Episode 7: Rediscovering Your Passion with Betsy Bush

Join your host Betsy Bush as she begins Season 2 of The Latest Version by telling her own story! Betsy talks about her time as a radio broadcast journalist in Germany, lessons she learned the hard way as a young professional, and what brought her to create this podcast!

Resources:

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

The Renaissance Soul: How to Make Your Passions Your Life by Margaret Lobenstine

Transcript:

Betsy Bush (00:00):

Hello, and welcome to the latest version. I'm your host, Betsy Bush. I'm starting out the second season of the latest version by telling you a bit about myself. Why I think the topic of reinvention is so important in mid-life and about my own return to the audio space with podcasting after decades away from the broadcast studio, it's a story about early passions, trips and stumbles, exploration, and finally a sense of coming home. It's also about things that affect everybody: longevity for one, it's a search for meaning and joy, a sense of accomplishment. And I think at midlife, especially the satisfaction of knowing that you tried, that you put at least some of those "what ifs" to rest. So let's take a trip in the time machine back to April, 1985.

Frank Loeser (00:59):

...I decided to flee.

Betsy Hills (01:00):

Dr. Loeser was a leading member of the East German communist party, the party secretary, and to professor of philosophy at east Berlin's Humboldt university positions of considerable political influence. But last September Franz Loeser left east Germany with only the belongings. He could fit in a suitcase. He was later granted political asylum in the U S I spoke to Dr. Loeser in Cologne to publish his latest book. And he told me of the frustrations of living in the democracy that has slid into dictatorship in East Germany.

Betsy Bush (01:32):

That's my 24 year old self co anchoring a half-hour radio magazine program called across the Atlantic produced by the German public broadcasting service Deutsche Welle in Cologne, West Germany, which aired on us public radio stations. I say West Germany because in 1985, Germany was still divided and the iron curtain kept East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary behind a fortified border. My few forays into Communist Poland and East Germany, and even the Soviet Union back then make for some interesting stories, but I'll save those for another time. This is my last report from Across the Atlantic.

Willy Mauhs (02:19):

This is a very special Across the Atlantic for us here in Cologne. And for me, it's the last program with my cohost Betsy Hills. Betsy's returning to the states soon after almost two years with us here at Deutsche Welle. And before she left, she had a very unique assignment, a very special project. She wanted to complete. Betsy ?

Betsy Hills (02:40):

Thanks, Willy. Like a lot of Americans. I had always wondered if I could find my family roots here in Germany in preparing for my search. I was very lucky to have a lot of family information already at hand. The German ancestor I wanted to track down was named Johann Nicholas Dietrich. He was born in 1727 in the village of Riesweiler in an area south of the Mosel river and west of the Rhine called the Huensrueck. My great, great, great great-grandfather Dietrich immigrated to America and settled in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, but the village of Riesweiler is still on the map

Betsy Bush (03:18):

Two years at Deutsche Welle were the high point of my broadcasting career,. I got there, the way I fell into a lot of opportunities at a young age I was volunteering as a reporter at the public radio station in Cincinnati, where my now husband was a student, When I ran into a German gentleman from Deutsche Welle looking for a co-anchor for his new program across the Atlantic, it was literally that easy. I had just come back from a summer program in Germany. I spoke some of the language... The problem with great jobs falling into your lap like that I've since found is that you probably haven't done the preparation for the job. And if you're honest, probably don't deserve it. I was so young, 23, good enough, but insecure. And my insecurity kept me from learning as much as I could have. My insecurity kept me from admitting that there were places where I needed to shore up my weaknesses. And I never really got that back. When I left Germany to get married and moved to New York, there were no radio jobs for me. I was still too young and too inexperienced to work in the number one radio market in the country. And that was the end of my broadcasting career. I went on to the field of nonprofit fundraising and development which was a place where I could put my writing skills to work. And that was that marriage kids house. You know, the deal. In episode three of the first series of The Latest Version, Lucy Filppu, the English teacher, talks about working on her first novel. She describes returning to her childhood love of storytelling and returning to the story writing she loved as a girl, as her inspiration and motivation. She needed to get started on her novel. I love the podcasting world and the vast variety of audio productions out there, not just what I do here at The Latest Version where I'm having these great conversations with these wonderful people, but also the other podcasts with the reportage and the ambient sound andthe on location interviews, all of which are enhanced by sound design it's storytelling on a grand scale.

