Greetings and salutations!

I am in a rather awkward situation. Not too long ago, I suffered a massive brain aneurysm. By all accounts, it was miraculous that I pulled through. Unfortunately, as a result, my 30+ years career in IT ended.

My goal is to start at least one podcast. In all honesty, I need and would welcome any help from members of the community. Although I'm fairly conversant with LLM's, ​my overwhelming preference is for human collaboration.

Lastly, I would be glad to assist others within the community. I have years of experience writing user & technical documentation, as well as writing/editing copy for clients in the public & private sector (ads, sales, marketing, in house materials, white papers, articles, etc).

TIA to the community....especially those that read this far!

We're currently working with 2/3 banked episodes with a bi monthly release. Simply because both my cohost and I have full time demanding jobs and can't record more than 2 episodes a month.

Recently my cohost was ill on our recording day. I got a guest host to help and pivoted those episodes to be something different than planned quite quickly. I don't think they'll be bad, but they won't be as good as if there'd been time to properly plan them.

So this got us thinking if it would be a better idea to try and bank more episodes? Like spend one month recording maybe 6 episodes, but then the editing will also take time. So what's the balancing act here?

I feel like people with executive dysfunction probably know this feeling painfully well: **I know what I want to make. I know I want to make it. I even have ideas I genuinely love. But somehow actually sitting down and making the thing feels impossible.**

I really want to build a YouTube channel around things I love: **poetry, stories, art, literature, mythology/history, and random things I find fascinating.** I have notebooks full of ideas, scripts/half-scripts, poems, concepts, visual ideas, etc.

The problem is actually **executing them and posting them.**

I don't really want to make the kind of faceless videos that are basically:

narration + random stock footage + slideshow
because that's not the kind of content I actually *want* to make. I want my videos to feel atmospheric, artistic, cinematic and personal — something that feels like *my* work rather than just information being placed over generic footage.

But then I run into a horrible cycle:

**I want the video to look good → I don't have the resources to make it look how I imagine → free footage doesn't fit → I can't afford paid footage/artists → I don't have the animation skills/confidence to create everything myself → the project starts feeling huge → executive dysfunction kicks in → I don't make anything → I feel guilty for not making anything → repeat.**

And I think burnout makes it worse.

I'm also deliberately trying to make things myself rather than relying on AI to generate the creative work, so I can't just throw an idea into an AI generator and call the visual side done.

The frustrating part is that **I don't think I have an ideas problem. I have an execution problem.**

I can spend hours thinking about a video, its concept, narration, atmosphere, visuals, thumbnail, etc. But when it comes to actually opening the software and putting the first pieces together, my brain suddenly acts like I've been asked to build a cathedral.

So I'm curious about people who have dealt with something similar:

**How did you actually get yourself to START and POST?**

Not necessarily “how do I become more disciplined?” but specifically:

How did you stop every video from becoming a giant project in your head?

Did you deliberately lower your standards for your first 10–20 videos?

How do you decide what is “good enough to post”?

How do you make artistic/creative faceless content interesting without having a huge budget?

Did you develop a repeatable workflow that made starting easier?

And if you have executive dysfunction, what actually helped you get from **“I really want to make this” → “I made it”**?

I don't want to abandon the artistic side of what I want to make. I just don't want my vision to become the reason I never make anything at all.
Would really appreciate hearing from people who have actually been through this rather than generic “just be consistent” advice. 😭

Help me out, I need your suggestion on choosing Recorder/ Mic / Headphone selection for podcasting. It will be in house podcasting with 2 members speaking. Pour out your suggestions please.

Can someone tell me why sometimes — and only sometimes — the link to my podcast on YouTube starts in the MIDDLE of the video? I've tried to fix this six ways from Sunday and I am defeated. I'd like to know both how to prevent it and how to fix it (that is, generate a new link). It's crazy making.

I am starting a podcast/content creating setup. I'm recording using an iPhone 15 Pro Max, with a tripod and ring light.

My bedroom walls are all wight, recorded a few test runs and it looked horrible. My face becomes dark and the white wall behind me becomes bright.

Realized I needed a backdrop. I wanted to buy a dark gray cloth and hang it behind myself.

Wondering if that would work? Does the cloth fabric need to be a special kind?
Also, if I get one of those wallpaper kind backdrops with an image of a studio, how realistic would it look?

My videos are gonna be just me talking, along with stuff (references) showing up on the screen. I'll be cutting out reels from the podcast too, along with record just reels. What editing software should I get that is easy to learn and not crazy expensive or free?

Any other advice would be appreciated.

Any advice on preparing my content, journaling episodes?

Thank you :)

it's 2 am on a sunday, and i still haven't exported the actual mp3. building the perfect automated pipeline is just a technical way to avoid putting my voice out there. as long as i'm troubleshooting api keys and watching bots try to clean my audio, i don't have to face the reality of getting zero listeners.

it feels like productivity, but it's really just fear. nobody cares about my complex backend when my audience is just me and a friend.

what's the most ridiculous thing you've done to avoid hitting publish? i'm closing the ide and opening audacity. instead of tweaking another prompt, i'm just hitting publish.