During a recent summertime hike we approached the bridge. A recent storm had blown through and knocked down a tree that fell across the bridge. Not a big deal. We just stepped over it carefully. Thankfully the bridge didn't suffer any major damage. Neither did we. It was an obstacle that wasn't there the last time we trekked through the area. It only slowed us down slightly. Some obstacles are like that. At first glance we may exclaim, "Oh no!" --- only to realize, it's not that bad. Or tough. Some obstacles are worse. That tree could have collapsed the entire bridge forcing us to improvise by adjusting our course over the creek below. The trek would have been slightly more difficult. The path wouldn't have been as straight-forward or smooth, but we could have followed the path forward. Mostly, it would have been an inconvenience. Life has shown me that's how most obstacles are. An inconvenience. We often make them out to be worse than they really are because they're unexpected. They make us spend more time lamenting their existence than we may in figuring out how to effectively navigate past them. Other obstacles are different and those are the ones I'm most focused on today. The obstacles that present themselves because we're intentionally forging a new path. A better path. One we believe will take us further. Or faster. And because it's a new path things appear like obstacles, but we really have no way to know because we've never ventured this way before. I wonder if we're seeing things correctly. For the past year plus I've spent considerable time analyzing a podcast that I began in June 2021 - Hot Springs Village Inside Out. I started the show with a co-host, but a year in we both got COVID and I had a whole lot going on. I remained very active behind the scene doing all the production work, including posting the shows and all that mundane but necessary work required to get a podcast out in the ether. I lost interest in co-hosting for a variety of reasons - mostly because it was a podcast about a specific community and I wasn't there as much as I wanted to be. My co-host lived their full-time. It just made sense to me to step away, clear my head - and my deck of all the stuff going on and figure out a path forward. A different, new path. In March 2023 I moved forward from The Yellow Studio v2.0 to v3.0. Then by May I moved forward some more by going to The Yellow Studio v3.1. You should know that when I built/assembled The Yellow Studio, I'd never done anything like that before. I started from scratch and had to learn. A lot! Over 20 years ago things were much more difficult and complicated. The technology for podcasting didn't easily exist. For a podcaster to do what I most wanted to do - operate using a broadcast workflow - it was hard and expensive because it required hardware. I wanted to hit RECORD and have my sound be as good as being on a Skype call. Yes, Virginia, we were once relegated to making Skype calls because all these other services like Zoom didn't exist. This meant lots of hardware and even more cabling. Routing those cables was a major obstacle when once conquered left you staring in the face of yet another monster, adjusting the hardware so it'd sound just right. No sooner had I hurdled one obstacle, then I'd be facing a higher hurdle. Or so it seemed. Mostly because the learning curve was steep. But... Once the obstacles were overcome - and they all were - then it was easy. I simply fired up the machinery, got behind the mic and hit RECORD. Only if a cable or connector failed - or forbid, a piece of equipment failed (yes, it happened a few times), I had a very predictable workflow that...well, it just worked. Every path forward will most certainly have obstacles, if only your need to learn something new. Usually, there'll be other obstacles brought about by the result of traveling an unknown path. It's why forward progress is such an individual and personal journey.