I first heard about Micro.blog back in early 2017. Many of the people that I followed on Twitter were talking about this new blogging service. I was interested, but I didn’t back the project.

When it went into beta later in the year, I sheepishly emailed Manton and was given an invite. Over the past three years, the service has grown and improved, dramatically. I have since left all major social media platforms and publish only on my blog, hosted by Micro.blog. All of my favorite links, thoughts, photos, books, and microcasts are hosted in a single place, in a single feed.

In the spring of 2018, Manton introduced audio support for Micro.blog hosted accounts. For an extra $5/month, users could create, upload, host, and distribute their own podcasts. The idea was that they’d be short form, relatively straightforward shows. It’s a concept that has come to be known in the community as a “microcast.”

Inspired by Manton’s Timetable, a microcast in which he gives brief updates about what he’s working on and thinking about, I launched ChetCast in April of 2018.

Parents naturally want to capture moments in the lives of their young children. The innocent, cuteness, and hilarity of a child cannot be understated. We know that it won’t last, but we want to hold on to it for as long as we can. For my dad, that meant home videos. In those little clips, most of which are on a medium that are hard to watch today all these decades later, I could see streaks of my future self.

When my first child, Benedict, was born, I kept a journal for him in Day One. It was unsustainable, but at least I have that for him. Microcasting offers me something even more special that just my written recollections written for each of my children. Audio recordings, in an open format, are about as future-proof as you can get. Even more than that, these recordings deliver the actual sound of my children’s voices, their laughter, and their unfiltered thoughts. They are the perfect time capsule of my children, recorded and preserved for the future.

Creating and publishing ChetCast is about as easy as it can be. Using the Wavelength app, I record the raw audio, drop in my pre-recorded opening sequence, and hit publish. The easy of recording and publishing enables me to publish more frequently, even when the stories seem insignificant.

I started ChetCast as a way to capture the stories, experiences, thoughts, and sounds of my children as we go through these very special years together. The fact that I can easily distribute the podcast so that friends and family can enjoy is even better.

Three decades from now, when my children are grown and gone, perhaps starting to form families of their own, I’ll have these recordings. I’ll have these memories and be able to share them with their children, too. And all it took to capture and preserve these moments was a few minutes out of my day, a single iOS app, and $5 a month.