Bel Folks Stuff Podcast

The Bel Folks Stuff Podcast

Bel Folks Stuff – Episode 10 – Featuring the Librarian

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Hey Folks! This weekend was a bit wild. I had a tornado pass within a mile of the house, and then, in my very sleep-deprived state, I decided that it was a good idea to record two podcasts on Saturday. One of them was obviously AggroChat, but the other was sitting down with a long-time friend of mine from High School that I have referred to by the enigmatic title of “The Librarian”. Better known in some circles by Kaleon or others as Jason, this is someone who has known me for an extremely long time, and as a result, this show gets a bit more personal than normal. Every episode ends up revealing something about me, just by the nature of the conversation. This show, however, goes into some extremely “real” places with my past and the past of “The Librarian”.

This is the first episode in what I hope is a series of brand new recordings. Originally, I was going to sit down and record with all of the AggroChat crew, and I still want to finish that out. The challenge is always timing. This took up roughly two hours of real-world time that got edited down into an hour and twenty minutes once I compressed the silence. It is sometimes a challenge to figure out a time when you can spend that much time talking to a person and recording it. Hopefully, you enjoy this episode and will be around whenever the next one drops as well.

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Bel Folks Stuff – Episode 9 – Featuring Tam

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Hey Folks! I am in the process of trying to reboot one of my favorite side projects, “Bel Folks Stuff”, and get into the swing of recording new episodes. However, it was in this process that I realized that I recorded a whole episode with Tam and never released it. What is wild about this episode is that it is a timecapsule from before the world changed. I think many of us were irreparably damaged by the isolation and changes to our norms that the pandemic and lockdowns brought forward. However, for some… the isolation of the pandemic completely changed their lives. This version of Tam that I interviewed was before he got into a lockdown relationship, which turned into a marriage, which ultimately led to him becoming a father.

The negative of this episode, however, is now that I listen to it… I remember why I never released it. I was trying to figure out how to fix the audio. I was dealing with some really frustrating coil whine happening in my microphone, and it just so happened to plague this episode. I think this might have been the point I realized it was a thing, and it took me months to figure out how to keep it from happening. So this episode was edited and ready to go… but just never got released, and I feel like it is unfair to leave this to the void. Some interesting conversations happen in the middle of this episode, and it is fitting that the broader world finally gets to listen to them.

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Bel Folks Stuff – Episode 8 – Featuring Grace

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Good Morning Friends. Earlier this week I released the last of the original Bel Folks Stuff episodes again since the entire project predated me actually putting things on YouTube. The nasty secret however is that in January of 2020 I started the process of recording brand new episodes of the show. This has always been a little bit of a passion project for me and I enjoy these way more than probably the people listening to them. I want to do more of them and I thought initially by re-releasing all of the episodes it would kick start me back into scheduling recording dates and such and making it happen. I had two shows recorded that I have been sitting on for almost two years at this point and now feel like it is time to actually let the world listen to them.

The pandemic wrecked a lot of us creatively, so it is a bit weird to be listening to this show knowing it was recorded well before most of us had to deal with lock downs, toilet paper shortages, or the fear of leaving the house. It is really hard to have “best friends” as adults, or at least it is something that I have struggled with personally… but if I were to try and sort out that thing Grace would absolutely be at the top of that list. In part I started this initiative up again with their show in part because I knew it would be relaxing and easy for me to get through. In truth all of these first episodes are me sitting down with various folks that I record AggroChat with so it would be low pressure. I was battling social anxiety pretty freaking hard when this all started and only recently have pulled myself out of that cycle.

I hope you enjoy listening to the show anywhere near as much as I enjoyed recording it. So without further rambling I present you Bel Folks Stuff featuring my amazing friend Grace.

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Bel Folks Stuff – Episode 7 – Featuring Jaedia

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A Discussion with Jaedia

Hey Friends! This morning I woke up and realize that I had committed a travesty and am trying to right that wrong. Almost two years ago I had this grand idea of rebooting Bel Folks Stuff… and had even recorded a few new episodes as part of the process. I had this entire plan of re-releasing all of the original content since it never existed on YouTube and then this giving me a ramp to start recording new content. Then like everything that happened early in 2020, it was derailed by the pandemic. I mean on one hand being stuck at home should have been the opportune time to record something like podcast episodes with so much of the populace now working from home. Instead I personally found that the pandemic and the constant fear of death… pretty much sapped whatever creativity I had in me and left me this hollow shell.

The end result is that I never actually got around to re-releasing the episode featuring my good friend Jaedia, and since today is her birthday I thought I would fix that today. Her blog Dragons and Whimsy is now on its third revision and quite honestly there are so damned many accolades I could throw out here. Many of you specifically may know her from her work that she did on MMOGames.com from 2015 through 2018. I would provide links to profiles, but it is grossly incomplete because the site seems to have a habit of replacing “by lines” and several articles I know she wrote now show up as someone else. I may or may not have pent up bitterness about my brief time writing for the site as well.

Not at all where I intended to go with this discussion, but here we are nonetheless! This episode was recorded in May of 2015, so an awful lot of things have changed in those six years. The discussion that was had though is just as relevant today as it was when it was first recorded. I hope you can enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoy revisiting it in my memories. Here is hoping that this will also act as a catalyst for me actually releasing some of the episodes that I have recorded already as well of the new rendition.

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