What are you working on—on the side?
Postloudness is a collective of independent audio shows hosted by people of color, women and queer-identified hosts focused in the Chicagoland area. It came out of a love of radio shows between myself and my fellow co-founders Cher Vincent and Alex Cox. We love listening to podcasts all throughout the day, but wanted more voices that looked and sounded like us, particularly Midwestern-based. Also, we had a bunch of friends that came up to us and had these great ideas, but had no background in producing and editing shows, so that’s where Postloudness was born. We took on a couple of shows at launch and piloted them—taking care of all the branding, production, mixing, editing, distribution and ad sales. Now that we’ve hit our limit for producing brand new shows, we are now seeking shows to join the collective that are already fully formed and maintained.
How do you manage to work
on your side project(s)?
A very strict schedule and tracking my time to have an idea of how long certain tasks take. Since I also maintain an independent design and development consultancy, teach at a university, writing a book, independent radio producing and sound design, I manage every hour of my day, week by week, even sleep and free time, because I hate that bullshit that says people that don’t sleep are better hustlers, and I love spending time NOT doing work, like weekends. I dedicate certain days to certain projects to keep my mind in certain headspaces so I’m not consistently task switching, such as client work on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Also, I only check email twice a day for 15 minutes because that can be such a huge time suck. If it wasn’t for calendar app Fantastical, Hours for time tracking and Omnifocus, I would be lost.
Why have a side project?
Mostly because you never know where it could go if you don’t give it a shot. The Studio Visit, my experimental newsletter, started off as a side project, because my personal journaling got way too insular and then it lead to interest from a publisher who happened to follow along with them.
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Diptych courtesy of James T. Green.
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Read more about the joy of side projects.
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