My wife saw a 14-year-old cat that had been put up for adoption because his owner had died.
His name was Roo.
We took him in. The animal rescue that facilitated everything told us he was the oldest non-purebred cat they'd ever placed.
A couple of months later, Roo became ill, throwing up a couple of times and not being himself. He was the first cat either of us had ever had, so we didn’t know what was "normal" and what wasn’t.
We decided, at almost Midnight, to take him to the emergency vet.
That was a good decision. He was severely dehydrated and needed IV fluids. But an x-ray and blood tests showed nothing wrong.
He still wasn’t feeling well, so in addition to more fluids the next day, he got an ultrasound.
Again, tests showed nothing was wrong.
What does a sick cat have to do with podcasting?
You make the best decision with the information that you have available. Sometimes you make a "wrong" decision, but it's almost better to do something and move forward on whatever is next than sitting around and waiting for conditions to be perfect.
Conditions are rarely, if ever, perfect.
This is true whether making medical decisions for your cat, launching your podcast, or producing a single podcast episode—if you're waiting for "nice weather" to move forward, you're going to be waiting a long time.
An ultrasound exam is a weird thing. This one was $725 and, on one hand, you want to see something from it to know it was worth the money. On the other though, finding "nothing" is likely a much better outcome for Roo.
Then what? You move on to whatever the next step is. That's how we got to "ultrasound level" in the first place. The blood work and x-rays didn't tell us anything, we knew something was wrong, so we used other options to find the problem.
Same for your podcast. You're probably doing some things to get more listeners that aren't working. OK, so now you know what doesn't work!
Keep going!
UPDATE: Roo bounced back and lived another year before finally succumbing to an aggressive form of cancer. He had a great run and I’m thankful he could spend his final months with us.