Betsy Bush (05:49):

And it's all taking place between the two years of the listener. It's magic. Maybe this fascination with storytelling started when I was a kid and we had a lot of story records at home. And my favorite was Winnie the Pooh wonderfully read by the English actor Maurice Evans. And there was Danny Kaye, the actor and comedian, who recorded records for kids with songs and funny bits that would have me rolling on the floor. Then as a teen, I discovered public radio, which was just getting started in the seventies, not just National Public Radio and All Things Considered, but the crazy quilt of programming you'd find on college radio or public access radio: tuning into an episode of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and being transfixed by the worlds, the planets, the alien characters being conjured up through dialogue and sound. It was so much more satisfying than anything the movies could produce. I only heard that episode once. I didn't know where to find it or hear it again, but it stuck with me all these years. Those good radio productions could really use the listener as a co-producer in creating this world that you only can imagine. You can't even visualize it on the screen. It is so effective. When I went to NYU, New York University as an undergraduate, I was in the film and TV department where I found myself working, spending most of my time, where else, at WNYU our college radio station. My big project there was creating a live radio drama program. Now all my filmmaking friends, film, major friends thought this was hilarious because radio drama, what that's from the thirties, you know, war of the worlds and all that, you know, what are you doing with that gun in your hand? That's radio drama. That's not movie-making that's so passe, but I'll tell you, there was something about, about creating a play on the, there was something live radio drama, there's that free zone that excitement the idea that it was high stakes, because it's going out, it's being broadcast, goes right out over the air. Um,but it's fast. And then it's over with there's no obsessing over details and post-production, and it was moderately successful. Well, the advantage of radio, as I tried to explain to my filmmaker friends was that it's cheap and fast and you can try out ideas, write dialogue, try out storylines, create characters and see if it worked. Why not? Unfortunately, I didn't convince all that many,ubut I was onto something.

Betsy Bush (08:57):

And I'll tell you what, just this past February, the New York Times Arts and Leisure section did a huge multi-page report on podcasting. And one of the people it talked to was actor, Lamorne Morris, who with Kyle Shevrin are the creators of the buddy action comedy podcast. Unwanted. It partly pays homage to Beverly Hills Cop. I'm going to read directly from the article right here. "Morris Says, podcasts offer a rare opportunity to test new ideas quickly and cheaply quote. 'When You're a creative person, you need an outlet,' Morris said. 'You Can't always say, let's go and make a $50 million movie, but you can sit down and record and say your idea out loud.' Unwanted, Morris said, could very well be a film or television project. The story he said was one of millions of ideas. He and Kyle Shevrin, his co-creator and writer writing partner had bandied about and podcasting allowed it to become a reality. 'It's A proof of concept,' Morris said, to say to the industry, this works, this is fun. This is something that can be done.'" I could have told you that 40 years ago. College radio was fun. You know, one of my colleagues at the station was Martha Quinn, the one of the original MTV VJs and she was just as nice in person as she was on MTV. I have to say one of my low moments, and I know everyone has one of these was being up with a baby at 3:00 AM, sometime in the nineties, turning on the TV and seeing Martha Quinn with Davy Jones of The Monkees doing some TV retrospective. Oh, Martha Quinn worked with Davy Jones. Oh, it was really one of those “what if” moments.

Betsy Bush (11:01):

I also have to admit I'm still haunted by the call. I never made to the producer of audio books, a contact, someone gave me soon after I returned to New York from Germany. Now I realize to have gotten into audio books on the ground floor would have been huge. That still makes me wonder 'what if', but can there really be anything more destructive than the practice of always doing the, what ifs and the 'coulda shoulda woulda.' It's really not productive. I used to think this question of wondering whether, you know, what your life would have been like if you had made different choices was mostly confined to women because women so often have set aside careers for raising kids and tending home fires only to wonder 'what if', so it was interesting to read an article in The New Yorker, by Joshua Rothman, that this idea of the unleaded life has long been a male preoccupation as well. Wow. So it's very human. Remember the Robert Frost poem from English class? "Two Roads diverged in a yellow wood and sorry, I could not travel both... I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference." No doubt. Some of us go down a road and at some point may ask ourselves if it's too late to get back to that other road, we all have to choose one road. And even not choosing is a choice. You know how it, in kindergarten, the teacher sometimes asks the kids what they want to be when they grow up. And it seems amazing, right? All the options are open to you as a kindergartener, you think, and there's always some kid who raises his hand. I want to be an astronaut. Well great. But being an astronaut is a very particular narrow road. I don't think you can go down the road of being a theater arts major and then suddenly decide you want to be an astronaut.

