despite my tardiness. As long as I compensate by staying until I’m tucking the host into bed and scrubbing their dishes.

  If Substack is a party, I’m late and here’s my excuse: I started sending a newsletter at the same time the podcast began. First on Mailchimp, until 2020 when the list size had made it expensive, and I found Flodesk which charged a flat rate rather than per subscriber. It was tedious to bring 7 years of newsletters over but it was peak lock-down, so what else was I doing?

  
  By 2022, most of my favorite writers had built a home on Substack. But migrating again felt daunting, so I waited until now when everyone is here from legend Patti Smith to renowned evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.

  
  Is it me or is Substack just a blog that comes to your inbox? 
  

  Reading Substacks felt like I’d jumped back in time to the wholesomely collaborative 2012 internet. That bygone era was peak-blogging, early social media, and my favorite because connection was easier, like it is here with recommendations and threads.  

So despite my tardiness, I’m happy to be here now. A like a midwesterner at a party I brought dip and will roll up my sleeves to make myself useful…which brings me to…

3. LET IT OUT is becoming… LISTS.
   If you’ve been reading since last year, this won’t shock you. I primed you for it here and here, but humor me for issue 00 as I turn this predictable pivot into a fresh start…
   INTRODUCING:

I’m hoping this creative constraint will help with 3 of the things I’m terrible at:
1. Brevity
2. Dosage
3. Accountability 

Not sure what exactly the evolution of this project will look like yet, but I want it to prioritize connection and collaboration and Substack seems like the best tool to do both right now. This is starting to sound like an ad for a company that owes us nothing. But it is the platform where people seem to be migrating to, so like a lemming…I too was about to jump off the cliff before remembering…

Charles Bukowski said,
“Wherever the crowd goes, run the other direction. They’re always wrong.”

I typically avoid “trends” (i.e., my eye-phone), so I stalled.

In the episode below Sam said,

“When you do something because you’re like, ‘oh this thing is hip I should do that.’ You are already behind. That’s coming out of insecurity, and it’s not authentic, your soul’s not in it. The real risk is trusting what’s coming through…”

I had to verify I wasn’t merely moving to where the traffic was but because it would benefit us more than our previous platform. Sometimes trends last because they’re useful. Resisting swapping my “eye-phone” for an iPhone, wasn’t cool, it was stupid.

I will continue to ask myself: am I doing this because it feels correct or because it feels like a trend I should participate in? Or am I avoiding something useful to be original? And often the only way to find out is to try…

Issue 01: List: A love letter to [______]
Issue 02: List: By Me for You
—> Quarterly- I will make a list directed by you. Anything you’d like me to list? 

Thanks for hosting me,
Katie

---

#424 | Perfection Bubbles Burst: Musician Sam Burton on Collaboration, Tarot, Criticism & More

Sam Burton is a musician originally from Utah now living in LA. He came over a few weeks ago and talked about everything from how he began playing music, to how he approaches collaboration, craft, and criticism. He’s candid about how constructive feedback has shaped his sound and his thoughts on falling in love, nature, friendship, the music that shaped him, and more. Sam is easy to talk to, and full of wisdom.

---

P.S. My goal for this new iteration is to be useful, so I meant it when I asked what you’d like me to list. My dear friend Deenie recently said of BLURT (which I love) that it is a way to hold herself accountable as a writer: 

“It allows me to explore ideas, make (and learn from) mistakes, and doesn’t let me be too precious about my work.” 

I hope that’s the case for me and that in doing so it will be useful to you. If I don’t have to form it into a cohesive essay and can simply list, odds are better I will actually do it.

I don’t call this LET IT OUT for nothing….I’m open about any of my experiences that could be useful to you…. perhaps: 

• Podcast episodes I’ve listened to more than once?

• On dog-sitting? Moving multiple times? Traveling on credit card points?  Eyeliner?

• Journaling prompts? Conversation prompts? Hostess gifts?

• On living alone? On living with others?

• On the above instances of being in or out of love? Reasons I love breakups?

• On how/why I walk miles a day? 

I don’t know much but I’ve been putting in my 10,000 hours in these. You can remain anonymous, or I can reveal your identity.

---

image: Nokia 9000 Communicator Cell Phone (1997) Image of Sam by: @internetkt