#oneaday Day 19: Spellcasting! P-O-D-- wait

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I wanted to talk about this today because I've been doing podcasts off and on for quite a long time now, and I've always enjoyed it. This, to be honest, surprises me quite a bit — we'll get onto that a bit later.

The first podcast I did was called Gaming with Pedwood, and it was an experiment with some old school friends. You can actually still find this online in various places, such as here on Podchaser.

Gaming with Pedwood was inspired by our friend Ed's interest in Ricky Gervais' podcast at the time. He was rather taken with the casual, off-the-cuff format that Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington had with their podcast, and suggested that we try it for ourselves next time we got together. So we did, recording three episodes on one occasion, then three more a little while later after we'd decided that yes, we'd had a good time.

Gaming with Pedwood was a lot of fun to me because we managed to find a good balance between pissing about as old friends and saying something with some actual substance to it. I really enjoyed it when we reminisced about the games we played in school, and all of us had plenty of entertaining (if mundane) stories to tell. It was definitely a fond memory.

The next one I did was an offshoot of a community I was once part of called The Squadron of Shame. This began as a group of people on 1up.com's "Radio" forum, attempting to continue a challenge the site's podcast hosts had set for themselves and promptly abandoned after no more than a week. The concept was simple: it was effectively a "gaming book club", in which we'd all play the same thing at the same time, then share our thoughts with one another. The podcast was a natural extension of that after 1up's community imploded.

I enjoyed the Squadron of Shame podcasts for different reasons to Gaming with Pedwood — though they were a huge challenge to edit at times. We'd often have quite a few people involved with a single episode, and while this made for interesting and lively discussions, it also gave me huge headaches any time I had to, say, figure out where a weird noise was coming from, or try and at least make it appear that people weren't talking over one another.

Regrettably, the other members of the Squadron of Shame have mostly left me in the dust over the course of the last few years, and I don't really know the reason why. It's upsetting and frustrating given how close we all used to be — many of us visited each other on several different occasions despite being in completely different countries, for example — but I guess this sort of thing happens. We had good times while they lasted.

The Squadron of Shame's podcasts aren't online anywhere at the minute. I think I do still have the original mp3 files for them, so if I find a suitable place to put them you can hear what we got up to at some point in the future. They're an interesting and varied listen.

And so we come to my current podcasting project, The MoeGamer Podcast. This was something my co-host Chris and I had discussed a few times after striking up our friendship. Chris appeared on another podcast for a short while before, to put it politely, deciding he didn't quite "mesh" with how some of his co-hosts wanted to do things, so we decided that one weekend we'd give it a go for ourselves. Sixteen episodes later we have a show that I'm pretty consistently proud of.

The MoeGamer Podcast kind of blends elements from both of my past experiences with podcasting. It has the clear structure of the Squadron of Shame's podcasts, but the somewhat casual, laid-back style of Gaming with Pedwood. With just me and Chris, it's the smallest-scale podcast I've ever been involved with, and I think it works very well as a conversation between just two people. It's always a pleasure to record, it's fun (if time-consuming) to edit and I've learned a lot about a variety of different things since we started it.

And so on to why I find it strange that I enjoy podcasting so much: well, I've alluded to it before, but I'm riddled with social anxiety, and find the idea of "just talking to someone" quite a daunting prospect. I am extremely anxious about being placed in a social situation with someone, and particularly wary of voice-only communications over the phone or via Internet voice chat.

In the case of Gaming with Pedwood, this wasn't much of an issue, because we all knew each other very well and were in the same room with one another, drinking, farting and burping. In the case of the Squadron of Shame podcast, it took time and courage for me to step up to the plate and contribute, though the appreciation I got for being The Guy Who Knew How To Edit and Publish Podcasts helped give me confidence. And in the case of The MoeGamer Podcast, I'm now leading a show in collaboration with a close friend; I was extremely nervous the first time we recorded, since it was also (if I remember correctly) the first time Chris and I had ever voice chatted, but I was happy that things went so well — and they've only improved from there.

An interesting side-effect of all the podcasting and video work I've done over the course of the last year in particular is that it's caused me to feel a lot better about my voice. I used to absolutely hate hearing my voice — a side-effect of having to record my piano exam pieces for my grandparents as a kid and my parents insisting that I gave a spoken introduction to them, I feel — but now, I actually quite like it.

To be perfectly frank, and I'm aware how vain this sounds, I actually rather enjoy watching back my own videos and listening to our podcast episodes again and again. But then, I also enjoy reading my own articles, so I think that element of pride — or at least a desire to enjoy the things I've created myself — has always been in me to a certain degree. Given my self-esteem is rather low in other areas of my life, I think I might overcompensate a bit with the pride I take in the things I feel I'm actually quite good at!

Still. There it is. If you've not yet listened to our podcast, check the links above to enjoy it for yourself — and share it with your friends, too! I think we've got a great show going, and I'm always happy to know that more people are listening.