I’m back! In today’s episode I chat about where I have been during my podcast hiatus (LOTS OF STUFF MAN) as well as where this podcast may or may not be going.

• DISCLAIMER

Colorful words may be used. don’t be alarmed.

• FIND ME ON ALL THE THINGS

Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo

YouTube – https://youtube.com/c/CindyGuentertBaldo

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/llamaletters/

Discord – https://discord.gg/Rwpp7Ww

Pinterest – https://www.pinterest.com/llamaletters/

Website – www.cindyguentertbaldo.com

• STUFF I MENTIONED

Planners & Wine – https://www.plannersandwinepod.com/

Spiced Chaos – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/spiced-chaos/id1478171420

Planner Girl Chatter – https://plannergirlchatter.com/

Inquiries – cindy@cindyguentertbaldo.com

Check out this episode!

TRANSCRIPTION:

Well, hello everybody. It’s been a while. Has it? I know it’s been a while because this is the first time I’ve podcasted in almost a year. So yeah, I know it’s been awhile. It’s been awhile. So if this is your first time here, which would be interesting to me, but still cool. This is the uncurated life podcast, where I talk about how our real life.

 

And our internet lives don’t always match up. There’s a difference, a disconnect. And I also just talk about all the things that I want to talk about. My name is Cindy Guentert Baldo. I am a artist YouTuber. I make stuff here on the internet and so on and so forth. And I’m back after a hiatus. So I know that.

 

Some of you have been following me on YouTube, but for those of you who haven’t, or for those like to kind of maybe pull everything into a neat little package, I thought today I would talk about both where I’ve been, what’s been going on and what’s coming next for this podcast. Let’s just start, I guess, with where I’ve been or what’s going on.

 

So when last time I posted a podcast, it was December of 2020. We all, no what’s been going on 2020, 2021 with the pandemic and everything else. There was also all of the brew haha. Surrounding the 2020 election here in the United States and the January 6th insurrection. And that, that is still on.

 

Yeah. Going like there still a lot of bullshittery going on in the world. As of now September 20, 21 as I’m recording this. So there is that, but in my personal life, there’s also been a lot going on. For one, I moved when last I was here, I was living in Napa, California. And now I live in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado.

 

We moved because my husband’s job opened or is opening up a second office and his team got transferred out here. So yeah, we’re out here, which had implications, not only on where we lived, but on our custody, on my medical care. On all sorts of things. And we are still in the middle of all of that. And I will be doing an episode kind of deeper diving into the changes, the custody, all of that, probably here on the podcast versus YouTube.

 

That’ll be coming up in the future. As I sit on my YouTube channel. The custody situation is a delicate one to talk about because it doesn’t just involve me and my, my immediate like circle here in my home. It also involves my kid’s dad. And there’s a lot of toes I don’t want to step on when it comes to talking about that, but I will discuss it in an upcoming episode.

 

So we moved, we found out at the end of January that we would be moving. We sold our house in Napa. We bought a house here in Denver, on the burbs, made the move, and now we are all the kids, the cats, Jesse, and I we’re all here, but that was a huge part of my life in the last six months, seven months, however many months ironic.

 

I did not put the podcast on hiatus because of the move. I did that before we even knew we would be moving. I put the podcast on hiatus because I was just overwhelmed and exhausted and I needed some time and I’ve had some time. And in that time, I did not get the rest I needed because of all of the other things going on the move being kind of the central piece of all of that.

 

But it hasn’t just been, the move parenting has gotten so much more complicated. My kids are teenagers, they’re 15 and 17 and the combination of the pandemic and being at school from home like virtual learning. And all of that. Plus some other things that were festering having to do with chronic pain and anxiety has meant that one of my kids has been having a lot of struggles around health.

 

Around their health, around their mobility, around their mental health, their physical health. And it’s just kind of become a really hot mess of a situation. Now, my kid’s not a hot mess. My kid is wonderful and fabulous and also human and, and having struggles right now. And the reason I emphasize that is to let you all know that that.

