Stories of Our Journeys

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Five years. 762 episodes. A show a day, seven days a week. People watching from over 70 countries. Consistently in the top 10 of all popular podcast channels and show lists. She’s a pretty lady walking her dog on a beach. What could possibly be so fascinating?

While Beach Walks with Rox is really just Roxanne Darling walking her dog, Lexi, along the beach near her home in Hawaii, this popular, short, low-tech video podcast has captured the attention of the world by being innovative, accessible, fun, funny, educational, enlightening, inspiring, thoughtful, and thought provoking.

Roxanne Darling is considered one of the world’s experts in video podcasting, social networking, live streaming media, event production, and web development. Her company, Bare Feet Studios, works with travel agencies, local government agencies, public relations firms, and regular companies on web development and social media projects and consulting in Hawaii, the United States and internationally. She is the founder of Social Media Club, the Social Media Club Hawaii Chapter, Association for Downloadable Media, and a member of many other blogging, social media, and featured in several books on social media and web publishing. She travels the world presenting workshops and keynotes on accessible audio and video podcasting for the web and mobile platforms.

She’s beautiful, talented, and knows her code. Her life is perfect.

One would think so, which is why she has a story to share.

While her journey took some interesting twists, eventually making a life time dream come true to sell everything she owned and move to Hawaii with her partner, she began her life as a highly technical and scientific thinker. Totally left brain, when she reached her 20s, she turned it all around to focus on the right brain, working on herself, specifically her body. She gave up her left-brain career to start an exercise and dance school in California, writing a book on fitness and health training, and working as a consultant in the field to corporations, traveling the world to teach training programs and speaking at conferences on body issues and health.

Another twist on her path led her to a career in marketing consulting.

My job was to sit and talk to businesses all day long and give them ideas. I always have more ideas than I can execute. At the end of the day I feel that little voice in me saying you’re a failure because you didn’t execute any ideas. Here, I could just give them away. It was a perfect match.

Meeting her partner, Shane Robinson, introduced her to the world of web development where she found a perfect match in mind and spirit, taking her journey into the world of web technology. She’s worked intimately with her partner for over a decade and shares advice on working with a loved one, as well as working with multiple projects at a single time, maintaining your sanity as well as your partnership.

Along the way, she had to come to terms with her own inner peace, fears and doubts that plagued her from the very beginning.

It’s one of the great ironies in life. When I was in my 20s and 30s…I did not have confidence. I actually had an eating disorder, which kinda comes with the territory of being a ballet dancer and aerobics person. On the one level, there are all the societal pressures – in my family, appearances were very important. What we wore, how we looked, was really big front and center issues from childhood. I certainly had the superficial impetus laid down very strongly.

Then there is all the other stuff. I was raped when I was 14, and had those kind of issues that make it very difficult for a person in general to be comfortable in their own skin…for me it was just a full time occupation to be monitoring every little aspect of how I looked.

Being a fitness trainer, it added more pressure I put on myself. Not only did I have to interact with the 500 people that belonged to my club, I would then go on the road to Japan, Switzerland, Germany, and Singapore to teach other instructors. I pressured myself to be even more perfect, to be even more of a role model…The irony is that I now weigh 15 pounds more, my body fat is now 15 points higher. If I was judging this body from that mind, I would be in absolute horror. ‘You are not going to walk on the beach like that!’ That’s part of the crazy-making.

I’m now comfortable in my own skin and bumply as it might be, imperfect by my 25 year old standards as it might be, I’m comfortable. I want to live in a world where people are comfortable, where they go to the beach regardless of how they look in a bathing suit…Sometimes we put ourselves down. If we weren’t doing that, no one would know we were having any problems. The lesson is, keep your mouth shut. Chances are I’m the only one finding any flaws. If I can get over it, we’re done.

In this interview with Stories of Our Journeys, Roxanne opens up about her joy of podcasting and how it helps to tell any story, especially her story. For her, podcasting is such an intimate connection “between the speaker and the listener.” It helped her grow as a person, rebuilt her self-esteem, and changed who she is as a person.

While Beachwalks.tv was an experiment in technology, answering the question of whether or not she could do a daily video show with the least amount of effort and technology, the experience has changed as the listeners’ experience now plays a greater part in their understanding of how a good show works and to define the social web intimacy that can form when all the pieces come together right.

The show helps her make her dreams come true. Roxanne is able to produce something people enjoy, share the beautiful place where she lives, and helps to lift viewers out of their daily doldrums with a few minutes of beauty, peace, and inspiration in a simple podcast show.

I want to live in a world where people are less stressed, happier, more fulfilled, more engaged with their in conscious mind in terms of what’s possible. To help people withdraw from some of the negative aspects of group mind – the herd mentality in that rush to the bottom, whether its the bottom of expertise, or the bottom of depression or whatever those bottoms are. I want other people around me that are happy. Having a good life because that makes it more fun for me, and I’m willing to put some of my time and energy into making that happen.

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