Have you ever been out by yourself when you have this amazing idea—but by the time you get home, it's gone?
It's like waking from a dream, knowing you had something important you NEEDED to write down, but you just can't remember what it was.
That's why I started UnRambling—to capture those fleeting ideas before they disappear.
Hi! My name is Sean Openshaw, and welcome to UnRambling—where I record myself while [running, biking, hiking, walking, driving]… or swimming—well, maybe not swimming.
I then transcribe and reflect on the recording to preserve the insights often left out on the trail. Through this process, I've learned that saying thoughts out loud can be even more powerful than just thinking about them or even writing them down.
Today's episode is about this:
➡ The only way to get to THERE is through your HERE.
Sometimes, the HARDEST way is the ONLY way:
➡ This is how I'm overcoming the fear of recording myself, one speaking at a time.
Beyond that, this podcast is about more than just capturing and unrambling my rambling thoughts.
It's about the rambling way we interact with the important moments in our life—and being able to unramble them in a way that's sustainable, meaningful, and unforgettable.
It's about recognizing that there's more to a moment than meets the eye—because life is more than just what it looks like.
I want to help people live, capture, and catalog important moments—so they can create stories, preserve memories, and stay connected to the moments that bring meaning and purpose to their lives.
I really hope you stick around so we can figure this out together.
Today is Sunday, February 16, 2025, and I'm recording myself while driving to Scottsdale to have lunch with some of my family.
I often start these UnRambling sessions with a question: What am I trying to unramble?
Today, it's this:➡ How do I improve the way I deliver a message? And what even IS my message?
I'm not necessarily talking about writing or photography, but literally, physically—through speech. How do I say the thing I'm trying to say?
For years, I've struggled with this. As someone who stutters, slurs their words, and tends to ramble, I know I'm often perceived as ineffective, simply because I can't always articulate the thoughts in my head.
Words trip me up like a bully.
Writing? I can edit and make it better. Photography? I can keep shooting until I capture the decisive moment. But speaking? That's been the skill that has always crushed and evaded me.
I've been in a lifelong battle with public speaking.
I felt terror in front of audiences in high school. That feeling followed me through college and has stayed with me ever since. In college, I failed public speaking twice and barely scraped by the third time.
It doesn’t matter whether I’m in front of a group of Cub Scouts, leading a meeting, or speaking to a crowd of any size—I hate it. I can talk with family and friends or my team, no problem.
But beyond that? I struggle.
But there's something about right now that feels different.
For the first time, I feel like I have a message that needs to be delivered—that needs to be said out loud. What's standing between me and my message is being able to say the words when people are looking.
During this process, I realized that my life has come down to more than just photography.
That's scary because I've spent the last 30+ years as a professional photographer chasing what things look like. Every day, I hone my photography skills. And yet, I'm not drawn to teach it.
There is so much information out there right now. The world doesn't need another photographer teaching a course about how to capture what things look like.
What the world needs—is a better way to capture, organize and preserve what moments mean.
That is the message I was meant to deliver. That is the problem I was meant to solve.
I have two things to figure out: What exactly I want to say so that people "hear" me, and how to physically say it, so they can understand me.
I know I don't have the gift to gab. And I definitely don't have the gift to "glam" like so many over-energetic content creators I follow.
What I do know is that if I'm going to deliver a compelling message, I have to get better at speaking. I have to get comfortable with my voice.
I know you’re supposed to “start with bullet points and just talk,” but right now, bullet points lead to rambling, which is worse than being robotic.
That means doing the hard thing first. And that presents two critical gaps:
I don't know how to read from a script without sounding robotic.
I don't know how to talk to an audience (on stage or on camera) without feeling awkward and terrified.
The Plan is to UnRamble to Podcast to Video to Stage
How do I move forward without detours? I think it starts with these UnRambling sessions. I record these UnRamblings, letting my thoughts spill out as they come—raw, unfiltered, and real. There's no pressure to get it right; no one is "listening" when I’m out by myself or with my dogs.
I'm also not getting stared down by a blank page.
It gets me comfortable hearing my voice out loud.
