Episode 102 is the special monthly bonus episode. It also acts as a de facto season finale, but not a series finale.
2023 is shaping up to be a tremendously busy year with three books being released during the first half of the year. I have decided to put the podcast on hiatus until the summer as I try to navigate these new projects. There are only so many hours in a day, in a week, and with so many projects on my plate, with more potentially to come, it is best to pause the podcast rather than try to produce a show of diminished quality.
This episode dives deeper into what contributed to this decision, what is on my plate for 2023, and my plans for the return of the podcast later in the year.
Continue to follow me through YouTube, IG, Twitter, and my blog as I will continue adding content, just content that doesn't have any set deadline.
Thank you to each and every person who has listened, supported, shared, and reached out regarding the podcast. This is not goodbye, just aloha for now.
Helpful Links from this Episode(available through Buzzsprout)
Listen to Episode 101 here.
Episode 102 is the special monthly bonus episode. It also acts as a de facto season finale, but not a series finale.
2023 is shaping up to be a tremendously busy year with three books being released during the first half of the year. I have decided to put the podcast on hiatus until the summer as I try to navigate these new projects. There are only so many hours in a day, in a week, and with so many projects on my plate, with more potentially to come, it is best to pause the podcast rather than try to produce a show of diminished quality.
This episode dives deeper into what contributed to this decision, what is on my plate for 2023, and my plans for the return of the podcast later in the year.
Continue to follow me through YouTube, IG, Twitter, and my blog as I will continue adding content, just content that doesn't have any set deadline.
Thank you to each and every person who has listened, supported, shared, and reached out regarding the podcast. This is not goodbye, just aloha for now.
Helpful Links from this Episode(available through Buzzsprout)
Listen to Episode 101 here.
Hello world and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast.
I am Christopher Setteland coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape
Cod Massachusetts and this is episode 102.
This is the typical monthly bonus episode but it's also going to be a very different
episode as I guess it's going to act as a sort of season finale, not a series finale.
After this podcast goes live, I will be shelving the podcast for at least the next several
months and I'm going to go into detail as to why.
I had shared all over social media this past week that the podcast was going to go on
hiatus and for those of you that don't follow me on social media, I didn't want this
to just fade away where you're expecting a new episode and it just doesn't come so
I decided to put together one final episode for now. Kind of putting a bow on things but obviously reinforces the idea that this is not the end of the podcast I promise you that.
There are a few reasons why the podcast has to go on hold for a while and they're all
good reasons that's the main thing. I've mentioned repeatedly on the podcast over the last several months that I had a lot of projects coming up, especially starting off 2023.
First and foremost is the Lady of the Dunes documentary and the corresponding book Searching for the Lady of the Dunes that I am working on.
I've noticed over the last few months that I have so many spinning plates and so many different goals I'm trying to achieve and when you're trying to achieve them basically all at the same time you can only make so much progress on each one.
So there are times that I feel like I've been stuck because I'll go behind the scenes here.
The podcast, researching it, scripting it, recording it, editing it, and then marketing it.
It's a lot of work to do weekly and I love it. I do.
There are only so many hours in a day, hours in a week when you combine that with the fact that I work a full-time day job. The last thing I would want to do is kind of start half-assing the podcast, especially for those of you that have been listening since the beginning. It wouldn't be fair to you for me to just put out subpar episodes just to pad my stats.
I knew that a hiatus was going to be necessary as late as a month, two months ago.
That was a big reason why episode 100 was the super-sized Lady of the Dunes episode because if I go on hiatus until the summer, by that point, the Lady of the Dunes website and the book will have been out for a while. So I wanted to have the majority of my information that I could share out on the podcast before that. When it comes to the Lady of the Dunes projects, I know how important these are to me for my career and in order for them to have the greatest chance for success, I really have to dedicate a lot more time to getting the website up and running, getting the book finished
the way I want it, and then going through the long process of getting it printed so that
I can then have potential readers buy it.
It's funny because doing this book on my own, self-publishing it right now just to make
sure it's out in front of readers. It's both a lot of work and easier than I thought if that makes sense. The book is for all intents and purposes done. I need a couple of hours to kind of go through it and put the final coat of paint on it, but then there's the matter of gauging interest from potential readers. So if you're listening to this podcast and you're interested in the book, you can shoot me a message on social media. It's by no means any sort of obligation to buy, so I'm going to put out feelers on Facebook,
Instagram, and Twitter, because I want to get an idea of how many of these books I need to have printed, at least to start, whether it's 50, 100, 200, 500, God willing.
So the book and the website we're looking at within the next month from when this is
being recorded, which is mid-January and I owe my full effort to get this done as best I can. I owe it to Frank for him putting his faith in me to write the book, and I owe it to everybody who worked with him on the documentary, all the friends of the projects, because if this book doesn't succeed, if the website doesn't succeed, it is not going to be because I didn't put in my full effort.
