The Fear Factor

Not the best handwriting, but it will work!!! This is the general idea behind the exercise from today’s episode. Be sure to be as honest as possible with yourself as you evaluate your thoughts. Remember, the goal is to be able to focus on bigger and better things, so much so that our fears become irrelevant.

A Season of Renewal

Spring is a time of many new beginnings. Between the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, the Jewish celebration of Passover, and the beginning of Ramadan, amongst many other things, it seems that there is a real scent of renewal in the air.

One thing I’ve learned in my own life in recent years is that the trees that come alive this time of year aren’t too dissimilar from humans; we all go through seasons of growth and change, and even though there are times where things may seem desolate and even dead, there is always a breath of life on the inside, and whether or not it is visible does not change if it actually exists.

It can be so easy to get discouraged in the world today. Between pandemics we didn’t see coming, the bills and stresses of everyday life, trying to maintain relationships with friends and family, and a thousand other things that I can mention, it can be so easy to feel like everything seems utterly hopeless. 

Funnily enough, trees never worry about when the next time they’re going to see the sun is. They don’t care about appearances nor external factors; they can be barren in the middle of winter and look as gravely as any other inanimate object, yet consistently, at the same time every year, they begin to bloom and blossom into majestic beings with colors and textures that only nature can provide, regardless of environmental circumstances.

As weird as it sounds, maybe it’s time to begin to take a lesson from the trees. Maybe the things that I worry about are superfluous; maybe the growth that I’ve been waiting to see for so long IS happening; it just takes a particular set of circumstances to show it. I also think that, regardless of what it looks like on the outside, it’s never too late to start over and try again.

As long as we’re alive, we still have a purpose.

Just like the trees.

Everything has to have a beginning… right???

Content Creation has been one heck of a ride. Even as I’m writing this, I’m still trying to work out a brutal technical issue from a recording last week, which has become yet another technical setback in a long series of setbacks that almost makes me feel like my equipment is staging a rebellion against me as we speak (lol). Despite all that, I promised myself that I would launch this blog by the end of March, and alas, here we are.

As an introduction, this blog is an “accompaniment” of sorts – it goes along with a podcast I host called Unlimited Talk, which, to put simply, is an encouragement-focused talk show FOR young adults, BY a young adult. It’s been a dream of mine for a long time, and I never want to take the fact that it’s actually coming true for granted.

One of the many reasons why I love doing the show so much is because of how much it teaches me. I know that might sound kind of weird, especially when you consider how most episodes are framed- just 15 minutes of me talking straight through about a topic that I prepared for days, weeks, and in rare cases months to talk about, all to encourage people on life’s journey to keep going.

Let it be known NOW that my life is FAR from the preparedness I try to portray on every episode. In fact, it is quite the opposite. I am a kid in an adult’s body just trying to figure out life at most times. I have so many flaws and failures within my life that I lost count of the missteps a long time ago. In fact, I think that’s one of the things that makes Unlimited Talk unique; the host talks about the advice that he needs to take himself. As the saying goes, “it takes one to know one.

That’s where this blog comes into play. I wanted to create something that “peels back the curtains” so to speak; I wanted a space where people who enjoy and rock with the show could come and read about not only the process of episode creation but more importantly the heart behind it- the reasons why the show even exists in the first place.

Even though we get to talk about real issues on the show all the time, it still sometimes comes off as a little too “sterile” to me; if it were within my control, I’d go out to lunch and spend time with every individual listener just to hear them speak their hearts; the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between. In reality, however, that’s not possible, and no matter what happens, you’re generally never really able to appeal to all hearts at all times. In respect of this truth, I wanted to take the reverse approach; maybe, through my failures, my successes, and everything in between, I could potentially reach hearts by showing mine first. 

“Unlimited Talk” is far from a name that was just picked by chance; the show was designed as something that was meant to take the “limits” off people; what are the things that hold us back from reaching our true potentials? An even more poignant question for myself, as a Christian, is how can I show the people in my life that what I believe in is more than just the hateful perception that has come to be a reality in their lives? Is the “freedom in Christ” from Galatians more freeing than restricting? Can a guy who proclaims to be all of the stuff that they hate in the news be a loving individual?? These were the questions that the show was designed to answer and to be frank, I can’t even answer them all by myself; but then again, I suppose that’s the point.

I’m probably the farthest thing from perfect you can imagine. I’ve made countless mistakes; I have said things I shouldn’t have said, have done things I shouldn’t have, and more times than I can count, have allowed pride to be the fixture of my heart when love and humility should have been in its place. That said, I created this show with the hope that as I go along on this journey, you’ll come along with me for the ride.

This is more than content, and this is more than just a hobby; it has, in a sense, become my passion. 

I would love to share that passion with you.

• C.