This is all @potatowire’s fault.
I’m serious. Every single bit of it. Here’s how it went down.
We were casually conversing one day in the summer of 2011 and I mentioned to Potatowire that I was bored on the hour-and-a-half desert commute to my reserve job. He asked if I listened to any podcasts and I replied that I had never really found any shows that made me want to start.
On his recommendation I checked out a few you might have heard of before:
The scales fell from my eyes and I finally understood. Podcasting was cool. Actually, podcasting was awesome.
Listening to Dan Benjamin on Back to Work served as an existence proof that there were intelligent, rational Buddhist geeks in the world. Following Merlin Mann’s advice on the same show gave me the kick in the butt I needed to turn my deep interest in Buddhism into an actual practice.
About the same time, Potatowire mentioned a few smart people with blogs that I should add to my RSS feed. They had authors who were also pretty helpful on Twitter.
Look, Potatowire was so cool, Dr. Drang followed him. Yes, way back in 2011.
Along the way, I started this site as a little Tumblog and signed up for Twitter on a lark. Few noticed.
Then one day I piggybacked on Potatowire’s suggestion that Gabe let people donate to support his website.
@macdrifter Seconded. RT @potatowire Regarding item number one, you should set up a sponsorship program. I like to pay for good writing.
— Erik Hess (@themindfulbit) February 23, 2012
One word on top of his idea. That’s it.
Gabe then wrote an article about the idea and we started chatting. A few months later, Gabe told me about a secret project he needed design help with: NerdQuery. Then Macdrifter.com needed a site redesign. Then he had me on his show. Then he asked me to co-host.
And now we’re here of all places.
The whole time Potatowire was sitting there in quiet excellence. And now you can read his amazing show notes for the first full episode of Technical Difficulties and understand how excellent he is as well. I couldn’t imagine anyone better suited to bring order from our chaos.
One little conversation with Potatowire started all this.
Thanks, my friend. Thanks.