belonging is the outcome (feat. Christopher Bylone)

I think it makes perfect sense to me 'cause in some ways I'm the same way, 100%, because there have been times where...

Kind of sum everything up, I was, um, earlier you had mentioned about, you know, when people say what you do for a living and you kind of go into this career, they kind of look at you as like, "Are you sure you wanna go into that?" I went into journalism when I was, uh, when I was a junior I decided on that, and people...

[laughs] To anyone personally that knows me growing up knows I was very shy.

I never really wanted to talk to anyone, mainly because they didn't talk to me, but it was more of I was shy.

I was always shy.

And so when I told people that I was going into journalism, they're like, "Hold the fuck up.

You are wanting to go into journalism, the quiet person that never talks or anything?" They thought it was a joke.

And I knew that it was going to be kind of a joke at first because, yeah, this is someone that ha- has been quiet for most of their life.

They don't really talk to random strangers on, on the internet.

They always kind of keep to themselves.

It took a lot to get out of my shell to be able to do what I do now, and this wasn't even something that I really had to do.

I know a lot of my friends that I have now that I went to my community college with have really seen a huge increase in how I act towards people.

They see me be more outgoing.

They've s- see me break out of my shell, and I've become more vocal and honest and open about anything and everything on here.

And which 2019, 2020 me would not have done that.

It, I would still would've been quiet, would only talk to people I knew.

And it, it took a lot of, like, breaking- Breaking barriers that I had built up for years to knock down and to break through.

And, you know, I, it- people might think that, um, well, how are you able to do all these interviews? Practice.

It's kind of like what you said earlier, practice a lot, and I've done over, between school assignments, talking to random people, I probably have talked to over, I know, 10,000 people in my life.

And [laughs] it is like, I know that might seem a little out there and gra- outrageous, but I think honestly that's probably who I- in total I'm, I've talked to.

Whether it's-

Well, it's that Malcolm Gladwell's theory that you need to have 10,000 hours of experience before you can become an expert, right? So you're, you are definitely hitting, hitting that mark, so.

Yeah.

It would've been interesting to see, if I'd started podcasting in 2020, the change and evolvedness, 'cause I would've been probably the most timid podcaster you've ever seen, ever to have a podcast out on the n- [laughs] on the network, be like the most quiet person, would not say anything explicit at all.

Well-