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This is episode 1, where we talk about how the podcast came to be and what we are wanting to do with it.
A podcast talking about random topics, featuring a Gen X dad and his Millennial daughter.
INTRO: Welcome to tricky fish, a conversation between a millennial daughter and her gen X dad. Here's your host. Rhiannan and Ian.
RHIANNON: Okay. So you know how generally people have new year's resolutions where towards the end of the year, beginning of January, they think about what they've already gone through and what their intentions are for their next year.
IAN: Sure.
RHIANNON: Well, I kind of have that process around my birthday though, because with me being born in the end of January and three of my kids all have birthdays in the beginning of January, we have like Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, their birthday, new year's and then their birthdays. My birthday kind of marks the time for the holiday season to finally be over. And that's kind of when my personal year starts over
IAN: Real quick, New Year's falls in between Christmas and their birthdays. Do you get super drunk so that you can handle the upcoming birthdays?
RHIANNON: No, I don't have money to buy liquor to get super drunk. I have to pay for three children's birthday parties, like three days in a row.
IAN: Happy birthday kids mom's drunk!
RHIANNON: No!
IAN: I'm sorry. I just had to ask.
RHIANNON: No, I get it, but with that, last year, in the beginning of 2020, I felt that there was going to be a really big change. I didn't think that COVID was going to be that really big change.
IAN: I don't think anybody thought that.
RHIANNON: But for me personally, I just got this feeling of I think I'm here to help people. But not in like a famous way where I'm rich and famous and popular. Like in that sense, I think it's much more on a small scale, but widespread.
IAN: Right.
RHIANNON: So that's kind of where I got the desire to start a podcast was at this point, it gives me a space to be able to talk about my crazy ideas and having somebody with me helps the conversation go. And so I thought "I need a copilot for it", but everybody I thought about either weren't really that committed to the idea or like maybe they just didn't have the time or what have you. So the idea of getting a podcast kind of went on the back burner until you came out to me and you're like, "Hey podcast!" And I'm like, "Yes, let's do it!" So that is what made me want to create this podcast. Did you want to talk about your reasons before I explain the name?
IAN: Sure. So I've been kicking it back and forth for doing a podcast for a while. And I've been working on writing a book and becoming an author. So for me, it was kind of like, okay, I need an author platform, but do I do a podcast that's just me and I'm talking about writing or do I do one that is just random topics? Cause that's what I arrived on. I wasn't going to do anything that was movie specific, TV specific, video game specific, because that would all require me to just be super on top of that. And I'm usually not watching a lot of TV and I'm more likely to watch movies than TV, but I don't feel like watching enough movies to make it into a podcast. And video games, when I was younger, I used to play video games all the time, but as I've gotten older, I've really shifted away from that. And so if the weather's good, I'm outside, going on a hike with my dog, whatever. I play the most video games when it's really wet and cold and rainy and I can't get outside. And you can't really do a podcast that's once a year. And I didn't really want to talk about video games anyway, cause I don't really care. So then it was kinda like, well, I didn't know. I'd go back and forth. And I would think "should I get somebody that I can bounce off of? Should I just randomly start talking?" Every time I thought about getting a cohost, it's like a number of things had to kind of be fulfilled. If I were to choose a cohost, they would have to be somebody that I can bounce off, that we could bounce off of each other and be entertaining. They had to not be dumb.
RHIANNON: Which is a hard order to fill.
IAN: And it's not necessarily dumb in the sense that they're low IQ dumb, but I feel like
RHIANNON: Dumb as in, like, when we look at the news and we're like, wow, that is just so stupid.
IAN: Yeah, but it's also, they're going to talk about stuff that when you listen to it, you're just like, that is just a dumb take. So there's people that in my life that while I like them, I'll hang around with them, they're clearly not somebody I would do a podcast with. But there are people that I absolutely would do a podcast with, but it was a timing thing. They are so busy in their own lives. You know, I didn't think they would be able to commit to a weekly thing and you have to commit if you're going to have any success, whether it's a YouTube channel, podcast, whatever, you have to be consistent
RHIANNON: Any kind of platform.
