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Episode 183: Sonia Hamer — Crock-Pot Prose
123 Plays5 years ago
Sonia Hamer talks about her story Pig: An Essay.
This show is sponsored by Bay Path University's MFA in Creative Nonfiction.
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Transcript
Podcast Mishap & Reflecting on 2019
00:00:00
Speaker
ready for a teaser okay there is no teaser because I left my hard drive at home and now I have to re-record my original intros and outros on iPhone earbuds for the final podcast of 2019 I tell you this year in a lot of ways was a one-way train to Bummerville
Introducing Sonya Hamer and Sponsor
00:00:27
Speaker
What's on your hammer? She joins me this week and we talk about a piece she wrote for Creative Nonfiction's true story called Pig NSA. But first, this is CNF, the greatest podcast in the world. And let's hear from that flagship sponsor, Discover Your Story with Bay Path University's fully online MFA in creative nonfiction writing.
Praise for Bay Path University
00:00:48
Speaker
Christine Brooks recalls her experience with Bay Path's MFA.
00:00:51
Speaker
faculty as being filled with positive reinforcement and commitment. They have a true passion and love for their work. It shines through with every comment, every edit, and every reading assignment. The instructors are available to answer questions big and small, and it's obvious that their years of experience as writers and teachers have made a faculty that I doubt can be beat anywhere. Don't just take her word for it.
Promoting Newsletter and CNF Podcast
00:01:14
Speaker
Apply now at BayPAP.edu slash MFA. Classes begin January 21st.
00:01:21
Speaker
You know what else sponsors this podcast? My monthly newsletter. This is gonna be real important heading into 2020, so you need to heed this house ad and subscribe to the newsletter at BrendanOmero.com. Hey, hey, once a month, maybe, maybe more. We'll keep it once a month for now. No spam, can't beat it. All right. I'm gonna say something real controversial here. Star Wars was awesome. I loved it. Got it?
00:02:00
Speaker
Well, okay. This is CNF Creative Nonfiction Podcast, where I talk to badass people about the craft of telling true stories. I'm your host, Brendan O'Mara. Hey, hey. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and consider leaving a little love over on Apple Podcast. Let's head 100 ratings and reviews, man. I hope I've made something worthy of your time and worthy of your endorsement. It means a lot coming from you.
00:02:25
Speaker
Reach out via email, creativenonfictionpodcastatgmail.com if you have any questions or concerns.
Admiration for Sonya's Complex Essay
00:02:31
Speaker
Sonya Hamer, today's guest, the last of 2019, wrote an essay that is so multi-layered and multi-faceted that I'm not entirely sure how she did it. I know I could never write anything quite like it. Not in a million years. Certainly maybe in a million, I would say maybe in a million years I could.
00:02:55
Speaker
realistically It's just we're not gonna get there. I'm gonna fall far short of a million years of age hence if you can't do interview, right? It's a great piece. What can I say?
Reflecting on the Year and Setting Goals
00:03:08
Speaker
Anyway, I hope you had a nice holiday doing whatever it is you do This is the last part of the year lots to reflect on. I hope you take time to reflect a bit also and
00:03:21
Speaker
hone your goals and sharpen your focus. That's a big thing I'm trying to do this year. But above all, as you reflect, set those goals. Go easy on yourself. Advice I'm trying to take myself. Hard to do, but worth trying to heed, if you know what I mean. Enough from me, man. Sonia Hamer is here. She's going to close out 2019. She's the hammer of the year.
00:03:49
Speaker
Hammer? Hammer? No, it's just hammer. Here she is.
Sonya's Personal Stories and Family Bonds
00:03:55
Speaker
Cool. Well, I think we should dive right into your essay and true story and just go from there. I love your very short opening paragraph, which talks about the passing of your grandmother and then the final couple sentences go three and a half months have passed. Life has gone on.
00:04:19
Speaker
that's where the pig comes in. So yeah, so take us to that moment of adopting this pig and what it does to your life, essentially. Yeah, so it was just sort of a strange moment where I think I was spending some time with my dad and this sort of standard thing where we don't always, like we both care about each other, don't always express it well.
