Sunday Morning Selfie

Happy Sunday Morning! My name is Joe Bryant. I am a Seattle area teacher and radio personality who started a blog on New Years Day as a way to spend a little time reflecting on the past week, looking to the next and mostly, to document my challenges to live a healthy lifestyle and lose weight. I appreciate you taking the time to read my story.

My New Radio Show “Joe’s Class”

It took a couple of years but I finally found a radio station General Manager willing to take a chance and put me back on the radio! 

That GM is me! Joe’s Class can now be heard weekdays at noon on KMIH – 88.9 FM. Since we are only a 30 watt station terrestrial radio is not the best option for most but you can listen live from anywhere in the world at 889thebridge.org or by downloading our free KMIH app in the Apple or Android stores.

  I made the decision to put myself on the air daily as an opportunity to “model” to my students instead of “lecture” to them. I can talk for hours about how to do great live radio in a classroom or we can just go in the studio, crack the microphones and make it happen five days a week!

Joe’s Class is a class on how to do a radio show but it’s also a radio show about a class! My vision is to tell stories with my students and give them a platform to shine and develop their skills and brands. It is also a way for me to have fascinating guests on to share their wisdom with my students. This is something that is only a week old, has never been attempted on radio as far as I know, and has the potential to be an awesome tool to educate AND entertain. It’s a totally grass roots thing and I appreciate anyone that can take the time to tune us in at noon or listen to the daily podcast.

Here are a couple for you to sample. On Tuesday my first official Joe’s Class guest ever was my old friend and radio partner/guru for 25 years Bob Rivers. Bob and I had a great conversation and he shared some observations on listening that EVERYONE should hear. (and all my students, including the Marketing class got the opportunity) Here is the link to the podcast. 

While Joe’s Class will feature news makers, celebrities, Rock Stars and other guests from outside the building, the real stars and fascinating stories are the ones I envision my students and fellow mercer island High staff telling. 889 The Bridge is “music and conversation that spans generations” and our show at noon will primarily serve as a platform to have some of these multi-generational conversations. Give this segment with myself and Program Director Emily a listen to get an idea of where we are going with this.

If you like what you hear please check us out daily and tell your friends. The radio lessons are taught live on the air and one of the biggest takeaways that I want my students to get from this is to realize that if they make great content it WILL be heard by an audience. I tell them that while we may have a less powerful transmitter, that should not limit us from having big aspirations. If we go on every day and broadcast with passion. purpose, focus and humor, the ears will be there. A lot of what I hear coming out of big transmitter commercial radio stations these days does not impress me. I tell my students that they will be the ones to bring our medium back to the forefront and the time and place to begin that mission is weekday’s at noon on 889 The Bridge.

A couple of things lined up for next week on Joe’s Class include in studio visits from another of my favorite radio partners, Maura Gallucci on Monday, and YES drummer Alan White on Thursday. While I have interviewed Alan MANY times as part of the Bob Rivers Show and he has graciously granted several of my students access to interview him, I think this will be my first time sitting down with Alan with me as host. We are working on and INCREDIBLE benefit concert taking place at the Hard Rock Cafe on October 5th and I will have the details AND podcast of my time with Alan on the SMS blog next week.

Whats Next For Sunday Morning Selfie?

I started this blog as a way to keep myself literally out of the cookie jar. I figured sharing my life and weight in a public forum would keep me on track and honest with myself as I tried to lose weight. It certainly did the job with TONS of help from 30/10 Weight Loss For Life. 

The first six months of the year I had some incredible success and I am a good amount down from where I began the year. But when summer hit I decided to give myself a short break that carried into a several month break. Without the help of 30/10 I am now at 234 pounds and more than 10 pounds up from where I was in June. For those keeping track that is the same weight I was last Sunday.

I have some decisions that need to be made. Do I go back to what I know works and admit my transgressions while I was away? Do I just try to go it on my own by eating sensibly and get off empty calories like booze and sweets? Do I continue to document my weight weekly to you even though the results are less than inspiring?

These are all questions I need to sort out in my own head but any input is welcome.

Writing this Blog does take me a bit of time every Sunday and, now that you can hear me on the radio five days a week, is having me sit down and type this a necessary exercise any more? Maybe I should just post the links to all the great conversations I had with my students and guests on the radio?

I don’t want to come across as lazy when I mention this quandary. But job one for me is to continue to learn to inspire as a teacher and now I even have a Marketing and a “Bridges” class to prep for. A teachers work is never done I am discovering and everything I am doing at the moment is focused on getting a handle on the new school year and a much bigger class load than I am used to. I don’t want to get so many projects going that I spread myself so thin none of them are done well.

I realize this is not super entertaining writing and is mostly stuff to sort out in my own head BUT, what Sunday Morning Selfie started as was a way for me to be accountable to myself and make good decisions regarding my lifestyle. I have reached a bit of a crossroads on this project and will have to ponder where to take it from here.

 But for today SMS will lives on. I will make one promise to myself and that is to get back to doing a journal on my food intake next week. I think it’s time to take baby steps back in the right direction and tracking everything that goes in my mouth is HUGE to making me less huge.

 Teaching is an all consuming passion and profession but I know I will be a much more effective one if I am not also so all consumed with eating junk food and going off the dietary rails. Yes, like many of us, I am an imperfect and conflicted human.

Please give Joe’s Class a listen and let me know what you think and, regarding today’s game, I am thinking Seahawks 34 – 49er’s 17. (I ALWAYS pick the Hawks to win)

Go Hawks!! Joe