IAN: True. So you need to be consistent. And I never thought about you, not because I was like, oh, well, you know, Rhiannon's dumb. No, it wasn't anything like that. Okay. As your father, I wanted to be the good adult father. I didn't want to always be in your life. Like always calling you up and being like, did you eat your vegetables? Are you getting enough water?
RHIANNON: The answer is no. I do drink enough water. I don't have enough vegetables.
IAN: I don't either. But I just didn't think about it cause I'm like, okay, well that's like getting too far in your life and I didn't know whether that would be something you would want to do. So it just never occurred to me. And then when you were like, "Hey, we should do one together", it just felt right. It was just like "yes!", and it would work because we have such good conversations. So yeah.
RHIANNON: I'm already seeing a difference in our mindsets because you're looking at me as "I don't want to be a helicopter parent", and I looked at you as in I don't view you as my dad. I view you as my friend. So I'm like, "Hey friend, let's do this project together". It's interesting to see how our perspectives are different like that. But for the name, I really liked TrickyFish because "Lilo & Stitch", in the very beginning, Jumbaa and Pleakley come to Hawaii for the first time. Also "Lilo & Stitch" spoilers, if that's a thing. They come to Hawaii, they're following Lilo and Stitch around and they're in the ocean. And Pleakley is looking at coral reefs and is totally enamored. And then a shark comes out and he's like Tricky, fish! Tricky fish!", cause it's a shark, when he was just hanging out in the coral reef, living his best alien life in Hawaii.
IAN: Didn't he think it was a dolphin?
RHIANNON: Yeah. And so I liked the idea for Tricky Fish for this podcast, because originally we were going to make the name "We want to conquer the world", in a reference to a really good song that is important to you, which I love, but it gave the wrong impression because like, we're not, I dunno. I feel like that was a really aggressive vibe we were giving.
IAN: It was a name that at first, we were like, "Yeah, that's a great name!". What's funny about that name is that both of us kind of just sat back and we never talked about it once we decided that it was going to be "we want to conquer the world".
RHIANNON: Yeah, we just accepted it.
IAN: We just went ahead with that, right. But separately, we were like, "man, that's a bit aggressive. I don't know if that's the message we want to send". And then it was just kind of funny because I came to you and I was like, "I don't think that's a good name", because I felt it was too aggressive, and you're like, "yeah, I feel it's too aggressive too". And then I was "well, let's come up with a different name". And I remember staying up late. I used a lot of podcast name generators, not because I was looking for it to give me a name..
RHIANNON: Inspiration.
IAN: Right! When I'm writing stories and I need a name, if I'm not coming up with anything, I'll go to a name, generator. And I'll just start plugging things in and I'll just keep hitting refresh until my brain goes, "oh, how about this one?" Not that whatever's on the screen is what I'm going to use, but it just helps to generate the thing. And I came to you with the really horrible list of what was generated.
RHIANNON: It wasn't horrible. It was a condensed name generator that helped me think of Tricky Fish. So it was just a more rudimentary version of that.
IAN: Right, but the moment you said Tricky Fish, it clicked. Like I knew "yes, that is the name". And I'll tell you, finding a name is incredibly annoying.
RHIANNON: As a parent, can confirm.
IAN: So I'm only going to bring this up this once. I'm not going to use this to sell my stuff or whatever. I did a separate podcast for my writer platform. And I'll just be talking about my experience as a writer, stuff like that. And the name of that is "Empty Pages". That is not the name that I initially wanted. The name I initially wanted was taken by some kid who back several years ago took this name, recorded three podcasts that were like two or three minutes in length. The first podcast was "oh, I'm just doing this on a dare. I'm going to talk to girls I like", and that was it. That was the first episode. The next two episodes he kind of just talked about some random stuff for a couple of minutes. So there was no girls involved.
RHIANNON: Wow! So the purpose of it wasn't even fulfilled within those few episodes.
IAN: Correct. And not only that, because it's out there and you can Google search it. I couldn't take that name.
RHIANNON: You know, what's wild is my username is dyinglemurfetus on everything because nobody ever takes it. But I actually used a name generator for my SW stuff, and I check every time that I make an account somewhere to try to make sure that like it's not already in use. And for whatever reason, my Instagram, somebody had used the handle for my SW stuff on Instagram. But their page had literally nothing on it. It was just there. And one day I accidentally hashtagged it or something, and I was like, you know what, I'm going to see. And they deleted it. So then I snatched it right back up, and so now I have a consistent handle across all platforms.