00:04:50
Speaker
And I forget how pigs came up, but, you know, he essentially found out that one could adopt a pet pig at some point and it went on for a few weeks. And, you know, it was a joke that became a living pig. We were both at turning points in our lives, respective and very different turning points because, you know, there's
00:05:17
Speaker
quite a few years between my father and I. But I think that that was a way for both of us to, I hesitate to say, deal with what we were feeling. It was probably more of a way to not deal with what we were feeling, but to not deal with it together in sort of a joint action. So why a pig versus any other dog or any other animal?
00:05:44
Speaker
um you know i think it's just the strange the strangeness of it yeah the the eccentricity uh was appealing the outrageousness yeah you're just sort of um definitely a bad reason to bring an animal into your life um the the joke that went too far but you know um
00:06:05
Speaker
I wonder too, you said like getting this pig essentially was in a way a way for you and your father to not deal with what was going on in front of you. What has, you know, is that how your relationship has always been with your dad? You know, I feel like a lot of relationships have like some external objects that they latch onto as
00:06:34
Speaker
a way for both parties to prove the relationship matters to them. And there've been a number of those objects over the years. There's this country singer named Kinky Friedman, who you've probably never heard of, but he's, sorry, that was a hipster thing to say, but yeah, he's just a strange Texan. He's run for governor a couple of times.
00:07:03
Speaker
His whole thing is he's a, you know, a Jewish boy from West Texas. And my dad really latched on. He got found like a CD of his somewhere and like latched on to Kinky Friedman. And I was about 10 at that time. So, you know, I latched on two. And that was like something we could both come to together is Kinky Friedman and the Texas you boys. So, yeah, I would say that there's
The Art of Writing and Editing
00:07:27
Speaker
always been that element there. Well, yeah, I think, uh,
00:07:31
Speaker
fathers in particular. And I don't suspect that this is uncommon with like mothers and children as well. But oftentimes I think it has more to do with fathers. It's like with sons oftentimes it's sports and like that's their way of communicating with their kids. They can't say anything direct because that would show some sort of vulnerability. But oftentimes you can
00:07:57
Speaker
talk through sport and so I suspect with you and this this musician but also this pig too in this essay this is a way for you guys to convey various messages without actually having to come out and say it directly right oh yeah for sure for sure it's a hundred percent it's our football I guess it's funny that you mentioned the opening of the of the essay because like I like that is not the opening I would have I would have
00:08:22
Speaker
chosen on my own and it's not the opening I originally sent to Creative Nonfiction magazine. Oh, nice. What was the original one? Let's see. I think it was a line that I was just way too attached to. It was like when my grandmother died, my father bought a pig. And that was how the essay started. So I ended up being so attached to it that I couldn't see that it didn't really work as an effective opening or lead to an effective opening for the essay.
00:08:52
Speaker
And so I owe a lot to the editor at True Story for really pushing me to, you know, we need to figure out a way to open this essay and it might look like cutting out some of the stuff you have and moving this paragraph up here. So yeah, I just wanted to mention that because- That's cool. Even in an essay I had published with in the quarterly a couple of years ago, I had this sort of irreverent
00:09:21
Speaker
throat clearing, maybe first 200 words, but they accepted it anyway, because Hattie could see that there was something good there, and we cut all that out. So what was that like for you, being edited in this piece, the fact that they accepted it for this, even though you're original, they could see the good in it, even though it needed some work. What was that like for you, working through those kind of edits?
00:09:51
Speaker
I mean, it was an, it was an amazing experience because I've never had an experience. I've never had that happen before. Like I've never had an editor care enough about my writing to try to make it so much better. And so I was just so blown away by what Hattie helped me see about this essay and how, how she helped me push it beyond what I had, what I had sent in.
00:10:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think it was a very educational experience that like I can carry forward. You know, it just taught me a lot about about writing. And it taught me a lot that I can use as an editor myself. Yeah, it's it's it working with a really good editor like teaches you it kind of what does it do? Really? It kind of lets you know that these things are are fluid and it takes like a lot of work and there's a lot of
00:10:45
Speaker
craftsmanship that goes into making something read really fluidly and smooth and that it's okay to have sort of a herky jerky early rougher drafts and if you have an editor with a good eye that you can work that you can mold it you can shape it and it can still come together beautifully but it was definitely you know radically different than what you thought was this beautiful idea when you submitted it so it's like it's kind of in it's kind of inspiring to know that things can be
00:11:15
Speaker
really labored over and worked over to get to something that is readable and fun and artful.
