Thank you x It was a very difficult experience, but in a way it's a relief to be out of that environment. Hopefully the accountancy course will open up opportunities for better paid jobs in a non-retail setting.

Oh, hot tip! If you have a smart phone, they're actually really good to record audio on, because they are designed to be good at excluding outside sound and the quality is very good. I recorded the pod that I did for pod_together on my phone and if anything it sounds better than the ones I recorded on my mic.

In terms of bells and whistles, doing a Star Trek pod was a fun fandom to try out sound effects, because Trekcore has such a great range of iconic Trek sounds to download for free. I definitely think that sometimes people can be snobby in a "podfic is only a valid art form when you have effects/music/etc." which is annoying, but it is also fun when a podfic uses the medium to do things that are not possible in a text format and it's something I'm kind of curious to explore in the future.