It gets me comfortable with pauses.
It gives me confidence to say what I'm trying to say.
It teaches me to compose my thoughts on the fly.
From there, I transcribe and clean up the session. I unramble the ramble. Once I have that, I refine it back into a readable script—what you're hearing now.
This script sounds like the way I talk because it came directly from me talking. It's not words on a page that I've tried to reshape into my "talking voice." It's my actual talking voice quite literally onto the page.
Before I even think about video, I'm starting with audio.
I started with this podcast to get comfortable hearing my voice, practicing delivery, and building confidence to speak without the added pressure of seeing the flashing red record button on a camera.
By recording audio first, I'm working on two skills at once:
I'm getting comfortable with my voice and the IDEA of having to say things to an audience.
I'm learning how to read naturally and engagingly. I'm learning how to slow down and speak clearly.
The goal is to get comfortable in front of a microphone before I have to sit in front of a camera or stand in front of an audience.
The Only Way There Is Through Here
As I end this UnRambling session, I realize that I won't get better at speaking by watching YouTube videos and hoping for it. I won't wake up one day magically able to deliver a flawless message.
The good thing is—I already have everything I need to succeed. I don't need permission. I don't need any more gear. I don't need to wait for the perfect moment. This is the only way to get better.
I just need to hit record.
I don't want to be sitting here five years from now, still talking about how I need to improve my speaking skills. Hell, I don't even want to be sitting here five months from now saying anything close to it.
Working on my voice has helped me find my message, and I now have a process for delivering both. I need to stop hiding behind "learning" or the need to "get better." I need to stop spending endless hours watching other people's content and start creating my own.
Because, at the end of the day, the world doesn't need another photographer teaching how to better capture what things look like. It needs someone teaching how to capture what moments mean—and, more importantly, how to document, curate, and catalog that meaning so that it's not lost.
I want to help people stay connected to the moments that bring meaning and purpose to their lives because to have good stories isn't so that we can live forever—our stories show how our lives matter.
And no one is going to tell our story the way it was meant to be told if we don’t capture what it meant to us.
Let Me Step Back for a Moment
If you're listening to this, that means I hit record. And I'm glad I did.
Looking back on this UnRambling session, I think it captures where I am now.
It captures what this moment feels like.
This isn't just about struggling to communicate better. It's about actually doing the work to get better and hopefully finding an audience who wants to follow along—finding people who want to go beyond capturing what life looks like to preserve what it means.
And by forcing myself to articulate how I want to say something, I'm finally starting to understand what it is I have to say.
This isn't some hypothetical self-improvement plan. This is me, mid-struggle, figuring it out as I go. And that feels worth capturing.
I also know I'm not the only one wrestling with this. So many people want to communicate their ideas, but like me, they get stuck in self-doubt, fighting their voices, overthinking, or not knowing where to start.
That's what makes sharing this UnRambling process important to me.
If I can overcome this—learning to become comfortable speaking and delivering my message—maybe that will help someone else do the same.
If I can use my journalistic skills, storytelling experience, and perspective on curating life’s moments to help people create a Personal Life Record—tools and procedures they can use to catalog and preserve the details that make life meaningful—then I’ll have a message that matters.
This isn't a distraction. This is the work. This session proves I'm on the right path because I finally have a message I’m dying to deliver, and I finally hit the record.
If I could leave you with one thought, it would be this.
The tagline for this UnRambling podcast is “Wandering Thoughts Don’t Need to be Lost.” It’s a nod to the famous Tolkien line, "Not all those who wander are lost,” because I believe there is great value in rambling thoughts and wandering adventures.
But I also believe that if we don’t put down our camera and pick up our pen, we risk losing forever—why our journey was valuable in the first place.
P.S.
This episode came out of one 90-minute recording as I drove from Flagstaff to Scottsdale. This entire "speech"—all the words and ideas—would have been left sitting in my head... had I not just hit record.
So, as I end this UnRambling session, I'd like to ask you one question.
If you were to get in your car or go for a long walk by yourself, what would you UnRamble about?
Would you consider hitting record?
What do you have to lose?
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