Please be aware that no one ever said that the blood drive at The Secret Lair was for the Red Cross.

Check out the newest comic from Natalie Metzger. We’ve got more scripted, so please head over and chime in. What do you want to see happen?

Don’t know about The Secret Lair?

The Secret Lair is a podcast and blog which follows the real life “adventures” of Kris Johnson and Chris Miller. From the safety of the Lair, they will plan grand travels, trick unsuspecting victims into recorded interviews, plot the downfall of David Moore, project manage their goal of tri-county domination and…frankly…talk about what catches their attention.

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I have a bad habit of overcommitting myself. No…wait…that’s not quite right. I have a bad habit of committing myself and then mismanaging my time. It’s a character flaw, and one that I’m working to correct. However…one of the inevitable consequences of my time mismanagement is that, sooner or later, I begin to feel as though I am being pecked to death by ducks. Everything piles up, and all I want to do it run and hide until it goes away.

I know what I should do: bear down, shoulder to the grindstone, nose to the wheel…or something like that. Still, when it all feels like the Myth of Sisyphus, I want to slink off to the local Barnes & Noble, buy a coffee, and read graphic novels.

I was starting to feel this way in February of this year. There was work to do on Podiobooks, I had my own solo podcast that was dreadfully late. I was helping Mick Bradley with his two podcasts, and was starting yet another with a friend. All of the activity had shifted from a series of welcome challenges to a collection of large, stinking seabirds hanging around my neck.

I was venting about all of this to a friend, and his question was, “Why don’t you just quit the podcasts?”

I thought about that. I could, of course. Let’s face it, few of us are getting paid to do this. It’s a colossal time-suck at times. It’s endless fiddling with settings, levels, microphones, mixing boards, all to get rid of that low-level hiss that never seems to go away. It’s the late nights, knowing you should be in bed, but you’re just not able to rest until you get the thrice-damned thing edited and posted. Damnable though it may be at 3:30 am, it’s also the coolest thing you’ve recorded to date, and you just can’t wait for people to hear it.

That’s the core of it, isn’t it? The listeners. I remember when I got the first bit of feedback about my podcast. First off, I was stunned that anyone was listening. Secondly, I was thrilled that this individual, a podcaster whom I respected, mentioned me in his show. The clincher was these words, “I’ve been listening to Chris Miller’s Unquiet Desperation. I like it. He’s got some worthwhile things to say.”

Do you recall how you felt when you were told by a fellow podcaster or a listener that they really liked your show, that it meant something to them? Inside your head, weren’t you doing your own personal Sally Field imitation? (You like me! You really like me!)

It’s like a drug, this appreciation thing, and a little goes a long way. As we continue to put out episodes, we all try to hone our craft, shape our message. We try to be a bit more profession, or we try to spice it up, keep it fresh, but still keep our audience. In some arenas, we compete with other podcasts. But at the end of the day, know that people out there like your work it enough to keep a lot of us going.

It is for me, at least. None of the podcasts that I’m on have more than two hundred listeners. I’m fine with that. I’m not the most recognizable name attached to Podiobooks.com, and I’m fine with that, too. What keeps me going is that, at this time in history, any one of us can pick up a microphone, grab a copy of Audacity, and find those like-minded folk that we would never had a chance to reach otherwise. We get meet other podcasters who have the same struggles that we do, the same self-doubting natures, the same need to speak and be heard. It’s massive, it’s global, and it’s just about the coolest thing I have ever witnessed

So, now I sit and work through my endless piles with GTD. I have my lists and my inbox, my folders and my files. I run like a not-quite finely tuned machine because this has become more than a hobby…it’s a connection to something larger than myself. To give up friends that I’ve made doing this is unthinkable. It’s worth the long hours, the days of prep, the answering of listener questions and subscriber feedback. It’s even worth the occassional argument on the email list. We’re doing something revolutionary here…never doubt it. One day, we’ll look back on all of this: we’ll see how media was changed by a bunch of “amateurs” with laptops and and a couple of microphones. We can say that we were there.

If that’s not worth it, I don’t know what is.

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Mick says:

I want to let Monkey patrons know about a little behind-the scenes adjustment that is taking place that is designed to improve the quality – and hopefully the consistency – of episodes of the Round Table. Chris Miller and K.J. Johnson will officially be taking over editorial and producing duties on the Round Table. They will choose topics, schedule guest hosts, and bring a focus and direction to the show. In many ways they’ve already been doing this, but now it is official. I still have every intention of being on the show regularly, this is just a matter of making it possible for the show to get the priority attention it deserves because it will no longer have to compete for my time and attention with the other projects I’m doing. That is very likely going to result in a more entertaining Round Table that comes out more regularly than it has in the past few months. So, for those of you who are familiar with This Week in Tech, Chris and K.J. are now going to be the Leo Laporte and John Dvorak of the show, while I become more like Patrick Norton, joining the discussion most of the time but also freed up to give my focus to producing Misfit Brew and writing Vegas After Midnight. In addition, as we’ve mentioned on recent shows, we’ll be lining up a variety of folks to sit at the table – including some of our past guests, some new ones, and probably a few nifty surprises. So, if you have ideas or comments or questions, feel free to post them on the forums or shoot an email to Chris Miller. Thanks for sticking with us, and we’ll show our gratitude by continuing to give you the best mythic misfit news and discussion that we can. I think this is a step in the right direction.

Kris and I are getting together tonight. We’ll be discussing the future of the show, and what direction we’d like to take it. If you’d like to join us for a future recording, please watch this blog and the HHM forums for the recording schedule.

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Podcasting continues to gain validity. Reader’s Digest Canada has listed Podiobooks.com in it’s Best of the Web for January. Podiobooks was founded by Evo Terra, Tee Morris, and Chris Miller. Over the summer it reached one million episode downloads of over 80 book titles. They have also recently decided to do away with the subscription and membership-only portions of their website, thereby making it easier to listen to podiobooks.

How cool is that?

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