I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I’ve made a decision. I’m going to go back to only do the podcast in audio format, pre-recorded. I made a list of all the pros and cons, and the pros just vastly outnumber the cons.
For one thing, I won’t have to go through all the work of making PowerPoint presentations to make the videos visually engaging. See, I wanted to make a series on the historical reliability of the gospels for YouTube and the podcast. But I don’t want to go through all the work of making slides. I said that when I was done with the written series, I would finally embark on my journey towards an academic career. Making these slides is time-consuming. It would be so much easier to just turn my in-depth written series into an audiobook and publish it on the podcast. This is what I did what my Primeval History (Genesis 1-11) essays. There’d be no extra work except reading aloud into a microphone.
Additionally, I just see no reason to do Cerebral Faith Live anymore. I have no more reason to think people are going to show up live to leave questions in the live chat THIS year than they did last year. 2021 was great. There was a lot of interaction and I fell in love with streaming, but in 2022, the level of interaction was abysmal. Moreover, doing it pre-recorded would make for flexible scheduling between me and guests. There would be no need for everyone to show up at the same time because “We have to be consistent so people don’t get confused about what time this program comes on.” Moreover, it’s frankly embarrassing to do a stream and have no one show up. The audio podcast’s ratings are just fine though.
There are a couple of cons though, which is that it won’t be too visually appealing for a YouTube audience. If I DO upload, say, the audio recordings of me reading my book-like blog series, It’ll just be one still image. Additionally, if I don’t upload the podcast to YouTube at all, there won’t be a centralized comment section for me to interact with people. I want people to leave their thoughts and opinions, and I want to interact with my audience.
And truthfully, I’m thinking of ceasing to make YouTube content altogether. There are still some CFL Snippets I can make, and maybe I can continue to make TikTok compilations. But It’s too cumbersome to handle three forms of content, two of which I always liked doing better anyways. It might be different if I were a content creator for a living, but I’m not. I have to work to support myself. And if I’m going to pursue schooling as well, budget cuts will need to be made. And by budget, I mean my time budget. There’s only so much time I can devote to things. And lately, I haven’t even had anything remotely like a life outside of work and ministry.
I will never stop doing Cerebral Faith. Even if I have to go back to my roots and just be a blogger, I will always put out some kind of content for the purpose of equipping believers and convincing unbelievers. Blogging is a bit easier on me, as I’m under no schedule to churn out X amount of content on a weekly basis. And the only editing is just fixing typos and grammatical mistakes! I might be able to keep the podcast going IF (1) is is a seasonal thing, and (2) it is audio only. I don’t want to cut out the podcast from my “Time Budget”. However, if this needs to be the final season of the podcast, then it will be. Well, final for a while. I could definitely bring it back later once I settle. But right now, I’m in a very bumpy transitional period of my life. And while I’ve tried to continue to make content like normal, it has NOT been easy.
Another thing that irks me is how much I forget to embed video content to this website. I can’t really remember what videos I’ve yet to put in the video section of this website. Hopefully, I can get to that soon.
In a perfect world, I’d make $1,500 a month on Patreon, I’d live off of that, and making content would be my job. But that is not the actual world. And so, working a job goes into the time budget. And it takes a hefty chunk. When I go to school, that will take a lot out of the time budget. And, blogging and podcasting take things out of the time budget. In addition to these, I have regular run-of-the-mill adulting to do (washing dishes, washing clothes, paying taxes, et. al). I have but mere temporal pennies to spend on things like watching TV as it is.
I will attempt to make 12-20 audio-only podcast episodes this year. It will be a trial run. If It turns out that even this dramatic cut to my time budget is not enough, then I will have to stop the podcast entirely, and keep the ministry afloat only on the blog. Hey, I did this from 2012-2018. I can do it again. And like I said, with it not pressuring me to churn things out at specific times, it will be a lot less stressful. Again, I don’t want to end the podcast entirely. When I started, I wanted to make 500 episodes before I even thought about ending it. Unfortunately, I’ve only done 148 as of the time of writing this. If I do decide to end it, it will be analogous to when Bleach got canceled in 2012 (2015 for the English Dub) and then 10 years later it came back, with even better animation (i.e Bleach: The Thousand Year Blood War). It’ll be more of a pseudo finale, but I’ll come back an indefinite time period later to finish “The Final Arc”. I definitely won’t just disappear from the podcast scene. If I do decide to put the podcast on an indefinite hiatus so I can pursue my dream, I’ll have a finale episode. Maybe I’ll even think of something special to do so that it feels like the big send-off I would want it to be.
