Dominic has been a distraction.
By the end of the weekend, I’ve fully convinced myself of this. Ameena was wrong—it’s not that I’ve outgrown public radio. It’s that I’ve become complacent, letting Dominic and Kent speak for me when I have a microphone, too. I didn’t even stand up for my own idea. That was all Dominic. I was grateful at the time, but it should have been me.
Now it will be.
After a soul-replenishing cake tasting, which my mother rescheduled after the unexpected Orcas trip, I dig back into work in a way I haven’t in months. I camp out at a coffee shop, order a soup-bowl-size mug of chai, and clamp on my headphones.
We had a huge publicity push at the beginning, which I’ll begrudgingly admit was thanks to Kent. Then there was Dominic’s Saffron Shaw connection. I participated in all of that promo, sure. But it’s almost like I was so used to being behind the scenes that once I wasn’t, I didn’t know what to do. We have some loyal listeners, but our early buzz has definitely dipped. Nothing lasts, Kent said. I’ll prove him wrong. I’ll find our momentum.
He said we had a chance at PodCon—I’m determined to make that happen. The full lineup hasn’t been announced yet, and we sent over a handful of sample episodes last month. I’m going to make us impossible to ignore.
My social media following has scared me a little; even the blue checkmark by my name is something I’m not used to seeing. Still, I open Twitter and search our hashtag. People are still talking about us, discovering us every day. Our subscriber numbers have continued to climb.
I tweet out a shameless request for listeners to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher. It gets twenty, thirty, fifty retweets within a few minutes, and it’s hard to ignore the thrill of validation that brings me. I add a form on our section of the PPR website encouraging listeners to submit their dating stories, and I tweet that out, too.
Then I listen back to our most popular episodes, pull quotes from our guests, turn them into graphics for social media that Ruthie can post on our official Twitter and Instagram accounts this week. No—I’ll do it. I schedule the tweets and posts, spacing them out so we don’t bombard anyone.
I scroll through my friends lists, looking for people who have a connection to something bigger—former Pacific Public Radio employees who got snapped up by NPR, acquaintances with podcasts of their own. I send about a dozen messages. Hell, I even reach out to producers of some of the biggest dating podcasts, and I go back on social media and promote the shit out of their upcoming episodes.
It’s not glamorous work, but radio often isn’t. We don’t see the people painstakingly stitching audio clips together, waiting for files to upload, refreshing their subscriber numbers. We see the shows that take off beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, the Serials and the My Favorite Murders and the podcasts hosted by whichever celebrity decided to start their own podcast that week.
Fortunately, I’m no stranger to the unglamorous, to the behind-the-scenes. I’ve been there for ten years. I’m producer-ing the shit out of this, and if there’s anything I know for certain, it’s that I was a damn good producer.
* * *
—
Slowly but surely, my producing works its magic.
On Monday, we have a few dozen new Apple Podcasts reviews and dating and breakup stories submitted by listeners.
On Tuesday, we sign a sponsorship deal with a major mattress company. And both Dominic and I get free mattresses.
On Wednesday, someone at NPR emails me back, apologizing for the short notice and asking if they can simulcast our grief episode this week.
That one makes me splash hot coffee all over my keyboard.
“Shit,” I mutter, racing to the break room for some paper towels.
“Everything okay over there?” Dominic asks when I return.
I mop up the spill as best I can. “If by okay you mean, is NPR going to simulcast tomorrow’s episode, then yes.”
He glances up from his computer. We haven’t exactly been doing sustained eye contact this week, and I’ve been immersing myself in the show as much as possible so I don’t obsess over it. As long as I don’t slow down, I don’t have to think about his hands or his hips or his mouth. His scratchy voice in my ear, asking if I’m almost there.
Yes, of course this is healthy.
I tell him about NPR, and then we tell Kent and Ruthie and my mother and Phil, and oh my god. This could be it. This could be the thing that gets us to PodCon, the thing that turns us from cute local podcast to one of those massive success stories.
All we have to do is nail it.
* * *
—
My mother slips on a pair of headphones like she’s worried they might bite.
“You’re going to be wonderful,” I tell her from across the table. “You go onstage in front of hundreds of people every night.”