Hey everyone, guess what? I'm still here. And I'm back. I think.
It's been a few years now since I've published anything here, which for those of you who know me can probably understand. But for those who don't, here is something of a recap and an update for what I'm hoping to resume going forward. For the past three years, I've been pretty deep in the trenches of stay-at-home parenting, giving our best loving care for our two kiddos. But they are aging out of this stage now, and finally getting into school and part-time preschool individuals that give me a few days a week to resume my aspirations as a writer, filmmaker, podcast, producer, and such.
I know a lot of people out there can relate to this time in their own lives, a time of setting personal ambitions, time, and relationships aside during the high-velocity years of parenting infants to toddlers. In our case, my wife is the career professional, so I've been in the unconventional role of full-time parent and home-making duty. And if I can be honest, it's been tough. And as a person with an unfortunate affliction of zero multitasking ability, this has at times drug my various creative outlets to a screaming halt.
Now some people can read, write, think, and function in the midst of chaos. As it happens, I can't so much as type my name with a mere distraction of a crying or babbling child in the background. I think my brain has a large, single, rusty wire running through it that only flows one direction at a time. I'd suggest that I'm okay at thinking hard about one thing, but one and only one thing at a time.
I've noticed this often in recent years and learned a lot about myself while juggling the evolving demands of babies becoming children. A stream of professional projects has continued through our life during this time, in which I've created some outcomes I'm quite proud of. I produced a video series on digital scouting for Idaho Fish and Game that really is a deep dive into my personal step-by-step process of big game scouting and hunting. The series has become part of Idaho's Hunter Education curriculum.
Then I had the honor of continuing to build upon the 2012 documentary series I produced for both the Nature Conservancy and Iconic Purdy family of Pikobu, Idaho, and a restoration project on its crown jewel, Silver Creek. Nick Purdy hoped a print book could accompany the video content we created together. So I spent a lot of time during COVID creating and publishing for him an elegant coffee table style book. Another Idaho Fish and Game video tutorial series followed, this time focusing on learning to fly fish.
With those projects under my belt, I also began a long held personal ambition of creating my own print book titled An Arrow's Reach, Essays from Two Decades of Archery Hunting Elk. This project pairs much of the scripts and outlines from my video and podcast series with the massive library of photos I've taken along the way. It's far from complete, but now in layout form within a book making template. So I've been in fact very busy and even creating, just not publishing, but I'm quite driven to change all of that as soon as I'm able.
I've had incredible fun producing my Wired to Wander video series, which left us off at Chapter 10, the beginning of the 2015 season. The episodes prior to that took viewers through a gut-wrenching decade of my elk hunting journeys and calamities, and as luck would have it, that's as far as I made it in the production process, home life simply took the wind out of my sails. Oddly enough, it was that 2015 season that I broke out of my elk harvesting funk and seasons once again became fruitful. Some of these seasons are featured here in my podcast essays from 2016 up to 2019.
But there is a gap in time and harvests here that I need to get organized and published. And in addition to that, all the hunts that have taken place since 2019. For some of this, I have ample video footage to merit creating brand new Wired to Wander episodes. The 2015 season in particular stands out for this.
And Chapter 11 is in the works now as I speak. You can find these episodes over on my Skylines Fishbite Media YouTube channel. In addition to sorting out these past elk videos and podcast stories, I've actually already put a bunch of time into a deer hunting video series that I'm really excited about. I haven't had the bandwidth to complete and publish any of it yet, but I'm really proud of how it's taken shape.
And in my mind, imagine it could be very well received, by audiences far beyond the regular hunting types. So that's also an emerging silhouette on the horizon to watch for. Tossing this bonus in, I ran a variety of marathons this past year, including one called the Stand Hope Ultra that marked significant milestones in my life and racing career. I've started an essay about those experiences that I'll look forward to publishing here as a podcast in the future.
And finally, I want to touch on something from just a week ago that I found quite interesting, and hence the reason I'm talking to you now. For the first time in ages, I happened to look at this Skylines podcast show page on the podcast app and stumbled upon the one and only review. A year or so back, a listener shared some very kind and meaningful thoughts of what my story telling means to them and also how insufficient my marketing skills must be. Now this point is very well taken, as I've sometimes felt that growing a Skylines audience has revealed a harsh reality that content matters little in the success of a podcast.
And inversely, marketing is sadly the only thing that matters. I'd wrongly assumed that if the stories I told were strong and could touch listeners in a unique way that nothing else in the hunting media sphere was doing, then they would get enough energy under the wings to take flight and self power themselves into an expanding audience. But the degree to which that has happened has been microscopic. And I own that failure.
But to my defense, I actually do have a lot of experience in marketing and some respectable success to show for it, just not with my own personal work. I guess for me, there's something of a barrier that arises when it comes to self promotion. Those barriers are self imposed choices, I suppose, and can probably chalked up to stubbornness as much as an unwillingness to dive into the hardcore hustle required to get content noticed and really performing in this day and age. And so to that listener's point, I have to laugh and say, you're right.
I've absolutely sucked at doing the work needed to market Skylines. And although it's taken me a year to notice your comment, what was written is incredibly flattering to me and a great kick in the ass to jumpstart my ambitions. Thanks for that. So I'm here to say now that after three years, I'm beginning to get more quiet desk time.
And my keyboard is pitter pattering more often. And video and editing programs on the computer screen are open full time. I've had some great stuff happening, folks. And I'm more than a little ready to create something special that I truly hope you will enjoy.
It's nice to finally say once again, thanks for listening and coming along.