This blog has always been updated rather intermittently. I have about 5 posts in various stages of doneness, but I’m too finicky. I want the posts to be polished before putting them out there. So it invariably means paralysis as I have to summon the courage to edit and re-edit something that is never going to be perfect.

I’ve recently started listening to podcasts, starting with Drive to Work, a podcast about the design of the game Magic The Gathering(TM) by Mark Rosewater. I really liked several things about Mark’s podcast. He records it while driving to work, which would be downtime anyway. He embraces the lack of perfection by recording in one take and throwing it out if it’s really bad. He doesn’t feel it precludes him from addressing the same topic in other media (like blog posts), or from addressing the same topic multiple times from different angles.

So that persuaded me to record Walk to Work (I may cave in and call it Dance to Work or something that makes the title slightly meaningful). The main topic is dance (blues, lindy hop, folk dance, balboa, tango, etc.) and related topics such as music, teaching, learning, body mechanics, etc.

I record it on the walk between my place and work, which has about 15mn worth of paths away from traffic. It’s not my shortest route to work, but that’s fine. I publish an episode every thursday (18 weeks in a row so far). I record in one take on my phone, without caring too much about sound quality (unless it’s too windy). I deliberately don’t prepare too much. If it’s not perfect or I forgot to talk about something, it’s fine, I’ll address the same topic some other time. So far so good: I can keep up with the schedule, the imperfection is not making me overly anxious, and I’ve had good feedback from listeners.

Ultimately, this all stems from the influence of Seth Godin. Make art, show up and ship it!

Here is a list of episodes by topic. I may update this list from time to time. If anything I say inspires you (agrees with you, disagrees with you), get in touch!

Dance (culture/philosophy)

Dance and Race

Some notes and links to go with episode 33.

Dance technique

Teaching and learning

Body Mechanics