Today I write to let you know that Living Blindfully will cease publication at the end of September.
If you read on, I will give you what info I am at liberty to share regarding the reasons for this decision, but first, I want to provide you with information about what it means for our Plus subscriber.
All remaining episodes of the podcast will be made public to everyone without the 72 hour advanced publication for Living Blindfully Plus subscribers.
Living Blindfully Plus subscriptions made via Apple Podcasts will be cancelled immediately. When your next subscription payment would be due, you will receive a refund for the time between when the subscription was cancelled and when your payment was due. If you opted for a yearly subscription, this means it will be some time before you see your refund, but you will receive it. Apple handles all matters pertaining to payment, according to their terms and conditions.
Most of our Living Blindfully Plus subscribers have subscribed through Pinecast. If you want to, you can cancel your subscription now. Please be aware though that once you cancel your Living Blindfully Plus subscription, if you want to hear the remaining Living Blindfully episodes that will be published throughout September, you will need to subscribe to the public Living Blindfully feed through your podcast app.
If you do nothing, eventually all Living Blindfully Plus subscriptions will be cancelled. We’re letting some time elapse to give people a chance to subscribe to the public feed so they can hear the few remaining episodes.
Since Living Blindfully is winding down, as of now, we will no longer be accepting new listener comments via our WhatsApp, email and phone channels. This ensures that we can get through as many of the existing contributions we’ve received as possible. We have a lot of great interview material and product demonstrations in the can already, so you may find there are some extra episodes in September.
Now I’ll tell you what I can about the question you’ll be asking. Why?
Coming to this decision is incredibly bitter/sweet for me. We just passed our fifth anniversary. If you played all the episodes back to back, and didn’t sleep, you’d be listening for almost a month. That’s a lot of discussion, many people helped, fascinating people spoken with, and products demonstrated. I love putting Living Blindfully together as much as I always have. More so, in fact. When I took the gamble of moving to a model where we generated some revenue so I could get some help with the show, I wasn’t sure if people would just walk away. Exactly the opposite has happened. More and more people have started listening, and many more chipped in than I ever expected. I cannot thank you enough.
So, if it’s all going so well, and I’m not burned out, why shut it down. If you were listening to episode 288 back in June, you’ll recall that I discussed how I resigned my position as a CEO here in New Zealand just after my fifth anniversary there. I was fortunate that if nothing else permanent came up, we’d be OK financially, and I knew that even if I just continued to work on Living Blindfully, I’d be making a difference, and making a difference is important to me. I tend to think that when you follow your heart, when you do the right thing, the universe has a habit of sorting things out. I was quickly approached by some talent scouts, some of them with attractive offers, but in the end, I felt like I’d be just getting back into the rat race. My next opportunity had to be extra special. I wanted something that fit my personal mission, my values, and helped me to contribute to making the world a better place. That opportunity has now come along. It is up to the organisation I’m working with to announce where I’m going and give some indication of what I’m doing. You won’t have to wait long.
But as the news of Living Blindfully’s end sinks in, I do want to make this clear. During the negotiations that led to this new opportunity, no one at any time said, unless you give up Living Blindfully, the deal is off. The reverse was the case. I don’t think the word “agonised” would be too strong a term. We thought long and hard about whether we can make this new opportunity and Living Blindfully co-exist. And I know that it can’t work.
What makes Living Blindfully work is that you get me unfiltered, without any potential conflicts of interests, or any need for me to curb my remarks about certain subjects. To have the biggest impact I can in this new role, there are times when I would need to be diplomatic and circumspect, because I will know things I can’t talk about, and I will be seeking to establish high trust relationships that would be compromised if I let rip, as talk show hosts are inclined to do.
But let me give you this cast iron assurance. If you’ve listened to the show even for a small number of episodes, you’ll know my heart, you know what drives me, you know I am a staunch defender of the rights of blind people everywhere. That’s been the case even long before I joined the consumer movement here in New Zealand as a sixteen-year-old, and it will always be the case, as long as I have breath in my body.
As much as I absolutely love doing this show, I know that I can make a substantially bigger difference to a much larger group of people by accepting the most exciting opportunity I’ve had in my life to date. And that’s really saying something, because I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some great people and organisations.
I understand that these sorts of changes hit the community hard, and I truly am sorry about that. Although I will do so on our last episode, I do want to acknowledge and thank profusely Derek Lane and Hannah-Mae Aldeza who have been working on Living Blindfully with me, Derek doing some audio editing, Hannah doing the marvellous transcripts. I hope that I will have the opportunity to work with them in my new role.
We’ve been meeting this way, almost every week, for a long time, and I truly do understand how something that’s become a part of your life leaves a void when it disappears. But when you get the other piece of the puzzle, when we come back and discuss the exciting future that beckons, I like to think that most of you will agree that the sacrifice is worth it for the gains that we can make.
Yes, I’m sad, but I’m also excited, Bonnie’s excited, my kids are supportive, some dreams are coming true, and alongside some of the best, brightest, and most dedicated people in the world, I’ll be working to make life better for us, and you have my word I will give it everything I have.
Thank you again, so very much, for supporting Living Blindfully.