Betsy Bush (13:17):

I don't think. And if, if you're stuck at a desk and always wondering what would have happened if I had pursued my arts career, my music career, my writing career, my filmmaking career always know that there's someone who has pursued those things and is wondering, gee, maybe it would be nice to have more predictability or stability in my life. I am going to be talking to two women, this series upcoming series, who will be able to talk about these choices that they made. I'll be talking to Betsy Steward who went from a successful career as an opera singer to a fundraising consultant for nonprofit organizations. And there's also the painter, Jill Krutick, who left her career as a financial analyst to pursue painting full time. And now her work is exhibited and collected. There's no single right answer. Only the answer that's right for you.

Betsy Bush (14:26):

It may be also, it's important to think about not doing too many things at once, but it may be. It's possible to do things sequentially, two books you might want to check out are The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. This is a very popular book. That's been out for like 25 years. And it's, it's like a workbook where you go through exercises week by week to help you unlock or recover your creativity. It's a very well known book and maybe it's something you'd want to check out. I will have information on the books on the website, the latest version podcast.com. There's also another book that I've discovered recently called the Renaissance Soul by Margaret Lobenstine. Lobenstine's book really spoke to me because I often feel like I'm always finding new things that interest me, gardening, native plants, urban ecology architecture. I went back to college at 56.

Betsy Bush (15:35):

I went to Columbia. I got a second undergraduate degree, majoring in architecture, but it was the core curriculum that absolutely fed my soul. So maybe what I am is a Renaissance soul. Lobenstine has an interesting exercise for those of us who think I'm too old to start something new. What's the point? I'm blank years old, yada yada, yada. So here is her exercise. So get out your pencil, write down your age. I'm 60, that's a nice round number. Then write down the age you expect to live too. I know that's a little weird because none of us know what's in store for us, but okay. I'll put down 90 because my parents lived into their nineties then subtract 60 from 90 and you get 30. Okay. So God willing, I have 30 years ahead of me. Now, this is what she does. Lobenstine does this interesting thing.

Betsy Bush (16:40):

So subtract the sum. I came up with 30 from your current age. So 60 minus 30 is 30 in short. I have as many years ahead of me now at 60, as I did at 30 up to this very moment, I find that mindblowing, think of everything that's happened to you since whatever number you come up with and just think you have that same amount of time ahead of you, God willing and everything else that might happen in life. And hopefully your health, hopefully you stay healthy. But the point is that these can be incredibly productive years that are not taken up with some of the worries that you had say as an undergraduate. And I saw this among my undergraduate classmates. So I know that you probably don't have to worry about if you're going out this Saturday night, you probably not wondering does so-and-so like me.

Betsy Bush (17:47):

You don't have those kinds of meta concerns that undergraduates have, right. Am I going to get married? Am I going to have kids? Am I going to have a career? Where am I going to live? What's going to happen to me because you're probably already there, right? You've reached a point in life where a lot of those early concerns are just no longer valid. What I loved about going to college was being able to appreciate, and really delve into the course material and having the time to read all the assignments and all the books. And I could bring context and history to the lectures and the readings that often even my professors didn't have, because often I was older than life professors. It was far more meaningful than anything I did when I was a real undergraduate. I also have to say, I could not have done this coursework at Columbia when I was 18.

Betsy Bush (18:42):

Those kids are really smart. But the skills I acquired over the years, I was able to put, to work in my coursework. And it was an amazing experience. The point though, is there's no reason to stop being interested in the world around you, or to think that you can't try new things and be successful at new things. What's your latest version going to be? That's the biggest question you have to ask yourself right now. I end every episode by asking my guest three pieces of advice that she has to share. So I will share advice from series one that I found really helpful. Lara Lavi. My first guest said, be intentional there's room for you in whatever field you choose, but expect to work at it. So be intentional from Lela Goldstein, the collage artist, her message was, don't be afraid to fail. Just keep trying. Remember you have to fail sometimes because you don't learn if you don't fail. You learn more from failure than you learn from success. And I think as a young person, way back when, when I was in Germany, I was really afraid to fail. And because of that, because of my defensiveness in my insecurity, I did not learn. And I didn't grow as much as I might have as a broadcast journalist. And finally, from Lucy Filppu, find that thing That gave you joy as a kid. What is your latest version going to be?