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Wednesday, October 04, 2023

Preface To The 21st Anniversary Show: Longevity

(image from here)

It can be said with absolute modesty that I had no idea I would still be doing a radio show called Self help Radio twenty-one years after it began. I actually didn't think I would still be doing it in 2006, which is when the show with the theme I am revisiting (more on that tomorrow) aired. In fact, I bought myself one of those "books" one stored CDs in back in the day & after the show I would collect the songs I played & burned them to a CD to keep them, a sure sign I didn't know how long this would last. What did those things hold, fifty CDs? There are more weeks in a year!

It would make the woman I married sad, perhaps, to hear this, but I didn't even know how long we'd be together. In October 2002, we had been dating for about a year. My longest relationship up to that point was barely three years long. My track record was terrible.

Same with radio. I had done radio from mid-1994 to mid-1999 at KVRX, & had waited a year to volunteer at KOOP. By the time I started Self Help Radio on October 9, 2002, I hadn't had a regular radio show in three years. Nothing felt permanent, nothing seemed assured.

Which is not to say it's a surprise that I've been doing this for twenty-one years. Around the time I left Austin, I was determined to keep doing the show wherever I ended up, & so I have. Around 2013 or 2014 I started inviting people onto the show to do the silly interviews & that breathed new life into the show. So if you had asked me in 2009, or 2014, did I think I'd make it 21 years, I probably would've said, "God I hope not" because I would think I was being funny but if asked to be honest, I would've said, "Sure, why not?"

On anniversary shows I revisit old themes. It's in the hopes of improving on them. I will explain why I am revisiting this year's particular theme tomorrow.

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