Bad Attitudes: An Uninspiring Podcast About Disability

Episode 44: One Year Later

June 20, 2022 Laura Stinson Season 2 Episode 21
Bad Attitudes: An Uninspiring Podcast About Disability
Episode 44: One Year Later
Show Notes Transcript

We're celebrating one year of Bad Attitudes: An Uninspiring Podcast about Disability!

Email badattitudespod@gmail.com

Follow @badattitudespod on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter

Support the pod ko-fi.com/badattitudespod

Everytown: everytown.org

Be sure to leave a rating or review wherever you listen!

FairyNerdy: https://linktr.ee/fairynerdy

Support the show

Watch my TEDx talk

Email badattitudespod@gmail.com

Follow @badattitudespod on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Threads

Support the pod ko-fi.com/badattitudespod

Be sure to leave a rating or review wherever you listen!

FairyNerdy: https://linktr.ee/fairynerdy

TRANSCRIPT OF “ONE YEAR LATER”

[rock guitar music]

MALE VO [00:03]
This is Bad Attitudes.

[rock guitar music]

LAURA [00:20]
Hello friends and strangers! Welcome to another episode of Bad Attitudes: An Uninspiring Podcast about Disability. I’m your host, Laura.

Exactly one year ago tomorrow, I launched this podcast! Let’s celebrate! 

[DJ air horn sounds]

If you like this episode, share it and the podcast with your friends. Word of mouth is absolutely the best way to grow this podcast and our community. And please make sure you are rating and reviewing the podcast on your preferred platform. It really helps me out!

If you’d like to contribute to the show, please visit ko-fi.com/badattitudespod. Your contributions help keep the pod running and each donation gets a shout-out in a future episode.

Through July I will be donating half of each contribution to Every Town For Gun Safety, a movement of parents, students, survivors, educators, gun owners, and concerned citizens working together to fight for public safety measures that protect people from gun violence. Visit everytown.org for more information.

For questions, comments, or ideas, email badattitudespod@gmail.com or reach out through social media. Follow @BadAttitudesPod on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

As always, I want to remind you that disability is not a monolith. My experience as a disabled person is going to be different from the experiences of other disabled people. I am one voice for the disabled community but I am not the only voice.

This week in 2021, I launched Bad Attitudes: An Uninspiring Podcast about Disability. In fact, if you’re listening on the day this episode drops, tomorrow, June 21, 2022, is the official one-year anniversary of Bad Attitudes. It’s also my birthday. Feel free to send presents.

To be totally honest, when I started this podcast, I wasn’t sure I would make it a year. In fact, I was pretty certain I would NOT make it a full year. We don’t have a full year’s worth of episodes yet, but this is episode 44 and I was POSITIVE I didn’t have enough ideas to make that many episodes. We’re quickly closing in on the big 5-0, and I’ve still got a lot to talk about.

And more than that, I didn’t believe anyone would actually listen. Maybe my friends and family would listen to the first few episodes, but beyond that, I didn’t have much hope. And while the podcast hasn’t caught fire the way I would love for it to, I still can’t believe how many of you listen regularly and take a minute to send me an email or a DM to share your thoughts with me or to tell me you enjoy the podcast.

Beyond THAT, when I decided to set up the podcast’s Ko-Fi page, I really couldn’t fathom that anyone would contribute their money to this passion project of mine. We work hard for our money — and billionaires and corporations are making it harder every day — and I know you don’t just throw your money around without consideration. So just know that I truly appreciate every donation.

I’ve tried to bring awareness to disability issues in various ways throughout the years. Right after I graduated college, I wrote a column for my local newspaper — back when newspapers were still a thing — for a year. But that was a limited-time contract, and I only had 12 chances to enlighten readers, and we know that people aren’t always receptive. With limited opportunities to share issues with readers, my contributions seemed to skew negative, so much of the feedback I received was that I was “bitter.” Keep in mind that I was in my early twenties at the time. Imagine how bitter those people would think I am NOW!

Years later, I tried to start a blog, with a really clever name: Bums and Bellybuttons: The View From Here. Unfortunately, I wasn’t great at being consistent. I also hardly got any traction. Very few views, no comments. It’s hard to stay interested in a project that no one else is interested in. That was another thing I feared when starting this podcast: not being able to be consistent. I’m great at ideas, not always so great at the follow-through. It’s part of my charm as a Ravenclaw.

I gave up on the blog but always sort of semi-intended to go back to it. Then I discovered podcasts. I’m not super into listening to people talk, but I realized that this media form was reaching all kinds of people about all kinds of topics. Anyone could produce a podcast.

It took me about a year to finally decide to go through with it. I’d never been great at expressing myself verbally and certainly wasn’t too keen on listening to my recorded voice, which I knew I would have to do in order to edit the episodes. I thought of a lot of reasons not to do it.

But, I kept coming back to the main reason TO do it: I wanted to be a voice for the disabled community. Every day I encountered so much ignorance and ableism that I knew could be counteracted with simple information from the perspective of someone who is actually disabled. I kept coming back to the long-smoldering desire I had to speak up for the disabled community.  It was something I had always wanted to do, I just could never quite figure out how.

I toyed with the idea of starting a Youtube channel, but the prospect of filming myself regularly stressed me out just to think about. Using just my voice wasn’t quite as daunting. Plus, I wouldn’t have to worry about how I looked if I was recording an audio-only podcast. Behind-the-scenes secret: I record in my PJs. Nobody would want to look at this, trust me.

My ultimate reasoning for starting this podcast was, basically, What the hell? What did I have to lose? If no one liked it, if no one listened, I could just stop. I really had nothing to lose.         

And here we are. Apparently, some people really like what I’m doing. Others definitely hate it. This year, I got my first “fuck off and die” and it was the first time someone called me “subhuman” because they didn’t like my voice. I don’t know, when I hear a voice I don’t like, I just stop listening. Anything else seems like too much effort.

And here we are now. Maybe not a rousing success, but a definite success. The fact that I want to keep doing it is the successiest success of all, if you ask me.

So, where do we go from here? Ultimately, I’ll just keep plugging away. I’d love to grow and attract more listeners, but I need your help to do that. Sharing the podcast and rating and reviewing are the best ways. Eventually, I’d like to advertise on OTHER podcasts, but that costs major money. 

I’d also like to start selling merch. I have a LOT of ideas and am really just at the point of deciding what is the best way to go: An Etsy store or a standalone website? Or maybe both? Probably both.

Eventually, I hope to launch a Patreon so I can offer you more content and exciting things in exchange for your kindly given money. I have some ideas for that too, but I’d really like to get your feedback. What kind of perks would entice you to part with some of your hard-earned money every month? Especially if you’re disabled, because money is such a scarcity for disabled people, I want to know what would make it worthwhile for you.

I don’t really know what else to say. I really can’t believe it’s already been a year. Time flies when you’re pissing people off. I sincerely thank each and every one of you for listening. The fact that you find listening to me talk to myself a worthy way to spend your time is mind-boggling. So, thank you.

And, as always, thanks for listening and I’ll talk to you in the next one.

[DJ air horn sounds]

[09:10]
[rock guitar music]