Influences of Writing Styles
00:11:20
Speaker
Oh, yeah, for sure. It's definitely comforting that you can, because the idea that something just comes out fully formed and is perfect is way more intimidating than the idea that you can put work into it and you can get help from other people to try to make something
00:11:44
Speaker
you know, publishable. Yeah, I used to think that about Hemingway's work early on, like when I was in my, you know, when I was just starting to take on writing seriously, and I was like really obsessed with with him, especially, you know, it just read so his work was so tight and lean. And it seemed it was so easy to read that it made it feel like it wasn't labored over and that it just came out like that. And that was like you were saying, kind of intimidating. But now, like, once you're in this long enough, you realize that it is
00:12:14
Speaker
you can really labor and tinker over this. And it does, it comes out through, it comes out through the work. And so you don't have to be as intimidated. You have to realize that even the masters that we think it just comes out fully formed, it's like, no, it's anything, but if anything, they're going through 40 and 50 drafts to get it just right. And I mean, like the great Gadsby too, Pitch Gerald, I mean, that's another book that's like really lean, but
00:12:43
Speaker
Completely like oh it's so much to its editor. And, you know, there's just most. I think most pieces of writing I think about are like that either the, the writer themselves, like, edit them in a very labor intensive way or they had a great relationship with an editor that helped them work through it.
00:13:07
Speaker
I reread Gatsby every single year. It's one at the top five book for me. Yeah. I read it every now about this time of year in December. I always reread it. It's it for that reason, it's so lean and good and it's really funny. And the writing is is beautiful. It's it's unlike anything I could ever write. And that's good because it's just not my my style per se. But I just I love it for the story, the leanness. And even though it's a novel, it's an in effect, the memoir.
00:13:37
Speaker
And so it is very non-fictiony, even though it's a novel. So I'm always coming back to it. Yeah. I mean, the faux memoir genre is really interesting. Like that sort of first-person narrator stance. Like I just started reading Moby Dick for the first time, and then also has like that famous sort of effaced narrator, but not effaced, you know, like Caraway.
00:14:02
Speaker
You've got Ishmael sort of watching and narrating, and it gives it that layer that you're more familiar with in personal essays or narrative nonfiction. It's interesting why our brains latch onto that mode of storytelling. It could be that the narrator, when that's done really well, it feels like they're a true stand-in for you as the reader in an unobtrusive way.
00:14:29
Speaker
Like they're there observing this thing and reporting back to you. And they're not getting in the way of the story. They're just kind of there observing on your behalf. And I feel like my favorite memoirs, my favorite essays, I'm kind of blanking on some of the exact ones. But my favorite memoirs are always the one where the narrator is looking outward and is actually telling someone else's story above their own. And just like Gatsby as a model. Like I think that is, if you can write a memoir that's like that,
00:14:57
Speaker
To me, that is like the gold standard. And that's just my taste, but that's just where I gravitate towards. Is that something you really like too? Like you were saying that we kind of latch on to that. Do you like that mode of storytelling? I definitely do. But I also appreciate like when the narrator has a very strong presence and voice. And I think that that persona can also be an important tool in writing. It just depends on what story you're telling and what job you're trying to do with the writing.
00:15:25
Speaker
There's a David Foster Wallace essay, a very long title profiling Mike Joyce, this tennis player from like the mid 90s. Yeah. Have you read that? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Is that in Consider the Lobster or is that in a different collection? He has several collections of his essays. Yeah. That one's in Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. Yes. OK. Yeah. The cruise ship essay, right? Yeah. Yeah. That one. That's the lead essay, I think. Or actually, no, I think it's towards the back. But that's what it's named after, the cruise ship essay.
00:15:55
Speaker
And but, yeah, that profile on Mike Joyce, where, you know, you've got the the pyrotechnics of his writing style, but he's also basically profiling how hard it is to break through on that upper tier of tennis. And then, of course, this this player, Mike Joyce. So it's like it's outward looking, but it also has just those just such kinetic language that it just pops off the page. So there's a great balance of voice and looking out.
00:16:24
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, for sure. And there's the he also has like a profile of John McCain that is not I think is not quite as formally. It's not quite as Wallacy because I think he was writing it for like a major news outlet of some sort that I don't remember. But yeah, Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone. Yeah, really probably a very difficult balance to achieve. I can't say I've tried it myself, but I can imagine it being just agonizing.
