Episode 20: Where Do I Go From Here? metadata

Writing Class Radio is a podcast of a writing class. You’ll get true, personal stories from the students in the class, plus a little about how to write your own stories. This episode is about those moments in life when you have no idea how you got here, whether to stay or go, or where to go next.

Allison Langer, student in the class and host for this episode, asks the questions most of us struggle with. Did you land that dream job that turned out to be not so dreamy? Do you wish you lived somewhere else but can’t afford to move? Do you wonder what life would be like if you could just finish school already? Have you ever reached that point when you’re not sure you want to go on at all?

Writing Class Radio teacher, Andrea Askowitz forces Diego Saldana-Rojas, our audio producer to write stories in class, then finish the stories at home. Finally, at the end of the 2nd semester, Diego did his homework. He reads his story What Next?

Allison asks Diego why he didn’t ask his former editor for a recommendation. Diego confesses that he messed up a few times and did not feel confident his editor would give him a good recommendation. Even though it was his first job, he felt like he couldn’t mess up.

Diego wonders if he should just give up freelance audio to become a bartender, a much less stressful job. He was not the only person with this question. Three other students in the class were also uncertain they were on the right path.

Nicki Post, student in the class and a regular on the podcast, tells the story of leaving city after city and starting over, which worked until she found a group of friends in Miami she didn’t want to leave.

Nicki’s stories got Allison thinking about why people leave: college, new job, marriage, divorce, failure. In Diego’s case, fear prevents him from leaving. In Nicki’s case, fear causes her to leave.

Student Missy Hernandez tells us about a time she felt she had nowhere left to go. Her mom took her to the psych emergency room when she had thoughts about killing herself.

Karen Collazo, a student in the class is in her 30’s, had the great job in NYC and was miserable. She reminds us of Noelle Hancock, who left a $95,000 writing job in NYC to scoop ice cream in St. John. Noelle wrote an essay for cosmo.com. There’s more Karen on our blog at www.writingclassradio.com.

Diego and Allison talked about the imposter syndrome? That feeling where you think you don’t deserve your job because you’re not good at it. Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild and the host of the podcast Dear Sugar Radio, said she feels like an imposter, so did Gretchen Rubin, the author of The Happiness Project.

This episode is sponsored by the Sanibel Island Writers Conference. Tom DeMarchi, the director talks about creating the conference he’d want to attend. So he invited our very own, Andrea Askowitz to teach there. More on our website. Sanibel is November 3-6, 2016.

Writing Class Radio is hosting our first live show Oct. 1, 2016 at the Light Box in Wynwood featuring Ann Randolph, an award winning solo performer and writing teacher. Details and tickets are on our website.

Do you feel like an imposter? That’s the prompt for today. Set a timer for 10 minutes, record what you wrote on the voice memo of your phone and send it to info@writingclassradio.com. Your story could air on our show.

Writing Class Radio is produced by Diego Saldana-Rojas, Andrea Askowitz and me, Allison Langer with editorial help from Sonesh Chainani.

Theme music by Adriel Borshansky. Additional music by Misha Mehrel, The Boundary Birds and Daniel Correa.

Writing Class Radio is sponsored by and recorded at the University of Miami School of Communication.

Study the stories we study and listen to our craft-talks. There’s no better way to understand ourselves and each other, than by writing and sharing our stories.

Everyone has a story.  What’s yours?