And that's another reason why the podcast has to go on hiatus. It frees up a lot of time to really dedicate to the website and the book and what's going to come after it.
Because sure, I could take a few weeks and get the website done, but then after that
comes potential events, you put in the effort of putting together a book, and then the author's events are kind of the reward, I suppose.
I want to have the chance to do talks kind of like what I'm doing right now with all of
you at libraries, bookstores, and other places to gather, speaking about the case and my experience and the documentary and the book, maybe showing the documentary.
And that is right there as we head into spring and later into the summer, which takes up a lot more time too. Scheduling events, and possibly having more books printed to bring to these events, but then I have other impending projects coming later in the spring.
I have two other books that are going to be coming out.
This first half of 2023, especially is going to be so busy and it might set up a busier
second half. Photographer's America, Cape Cod, Beyond the Dunes is scheduled to be released in May. It has gone to print through Fonthill Media, they're connected to Arcadia Publishing, kind of like a branch off of that.
It's my first ever photography book, so I'm really excited about that because obviously
I'm no professional when it comes to photography. I'm one of those that I'm good, I know how to frame things and I have this eye for photography, but as far as the talented
ones that do wedding photography and such, I don't have that skill. Maybe I do, I've just never tested it.
But then in addition to that book, there is the 10-year anniversary of my very first book
in my footsteps of Cape Cod travel guide is being re-released through Schiffer Publishing, which I can't believe I have a book that's so old that it's getting a second edition.
I don't have a date on that yet, it could be May, so there you can see where my schedule
is going to start getting clogged up because what I want to do is put together author events that combine those two books. So I'll talk about all these beautiful places on Cape Cod and then kind of how to photograph them, I suppose.
Those events are going to be totally separate from any Lady of the Dunes events.
I want my spring and my summer to be so loaded with author events that I have barely any time to think because that's why I got into doing this. I love writing, I love talking about the writing and interacting with people who are interested in the same stuff.
Hell that's why I started the podcast, I talk about all things that I enjoy and I get so
many people that enjoy the same things.
That's another reason why it's hard to put this podcast on hold. I hope you understand
it's so necessary hearing those things, just those three books, and the potential events
coming from it. It's going to be a lot of time.
But like I said, the podcast is not going away and the proof of that will be that all of
the episodes will still be up on all the streaming platforms. I pay to have the podcast hosted on Buzzsprout and then it gets sent to all the other ones: Apple Spotify, Google, wherever you get them. And if I was just ending the podcast, I would stop paying for the hosting service and then the podcast would eventually disappear.
But if for some strange reason, this episode is the very first one you're hearing of the
podcast and it's so different than anything I normally do, go back and listen to the other
101 episodes. It's a perfect chance to play catch-up.
I've mentioned that I've started putting full audio episodes up on YouTube.
I believe as of this recording, I have the first 14 episodes up there.
I'm going to get all of them up at some point, but each one takes time.
Another thing that I want to do is go back to the visual segments of the podcast.
I did those at the beginning where I take one segment and I'd put it up on YouTube complete with visual aids.
So for example, back in episode 99, I did a segment about the old Compass Lounge in South Yarmouth. I may end up doing a segment where I put that up on YouTube with some old photos from those days.
It's another way to repurpose content, possibly bringing new viewers/listeners.
So be sure if you're not subscribed on YouTube, if you don't follow me on Instagram, on Twitter, go and do that. Check out my blog at blogger.com. It's literally the in my footsteps podcast blog. My plan is to update that more with more local Cape Cod New England history. And you may be saying, well if you have time to update the blog and do YouTube videos, why don't you have time to do the podcast?
The thing is with the podcast, I set myself up where it's every Thursday the podcast is live. With a YouTube video with a blog. I can take my sweet time. I could get a blog done today. I could get it done in a week and a half. Either way, I don't have a set deadline, which is really good. These things that I've talked about, are just things on my schedule that I currently know about. I don't know what's coming.
There could be an opportunity that comes tomorrow or next week or next month that I don't even know about. Now granted, my plate is so full and it's only going to get fuller over the next few months. But you never know when the seeds that you've planted are going to grow and you're going to have to harvest them. I'd rather pause the podcast right now than have the quality start to go down where you notice it and you stop listening on your own. I'll pull back the curtain a little more because we're all friends here. A lot of you have been listening since day one or around there. The real last straw for me with the podcast was when I was getting ready to record what would have been the original episode 102 that I mentioned at the end of the last episode.