00:16:52
Speaker
Yeah, I've tried it and that's a hard, it's hard to imitate that because when you imitate it, it comes off of trying way too hard. You know, it's like, cause you know, there are some people who are so singularly unique and that's redundant of course, but it's, they are just on their own plane. And if you try to imitate them, it's like, oh yeah, you're just trying to be that person. So I've gone through that of trying to be really like funny and witty and
00:17:21
Speaker
you know verbose and using footnotes and it's just like here it's it's pointing the finger too much at myself and that's just ultimately not who I am and not where my strengths lie so I just have to pivot and go elsewhere with my taste but it's a but yeah sometimes you gotta you gotta like fuck around like that you gotta go and imitate people and just straight up copy their style and see if it works I know you've read widely with like Maggie Nelson and
00:17:49
Speaker
I think Rebecca Solnit and some other people like who were who were some people similarly that you try to kind of emulate to, you know, try to reach your own your own style. Yeah, for sure. I find so I'm reading this memoir called The Undying right now by Anne Boyer, and she's a poet and she does the sort of lyrical leaving together thing. But she also like, she doesn't hold herself back from like,
00:18:19
Speaker
maybe more analytic statements as opposed to just focusing solely on images. And I think I find that really compelling in her writing. And I found myself doing it sort of unconsciously. Maybe it would be a good exercise to just call a spade a spade and do it on purpose. Yeah, it's a bit like people in art in art school have to paint in the style of certain artists at some point. They'll have projects where they're like,
00:18:48
Speaker
paint something like Cezanne or like Picasso. And I guess just that exercise of trying to imitate teaches you a lot. Yeah, you've got to do that. It's the only way you'll come to anything that is semi-original or at least something that feels like it's coming from your core.
Balancing Personal Themes in Writing
00:19:12
Speaker
And who knows, there's probably a million Banksy imitators out there.
00:19:18
Speaker
but those people will eventually come to their own style of street art, or maybe they'll take the street art and somehow juxtapose it against gallery stuff, and they'll come to their own thing by just taking all those influences. It's the only way, and then you put it together and you boil it, you reduce it down, you season it appropriately, and then you, there you go. Sonja soup. Sonja soup. I'm not sure I want, if that's the soup of the day, I'm not sure I want it, but you know.
00:19:46
Speaker
Yeah, I think that, you know, we talk about creating, but really most art is fundamentally like synthetic. It's an exercise in synthesis of influences and, you know, experiences. So, or like, yeah, I guess I use the soup metaphor too. I like to say the crock pot, like I like to think about my brain as a crock pot and like you
00:20:14
Speaker
throw everything in there and you let it sit for a while. Well, that's a perfect metaphor in a lot of ways too, because it embedded in that is, you know, eight to 10 hours on low heat. Right. So it's like you have to be patient with a lot of this stuff. It's not going to come out in like 30 seconds in the microwave. You have to have the confidence that you've put the right ingredients down. And then sometimes these things just have to sit and percolate and marinate and just bubble together and get tender.
00:20:42
Speaker
for a long, long time. And then it's ready. And then it's like, okay, all that time was worth it. Oh yeah. But I mean, during the eight hours, it's not, it's not so easy to just sit there and be like, Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. You want to think like, Oh, this is starting to smell good, but I don't know. Like, I want this thing out. Exactly. Yeah. Maybe it's ready to serve, but then you bite into it or someone else bites into it and you're like, Oh no, there's, that's all,
00:21:11
Speaker
It's very red, very red in the middle. Oh, man. Yeah, that's great. I love it. That's such a perfect metaphor. And it's definitely probably going to be in the title of this episode. So it's like Crockpot. Crockpot. Crocpot. Crocpot. Crocpot. Crocpot. Crocpot. Crocpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Crockpot. Cro
00:21:38
Speaker
That is the feeling where you send it out and it's still pretty, it's pretty bloody in the center. And there, if you see, like, it's really nice when an editor, despite that, like, undercooked nature, sees, you know, oh, this could be really good. Why don't you stick it in the oven for just a little longer, you know? Right. It's a great feeling. Yeah. So as you were writing Pig in essay, which I love the title to, is that always the title?
00:22:08
Speaker
Yeah, that was that. And the first line I was very attached to were what came to be first. Nice. So as you're writing this, like this essay has I mean, you look at the title and you're like, oh, this is going to be something very cute. And I say about an animal and and oh, man, I hope this animal doesn't die at the end. But this is is so multilayered with the relationship with your dad. Of course, the the pig, your history with bulimia.
