Taking a Break from the Podcast

I have been doing the podcast for years, and I have loved it until recently. With new opportunities on the horizon for me, with new growth and transformation, and with only the same 24 hours in a day, I have had to take a look at where my energy is being invested in all the places I reside, and take note of what is worth my time and what isn't.

Unfortunately, the podcast has never grown to the space that I wanted it to grow to, and the time it takes for me to create episodes that I feel confident in releasing is no longer sustainable.

Thank you for listening to me and the episodes that I have created. Thank you for the pack bond, and for letting me into your day.

If you have enjoyed anything that I have put out, please follow me on social media, YouTube, or join my email list to stay connected. Many things are coming from Wolf Child Magick, and I am excited about where this next turn takes me.

Howl- 

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SPEAKER_00 0:46

Hello, and thank you for tuning in to the Wolfchild Magic Podcast. My name is Ashley, your tarot reader, Rocky Mountain Witch, and overall Wolf Child. And I thank you for being here with me today. Hello, my dear Wolfling. Feels like it's been a minute, and um You know, we're just meeting things where we can, as we can and how we can, and that is what today's episode is going to obviously be about. As you can tell by the title of the episode, I am going to be stepping away from the podcast. I now know that this is something that I need to be doing. And I finally trust that I'm making the right decision. I have sat on making this decision for a long time, waiting for the energy, my mood, receiving a sign to kind of shift to do I quit yes, do I quit no? And I'm now in a space where I really trust that this is the path and this is the avenue that I'm meant to be taking at this time. First and foremost, I want to thank you for listening and for being here in any sort of capacity. I am eternally grateful for the connections that I have made with my listeners, even if it's just I have brought something into your life in the form of tarot, witchcraft, or wild sovereignty. And I'm so grateful that you have allowed me the time of your drive in the car to work, when you're doing chores, when you're sitting outside just kind of taking the moment in, and you have me on in the background. Wherever you have listened to me, just please know that I am so eternally grateful. I do not take that for granted. I don't take that lightly in any way, shape, or form. You know, the podcast is actually very special to me. And so, you know, there's a part of me that's like, well, how can I quit something that's special to me? And we will get into some of the whys in a minute. But the podcast is truly so, so special to me. It was one of the first ways that I really branched out. It was one of the first ways that I stepped outside of being just kind of a personal um reader who would, you know, share stuff on social media. I think I had the blog at that point too. I had my website, but it was one of the first ways that I really pushed myself past some comfort. You know, the blog is I I can write for days. I'm a writer at heart, and because I'm a writer at heart, it's incredible to look and see it where I've grown with the podcast. Some of my original episodes are just not good, and I apologize for that. I am not always the best orator, speaking wise, because again, I'm just such a better writer. When I'm writing, I really that's where my voice really um finds its magic. So I've grown in so many ways, and one of the biggest ways that I've grown, and I'm so grateful for the podcast, is I'm such a better orator now. Even though I still think that I suck and I stumble, and I don't always like what I do with my hands or some stuff. I get so many compliments from people telling me that they wish that they could show up the way I show up, like on social media when I talk about, you know, tarot stuff, political stuff. And that means a lot to me because I have not always been someone who's had a strong voice, a clear voice. It's either been very emotional, it's been very um spirited. I'm a spirited person. I can't not be. And so the podcast really helped me learn how to channel all the emotions into a narrative and to speak that narrative. So I am I am so grateful for the podcast. And like I said, I'm right now only taking a break. I am not fully stepping away. I'm not gonna be like deleting any of these episodes because I worked really hard on them and I want them to still be of service. And we will see where where it goes. As I said before, I trust the decision that I'm making though. And it feels weird to have such conflicting emotions, but I I do trust that it's time to kind of put this away for at least a little bit and maybe come back to it. I trust my intuition on this, and it's funny because being so spirited, being such an emotional person, wearing my heart on my sleeve. I don't always do well with long-term kind of spiritual intuitive guidance because I fight it. It's hard for me as a person to let go, it's hard for me to surrender. I I I struggle with that. I probably always will. I'm better at it, but I'm I'm not great. And this was one of the first journeys where I was like, I completely surrendered, just give me the sign, let me know, tell