The The Hey guys it's Kelly, Happy New Year. I hope that wherever you are in the world and

however you celebrate that you're enjoying a peaceful and prosperous season.

Now obviously this is not a regular episode. I have a bunch of

announcements and exciting things to share and this seemed like the easiest way to do

it. So if you're chomping at the bit for the new episode just hang tight

with me for just a sec and I will share all of that information

with you.

But first, we have some celebrating to do.

When I started this podcast just a little over a year ago, it was truly a labor of love. I was still working long hours as a brand

director and so I knew that this was something that I'd only be able to do on evenings and weekends,

but I did it anyways. I've had a few podcasts in the past that have done moderately well, so I also knew that the approach that I was taking was breaking every rule about how to create a successful podcast. There was no regular release schedule, it was all scripted with just one host,

wasn't doing interviews that might help expose me to a new audience, none of that. I wasn't even

really promoting it. It was just me making a thing that I wanted to make

because it made me happy to make it. And if all I'd gotten out of this experience

was that, I very sincerely would have been perfectly happy. Like it did for so many of us, the pandemic years had a clarifying effect on my life.

I had a much better grasp than before on what mattered to me and where my joy came from.

And what I realized was that although my career

allowed me to indulge in my passion for storytelling, it was only tangentially and

not in a way that felt authentic or meaningful. It was the thing that I loved most in the world

with all of the things that I loved about it stripped away.

I realized that my career was the ghost of a dream

I once had about myself.

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