The art of creative composting

why I’m deleting my first podcast

Wild Letters is a newsletter about self-exploration and building a right-fit life.

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My dear reader.

12 days from now, on the winter solstice, I’ll be deleting the entire six-year archive of my first podcast, Real Talk Radio.

I hosted that show from 2015 - 2021, and so much of who I am and what I believe today was first seeded in the 200+ honest conversations that I got to have with those 200+ wonderful guests.

So no, I’m not deleting the podcast because the work wasn’t meaningful to me. I’m deleting the podcast because it’s what I know I need to do in order to make space for whatever wants to come through next — a way to reclaim all the small pieces of self that I gave away during that project, and tenderly tuck them back inside my heart instead.

I think of this as the art of composting, or of composting as art, wherein we reverently offer our past work and past selves to the compost pile so that they can slowly break down, decompose, and become nutrient-rich fertilizer for our future selves, future dreams, future work. The way I see it, you don’t need to know exactly what you want to plant next season in order to know whether or not to make compost — you simply start the compost now, add to it regularly, and trust that it will be there to support you whenever the time comes to grow your next new thing.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the benefits of “bad” decisions.

Getting sober was “bad” for my social life. Quitting social media was “bad” for my business. Divesting from the stock market was “bad” for my financial future. And all of that is true — I lost friends when I got sober; I lost a marketing platform and many potential readers when I quit social media; I lost all the money I could have kept making in the stock market when I divested.

And yet, each of those decisions has been more life-giving than I ever could have imagined. The losses were real and often painful, and it doesn’t serve anyone to pretend otherwise, but to me those losses were simply the price of admission I had to pay in order to get when I wanted most: a life of greater integrity, where I’m not constantly hurting myself in order to try and fit in.

As I prepare for the start of my gap year I’ve been unsubscribing from almost everything — podcasts, newsletters, really any form of content that’s been set to automatically pop up in my field of attention.

Not because I don’t think these particular things are worth paying attention to, that’s not it. It’s because I’m curious to see what I’ve been consuming simply because it’s there, what I genuinely miss when it’s gone, and which new questions/interests arise in the blissfully blank space that I’ll reclaim by being quiet within myself for a while.

I realize I’m not saying anything radical here — people unsubscribe from newsletters and podcasts every single day — but it’s been interesting to notice the little pang of guilt I often feel when I click the “unsubscribe” button, as if me choosing not to receive a certain thing for a certain period of time is a condemnation of it, or of the person making it, when all it usually means is that I need a break from so much input.

And we are allowed to take those breaks, is what I’m saying. We are allowed to quit things. Regardless of what it is and how complicated it might feel or who might be disappointed: you really can leave.

What’s the use in never disappointing other people if it means that you’re constantly left feeling disappointed in yourself instead?

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More soon—

Nic