me what to do. I'm asking for guidance. Do I let this go or do I not? Do I let this go because you know some things we'll talk about, but this is something I really love, and it's hard to make this decision. But if I'm even questioning letting it go, that's telling me something on a deeper level. If I was just 10 toes into the podcast, I would not be questioning letting it go. So obviously, there is a disconnect somewhere. There is a disconnect in the form of if I was so connected to the podcast, I would not question giving it up, I would not question taking a break. So obviously, there is something here that has started poking its head above the water, and I need to sit with that. I need to sit with the realization that a shift has been made somewhere along the way with my podcast, that I'm now disconnected from it, you know. And so as I do, I pulled cards on it. I asked the pendulum about it, and my pendulum just kept saying try again, maybe later. And my first tarot reading with it, I'll have to pull it up, but I know that the card in the middle was the moon, and the moon is all about just kind of sitting in that surrendered liminal space. It's about finding that magic, being in reflection, letting unknowns become known, but sometimes it takes time. The moon is not a card that's gonna be straightforward or immediate. You know, we have to kind of sit in the liminal soup of intuition, and that's not always easy to do. And this was one of those times where I just completely let go. And I think part of that is because I was already disconnected. I was already disconnected, so I was like, well, we'll just see what happens, you know, and I don't have the emotional capacity to fight this. I am so tired, I am so exhausted, and I don't have the emotional bandwidth to keep going up this hill. We either need to do something different with the podcast or we just need to let it go. And I came to this realization of if I'm already questioning letting it go, and I'm already kind of just in the act of surrender, I think that that speaks for itself. That's a little bit of a tell. For the longest time, I was just going full steam ahead, you know, doing the podcast, I started doing YouTube, doing my events, doing social media, doing blog posts, doing all of these different things. And I was just full steam ahead and I was completely ignoring the energetic depletion that I was feeling. And part of the reason for that is just because I love this so much. I will always be doing this in some capacity. I will always be talking about tarot, witchcraft, and wild sovereignty in some way. But I have been trying to place myself and Wolf Child Magic within all of these places. The podcast, YouTube, social media, the events that I do, Patreon, uh, now also at Rocky Mountain Punk. You know, I've just been trying to place myself in all of these different areas and show up completely in all those areas. And I'm recognizing now that I physically, emotionally, mentally cannot do that. Because one, it's just me over here. I don't have a team, I don't have people help carrying the load of what needs to be done. Everything that goes through Wolf Child Magic is touched by me, is created by me. I mean, yeah, I might use like a template on Canvas sometimes, but it's all moving through me. Everything is moving through me in some capacity, and that is tiring, you know. When you are tasked with creating stuff, that does not happen in a day, it doesn't happen in a moment. Because one, you have to be in a creative space. Sometimes, you know, your body, your mind, your heart, your spirit are just kind of fallow for a moment, and that's totally okay. But when you're tasked with creating because of you know, your it's your business, you have to pull on that, and then when you're pulling on it and creating it in so many different areas, you have to don certain hats. And so behind the scenes, I've also been really trying to research how to wear those hats, you know, business hats, marketing hats, strategizing hats, financial hats. I've been trying to learn this stuff because there's no other person here that's helping to kind of, you know, carry those responsibilities, carry the weight of some of the things that need to be done. So for a while I was just like, well, I'll just learn all of it, and I am still going to learn. I still, you know, am going to step into a greater space with Wolf Child Magic and with my creations. But I've been recognizing now that I'm just doing too much. One, I'm doing too much from a marketing perspective because of how many things I put out there, like the amount of free stuff that I put out there, the amount of content I put out there is it's a lot. It's social media, it's the blog, it's YouTube, it's you know, for a while it was the podcast too. It's the free stuff that you know you can get through um my website, like my downloads, it's the newsletter I put out. That's a lot. That is a lot of stuff, and it's almost too much. It's almost too much. Like, I don't ever want to bombard people with my content. I don't ever want to be so in a space with people where I'm in their inbox or I'm on their feed. I mean, I I want that, but I want it for a much bigger audience, you know what I mean? I want to be connecting to people, but I don't want people to get, you know, like it's like when you get five emails a day from someone. I