Reflections on 100 episodes…

It’s a little amazing to think that the podcast has just hit 100 episodes…

I often talk about the reasons why I started the podcast and in hitting this little milestone it’s nice to be able to reflect on all of the stories I’ve been able to share and some of the learnings I’ve found along the way.

For those who may not know, there’s a couple of reasons I started the podcast, for one, I had a high school friend of mine pass away just after Easter in 2019.

Adrian & my son Harley

Adrian and I actually didn’t start out on very good terms, when we first met in high school we would actually often pick on each other, and it even culminated in him punching me in the head.

It’s funny the kind of memories that get stuck in your head, however to share a story - what happened that day was I was eating a ‘Le Snak’

‘Le Snak’

For those who may not know, essentially it’s 3 cracker biscuits with spreadable cheese that kids often get given for school.

Anyway, Adrian and I must’ve been talking sh!t to each other that day and I took a biscuit (with a healthy amount of cheese on it) and flung it at him…

This biscuit travelled like a throwing axe, with the healthy dollop of cheese like an axe head propelling it to its destination and plop, it actually landed (and stuck) to Age’s shorts.

Needless to say he was pretty pissed and punched me with a left hook to the side of my head.

Whether I was shocked by sudden escalation of violence, or in awe of my majestic cheese biscuit throw is probably a matter of perspective, however for whatever reason, we became really good friends after this.

Starcraft 1

We would play Starcraft 1 for hours on end and in those days, we wouldn’t be playing on the internet - it was via modem, phone line to phone line.

The school holiday routine would be me waking up, having breakfast…

Calling Adrian to wake him up around 10:30am, chatting on the phone while he had his breakfast and then by 11am or so, our computers would be connected and it’d be the 2 of us battling 6 enemy computer teams till 1 or 2 am in the morning.

Rinse… Repeat… until we got to the later years of high school and realised we probably needed to put some effort into studying.

Adrian was a really smart guy with an amazing work ethic, I actually remember asking him why he worked so hard and what it was that he wanted to do after high school and him giving me this really blasé answer that he just wanted to get the marks to get into whatever he wanted but he wasn’t really sure what that was.

Needless to say, he made the HSC All rounders list in 2001, 99.95 in the HSC and achieved his goal.

To me, he was the epitome of work ethic, he knew how to knuckle down and achieve his goals and it was only in reflecting a lot about him since he left us that I realised that there were some pretty deep reasons why he was working so hard however I’ll save my thoughts on that for another day.

Anyway, when Adrian left this world, I really started to think a lot about when we really leave this place. Is it when we die? Or is it when we are forgotten?

Watching the Disney movie Coco with my kids probably made me think it’s more the latter and also watching them grow up I realised that I didn’t know very much about my own families history / ancestry.

Being an avid consumer of podcast content myself, I decided that I would start podcasting myself with one of my goals to sit down with my dad an ask him questions about his life and reflections. Something I managed to achieve in episode 3.

I haven’t always had the best relationship with my dad, however I’m really appreciative that I get to live the life that I live because of their choices and efforts.

I never really thought too much about where the podcast will go from there or what would come of it, hence why there was only audio episodes until around episode 34.

One of the cool things about podcasts is that every show has it’s own kind of ‘flavour’ where the premise behind the show or the episode will vary so much based on the interest of the host and the interaction with the guest.

As such, the reason why I like to focus so much on people’s background and stories is because I’m very curious as to how people formulate their views of the world. What’s important to us today may not be as important in 10… 20… 30 years, so it’s kind of cool to have these episodes to look back on and think of how our perspectives may have matured.

It’s also really easy to say you may not agree with someone’s position, however when you put yourself in their shoes, you might understand them better or at least appreciate how they came to their conclusions.

I definitely believe we are all more alike than we think and there is definitely some huge commonalities across the human experience.

Anyway, here’s to 100 episodes…

To all of my guests who have shared their stories, I thank you so much for sharing a part in this little passion project of mine.

It’s a pretty cool thing to be able to share these amazing moments with people, locked in on a conversation and not only that - to see how much they grow as individuals chasing their respective dreams after the little snapshot of an episode we’ve shared with everyone.

For those of you who listen, I hope you find something in these episodes that speaks to you and no matter what your position in life, I hope you can find peace in striving for it.