Think of this as a little bonus epilogue, a catch-up of sorts, bringing the podcast up to date and setting up the second season of the show.

In the final-ish episode of the season, I explore the moment when reality finally sets in: where coping mechanisms stop working, and you're forced to accept the reality of your life being changed.

This episode is all about accountability.

What it is. What it isn't. How simple and important accountability is for us to find happiness, and why an overwhelming amount of people choose to spend their lives running from it instead of facing it.

In this episode, we explore the topic of anger. What it is. Why it happens. Why our society insists on treating anger as something to be suppressed, and what the cost is when we do so.

In Episode 5 of "I Hope I'm Wrong", we discuss the other side of shame: Not the ways we hide ourselves, but how it can affect the parts of us we choose to show the world. How our shadow can literally shape the person we see in the mirror, creating a "safe" version of ourselves, while denying us the opportunity to be loved and accepted for who we truly are.

Why do we often leave the most important truths unsaid? Why do we sing quietly, love tepidly, and let shame narrate our story?

This one is all about why even we, the certified yappers and compulsive oversharers, find ourselves telling people all about our story and our hurts... while still leaving out the parts we truly need to be able to tell.

Sometimes we find ourselves in a lose-lose situation, a place we know that we aren't supposed to be, that we know isn't quite right. Sometimes, we choose to stay anyways.

"My Kobayashi Maru" is the story of my realizations around lose-lose situations, what staying in them costs us, and what we can do when we end up in one.

In this episode, I step back from the narrative (gotta build that tension!) and introduce myself properly. Not the polished version, just the real one. ADHD, anxiety, attachment wounds, and CPTSD all shape the way I move through the world, and they shape the story I’m telling here.

I talk about what it means to start a podcast from the middle of a life collapse, why my brain operates in patterns and hypervigilance, and why the title I Hope I’m Wrong captures the way so many of us live: hoping the bad signs aren’t what we think they are, even when they usually are.

This episode is about connection, honesty, and learning to speak your story out loud... even when it scares the hell out of you.