00:22:35
Speaker
sexual assault, there's the death of your grandmother, there's just so much in this essay. How did you balance all of those things so it actually felt cohesive? Um, so after we talked about this last time, I went back and found my notebook from when I was writing Pig because it is, it's, uh, I finished it over two years ago now. So it's, it's been a while. Um, but what I was relying on,
00:23:04
Speaker
at the time very heavily was something I learned from a teacher of mine, Lacey Johnson, who's also a great nonfiction writer and a great influence. But she really enjoys talking about triangles when she's trying to explain how to write essays and balance essays. And so one of her triangles is a mania mystery mastery. So if you like each of those goes at a point on the triangle.
00:23:32
Speaker
the narrator of the essay has a mania that they're obsessed with, a mastery, some sort of subject material that they have a grasp over and they use throughout the essay as a lens, and a mystery, which maybe is the underlying questions or questions that the narrator uses in the process of trying to figure out. So I use that triangle. I'm not sure how effectively I used it because it's
00:24:01
Speaker
I don't know that each element of the essay would map exactly onto that model. But the other thing that I was thinking about was the idea that what defines a lyric essay, at least for me, is that there's some sort of epiphany through the synthesis of these things. So like at some point, all the strands come together and there's some sort of turning point or change or
00:24:31
Speaker
epiphany or whatever emotional alteration, whatever word you want to use. And so I was thinking about the essay as being organized around that, around whatever emotional realization I came to in the process of these events. And was that epiphany in this piece when you were kind of pulling back what your grandmother had
00:24:56
Speaker
gone through and trying to show that show that to your father to what he was kind of avoiding the whole time. Yeah and I think so and I mean it's it's interesting because like as I was working on this essay you know I brought what I was working on in the essay back into my own life and you know it resulted in a lot of conversations with my dad about like why he was angry at her you know what I thought
00:25:27
Speaker
about the things that I had read about her life. And, you know, there's still a lot I haven't told him or talked to him about, but there was a feedback between the essay and like my life and my relationship with my dad and what I was at least trying to talk to him about. And I also think that the essay gave me a way to work through things like maybe in a less, well, I don't want to say less destructive because, you know, I don't really know what
00:25:56
Speaker
repercussions would be if he read that essay. But, um, it gave me a way to work through and think about the mess inside of me without like maybe putting the mess onto him. And I think it let me see him a little more clearly and accept maybe, you know, some of the ways in which we're both a little limited. I think the emotional epiphany was just that there's, um, these feelings are there.
00:26:26
Speaker
So there's a lot of love and affection and you know, all of these things can coexist in some manner. There's a passage partway through that, you write, my father's words leave me furious. How can he let his adolescent anger be so blinding?
Processing Emotions through Writing
00:26:45
Speaker
That jerk, that dick, that fucking piece of shit, his thoughtlessness, I feel feeds my silence.
00:26:51
Speaker
course you go on a little bit and I wrote in the margin there just like as a question that I want to ask you like how how hard was that to write for you to go into that to be that raw how hard was that for to to approach that you know pretty pretty difficult there's definitely there's definitely a big impulse to hold back from emotions like that I'm writing especially when
00:27:22
Speaker
people you care about are involved. I think the thing that helps me through it was I remember that particular section because I remember, again, Lacey suggesting that I use an uncharitable reading and then a charitable reading way of approaching that section. So I have, you know, an angry paragraph and then a more charitable paragraph under that. And so I do think that the
00:27:49
Speaker
Those two work together for me like both in the essay and emotionally that like having this more charitable interpretation helped me give myself permission to be more emotionally raw I guess was the word you used and open in the section above it.
00:28:11
Speaker
Yeah, and you close out that paragraph, too. It's just this very visceral thing. And all day, my rage leaves me breathless, leaking and shaking as pig's delicate toes click across the floor. So even as you're in this raw, visceral rage, the end of this paragraph is just this little playful TikTok of the pig clicking across the floor, which, of course, is sort of the connective tissue between you and your dad in a lot of ways. So it really is this wonderful sort
00:28:40
Speaker
juxtaposition of this anger versus this sort of oblivious, oblivious little pig, well, big pig at this point walking across the floor. Very big pig. Yeah, I mean, I guess not for a pig. He's not very big. But no, I mean, I think it's helped a lot by the fact that a pig is just it's just a it's a really intelligent animal. It's also a slightly ridiculous animal. And, you know, it's an animal we're not
00:29:09
Speaker
used to seeing in certain contexts. It was a very useful tool to have that sort of critical emotional junkers. Yeah, and it's nice that it kind of provides levity in the essay too, because anytime the pig pops in, it relieves some of the tension in a way.
