We recently connected with Kennedy Williams and have shared our conversation below.

Kennedy, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

As summer began to turn into fall last year, I knew I wasn’t happy with my life. I had to make a change. I had been living in Atlanta for about a year at the time. I had originally moved there for my first job post-grad as a physical therapist. I’m originally from western Washington and did my graduate work in North Carolina; I didn’t really know anyone in Atlanta, but when the opportunity presented itself, I thought to myself, “Hey, I’m in my mid-twenties and not married with kids or pets yet. I’m not tied down too much right now, so now is the time to try something new”. My original intention was to live there for a few years and buy a house then move back closer to my family while renting the house out there because the Atlanta housing market was better than many other major cities at the time.

While it’s always fun moving to a new place and exploring a new city for the first time, a few months into living there I was starting to struggle mentally. My morning commute to work could be up to 2 hours one-way at times because I was commuting from northeast to southwest Atlanta across the entire perimeter. My one-bedroom apartment was over $2000 per month. I was making enough money to afford rent, groceries, and gas but that was about it. Without extra cash to go out to all the fun bars, restaurants, festivals and activities in the area, I was finding it extremely challenging to make new friends and lasting connections. I was burned out from my job, being double or sometimes even triple booked with patients every hour on the hour from 8 to 5. That lifestyle truly was a ticking timebomb that finally got set off in August of 2023.

After a literal push in a new direction from a good group of people I had (finally, friends!) met at a bar near my apartment late one night, I woke up the next morning, drove to work with donuts in hand, and quit my job on the spot. No warning. No 2-week notice – Just gone with the wind in my employer’s eyes. At the time, I didn’t really think that I had the balls to take such a crazy risk like that in my life. You see, I was raised on practicality. I needed to have the next year, 5 years, and 10 years all planned out to a T or else my family would worry and I would seem reckless and crazy. But I did it anyways, despite what anyone else would think. With this decision to quit, I now had no plan in sight. Instead, I had the world as my oyster as they say.

That weekend, I threw all my stuff in a storage unit, cancelled my lease, and hopped on a one-way flight to Boise, Idaho. If any Idahoans are reading this, they’d probably be upset with me if I described how amazing Boise is in this interview. It’s truly a hidden gem of the United States and there have been a TON of people moving here recently – Reason number one why they’d be mad: they don’t want more people moving here! So why did I join them? Well, I live with my boyfriend and he has a lot of friends and connections there and I had visited him there in the past several times when he used to live there. I really loved floating the Boise River, hitting Broadway on the Rocks, and seeing things like the natural hot springs, lakes, hikes and all that Idaho has to offer. So when one of his friends said he had a room for us to rent in his house for less than half the price of what our 1-bedroom apartment was in Atlanta, it was a done deal.

After taking the leap and moving across the country with no plan, I slowly began to settle in and create my new life. After waiting for what seemed like ages for the state board to process my physical therapy license, a new job opportunity popped up on LinkedIn just 4 days prior to when I received my new license to practice. I was the second applicant offered an interview, and the next day I had an offer in hand. To begin this new job, I was first flown out to the middle of Wisconsin to complete a specialist training certification in the management of spinal conditions and scoliosis-specific exercises. I now work as a scoliosis specialist whenever I want to set my hours with a flexible schedule. I see patients one-on-one to provide them with the best possible care – not triple booked with increasing productivity pressures from management as is commonplace in arguably a majority of outpatient PT clinics in America. Deep down to my core, I truly love this patient population and love what I do every day. And with all this flexibility, I’ve had more time to continue working on my podcast – Keeping it Real with Kennedy – on the side. The universe truly does reward those who take risks and I’m now the happiest I’ve ever been!

Kennedy, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

When one of my friends said to me “I just can’t keep up with you!” after giving her an update on my ever-changing lifestyle, I had a lightbulb moment. I decided right then and there that I wanted to create a podcast called “Keeping up with Kennedy” to update her and everyone else in my life at the time on what I was up to and on all my shenanigans at that time in my life. I was in the middle of my clinical rotations in school and I was moving every 3 months to a new city and/or state. It was a wild time. It turns out, podcasts are pretty easy to make with a simple google search. I remember watching a seven minute YouTube video on “how to create a podcast” and within 24 hours my first episode was out on Spotify.

After being in the podcasting industry for several years now, my podcast has grown and changed a lot over time. I am currently in Season 4 and have changed the name to “Keeping it Real with Kennedy” this season in order to better reflect my mission and goals for the future of the podcast. My mission statement is “Sharing experiences, opinions, scientific research, facts and truth with listeners in a thought-provoking way to inspire them to get in the driver’s seat and make the world a better place – all while having a little fun and embracing each other’s differences”. I feel like we’ve done enough “keeping up” with me over the past few years and it’s time for me to “keep it real” with others now. I want to bring the “real” in all of us to the forefront and have guests on the podcast who want to share their stories, experiences and lessons that they have learned. We’re all in this together and if we aren’t learning and growing from one another in this crazy world, then we’re never going to make progress as a society. With the rise of AI and the ever-increasing amount of fake news, it’s time to Keep it Real.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I would say that my mission in my creative journey is to use the diversity of my skillset to benefit others. I host, edit and produce my own podcast – I’m just a one-man band at this point. I also love learning about anything and everything. If I can inspire just one other person to be kind, be honest, or open up to someone they care about and tell them what’s real after listening to my podcast, then I’m making progress toward my goal. I want to push to keep the best parts of the reality of human connection alive in the age of artificial intelligence. I want to be an agent of change for the better. While keeping a sense of realistic optimism as we move into the future, my creative journey is fueled by honest human connection and spreading that honesty to others through podcasting.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I think that as a society, we better support artists and creatives when we first try to see the creative within ourselves first. I have so much respect for all the artists creating phenomenal works these days. When I look into myself and see how I can connect with their art, whatever form or medium it may be in, it in turn connects me with a piece of who they are as a person. What society is missing right now in the current creative ecosystem is true connection. When we begin to see how everything is connected to everything else, we’re more apt to support the artist whose work may seem more “abstract” or “out there”. All artists are sharing pieces of themselves in their work. I know a lot of times the pieces that artists ultimately choose to share are resultants of the parts of themselves that they feel are the most misunderstood. In making an effort to understand the misunderstood and truly, personally connect with diverse forms of creativity, the creative ecosystem will truly begin to thrive.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keepitrealwithken
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kennedyannwilliams
• Other: Spotify: Keeping it Real with Kennedy
  Apple Podcasts: Keeping it Real with Kennedy
  All other podcast streaming sites: Keeping it Real with Kennedy