 

If there are things that you need help with things that you need intervention with, that doesn’t make you a, a broken person. It just makes you a person and a person who has circumstances and things that they have to deal with. It’s important because as somebody who is ill and has chronic pain, I need to continually remind myself that just because I don’t.

 

I don’t have the body and the feeling of like a healthy 40, 40, 45. I’m not 45. I’m 41. Jesus, Cindy, let’s not age yourself, extra here, but like, it doesn’t make me a less than person. It just makes me a person with my things that I have to deal with. Anyway. So there’s that dealing with those things as a parent is just, it’s very intense.

 

And if you are a parent or if you’re as somebody who has had parents or parental figures in your life, when you’re a kid, you expect that the adults in your life have the answers, and it’s a major step towards adulthood. When you realize that they don’t, that they’re fallible, that they don’t have all the answers.

 

And as a parent, Coming to the realization that I can’t fix everything that I am at a loss as much as anybody else’s and trying to manage some of these problems or deal with some of these situations. I don’t know if that’s like a graduation into adulting or what, but it was a really scary realization to come to.

 

And, and on top of that, and those particular circumstances, just in general, parenting is intense and parenting teenagers is complex and. Stressful. And it’s also amazing. Like, I think it’s also my favorite as stressful as it’s been. I think parenting teenagers is one of my favorite modes of parenting because they’re so awesome.

 

And I can have like adult conversations with them and they’re funny and they are just amazing people. And anyway, that’s another podcast, too. Parenting teenagers. It’s an entirely different podcast, but suffice it to say that combined the move, the pandemic. And general teenager-hood as well as some specific problems parenting in this family has become immensely complicated and at a sapped, a lot of my mental and physical energy now, as for my health, my health took a major nosedive during the pandemic, right around the time it started the combination of stress and everything else.

 

It really tanked my shit. I thankfully throughout the move and everything else in the time I’ve had this hiatus, it hasn’t gotten much worse. It has, uh, we’ve had some struggles, I believe my first. Subsequent forays into the world of having gout happened after this podcast, uh, went on hiatus, but like gout, not with standing and pain, not withstanding, I have not had fingers crossed a major setback since then, but that nothing’s felt better either.

 

So I’m basically just trying to adapt to this new normal and it’s been difficult. It has been very difficult, especially during the move, trying to not like fall apart during the move physically was really difficult, especially considering that right before we left California, I took a major fall and then had to drive 1800 miles with what I think was a sprained knee and a sprained ankle, two separate legs, but I didn’t land on my facial or my kidneys.

 

So good. Suffice it to say that while I have not been feeling better, I haven’t necessarily been feeling much worse. The biggest issues with my health right now are actually mainly surrounding getting new care established, which is still in process at the time I’m recording this and it’s very stressful.

 

At this very minute though, as I’m recording this, the kids are back in full-time school, which is exhausting for all of us. It’s been 18 months or so since they’d been in any sort of full-time school, the most they had been in was three hours a day, twice a week. Now they’re full day, five days a week.

 

It’s been an adjustment. We’re trying to establish medical care for all four of us. Jessie’s got the diabetes type one, I’ve got the kidney disease and both kids have their own things. They have to deal with. Lots of doctor’s appointments, lots of figuring things out, new insurances, all fucking moving man, moving right anyway.

 

But in general, I’m very happy here. I really like it here. I love my new house. If you would like to see tours of my new dream house, which I feel very privileged and lucky to have gotten into there on my YouTube channel. I’ll link them in the comment in the show notes. I will say that a big thing that has had me continually pinching myself and also doubting whether this is real or not is growing up in a state of.

 

Of pretty tough, low income poverty area. And I wish my parents were alive to see this cause I don’t think they would believe, and then they would want to move in, but it’s something I’m continually grappling with. And also probably something we’ll talk more about on the podcast is consider this to be like a, like, Preview of many things to come a taste of things to come, as they say in mortal combat.

 

But that basically, oh, almost forgot. Loki, my sweet kitty, the weekend that we flew out to Denver to close on the house the Friday before that w Loki. We found out that he has terminal kidney failure. These big mass on one of his kidneys, both of his kidneys are extremely damaged. There’s really no hope for him to ever gain kidney function back.

