The Frontier Psychiatrists is a health-themed newsletter and podcast. It’s a little bit of a media empire; there is a YouTube channel, Instagram, TikTok, and music I do over on Spotify up top. This article is a bit of a meta-article on my journey, with historical audio as reference material.
I’m Owen Scott Muir, M.D., and I’m prolific, if nothing else. My first pass, as it were, at content creation was more plodding because podcasts—after music—were my first love. I consider myself an imprefectionist, now. This is a maxim for me—the done imperfectly and on to the next iteration is better than the perfect. One of the perils of podcasting is my fancy taste—I love Radiolab. I have Radiolab production alumni in my life. I love craftsmanship in a production!
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The flip side is I am one person. Who isn’t perfect? Believe it.
This person—the modern imperfectionist version of me—has had guides on getting more iterative things done. One is featured in the podcast attached to this very set of words. It’s my friend Michelle Bernabe, RN who writes Moral Health ! My mom is also in this episode.
Enough preamble, now to the prologue. My journey to imperfection as a maxim began with the hero’s journey. I was in the ordinary world—pre-pandemic, and then there was the call to adventure. Except there was nowhere to go and nothing to do. Cause there was a pandemic. I started getting less-than-perfect content out in the world. This is the third episode of that “body of work.”
Michelle—a nurse with whom I worked at the time— and with whom I am still proud to call a friend today, taught me about narrative structure and the hero’s journey. She had a very dear friend teach her the same lesson. Slowly, I began to realize the hero’s journey I was on was as a storyteller myself…and the story I was telling was both about imperfectionism and in an imperfect format.
Much of that story will later be told, over and over, on the Clubhouse App in late 2020…but at this point—the March 19th date on which I recorded this podcast was subsequently released on March 22nd. That is a quick turnaround.
I am trying to understand the weirdness of the pandemic, yes. I am trying to understand how to communicate about public health. I am scared; you can hear it. But I also got a thing done and then another. I am starting to let go…to get going.
This is episode 3. It’s an origin story of a sort!
Plug 1: I work at a practice in NYC for those interested in neuromodulation-first approaches to mental health problems. That means not drugs. It’s called Fermata. We are even enrolling for the SAINT OLO Study!
Plug 2: Tickets are available for the Frontier Psychiatrists live event: Rapid Acting Mental Health Treatment 2024, Jan 7th, in San Fransisco!