IAN: Nice! The interesting thing was that when you decided "Hey, we should do it together", and I was like "Oh, yeah, that'd be great idea", was that when we started talking about ideas for this, you were a little bit further along in what you had wanted to talk about.
RHIANNON: Yeah. Well, like I said, I started thinking about this in the beginning of 2020. I had this whole expectation, like everybody does, where 2020 is going to be the year of personal growth. Like I knew it was going to be a lot of intense, big change and I was right. Last year still did have a lot of personal growth and change for me too. Like COVID just kind of destroyed everything for everyone. But I started to kind of thinking, I don't want to keep this personal growth to myself. I want to help other people also heal through the bullshit that they've gone through. A podcast was a good way of doing that. And so I've kind of already had it in my mind of the ideas I wanted to talk about and how I wanted to go about that. And then it was just like you, I didn't have anybody that lined up. And then the stars aligned, what have you, whatever. And now here we are!
IAN: When we started doing this, I really feel it coming together. I really felt like this was the time that this needed to be done. I don't feel that it was ready to be born prior to this.
RHIANNON: Yeah.
IAN: But no, it's funny. I've actually been thinking about doing a podcast for probably the last five, six years. And you just thinking about it in 2020, you came to the table far more along in what you were wanting to do with it than I was, I guess I was just like, let's just figure out if we're doing it.
RHIANNON: I also wonder how much of that is your lack of personal confidence and belief in yourself and actually achieving a goal by yourself? Cause at a certain point, when I first started thinking about the podcast idea, my whole thing is, well, I'm not that interesting. Probably I'm not that fun to listen to or to talk to. And I had that whole narrative that kind of held me back from seriously pursuing it. And then the more that I had genuine conversations with people and talk to people I trust about it, the more I was like, you know what, maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. And if idiots can come on the internet and make podcasts, if Joe fricking Rogan can have a podcast, I can have a fricking podcast.
IAN: I feel like Joe Rogan - I get the energy you're coming with that. I think Joe Rogan, whether you like him or not, I can see where he's coming from with what he's doing. I do think Joe Rogan's a bit more of a better example of a podcast personality, but he also came from a comedy background. And I love his comedy, but I get what you're saying. For me, it really wasn't that nobody's going to want to hear what I have to say, whatever, but I was also "what is it that I'm going to offer that people would pay for?" And I wasn't necessarily thinking I'm going to make money off of it. But because we come from a capitalist society, everything that we do has to have some sort of benefit. We never just do things for the fun of it.
RHIANNON: And that's what I've been trying to change this year.So starting 2021, that's been, my goal is just doing things for the sake of enjoying it.
IAN: Sure. And for me, I can say it's not necessarily a lack of confidence because there's a lot of people that would tell me they love when I tell stories. They laugh. They enjoy it and they're like, you should start a podcast. It's like, I'd love to, I don't know what I would talk about. I don't know that anybody would want to listen to it, but when you and I talked about it, what really broke it down for me and cleared the table, as it were, is that we both came to this going, "we don't care if this makes money, we don't care if we do this and we only get pity listens from friends and family. We're going to do this because it's fun." The other thing too is that as we've done this, as a father and daughter, we've also bonded over this.
RHIANNON;Yeah. And not even gonna lie. Low key part of me was like, what if we start doing this project and we ended up hating each other's guts again.
Ian: So, okay you say "again". To let people know for people who are listening to this for the first time we have had a rocky relationship over the years. We started out having a good relationship. Then we ended up not really having a good relationship. And then we ended up repairing the relationship and it started going better and then it went to shite and then eventually just went to the point where we weren't talking to each other.
RHIANNON: Blocked on Facebook, blocked phone numbers, literally no communication of any kind.
IAN: Exactly. And then now here we are doing a podcast, which is amazing. And that is one of the things that as you listen to our podcast, the goal of our podcast is to hopefully be entertaining first. But also to be helpful. So some of the episodes are going to be lighthearted. They're going to be just goofy stuff. They're not really going to be anything deep, but there are also going to be episodes that are a lot deeper.