don't ever want to be like that. And yet I had to kind of recognize I'm like, well, the amount of free stuff that I put out, the amount of work that I do for just content, that alone is too much because then I have to market that content. So I'm in the podcast feed, I'm on YouTube, I'm on the blog, I'm on Substack, I'm on my newsletter, I'm in all these places, and then I have to market all of that, you know, let people know hey, I have a podcast or hey, I have a YouTube channel. I have to then market that and I have to market it again because you do not market something really once, and everyone just flocks to you. That's not how it works. So behind the scenes, my brain has just been turning into soup because I've been trying to just keep climbing these hills, and now I'm starting to recognize I cannot place one more step without something changing. It it cannot happen for the sake of my business, for the sake of my relationship, for the sake of my own sanity. Something needs to give here. So something needed to give. Like I said, something had to switch. And again, I don't have a team, it's just me. And I was starting to recognize the emotional toll that the podcasts were kind of taking because it's just me, I have to do all the content, I have to do all the research, I have to do all the editing, I have to, you know, put it out there, build the show notes, I have to market it, and that can take a couple of days, and that may not seem like a long time, but when I'm also trying to market my events, my Patreon readings at Rocky Mountain Punk, all of those little things start to add up. And emotionally I was just recognizing where I was getting so drained. I did not want to step into a space of kind of doing the podcast because I just felt I didn't have the um capacity to do so mentally, emotionally, and especially physically. I just felt that I behind the scenes was starting to just be like, okay, here we go. And I don't ever want to get to a space where I become a robot. That's the complete antithesis of wild sovereignty. It's wild sovereignty is about being authentic. It's about moving in the ways of that sacred life force that call you into something bigger, that push you to grow, to transform. And I was starting to recognize where I was doing things because I felt like I had to. And I don't have to. I am my boss. I can literally choose what I do, when I do it, how I do it. And that's another reason why the podcast has become a place that I just I recognize that I my heart is just not in it. And that doesn't mean that I don't love it again, but for the amount of energy expenditure, my heart is not in it. And I want to take up space in other areas, like I said, YouTube and social media, YouTube especially, because one of the things that I've been kind of trying to set as a goal for myself is to be not only comfortable being a better orator, a better speaker, but also to be better on camera. There's a little bit of a divide, even with the podcast, because I am just here talking to a camera or I'm sorry, talking to a microphone. I'm not on camera. And I'm also trying to use YouTube as a way to kind of supplement some of my social media space because I've talked at length about my desire to eventually see where I can shift away, especially from meta. Meta has become very problematic. I mean, it's always been problematic. But TikTok too. You know, tick to all of these social media platforms are run by billionaires who do not give a fuck. And I'm sure that YouTube in some way is no different, but at least YouTube is not as social media-y, if that's makes sense, then uh some of the other spaces. I don't know, that's just the way my personal brain sees it. I maybe you can relate, but I want to take up some more space. I want to build more of just a social media following, and I want to also start committing time to having online workshops, having more uh face-to-face time with my patrons, doing programs, maybe stepping into a space of retreats. And that all is something that I need to stack up with with my physical capacity and say, do I have the time to build a workshop this month? Do I have the time to write a book this month? One of the other things I've really been looking at doing is creating my own deck. You know, there's just these goals that I want to achieve, there's these things that I want to do, and I have to start recognizing I do not have an unlimited physical capacity, and I've probably already been pushing myself past rest, past self-care more than I should have. And working with my therapist has been really helpful in seeing where I need to set some more clear boundaries with myself and be more mindful of my energy, my time, and my space. The next reason that I want to say why I'm kind of stepping away from the podcast and why I just don't have the mental, emotional, or physical capacity for it anymore. And I am not trying in any way to call anyone out or say anything or anything like that, but I am gonna be honest. Um, this podcast just has not grown. It just hasn't. And I'm gonna, you know, say that that is probably my fault. There's something that I'm not doing that is making the podcast not grow. Um, I feel like I do all the things, I do the call to actions, asking for reviews, asking for shares, asking for ratings, and I just don't get them. And I'm not, again, saying that to put the blame on