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The measure of intelligence is the ability to change Albert Einstein.

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Warning!

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You have just wandered into the unpopular playground arena, a unique space specifically designed for young adults,

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and those soon becoming where curiosity meets unconventional learning and dialogue with brutal honesty.

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If you're a bold and daring rebel who wants more options on your life journey than you have now,

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keep listening.

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Welcome Jen Lin.

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Okay, welcome back.

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This is Jen Lin.

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Welcome back to the unpopular playground.

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And a few things have occurred, one namely getting back to work.

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And that has involved a lot on my part, a lot of time taken away from the podcast

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because of a great many of things and I'm going to go into detail about that in this episode

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and having to pivot the reality check, what's working, what's not working, and how we'll be

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moving forward.

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So again, I apologize for having to do this and having it seem all about most of the episodes

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for the season, having to lay out the platform of what these changes in the podcast have been

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overall, but it doesn't make any sense at all to continue moving forward without a solid foundation

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of what we're all about, what we're doing, and also being able to fulfill the commitments that we

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say that we're going to do. And so there is a need to explain, to be transparent before

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our audience, so that you know exactly what's going on, why we're pivoting the need for that,

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so that we can be better, so that we can deliver better products, better everything.

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So in short, it's going to be better for you and it'll enable us to fulfill our personal

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obligations as well and to increase the consistency until that we can reach a point to be able to

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give you more. And after some reflection, we've been able to see clearly how we can do that

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and we're going to share those things with you in this episode. If you're enjoying the

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unpopular playground, don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

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We'd love to hear your thoughts, so leave a comment right now to join the conversation.

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If you know another curious friend who would resonate with our discussions,

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share the podcast and spread the word. Together, let's create a community where every young voice

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is heard. Okay, getting into it. After some reflection and being frustrated the last three

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weeks of trying to put out a weekly episode, thinking that, well, yeah, recording a 10 to

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15 minute segment for even 30 minutes should be easy to do, right? After all, it's just

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recording and uploading. You would think. But there's a lot that goes into it, especially when

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you want to put out a good podcast with useful information of things that are meaningful to you

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or listeners. Some people just put out things just to hear themselves talk and it's not meaningful.

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It's all about them. They make it all about themselves and if it doesn't have anything to

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do with you or if it's helpful to you, then I'm wasting my time. My very small team of two,

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my partner Debbie and anybody else in Ronda, anybody else that is working with us, we're

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always in our time if this has no meaning to you. It's all about you and helping you and

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bringing these points out, the hard discussions, being able to have discussions. And right now,

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we're all geographically separated. So it takes time to do research. It takes time to do writing

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and the recording takes a lot of time to edit and make sure that it's correct and then posting it

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and then putting it out there to market, which I've not even had a chance to do yet. If you're

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listening for the first time on this episode, we've already had seven or six other episodes for

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the season and we also have two seasons that have been put out every other year because of hiccups

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like this and not having a focus. So now we have a better focus. We have our target market. Of course,

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if you're not in high school and if you're not a young adult under 30, you can still get

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information out of this too. I invite you to listen to the earlier episodes of this season three

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if you want more introduction on this. But we are so laser focused in doing what we're doing

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and our passion to, and I don't say that lightly, we've with everything that we've done in our

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careers and everything that we've experienced, I know myself personally. I am so dissatisfied

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with a lot of the things and circumstances that have occurred in my life because of

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feeling ill-prepared and just having to eat it out and figure it out all by myself. I don't want

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that to happen to you. I've been on all sides of the coin as a parent, as a student, and as a

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teacher. So I have many different aspects of this and I've also been involved in the medical

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complex, also in my high school jobs I've been in the food industry. All of these things that have

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contributed to much of the disaster that you are experiencing now. And I've also made a lot of

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changes in my life personally that have been successful and I would like to share a lot of

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these things with you that have worked and that have been proven to work. So first of all, the

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reality check. I've gone over that with that it does take a lot of time to produce a podcast

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and to build and nurture a community. That is where we want to focus is nurturing a community

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with to be able to have real engagement with virtual and live meetups and to be able to design

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courses and other types of knowledge to get that down either through videos, courses, books, things

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to be able to help you, tools to have on hand practical that you can tangibly touch, use,

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apply to make your lives better. And the most important thing, one of the most important things

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is to be consistent with our output of our main podcast. And in doing this, we have seen

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just this month of January, which has seen a very long time. January sometimes feels like a whole

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century. It's always the longest month to get through. And that is when we had started. It is

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now February 1st. And in the month of January, we did produce six episodes. Half of the month,

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I wasn't working. And ever since I started back to work, it's been a struggle to keep up with

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weekly moving into our second point. After some reflection, I had to reevaluate what is going good

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and what is not what is clearly not working and to decide where we want our focus and momentum to

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be and what the purpose is in each thing that we're doing. And what is not working is at least

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that present moment with all of the time, all of the commuting, etc. is keeping up weekly.

