Aerial View of Downtown Statesboro

Well, it’s Friday and another episode of The Jason Durden Show is out. This week I talked with Paste Magazine TV Editor and Critic Allison Keene. It was a fun conversation and I think you’ll find it very interesting if you’re a fan of television.

I had thought I hit a small milestone with the episode this week, but I realized I was wrong. I had thought I had now posted 10 full episodes…but it’s actually 7 full episodes. While I have 12 episodes published, two of those were trailers, 2 of them were special episodes, and one of them was a regular episode but with no guest. I’m counting full episodes with guests. Well, it won’t be too long before I hit that 10 full episode milestone.

I know it sounds silly to be celebrating doing 10 episodes. But you take your milestones where you find them. While The Jason Durden Show is doing about as well as I expected for a new podcast, the numbers could definitely be better. While my show is monetized, I didn’t expect it to start raking in tons of money right off the bat. Things take time to grow.

I can be a little impatient at times. I used to be really bad about it, but have tried to do better because, for me, impatience leads to anxiety and I have enough of that going on already.

It’s hard to try and teach yourself to think differently than you always have. I’m 55 years old, so I have 5+ decades of practice with the negative thoughts. Trying to rid myself of those, no matter the circumstance, is a process. A slow process. Ironic, huh? Trying to teach myself to be more patient is taking a long time. So the first impatient thought I had to get rid of is that I can make myself into a more positive person overnight. That just doesn’t happen. So learning to be patient while training myself to not be so impatient has been really quite interesting.

For me, leaving Atlanta was something that took some impatience and anxiety off my shoulders. I had been wanting to get out of Atlanta for quite some time. Between the traffic, the noise, the crime, and so many people moving to the city it all just got to me. I realized Atlanta is not the city it used to be — some good changes, but also some bad changes. The City of Atlanta was basically a small town when I moved to Atlanta. After dark or on weekends people in the suburbs didn’t come into the city. This was at the time when landlords almost had to pay tenants to rent from them intown. Yeah, that isn’t the case anymore. 

Traffic is now so bad all the time all over town. When I first started flying traffic, we didn’t have to fly over GA 400. There was simply never any traffic coming down 400 in the mornings. That all changed for sure. These days you pull up to a red light or stop sign and oftentimes you are twenty cars back waiting. And the roads, especially in the city limits of Atlanta, are horrendous with pot holes and cracked, shifted pavement. Those roads costs me a few tires and a front end during my years there. 

When I was younger I didn’t give crime a second thought. My friends and I were in our early 20s and didn’t think a thing of walking home at 2 in the morning after being out all night. I know there was crime, but we mostly didn’t hear about it unless we watched the local news. I know I rarely ever did watch a newscast. Once I started in radio I’d mainly watch Fox 5’s morning show, Good Day Atlanta. It got started not long after I got into the business and WAGA was doing business with the traffic company where I worked. After switching from radio to tv covering breaking news from the air, I saw the crime firsthand and up close. After 12 years of that, it made me want to get out of Atlanta even more.

The late Captain Herb Emory always used to say about traffic, “Too many cars, not enough pavement.” Of course, too many cars means more people are moving into the metro area in droves. I am not a big fan of crowds, and the Atlanta metro is one crowded place. Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not against people relocating or the city growing, it just wasn’t what I wanted at this stage of my life.

Living back in a small town like Statesboro has done a lot to help with the impatient part of me. People truly are not always in a rush, like people in bigger cities. The roads are in much better condition and traffic is non-existent. You don’t hear sirens or gunshots all day. It does lead to a slower, more relaxed pace of life where you can be more patient. 

I like that feeling.