RHIANNON: I was going to say, I'm an Aquarius. So I thrive on chaotic and new ways of thinking and new conversations. So you can't set those expectations.
IAN: I'm a Leo, worship me! As people go through and listen, I know that there are people out there that don't have good relationships with their parents or their children,
RHIANNON: Or necessarily have good habits with building relationships in general. Cause interpersonal relationships, whether platonic or romantic can be just as complicated as familial relationships too.
IAN: Oh yeah, absolutely! That is things that we will talk about in future episodes. You will hear deeply personal stuff about us. So hopefully when you listen to that, you hear and maybe you can look at your own life and see that it's not hopeless per se. If you're child who is estranged from their parent or vice versa, I want to tell you that there is hope. I'm going to tell you, Rhiannon is a lot like me in temperament and personality. So that has been part of the clash, but we've managed to work through that and we're going to relate that as it pertains to whatever the topic is, and hopefully we can reunite parents and children or grandparents and grandchildren.
RHIANNON: I do want to make sure that we have the expectation set though, too, of inclusivity, So LGBTQ BLM, all that good stuff. We are a positive, nurturing, welcoming environment. Now, even though I say those letters, the letter mafia, alphabet mafia is what they call them, whatever, even though I say those things, people that listen to this are allowed and encouraged to form their own opinions, do their own research, all that good stuff. And I am more than willing and welcoming for people to have conversation, but it needs to be a conversation and not trolling or arguing, or specifically doing things to hurt or cause grief to other people. And not because I'm trying to police how people spend their time and how they act. I just don't want that kind of negativity and bad energy to pull away from what we're trying to do.
IAN: I totally agree.
RHIANNON: And I just feel like it's a waste of my time. Which I'm not willing to waste, I'll block people. I'll delete comments, whatever you got to do, life is short and I'm not going to waste it with people on the internet who are committed to misunderstanding other people.
IAN: Yeah. So if you're approaching us with bad faith, we're not going to engage. We're all on this planet together. We're all going to do this in good faith. Also, we want to say that we are going to largely stick to our lane and it's not because we don't want to talk about things that are important. But there are things that I feel it's not in our wheelhouse to talk about.
RHIANNON: I feel like it would be inappropriate for us to talk about things like other races and other cultures that we know nothing about beyond glorified Google searches that don't necessarily do them justice.
IAN: That's true. But one of the things that we did talk about was having guests on. So I'm throwing that out because as we get better situated and better set up to be able to do these things, I would like to bring on guests that can talk about things that are not in our lane, so that we can try to foster understanding. So if you're interested in doing it at some point, we'll have a way for you to submit an application.
RHIANNON: Maybe that could be a way people leave comments, like instead of a review, you could just be like, Hey, I have an idea for the topic. Here's this. Or, Hey, I would love to talk to you about this. And then that would be a great way to get our attention and, you know, also leave comments because that's helpful.
IAN: Well, we definitely need and want the reviews. Reviews get us noticed to get our podcast out there. Twitter would be a good way to do that. trickyfishpodcast.com is our website, so yeah, there's ways to reach out. So if you have questions you want us to answer, we'll answer. Again. We're only going to answer things that are asked in good faith. If you're asking in bad faith, just save your time and our time. Cause we're not going to deal with it. Do you have suggestions for things you want us to talk about? Yeah. Reach out, let us know. We'll definitely do that. And hopefully we can spark conversations and ultimately I would like to hope that whatever our efforts, nets a positive gain, good karma, whatever you want to believe in.