 

The best we can do is keep him happy and comfortable until he. Crosses the rainbow bridge we were even told it might not be a good idea to move him to Denver. This dress might be too much for him. Thankfully, we decided not to go with that advice and we did move him to Denver and he’s actually doing really well right now, but we know that our time with him is very limited.

 

So we’re trying to, we try to soak it up as much as we can. He’s skinny. Well, I would say he’s at a normal. Low normal weight. He had the weight to lose, to begin with. He was kind of a chunk. And so there is that, but it. It is difficult seeing him being skinnier than before, but in general personality wise, he is doing great.

 

So we’re hopeful that we have some more time with him, but we, our goal is to just keep him feeling as good as we can until it’s time. I know it’s kind of a bummer. It’s a bummer for us too. That also has put the idea of asking a dog into question, which was something we almost started the process of right before we found out we were going to move.

 

And I’m glad that that didn’t happen. Just because that would’ve made things even more complicated because moving with cats, that was a situation. But we are trying to decide whether we want to bring a dog into our lives before or after Loki is through with us. So that’s more to come on that anyway. So that’s my update.

 

12 minutes of update. Let’s move to what is coming up for this podcast. I missed the podcast. I actually really like it. I love to talk. I can talk all day, all night. You probably recognize that, but I also didn’t know what I want to do with it this whole time that it’s been on hiatus. I really not only was taking a break because I just needed it.

 

To free up some time, but it also, wasn’t really sure where I wanted it to go. It’s not the most focused of podcasts when I came into it, I had this really clear idea of what I wanted and then it occurred to me that. I wasn’t sure if the, the box of just exploring people’s real lives versus their internet lives was exactly what I wanted to be talking about.

 

I also didn’t just want to talk about planners. Shit. I love talking about planners shit, but if you want to talk about planner shit all day and all night on a pod. I’ve got podcasts for you. Check out planners and wine or spiced chaos. You can check out planner girl chatter. They’ve been around for so long and they love to talk about planners.

 

Shit, all sorts of planner, podcasts out there. And the ones that have two hosts, especially two or more hosts are so much fun to listen to because of their band chair. I, on the other hand, wasn’t sure if I wanted to bring on a cohort. I’ll talk more about that in a minute, but I wasn’t sure now that I’ve in the hiatus that I’ve been on, other podcasts have really like taking the ball and run with it.

 

And now I’m not really sure where this podcast fits. I’m still not sure, but I really wanted to start recording anyway. So I figured rather than just sit and ponder it and ponder and ponder and ponder, I’m just going to start making episodes and I’ll figure out my own fucking way. Thankfully, this is a passion project for me.

 

It doesn’t make any money. And the closest it comes to making money at my patrons, support it. And if you are interested in becoming a patron, you can go to www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo to find out more. They got to see here, some of these episodes ahead of time before, but the point I’m making is that this is not a integral part of the money-making side of my work.

 

And so I, I can experiment with it and I’m going to, I’m not sure how yet though, but, um, A big piece here is that I’m in a very spicy place right now. I have a lot of thoughts. I have a lot of, of spicy thoughts on things, both in the planner community, on the online community, in the world at large lots and lots of spicy thoughts.

 

And I really want to give some of those spicy thoughts. I want to give my takes whether they’re hot takes or their takes everybody that listens to this podcast have, which is also entirely possible. But I would love to give a lot of those tips. And I do give some of them on YouTube, but I’d also like to give some of them here, partly because the medium of a podcast actually, I think lends itself better to rambling about your spicy takes depending on the video.

 

Although part of me is also thought about maybe doing video versions of some episodes of the podcast and cross posting them to YouTube again, experimentation. Right. But I also don’t want to be talking mad shit all the time. At least that’s what I’m telling myself. I, it’s not that I want this to be like a super positive, happy place, but I also don’t want it to be just mad shit talking all the time place.

 

Because even though it feels like in the world right now, there’s so much to talk mad shit on. Sometimes I want to talk about fluffy as shit too. Like that’s the thing it’s so easy. And I’ve noticed that. Recently that if you post, there are some people who this, I guess, will be a spicy take, but there are some people in our community I’ve noticed who’ve gotten real kind of sassy about how somebody who might speak up about black lives matter or trans lives matter.

