Why There Won't Be A Self Help Radio Podcast This Week (Excuse # 1)

I am always full of excuses.  But this week, I had planned to go ahead & make another Self Help Radio podcast because - why the hell not?

There are four (4) reasons why the hell not.  I will explore them this week.  But in the interest of not keeping you in suspense (like you care), here they are:

Excuse # 1) I am going to visit my mother in Dallas.
Excuse # 2) I got sick.
Excuse # 3) I am a terrible planner in general.
Excuse # 4) What the hell was I thinking?  (The self-pity excuse.)

Today, I will talk about excuse # 1.  I am going to visit my mother in Dallas.

My mother, about whom anyone who has read this blog will know I have incredibly mixed feelings, is in her mid-80s.  When I lived in Austin, feeling as though it were somehow my duty as her son, I would visit my mother every couple of months.  Dallas is about three hours away from Austin.  I would drive up, sit for a while, perhaps take her to lunch, & then drive home.  It felt exactly like a duty.  It made her happy, I guess.  I would get Ethiopian food from our favorite Ethiopian restaurant in town & then drive home to my hungry wife.  It made her happy, I know.

Now that I live farther away from my mother, I try to make it back there once a year.  She always says, "I'm glad you're coming home," but I don't really feel like it's home.  It was barely home while I lived there - now that it's been decades since I've spent longer than a couple of days in Dallas, it's just another place where I stay in a motel & try to find good vegan food.  It just so happens my mother lives there, which is what makes it different from Memphis or Atlanta.

The upshot is, I'd have no time during the week to do a podcast (or even a radio show) because I'll be driving to Dallas, staying in Dallas, & then heading back.

Why schedule it then?  Well, my plan was to make the podcast this weekend, & then upload it on the road from wherever I am on Friday, & voila!  It's like brand new!

But other things interfered.  Stay tuned for updates as we have more excuses all this week!