What a year! In a good and bad way, happily the good out weighs the bad which will help make this good reading, I think.
So I’ve taken time to reflect on a busy year before it ends, mainly to archive a year in text and to plan out my targets for 2023 to then look back on my ‘targets’ … and then realise I didn’t make them but did something else, that is usually how things pan out.
2022 started off as a super busy one, I was getting married in the April and barely anything was organised, but luckily it all came together after much planning and we lived happily ever after. .. THE END. Not quite, amongst that my voice over work was booming, literally, it was popping up on TV, radio jingles for UK and world wide stations and lots more other voice related things, great stuff.
During this I was a Director and presenter at Sound Radio, something I was proud of, I’ve been part of community radio for 12 years, 7 years with Point FM and 5 years with Sound Radio helping gain the FM community radio licence for the area, but sadly cracks were starting to show, it was being a strain on me mentally,
I wasn’t really enjoying it anymore and it became a chore. It became like a full time job for free basically, it was no longer fun, I love radio, just not that radio. The thought of sitting with my daughter watching CBeebies was more appealing .. and still is.
My family was top of my agenda, my stepson lost his dad in the June which made a huge shift in my landscape, we’d already been through a tough 2 years with this and the super early birth of my daughter during the pandemic. After careful consideration, weighing up the situation of what would I gain and lose, I quit as a director. My loss was ‘just not doing the chore every week” my gain was everything. I realised my worth, I could happily walk away and still create/produce things I love doing in my own time, on my own terms, I’ve got an address book for contacts and over 10 years experience. I can now support my family doing radio type stuff and more and feel great without the sickening thought of going to a place you no longer want to be at. I resigned formally, wished them well for the future and moved on.
So what next? … Well I accidentally made a radio station, it wasn’t for my voice though, it was just part of a bunch of radio/podcast ideas bubbling around in my head that I didn’t want to give away for free. The the whole radio station thing was meant to come last, but I thought f**k it I’ve got no one to answer to or conflict of interest. For years people have been saying to me “Are you the bloke off that Rhyl Radio”, to which I always had to correct them, so it was the ideal time to grab the name, build a website and let it sit there. The local paper contacted me for a story and that was that really, cat out of the bag, oh well … which nicely brings me up to now and the future.
I’ve been working with lots of different people and organisations over the last few months, I’ve made adverts for other local community radio stations in North Wales, I’ve done some more TV voice work for a national UK restaurant chain, My voice appeared on Channel 5, I’ve recently done work with a huge social media/YouTube group (which is top secret until January 2023), I’ve had a huge boom for radio jingles from radio stations all over the world which this takes up most of my time lately … and I’ve even had time to dabble in recording a Christmas radio show, which is a litmus test for things to come in 2023.
Over the next year I want to branch out more, especially with podcasts, radio, more voice over work. I’ve put together a radio show that will be going out weekly on a number of stations worldwide and I’m fascinated by smart speakers and the internet, bespoke radio services and more, I can create, build and manage from home … 2023 here I come!