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Also, because of this, because what's really gotten in the way is funding. I'm self-funding

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everything. My partner and I, Debbie, and I are self-funding this podcast right now. And

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I'm having to work to fulfill my personal obligations and everything else has gone into

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this podcast. So we are very limited right now on what we can do. But we hope that's going to

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change really soon. It costs time, gas, to go to work, and to go over to Nevada to be able to produce

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more episodes on top of our personal obligations. So my intent isn't to complain about this,

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but to open your eyes to let you know that it's just not a matter of recording this and

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putting it out there. It takes a lot of work because we want it to be good and we want to be

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consistent. And so that brings us to our last point, readjustment and pivoting. There is an

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art to pivoting if it's going to be better, if you're going to be stronger, and if you're going

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to remove the things that aren't working, keep the things that are working so that we can be

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consistent and focus on what we need to be focusing on. And what we want to focus on is

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community building and live engagement. Yes, we'll do virtual, but we want a great majority of our

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engagement to be in person and have it be real. The podcast we had originally intended, because

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everybody's working, all of the team members that were going to be that we were going to have last

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summer, were all working. And then by September, I had explained in previous episodes that it was

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just too hard to expect to do more than one episode a month. And then I had to go on medical leave,

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so I thought, well, maybe I could do more. And there were some complications with that,

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that just still put things behind a little bit. Number one was my ability to even be able to

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speak. And that wasn't able to happen until closer to the beginning of the year, because that's what

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was affected. So the podcast, here's the way that it that it's intended to farm all down.

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The podcast to be able to highlight the issues, have the hard discussions that young people are

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facing and also that are overlooked and swept under the rug as you continue to struggle and choke

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on life to get by. And as students are launching to life unprepared, we want to highlight that

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stuff. But to just keep talking about the problem isn't going to solve problems. So most of our

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time and talents want to be spent building our league of youth members, nurturing you and guiding

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you through these challenging times with solid options and helping you to become strong, critical

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thinkers who can and will be tomorrow's problem solvers for society and that you'll feel competent

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to take action. We want to turn the tide and give you the art of pivoting to be able to stop and

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reflect every now and then what's working and what's not. We should be doing this daily at night.

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Did I accomplish my goals? What do I need to do tomorrow? And every night, how can I become better?

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Where did I go wrong? If everybody's doing this every day, there's no way that you will not get

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better. It will be impossible for you to not become better than you were the day before. But the

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point is not a lot of people do this and not a lot of people have the guts to pivot. Not a lot of

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people have the art of pivoting, being able to stop and willing to open up to new information

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that is working, that could work. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again. And if you

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have the courage to stop and reflect and open yourself up to new options, just imagine

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how your life could change for the better. We want you to move forward stronger on more solid

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ground so that you can actually achieve the things that you are seeking. So for this podcast,

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what we're going to do is scale back to our original plan of once a month. That's going to

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be our commitment. Now we may produce more podcasts and if we do, they're going to be on YouTube.

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All of the extras are going to be in our private community, which will be where we're going to

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start building in our Bamiya coffee community, which more information will come out on that

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next month. At the end of February for last Wednesday in February, that information will come

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out. We will probably do a bonus episode on community. We will have that coming out.

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As a matter of fact, I already have the next two episodes already completed that just need to be

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recorded for February, end of this month and end of next month. But we will have the information,

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the show notes of how you can join our league community and the Bamiya coffee platform.

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And also how you can donate if you care to support us for that. So yes, we're going to scale back

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to once a month. We're going to keep it from September to June, 10 months and it'll be on the

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last Wednesday of the month that you can look forward to our podcasts. But we will most likely

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have extra episodes. So if you're listening on another major platform like Spotify, iHeart,

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Pandora, Apple Podcasts or any other podcasts, there's quite a few that

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we're distributing to. We highly encourage you to subscribe, follow on this platform,

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because it will allow us to be put ahead on the algorithm as well as go over to YouTube,

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like, share, subscribe, comment. That's going to put us higher as well and enable us to qualify

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for additional funding. But that's where all of our extra episodes are going to be. And then we'll

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be able to produce more viable solutions for you. Courses that can be tested and tweaked accordingly

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by our league members. And eventually get us the point of justifying me, myself and Debbie,

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to be able to work on this full time. With the once a month, we can get ahead on our podcast.

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We can commit to these discussions, which actually have more fruitful discussions. We plan to have

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a lot of young guests to be able to have these conversations so that you're not just hearing

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it from me. You're hearing it from your own people, people in your age demographic, talking about

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these things. This way we can get ahead and focus on community and other engagement and events.

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We can raise, do some fundraising and build this league into a global movement of young people

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determined to make their lives better. And if you're, if you're strong, I have a saying,

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strong self, strong nation. And hopefully we can move away from the archaic mindless drone syndrome

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of people who can't think for themselves or really who don't think at all. You just turn on the TV

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and believe everything that they're told. You should be able to ask questions. When people

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get mad at you asking questions, questioning things and they can't answer, that should be a red flag.

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Because if you can't question, can you can't get viable answers? It's just usually from people who

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don't want to lose control. Think about that one kids. So that brings me to the end of this episode.

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And that is why I was not able to put out last Wednesday because I have a grueling schedule

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now of work which involves commuting. I work at night because it lessens the commute, but also

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somewhere in there I have to do my normal living duties because I'm a real person just like you.

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I have to do laundry, cook, run errands, pay my bills and do all of the same things that you do.

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If you're in school, in high school, maybe you might have a little bit of a bite, but

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this is what's coming for you, life. And you're having to do all of these things on your own.

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And wouldn't it be nice to be able to do something that you enjoy doing and that you can actually

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make a living and maybe have a little leftover to have some fun instead of feeling like a financial

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slave? And that's what most people in society have been reduced to. And if you live in California,

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it's much worse. If you don't live in California, just be happy that you're not paying over $4 or gas.

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So, we will see you in the next episode. Stay curious. Thanks for listening.

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And we hope that you will seriously think about joining our league when we drop it.

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Take care, kids. Bye. For now.

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Join us for our next podcast on the last Wednesday of next month

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on all podcast platforms or make sure to join us on YouTube for additional bonus episodes.

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And, as always, stay curious. There's so much more to explore.