The Lake: Let's Begin

Hi, and welcome back to home! A podcast with Brenna Greenfield. Come spend the summer with me, Lake Superior, and some great guests. This season is about feeling at home in the company of the one and only Greatest Lake of All Time -- Gichigami (Ojibwe) or Lake Superior or Lago Superior. Thanks for being here. Leave a review if you like the podcast! On weeks with episodes, they will drop on Saturdays at 7 am CT. 

Transcript

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Hi, welcome to season two of Home. This season is starting in June of 2026, and the theme of this season is Lake Superior. The questions I will be asking myself and others are related to how do you feel connected to the lake? How do you feel at ease next to a gigantic body of water that might have many monsters lurking at the bottom? And what does it mean to live by the lake? I am going to release episode Saturday mornings at 7 a.m. Central Time. If there is an episode that week, that's my standard release time. And this season, go around, I'm going to stick to about 15 minutes or less per episode. The last season was called The Kitchen. And I had a rap party at the end, which was really fun, with that a few people came to. And I did that. I was inspired by Cody Cook Parrot for that because they celebrate things like book launches or book finishing a book draft with launch parties and or rap parties, just celebration parties. And I think that's really great to do things to celebrate accomplishments and milestones. I now have a microphone. I went to uh Best Buy and they just had one. And Hurley Winkler had said, do not spend $30. Do not spend $300. Spend $100. That is the right amount for a USB microphone. So I got a few contributions from friends to support the next season of the podcast. Thank you to the three of you. And now I have this microphone. I also found out that I have OCD, which I did not know. I have had it for, I don't know, 30 years longer. And a lot of things that were distressing or confusing to me in my life make a lot more sense now. It's kind of ironic because I am a licensed clinical psychologist, and I have a lot of friends who are licensed clinical psychologists. And I would mention some things like, I just feel like I'm a failure all the time. I have that thought in my head on repeat. And they were like, that's so weird. You're not. Why are you having that thought? So I have found a fantastic therapist, and I just got diagnosed a few weeks ago. And I think the surprise from season one, perhaps, of the kitchen is that possibly part of my issues in the kitchen related to OCD symptoms, like feeling like I was never doing good enough in the kitchen, or I didn't know how to cook, or I couldn't manage a kitchen. Those OCD, as I am learning about it, um has a lot of doubt that goes with it. So um that was an example of it, I guess. Um, what else for the season? I would love it if someone would review the podcast. I'm so happy that some people are listening. I'm doing this podcast for myself. Uh also, one of my OCD fears is that I will be talking and my mind will go blank and I won't know what to say, and it will be very embarrassing. So I am just spitballing this um episode and probably others too, so that I can um do like what's called an exposure to that fear and get over it. I already feel a lot more comfortable podcasting out after a full season of doing it on a pretty regular basis, and I kind of love it podcasting, even though there were times last season that were quite challenging because I felt like I was like screwing up or different things like that. Again, OCD. Uh, it's weird to have OCD. I didn't realize that I would have it ever. I thought I had social anxiety disorder or just some general anxiety, but um I think that OCD definitely better accounts for everything that I experience. So I'm actually super happy to have a better explanation of my mind and its quirks and some solutions for helping things get a little bit better. I haven't told my parents yet that I have OCD. I'll tell them tonight, and then this episode will come out and I'll go from there. Um, I think that I guess let me talk a little bit about Lake Superior. So I've lived um near Lake Superior in Duluth since 2015. So that's 11 years, and the lake is magnificent. I the lake was like my companion during COVID because we couldn't talk to people at all. I would spend time there and in the woods. And the lake kind of just does its own thing and is very powerful. It's also cold but swimmable in the summer. There are people who dip in it year-round. The local group is called the Cold Water Dolphins, and that can be really fun. You can also like do an ice bath in the lake after you go for a run. Um there are sailboat races on the lake every Wednesday in Duluth. There's a person who paddleboarded around the perimeter of the lake one year. And there's research on the lake. It had its own Twitter account. The link had its own Twitter account that was pretty funny. I don't know if that's still going because I'm not on Twitter anymore. And um I'm just excited to talk about the lake, I think. And I'll probably include some pictures that I've taken. But also, the lake is kind of intimidating. I mean, probably as it should be, but I just want to um spend the season working on my relationship with the lake. And that's all for now. Thanks for listening. Until next time, I'm Venagreenfield.