 

Not speaking up about, say the surface members who died in Kabul. Right. That was something that I noticed very recently. Recording of this podcast and a, not everybody can talk about everything all the time. People have to also be able to take step away from that. Talk about lighter and fun things to keep from completely losing their ever-loving shit.

 

It’s a privilege to be able to kind of step away from the thought of some of those things, but sometimes people are doing it for their mental health, but for other reasons, also sometimes you don’t want to hear people’s opinions on certain things, or maybe you do. The point is that is something that I very much want to explore in this new, I guess season of the podcast is both my spicy takes, but also when and why people talk about things and when tragedies are used as cudgels to bop people over the head with, if you don’t fit into their worldview anyway, I also would like to bring guests back on again, but I don’t think that’s probably going to happen until after the new year, biggest reason being that I have some other.

 

Priorities when it comes to well earning money to help pay for the house that we live in now and so on and so forth. But other things also going on, including in like, remember I said complicated parenting and medical issues, I got those things. I only have so much bandwidth. And although I had a really, what’s the word I’m looking for a really, uh, Optimistic plan for what I was going to get done by the end of the year.

 

I revised that when I started looking at my goals for the rest of this quarter, quarter two or three, quarter three, and also quarter four of 2021. And I cut some things out and I’ll talk about that. Also, for example, the Facebook group is not coming back anytime in the near future, mostly because of. I really don’t want to right now, but I’ll do an episode talking about how I came to that decision coming up soon as well.

 

I should write that down. Cause I think it just came up with that. The point, the point is that I don’t have a lot of bandwidth. I do want to reserve some of it for the podcast. But there is an extra layer of contacting guests, arranging the interview time, getting the thing recorded and everything else like turning on the microphone and rambling at it is a lot less complicated than bringing a guest on the podcast.

 

And so I want to ease back into it before bringing guests back on, on top of that, I mentioned earlier that I had been thinking about co-hosts and. Again, for the same reasons, not thinking about bringing a cohost on all the time. What I was thinking about doing was bringing on guest co-hosts maybe to do a couple of episodes with, or for a specific topic and also potentially bringing my sister back.

 

If you didn’t hear our two-part episode from back, I don’t know. I think it was the beginning of 2020, maybe, maybe in 2019. I don’t remember. I love talking to my sister and I think we have some really great conversations having her on the podcast as a guest host from time to time would be great. But again, that’s going to be coming up probably after the first of the year.

 

In the meantime, if you would like to give me suggestions, go to my website and let me know on the contact page on the podcast page for your suggestions, or you can go to my discord, which will be linked in the show notes while I don’t know the Facebook group that is court is absolutely okay. But, so where does that leave me with all of that being said, where does that leave me?

 

Where does that leave this podcast for now this new season, we can call it season two, but I think I’m actually going to call it seasoned part D with the podcast. Uh, I’m going to be back to releasing weekly episodes on Mondays starting today. I’m going to have two related episodes coming up where I’m talking about recent, as of the recording of this, it’s actually kind of out of date now at this point, but I still wanted to talk about it.

 

And I, lot of people ask me to talk about it from my Patrion about the ship that went down with the happy planner world, the happy planner, squad, pain influencers, all of that shit. I have a two part episode on that coming up. One part kind of dealing with the. Pain influencer’s side of it at one part kind of dealing with the mean girls, sorta feeling about things that’s coming after those two episodes, I’m going to start alternating to kind of give myself a little bit of a format, at least for now while I experiment.

 

So the alternating is going to be sort of like a spicy or a hot take, which is my thoughts on some topic planner related, right. And then something fun or lighter. So I’ll be alternating the spiciness with the fluffiness and the fluffiness. I’ve got some favorite, like media I’m enjoying. I know I do some favorites videos on YouTube, but this is going to be specifically about like podcasts, TV shows, YouTube.

