Editing The Pen Addict 348/transcript (section)

== Podcast Introduction ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 348. Today's show is brought to you by Pen Chalet and Squarespace. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi Brad Dowdy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You almost didn't get through that. That was close.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, I was doing it. I committed.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, you were doing it. Yeah, you were doing it, but the laughter was coming through. I was starting to laugh. I had like several seconds to come up with what's smartest. New energy today. I figured... What smart-alecky thing I was going to say.

'''Myke Hurley:''' As you approach episode 350 of your show, it's about time to find a new energy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' God, 350. We don't need a new... What are you talking about a new energy? We're always happy and energetic.

'''Myke Hurley:''' New energy, Myke. That's what they'll call me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like, this is one of the highlights of my week. I was actually... I forget. I'll have to go back and see where I read this, but it was some other podcaster I listened to or someone was, you know, talking about recording the podcast. And they said, no matter... I think it was one of the baseball podcasts that I mentioned earlier. It said, no matter how bad a week I'm having, you know, no matter what kind of mood I'm in, whenever I hit record to go talk to my friend about the podcast thing, it changes everything. It fixes everything. Always. It really does. Always. It always does. And we've talked about that before, how I'll go into a podcast just kind of down because I've been, you know, whatever reason, you know, reason X. And then we'll get to talking. And by the end, like, everything has changed. So I'm lucky to be able to do this with you, Myke.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I feel exactly the same. You're my longest partner.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. Yes. And, hey, we're lucky to have the listeners that we have that want to help us do cool stuff, like travel pretty much around the world these days to do fun things and bring in the show.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Before we get to that, actually, before we get to that, I just wanted to note on episode 350, it's in two weeks. And we're not planning anything special for that because we have our big special episode a few weeks later, right? Like, we'll be in Atlanta. So obviously we will mark it and I'm sure we'll say some things with misty eyes, but we're not planning any big extravagances. Unfortunately, as you know, we were lucky enough that we were able to match up for the first couple of years in Atlanta to do our big episodes there. But then the calendar got the better of us and now we're multiple weeks off. So the only way we could do it is by taking a big break every year, which we're not, which we don't want to do.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, we just, I think last year was our first legit break, like on purpose, maybe second one, like around Christmas holiday.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, we do that. I mean, maybe we'll give us a week around the holidays, but it's not enough. We need to knock multiple weeks now, right? Because we've kind of gotten ahead of ourselves. But yes, so the Kickstarter campaign, we did fund, we funded, I think on Thursday, which is incredible. So thank you so much to everyone so far who has contributed to the campaign. We've crossed 500 backers and we're sitting at $26,500, which between me, Brad and the rest of you is amazing because we needed $25 to afford all of this this year. So thank you so much for helping us do that because San Francisco is super expensive. So that's great.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, we set an expensive bar last year going to New York and Toronto. Like that was extremely expensive. So I was going, man, I hope we get there to this time because it costs a lot.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, so I'm super, super happy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We've spent a lot on flights and hotels.