This past Friday I feel like an era ended as Scott Johnson, creator of the ExtraLife webcomic, announced that the ExtraLife Radio podcast (ELR) would be shutting its doors. Ordinarily, there’s not much cause to write about a podcast that was or has gone away (a.k.a. podfading), but that’s not what happened here. The show was still, even in its more recent highly irregular schedule, as entertaining as it ever was. However, I really felt the need to mention that this podcast was not just one of my all time favorites, it was one of the ones that carried me through so much change in my life.
In 2004, my wife and I moved from Massachusetts to Orlando, Florida. A cross state move can be a harrowing, stressful, thing, and on top of that I’m a very obsessed individual who stresses constantly about everything especially change. And with packing, moving, and all the things that came with it – including the 2004 hurricane season in Florida, I needed something to calm me down. On top of that, I had decided that with my move that I wanted to start doing better by myself physically. At this time I weighed close to 290 pounds.
During a brief trip back up to Massachusetts at the end of the summer to visit our old Temple for High H0ly Days, we stopped at a store in New Hampshire and I got my first iPod – I was convinced that this was to be a key factor toward my starting to loose weight. I’m an infonaut, so I was instantly drawn to podcasts, and ExtraLife Radio was one of the very first I’d come across – yes I was probably one of the first listeners. And with that I started walking.
Now, I’m still walking (5K+ at least 5 times a week), I’m 50+ pounds lighter than I was then, and I was still listening to ELR whenever a new episode appeared in iTunes. However, when I pushed play on ELR this past week, I had no idea that it was to be the final episode – I didn’t learn that until Scott tweeted a link to a blog post about it from his @extralife Twitter account. Checking iTunes, I found a recorded reading of the blog post (it also included an extended dance remix version of the ELR theme song). Reading and listening, it surprised me, but I completely understand where Scott is coming from in his farewell – a full moon is always more exciting than a waning one. Going out on top is the right choice.
So I just wanted to write this post to thank Scott Johnson, Brian Dunaway, and Obsidian for all the time I’ve spent with them these past years. Every minute was worth it. Dean Cain forever.