Dream Bigger (Ep. 174 - The Amazing Race)

This Week's Guest: Scott Flanary

Do you always NEED to dream big, or is it sometimes ok to just be happy with what you've got? My guest this week has some experience when it comes to achieving big dreams -- Scott Flanary was the winner of Season 29 of The Amazing Race, which had been a goal for pretty much all of his adult life. So now that he's accomplished goals that once seemed impossibly difficult, he's grappling with a tough question: now what?

Thanks to everyone who joined us for the Sewers of Paris live chat last weekend. Our next one is June 30th -- there's a link to the next livestream at the top of the Sewers of Paris twitter feed, when you can set a reminder to get a notification when we go live. 

Huge thanks to everyone who makes The Sewers of Paris possible with a pledge of a dollar or more a month on Patreon. If you're enjoying the show, click "Support the Show on Patreon." Or you can support The Sewers of Paris for free by leaving a review on your podcast platform of choice -- that really helps people find the show. Thanks to Alestrial who wrote on iTunes, "Yes please, A rare podcast that helps you discover something about yourself while learning about others." Aww that's really sweet. 

Also, if you're looking for more queer podcasts, check out the show I host with some fantastically funny drag queens Queens of Adventure. We play an ongoing and very queer Dungeons & Dragons adventure full of action and suspense and shady banter. Season 1 just launched -- head over to QueensOfAdventure.com to subscribe.

If you're in Seattle, we've got a live Dungeons & Drag Queens show coming up on June 21! And the Queens of Adventure live is coming to San Francisco for two shows on July 13 and 14. Tickets are now on sale at QueensOfAdventure.com.

This Week's Recommendation: Me Talk Pretty One Day

Thanks again to Scott for joining me. For more queer musings on travel, fresh starts, and finding yourself while you were looking for something else, check out David Sedaris' book "Me Talk Pretty One Day." Sedaris is, of course, required reading, his essays all beautifully crafted meals of humor, anxiety, and thoughtful resignation to the absurd. But this book marked a shift in his writing: it chronicles his time in America and then his re-settlement in France -- where, unable to speak the language, he is robbed of his primary means of navigation. The experience he relates is a bit like being hazed by an entire country, one word at a time, and yet still he soldiers on, a sort of gay Eeyore grasping his way through an alien landscape.  What emerges is a travelogue not as much about being in a new country as it is about living in a new language, a broadening of horizons that is far more expansive within the writer than without.
 

Stuff We Talked About