RHIANNON: You want to know what's interesting? Lately. I've been really trying to conceptualize the purpose of human life. You know, I feel like that's a big question that everyone kind of tackles on their own way and religion gives people a way to deal with that. Those ideas to kind of feel comforted in the fact that we don't know what happens after this, you know. I've always subscribed to a very hedonistic view in that I think the point of being alive is to experience and enjoy as much of it as you can. So that's kind of been my mentality of I want to do everything. I want to experience everything, including bad things too. You know, the pain, we can't have the good without the pain, all that, yada yada, yada. But I've been trying to think of my personal life purpose, like what I'm specifically here for. And like I said, I don't think it's some big grand gesture, like being famous or anything like that. I think my purpose is to find out how to be the happiest version of me. Because when I'm that version, I can take care of more people. And then I can pour that love into people that aren't otherwise getting it. And with this podcast, it gives me more of a reach instead of being limited to people that I speak to, that I'm able to see in person, which during COVID is incredibly difficult. And I hate video chatting and I hate talking on the phone for free. I did it for my job for years. So like now I just hate phone calls. So for me, I'm kind of testing if this really is "my purpose in life", if this would be how I achieve that. Cause I just want to help people grow and heal and figure out what their best life looks like for them, and help people realize that we can all have that. It's just that we're living in a capitalistic, garbage society that is built to keep us down and I want to help everybody break out of that. And so this podcast for me is kind of like an experiment, like if I do have that option and I do try, is it actually going to be helpful? Am I actually going to be able to help people evolve like that. And if not, I can then adjust and think of something else to do that. But I'm kind of looking at this as like a science experiment a little bit.
IAN: Personally I aim to misbehave.
RHIANNON: I solemnly swear that I'm up to no good. Hashtag Harry Potter.
IAN: I do want to be helpful. I think if we help even one person, it will be totally worth it.
RHIANNON: Do we count as that one person? Because if we were to compare our starting point of that conversation in the diner where we had that confrontation to now, we've made a lot of progress. But we could get closer. Like we're spending quality time doing this right now. So technically, if this goes well, and our relationship evolves to be even better, would that count as the one person? Like good enough for you that that's the one person that you helped or are you thinking strangers?
IAN: I'm thinking about strangers because it definitely works for us. But prior to us deciding to do this, our relationship was already on the mend. We were already working on these things. I feel like doing this has kind of accelerated it in some ways, but I don't really want to necessarily be selfish with it to be like, "oh, we did it! We helped ourselves! Pat ourselves on the back".
RHIANNON: Hey, I do that though.
IAN: Really? I think it's okay to congratulate yourself on achieving things.
RHIANNON: Well, yeah, it's really important to give yourself recognition because most of the time nobody else is going to, but also we grow up thinking that small things aren't just as important as like big grand gestures. But in reality, our life is completely compiled of small things that we do every day. And so like an easy example is I'm not a morning person at all. I hate existing before 8:00 AM. If I stayed up all night, then I don't care. But if I went to bed and I have to wake up before 8:00 AM, I'm not a fan. And with my job, I used to have to be at work at three 30 or 4:00 AM, and I could not stay up all night because it's a customer service based job. So I need sleep. What I would do is the night before I would plan my outfit. As in the entire thing, the bra, the underwear, the pants, the shirt, the shoes, the socks, all of it. Have it all laid together, right in one easy spot in my bathroom or something. And I'd have my work bag already packed, whatever, that way in the morning, when I know I've slept through every single alarm and am probably running a little bit late, I can literally just run to the pile, put them all on and grab my bag and go. And then, way to go past me. And then I pat myself on the shoulder because past me totally had my back,
IAN: Hey, that's a success, which we will be talking about in a future episode.
RHIANNON: So yeah, Tricky Fish podcast. We're here to broaden your way of thinking, for us to grow and learn and share that with people on the internet, which is funny because you used to tell me all the time, don't post personal things on there.
IAN: Yeah, and here we are talking about personal stuff. Yeah, I get ya. But we're not going to be doing podcast episodes where we go here's our address, here's how to find us, here's where we work". Yeah. None of that's going to be on there, so, yeah.
RHIANNON: Okay. Well, thanks for tuning into the - is this the prelude or not preface? Right?
IAN: This is episode one. The one about the podcast.
RHIANNON: I love that title. Perfect! Okay. Well then thanks for joining us for tricky fish episode one, the one about the podcast. I'm Rhiannon.
IAN:And I'm Ian. This has been another episode of tricky fish. If you enjoyed what you heard and want more of it, you can follow us at apple podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave us a review is that really helps us out. You can find this@trickyfishpodcast.com as well as on Twitter at trickyfishpod.