Confessions of a Gen-X Mind: Mental Health, Family Systems, and Personal Growth
Confessions of a Gen-X Mind is a reflective mental health podcast about family systems, identity, and what happens when you finally see your life clearly.
Told from a Gen-X perspective shaped by media, technology, and decades of lived experience, each episode explores the quieter side of mental health. Not crisis. Not quick fixes. But awareness, integration, and emotional adulthood.
Through personal storytelling, cultural observation, and honest self-examination, the show looks at inherited roles, family dynamics, neurodivergence, boundaries, and the process of choosing healthier ground later in life. It is about naming patterns without bitterness, honoring what was good, accepting what never was, and building forward with clarity.
This is a podcast for listeners who are thoughtful, self-aware, and no longer interested in pretending. For those who have reached a point where reflection matters more than performance, and peace matters more than approval.
New episodes arrive as part of ongoing thematic arcs rather than constant noise. This is a place to slow down, think clearly, and feel a little less alone.
Confessions of a Gen-X Mind: Mental Health, Family Systems, and Personal Growth
Never Meet Your Radio Heroes: The Gap Between On-Air Personas and Real Life
In this bonus episode of Confessions of a Gen-X Mind, I pull back the curtain on what it’s really like working behind the scenes in radio.
Listeners hear a voice.
A persona.
A carefully crafted version of someone they think they know.
But when you’re the person setting up the gear, fixing the signal, and making the show actually happen, you often meet a very different version of that same voice.
Drawing from my years as a remote broadcast technician in Dallas radio, I reflect on the strange inversion I saw again and again:
how some of the most beloved on-air personalities were the hardest to work with off mic, while the gruff, prickly “heel” types were often the most professional and respectful behind the scenes.
This isn’t a takedown, and it’s not about naming names.
It’s about understanding the difference between performance and personhood, and what working in media teaches you about ego, insecurity, and authenticity.
If you’ve ever heard the phrase “never meet your heroes,” this episode explores why it’s sometimes true—and why, occasionally, it’s beautifully wrong.
A thoughtful, insider look at radio, fandom, and the people who make the magic happen quietly, without applause.
I saw a post earlier today announcing the passing of someone I used to work with in the Dallas radio market. The comments were exactly what you'd expect from his listeners. What a legend, what a voice. He was always so kind. I loved his show on Saturday mornings on KLIF. And I didn't feel the need to correct anyone right there in the comments section, although I thought about it for a second. Because here's the thing about radio, broadcasting, or any type of media. The person you hear on the air, or on the podcast for that matter, is not always the person standing next to you behind the broadcast table or behind the scenes. Sometimes they're not even close. This isn't a takedown, it's not a hit piece. And it's definitely not about just one person, although it's inspired by him. It's about a truth anyone who's worked behind the scenes in the media understands instinctively, but audiences almost never see. When I worked as a remote broadcast technician in Dallas, my job was simple on paper. Make the show work, make the signal clean, make the host sound good, disappear behind the scenes. Most listeners never think about what it takes to pull off a live remote broadcast. They just hear the voice, the jokes, the confidence. What they don't hear is the setup at three o'clock in the morning, the cables, the IFB checks, the digital gear that either works or very clearly doesn't. And here's where things got interesting. Some on air personalities, the ones listeners adored, were absolute nightmares to work with off the mic. Berating staff, talking down to engineers, using phrases like it's amateur hour, or the signal's drifting, even though we were using digital equipment by that time, that physically does not drift. That wasn't technical insight, that was theater. It was a way to assert dominance, to remind the room who had the name on the billboard. If you work in broadcasting long enough, you learn something uncomfortable. Talent doesn't always breed humility. Sometimes it amplifies insecurity. Some hosts had built an entire identity around being the voice, being recognized, being needed, being on that billboard. And when something went wrong, real or imagined, the easiest target was the person quietly making the whole thing possible on location. The tech, the promo kids, the guy carrying cases and solving problems without applause. I learned quickly which host everyone hoped they wouldn't get paired with. You could feel it in the pit of your stomach when you saw a certain host on your assignment sheet. Here's the part that still fascinates me. The nicest on air personas, the warm, friendly, everybody's pal types, they were often the worst to deal with behind the scenes. Meanwhile, the on-air heels, the gruff ones, the opinionated ones, the guys who sounded prickly or abrasive on the radio, they were always the most professional, the most respectful, and sometimes genuinely kind. They knew the show was a performance. They didn't confuse the character with the crew. That inversion taught me more about media than any class ever did. Like a lot of people who end up in the media, I started out as a fan. I listened to these voices for years, I laughed at the bits, I bought into the personas. Then one day, I was standing right next to them on location, holding the cables, watching the mask come off. That's when I learned the hard truth. On-air talent is often playing a version of themselves, sometimes a heightened version, sometimes a completely constructed one. And meeting your heroes doesn't always ruin the magic, but it absolutely rearranges it. To be fair, and this matters, I also worked with broadcasters who were exactly who they sounded like, professional, prepared, and grateful for the people around them. Those folks never worried about ego. They understood that radio was a team sport. They knew the mic doesn't work without the room. Those are the people who lasted and aged well and didn't need to remind anyone who they were. So when I see posts celebrating someone's public persona, I don't argue. The audience didn't know the other version. They didn't have to. Both things can be true at the same time. Someone can be brilliant on the air and deeply difficult to work with behind the scenes. Someone can mean the world to listeners and leave a very different imprint on the people who made the show possible. Working in media taught me that reality is layered, that voices are curated, that charisma doesn't equal character. And it taught me something else too. If you want to know who someone really is, watch how they treat the people who can't help their career. This was a bonus episode of Confessions of a Gen X Mind. No names, no pylons, just perspective from the other side of the mic. Because sometimes the most interesting stories are the ones that never made it on the air. If you like what you heard here, tell a friend and check out all of our episodes on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get podcasts.
