I liked the difference in pace and emotion in this podcast, and the content was first rate. A big improvement in terms of delivery to my taste!

I stopped listening after about 3 minutes. Steve, I guess this was one of your improvement trials to see what works better. Slow down! I liked the pace of #1 much better. But then, I’m not a native speaker.

If you want to make a point, let it sink in. Smart listening means following the line of thought of the speaker, which takes effort and time. Arent’t your ideas worth sinking in? If not, why?

I’ll try to get throught the cast later again and see if I can comment on the content.

I’m in the situation you describe. A few years ago I realized that I had outgrown my career. I had outgrown a few of my values, too. Awareness helped. It still took years to figure out what to do. My new future will take years to build. Each day it gets closer. Until that incipient moment, I continue to live each day in the problem — just as you describe. Your personal development insights ease the way. Thanks.

Incidentally, you really seemed to hit your stride in the last minutes of podcast #2. You stopped speed talking, but you didn’t lose the energy!

You probably knew this already… See how many words of your podcast you can eliminate without losing meaning. For example, in one passage you said, “but at least for now”. I write and speak in much the same style. My too-many words strive for precise shades of meaning. But it’s not the most effective way to communicate.

Intonation and timing carry meaning, too. Connecting words like “And”, “Or”, “Also” can become superfluous.

Thank you for this. I definitely agree with your sentiments about honesty versus self-delusion. It’s amazing how much our society values mystery. Some quotes from personal heroes of mine:

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

-Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World)

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere gobs of gas atoms. Nothing is “mere.” I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part — perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one is belching there. Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together. What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the *why?* It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
– Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)

Just one point of confusion: Your podcast seems to imply that you are no longer a game developer. Is this true? Have you lost your passion for game development?

I also took your advice to the motivational audio programs you really found helpful. It is very nice to have positive voices and energy available on demand.

Keep up the great work!

Simply awesome!