And I realized that I didn't have the time to get it done. I had a legit panic attack, which is not the greatest thing because I panicked because I wasn't going to have time to meet the deadline that I set for the podcast, and anything that I would have gotten out there would have been subpar and it would have been something that I would not have been proud of and I wouldn't have wanted to share with all of you.
But I would have done it to meet the deadline and I decided right then and there I said I
have to pause the podcast because I love doing it and it's fun. The pressure right there told me that I needed to let something go. I've had people reach out once I mentioned that I'm going to pause the podcast and they're sad but they understand. They know the other stuff that I've got going on and what I've got coming up and now any of you that didn't know, now you know as well. Even now the idea of three new books coming in the next few months and all the stuff that comes from that marketing and events plus a full-time job. It's overwhelming to think of right now but I know I'm going to have the time and there is something else.
Those of you that listened to episode 101 heard me talk about the death of my uncle
Eric and I recorded that segment within a few hours of hearing about it but the thing is
when I heard about his death it was already done. It wasn't he sick and you should have your final conversation with him. It was he's gone and that stung so badly way more than I let on to anyone who knows me because I considered my uncle Eric to be a mentor and someone who looked out for me even though he was there were times that he was out in Vegas far away. The last conversation we had was a year ago way too long and he was so excited about my involvement with the Lady of the Dunes documentary and the book I couldn't wait to tell him more then time gets in the way and you get busy with other stuff and you forget and then you remember when you hear that they're gone.
So I need to make more time for people because I've had so many losses over the last five years. One of my oldest friends Matt I talked about before on the podcast my grandfather who was my hero my Nina who we couldn't even see really because of COVID we couldn't go in and see her Brenda she was like my aunt and my uncle Eric just gone. And there are so many people that I haven't been in touch with as much as I should over the years and that's on me.
I can say phones work both ways email works both ways but if you're thinking about someone you should be the one to reach out and when you're so busy you can almost use that as an excuse as to why you're not reaching out to people but how good is that excuse going to feel if you find out one day that they're gone and now you have no chance to reach out to them.
I've been so devastated by the loss of my uncle Eric the way that I found out that yeah
it was a big part of me putting this podcast on hold and I'm sure he'd be so mad if he
knew that I was not using him as an excuse but as a catalyst to pause something that I
really love doing but I always ended the podcast saying you never know what tomorrow brings so make the most out of every day.
And even though my life is still going to be so full of projects I'm working on I have
to take my own advice and make more time for these people. Hell, I wanted to take my oldest nieces Kaleigh and Emma on a photo trip around the Cape, and go to see some of the lady of the dune sites but because of how busy I was we couldn't set up a time and now Emma went back to college so that's just another example. Like I said I promise this is not the end of the podcast it's just aloha for now.
I'll be back likely in the summer once all of these new projects are going and I kind
of get a feel for where my free time will be then I can start planning the podcast again
because I still have so many more topics that I want to talk about and more to come so
I hope that if you're subscribed you stay subscribed.
If you're just hearing this show for the first time I hope you go check out all the other
episodes go on to my YouTube page go back to the live streams that I used to do, watch those. There's going to be so much content that if you enjoy my work in general I'm going to be a presence everywhere on social media on the web with three books in the website coming all that stuff.
I am a Cape Codder, 12th generation I am a New Englander, so my love of this area is not going to go away and I'm going to keep sharing it with anyone that'll listen, that will watch that will read just because the podcast is on pause doesn't mean that in my footsteps doesn't still apply to me I use that title for everything but that'll just about wrap up this special bonus episode this season finale episode 102 as I kind of explain my decision to pause the podcast for the foreseeable future maybe I'll come back
sooner I'm planning on summer because with two new books likely coming out in May and the Lady of the Dunes book coming out probably within the next month to six weeks I feel like I'm at a buffet where I'm full and my plate is full but people keep coming by and throwing more food on it and it's all good food. I'm like a dog that doesn't know when I'm full I'm going to just keep eating but before I go I wanted to make sure that I say one last thank you to everybody who's been listening you all that have listened that have shared, have reviewed have reached out to me you all are the reason why I keep this going. Sure I love sharing all this stuff that I've talked about but if nobody listens why would I keep doing it and I just hope will stay in touch through social media and that when the time comes that I come back with episode one oh three you'll be all there ready for it but until that time let's queue up DJ Williams James River one last time.
Find all those links in the description of the podcast support all those people that I support I appreciate all of them I appreciate all of you like Doc Brown said and back to the future the future is not written no one's is so make it a good one. And remember in this life don't walk in anyone else's footsteps create your own path, leave the biggest footprint you can in this world because you never know what tomorrow brings. Thank you all so much for listening for the last two-plus years. This has been the in my footsteps podcast I am Christopher Setterlund and I will see you all in the summer thank you again.