anyone. I put the blame on myself because when I could have been researching how to make my podcast grow, I was like, well, I feel like I'm doing that, but it was just an obstacle that I couldn't overcome. For whatever reason, I just could not find the answer to or the solution to the problem of building the following here. And it just hasn't. And because it hasn't, I need to again be honest with myself about well, if it's not growing, is it worth the physical, emotional, mental expenditure of how much time it takes to create these episodes? And I think that's one of the other reasons why I started to get really disconnected from the podcast is because it just it never took off. And because of that, each time I felt like I was like trying to do things even harder, trying to make it better. And it just never really got to a space where um I could monetize from it. I was finding clients, it just never grew. And I'm just being honest with that. I'm again, that's my fault. And I just need to recognize now that because it's not growing, it's not worth how much time I take to make the podcast. To those of you who, again, do listen, I I love you more than life itself. You mean so much to me. And the other thing is that this is not the end all be all of connecting with me and with Wolf Child Magic. I again I do events all the time. I have a blog, I have social media, I have a YouTube. There's so many other ways to connect with me. So now I'm sitting here going, why try to force something that I've been doing for a while? And again, it just hasn't grown. And also because of that, looking again at the physical investment I need to make the episodes that I want, it's like, well, I think that this is maybe just a sign that I need to step into the opportunities that I have. Obviously, one of those being um Rocky Mountain Punk. That's a whole new opportunity for me. And that is, you know, days that I can't take the microphone there. I can't step into that space or into a podcast space on the days that I'm there. And that's where opportunities are. That's where I can physically just meet clients, sit with them, and that's really what I want to do. I love the podcast, I love the YouTube, I love the blog, I love Substack, I love all those things. I love talking about those things, but I want there to be that receiving and that building of the pack bond on the other side of this. I don't want to just be talking into the void. You know what I mean? That's not um what I want to be doing. So I need to go where the opportunities are, I need to go where my heart is, and I need to recognize that there's just no longer unlimited time, space, or energy on my end. There's a capacity, and in some places I've kind of reached it, like here. That's why I'm not saying though that I'm done forever. I may come back, you know, things are always moving, ebbing, and flowing in a space of destruction and creation, life, death, and rebirth. Um, so the transformation is always continuing. We're we're always on the cycle, and we will see where that comes. But for right now, this is just where I'm at. And I may also start creating some podcast episodes that are exclusives for just patrons, and I will also then need to find a way to do the shout-outs or to switch things up since I'm not doing the podcast. Um, one of the benefits was doing the shout-outs for Patreon, so I'm gonna be looking at that very soon of what I can be doing. I think I might just start creating text that I put on like my YouTubes and stuff, but we will see. That is just simply where it's at. Again, I'm grateful, I'm humble, I am always ready to grow, to evolve, to step into the re into the rebirth, to go into the chrysalis so I come out the butterfly. I love you so much, dear listener. Thank you for being here on this journey with me. And of course, like I said, it's just changing, it's not done, I'm not done with Wolf Child magic. I'm just finding new spaces to take up and I'm following the muse, which I haven't done in a while. And it feels good to listen, to let go, to surrender, and to find a way to trust. And that's something that in many ways I've been lacking for a while. So in many ways, I feel like this has actually been a very supportive and therapeutic process to finally get to this space. There's a lot of relief, there's sadness though, too, and there's so many emotions, but I'm trusting. I'm trusting, I'm surrendering, and I recognize that I walk with so many beings bigger than myself, and again, that makes me humble, and that keeps me connected to the path and to the journey that is mine to walk. So thank you so much. Um, I love you. Thank you for being here with me. Please, please, please go and find me on social media, follow me, join the newsletter, find what way you want to connect with me because, like I said, um there's so many other places and probably too many places. So connect with me on social media because I'm really trying to bulk up my social media presence and just be more present on social media. I'm on YouTube, so find the places where you can connect with me. Uh, book a reading, you know, whatever you feel called to do, uh, stay connected so that we can continue the pack bond. I'm so grateful. I'm so humble, and I just, yeah, my heart is just very full. And again, it feels good to trust and to let go. So until next time, dear listener, take care. Goodbye.