 

Books, those sorts of things, silly shit that annoys me, pet peeves, talking about things I’m looking forward to like movies or whatever, or just in general things I’m looking forward to. And I’ll also be taking some personality tests. I’ve had requests for a long time to take some personality tests for the YouTube or for whatever, because I have not really taken any of them is I don’t really know what my Enneagram is.

 

I don’t really know what my. Fucking, what is it like Ian PJ or whatever the fuck that one is. I don’t know what any of that is. I don’t know what any of it is. So I’m going to be doing two episodes where I take some personality tests, because I thought that that would be fun. So I’m going to be altered, but there’s one thing I also would really like to do, but I’m not sure if there’s interest and if there is, I would love it.

 

If you post a picture of this podcast of the cover or whatever, let me know. You’re listening to it on Instagram stories, tag me at llamaletters and let me know a book you would like me to review because what I would really like to review. Quote, unquote guru books. There is a YouTube channel called savvy writes books.

 

I love her takes on things and she did some reviews of like Rachel Hollis’s books. And if you follow me for any amount of time, you know, I have feelings about Rachel Hollis, but like miracle morning books, I’ve read before. Books that maybe at a point I was like, Ooh. And then I was like, Hmm. So if you would like me to do any, read those books too, you don’t have to and tell you my thoughts on them.

 

Let me know on Instagram stories, tag me at llamaletters and let me know a book. You might want me to read and review for the podcast, because I would tell you, we do that now overall thinking about rebranding this podcast with a new name, but I’m lazy. And I have no idea what I would want to do right now.

 

So we’re going to continue this being the uncurated life for right now. And. It’s going to stay pretty on curated. So there is that the name may change soon. I’m not sure yet, but for now I did refresh the cover art and things. We’ll, we’ll figure it out. We’ll figure out soon how things are going. But like I said, I could either let this simmer for the next 85 years while I figure out what I want to do, or I could just start recording and figure it out as I go along, which is what I did.

 

Is the best option for me because I’m not fucking professional and polished. Um, uncurated and that’s the life I’m going to live. So look at that, the name still. Anyway, I’m also going to be starting a monthly newsletter via email on the first Monday of the month in part to kind of maybe give more expanded thoughts on podcast and YouTube topics, uh, to catch you up on what’s going on.

 

And to offer some reading and watching recommendations. I will likely be doing a form of the book club through this monthly newsletter in the future, rather than doing a big structure book club all the time. It may just be a monthly thing that happens in this newsletter. I’m not sure yet. But if you want to join in, you’re not already on my email list.

 

Check out the link in the show notes. I’m going to be sending a fun printable to the whole email list tomorrow. But if you are new to the email list, you’ll get it. As soon as you sign up. I’d love it. If you join in, if you don’t want to, you can always, if you were on it for the booklet club and you don’t care, you can always end subscribe.

 

It’s fine with me. I just, I want to have something that goes out monthly that kind of gives people a picture of sort of what’s going on. And also some of my thoughts, my patrons get this every week, maybe not this exact thing, but they do get a version of like a weekly newsletter every week. And this is not going to be that this will be something a little bit different, but hopefully valuable for you anyway.

 

And I promise you, I’m not going to try and sell you a course or anything like that. Through my email newsletter, the most sales you’re going to get out of it. It’s when my Etsy shop reopens for the holidays or when I have a new Skillshare class, it’ll go into the monthly newsletter, but there won’t be new Skillshare classes till next year.

 

Anyway, because like I said, my bandwidth is low. God. I suck at marketing myself. Anyway, if you’ve made it. I’m so glad, and I’m so glad that you’re here and I’m so glad that you’re listening. And I’m so glad that you have given some of your time for this. And I would love to hear from you, let me know on Instagram at llamaletters, go to the discord.

 

I will do my best to check it. I’m really terrible at that. Or go to my website to the contact page, go to the comments in my YouTube videos, reply in the comments of the blog post that goes with this post. I don’t know. There’s places you can. I will do my best. I’m not the best at responding to things, but I do try to read everything anyway.

 

Thank you for subscribing. Check out my Patreon if you haven’t already. And until next time my friends stay safe and peace out.