00:29:35
Speaker
Yeah, which is, you know, what the pig did in real life too, right? He gave us something to focus on and talk about. So probably writing it that way came pretty naturally because that's, you know, how I experienced it and how we, we use the pig functionally. And later in the essay too, you also write, and this, this might be a good time to ask you, given that you have probably a good two years distance from
00:30:02
Speaker
the Sonia that wrote this and the Sonia you are today, you wrote that, I can't remember a time when I felt safe in my flesh. And I'd extend to you, like, are you any closer to feeling safer in your own flesh? How has that progressed for you? Yeah, I've come a long way. With the eating disorder, like, is in the body dysmorphia is all much, much better. I mean, that stuff,
00:30:31
Speaker
sort of never completely goes away, I don't think, but I'm a lot farther away from it, which is a really nice bruiser because not a good headspace to be. And yeah, I mean, part of my process of maturing has been to trust my agency a little more about my body and my decisions. And I definitely have come a lot closer
00:31:00
Speaker
to feeling in control of that and embracing that.
Advice for Writers and Podcast Future
00:31:03
Speaker
I think there's still certain things that are difficult, like just navigating relationships when you have self-esteem or boundary issues or all of these issues that can come along with certain things.
00:31:27
Speaker
Like it's just a just a very ongoing process. Yeah. I've learned a lot and I have a lot more tools. So that's great. And as we wind down here, Sonia, I wonder for for for listeners out there who might be struggling with, you know, a piece of work, they might be, you know, just toggling around with maybe given that to me is a very fearless essay. Like it comes from it comes from a place of
00:31:57
Speaker
of fear and desperation in a lot of ways, I feel. At least that's how I read it. And you wrote through that and got here. So you had to be unbridled and fearless. So maybe for given that you've had that experience with this, for people who might be struggling with that, how might you advise them to be more unbridled and to lean into that fear to get the best thing on the page for them? I mean, I think
00:32:27
Speaker
probably to at least try and let go of the whatever all the I can't do this for whatever reason you have you say I can't do this because it will hurt this person or because this isn't a thing I should be talking about or it will make people think this thing like to to constantly be talking back against those those reasons that your brain comes up with because you know
00:32:58
Speaker
They, they're always, they're always going to come back and crop back up and you just have to constantly, it's a constant process of saying no to them or saying that like something else is more important. That's helpful. I mean, I think also just having a strong, um, base in the rest of your life, like having a strong accepting network or people that you can go to to talk about, uh, uh, maybe not your writing, but like what you're struggling with emotionally. Um,
00:33:28
Speaker
can be really helpful with writing that's very close to you. And sort of giving you a place to rest so that you have the emotional energy to come back to whatever you're working on. And fight back mentally against your anxieties or your fears or your worries. I dig the tight 30 CNFers. Sure, you can't quite dig
00:33:58
Speaker
as deep on some tactical matters. But maybe there's ways I can still shoehorn in some goodies in a tighter package, right? That's the black album nature of the next phase of the podcast. Same power, tighter package. Cause this is why I know an hour is a big ask when you've probably got 10 other podcasts and networks and baby yoga and homework and reading and romantic love to engage in.
00:34:26
Speaker
The more I think of it, putting out a show longer than 30 minutes seems downright rude and maybe even selfish. How dare you? Subscribe to the newsletter, friend. There's good stuff coming to subscribers. Once a month, no spam. Can't beat it. BrendanOmera.com, hey, hey. If you deem the show worthy of sharing, link up to it on social media. You can tag me and the show at cnfbot, as you know, scaling back on social media. Heard. So if I don't give you those mad props,
00:34:54
Speaker
and fist bumps right away. That is why. So in any case, like I said, last part of the year. Can you believe it? You've made it another year doing this pot mess of a podcast. It is time to go. We will just keep rolling into 2020, man. So let's do this CNF. Happy new year. This train doesn't stop. Cause if you can't do interviews, see ya.