We’ve all been there. You walk in on your mom and dad sitting at the dining room table, both with sorrowful looks on their faces, knowing that they’re going to have to explain to your 7 year old self that your favorite pet is going to be going away for a very long time, specifically, forever. From a dog with metastatic foot cancer (miss you, Rusty), to a cat with a terminally fatty liver (miss you too, Hobbes), I’ve experienced euthanasia multiple times in my life. Recently, I had an experience that reminded me of those morose moments of my childhood, and it retaught me a lesson that I had thought I had learned many times before.
I recently had to “put down” one of my favorite creations: Pick5! This is a story about losing something, as I have done many times in my life. This is no swan song, but rather, a celebration of life.
As many of those reading this have known, Pick5! was a podcast that I had created well over a year ago. On the show, I would give a countdown of a random top 5 of anything and everything that came across my tiny little brain. Thousands listened, dozens appeared on the show, but at the end of the day, it was time to hang it up and send my dying show off into the great unknown. While I shed an infinitely less amount of tears while putting down this show compared to the time I watched the ending of Marley & Me, it reminded me, ever so briefly, of that familiar melancholy, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
But loss is a part of life. I used to tell myself that in life, you win and you learn (instead of lose). Admitting that it is time to walk away from a creation isn’t an easy thing to do, much like putting down a pet, but it’s sometimes a necessary thing to do. Losing is a part of life, and it is something that pushes us to create something new, allowing our creative spirits to rise from the ashes. So, if you’ve recently lost, and odds are, you have, get up, brush yourself off, and rise from the dust. Join us and create. Here’s to another year of igniting conversation.
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