Born to Ramble Podcast

This week, Nikki takes a nostalgic trip back to the early 1990s, when late-night television meant infomercials: Ron Popeil was selling everything from food dehydrators to spray-on hair, and people were willing to spend hundreds of dollars on kitchen appliances they might use twice. Shipping and handling was not an issue, and you could still select “cash on delivery!”

Then things get even weirder.

Nikki shares the absolutely horrifying—and somehow hilarious—story of how her dad’s bestie used his Ronco food dehydrator for …welp, you’ll just have to listen and find out.

Nikki has officially launched NikkiSettelmeyer.com and is opening enrollment for her six-week online creative writing class, Write NOW! designed for people who have always wanted to write but keep telling themselves they don’t have the time, consistency, confidence, or accountability to actually do it.

And then comes this week’s story:

✈️ “The Airplane Approach” by Aparna Sangam

Nikki continues her reading of Aparna Sangam’s hilarious surreal fiction with “The Airplane Approach,” the second installment in the Shitshow Universe Trilogy.

If you missed Part One, Everything We Left Behind, Oliver was a corporate employee who got laid off by his boss, Gary Vance, after a soul-crushing day at work. He eventually finds himself in a bizarre alternate universe featuring a purple sky, two moons, and a frog named Dennis wearing a tiny necktie.

In Part Two, things get even stranger.

Oliver encounters floating fences, talking mailboxes, a soup-and-sandwich counter, and—because apparently this universe has absolutely no respect for the laws of physics—a flying spoon that behaves like an airplane.

He also meets Milo, who seems considerably less concerned about the flying silverware than Oliver is.

And then Oliver learns about something called the 11½-minute rule.

Naturally, Nikki has questions.

✍️ The Bigger Story: Why Are You Still Waiting to Write?

Beneath all the ridiculousness, this episode comes back to one of Nikki’s favorite subjects: writing.

So many aspiring writers say the same thing:

I don’t have time.

I’m not consistent.

I keep putting it off.

I don’t know where to start.

Nikki’s six-week creative writing class is designed to provide something many writers desperately need: community, accountability, encouragement, and dedicated time to actually write.

The class begins October 16, 2026, meets for 90 minutes every Friday on Zoom, and is intentionally limited to 10 participants so writers can build a supportive, meaningful community.

Because sometimes you don’t need another book about writing.

You just need to sit down and write.

🖊️ We’re Writing. When?

Write NOW!

If you’ve been saying you’re going to write someday, consider this your invitation to stop waiting for someday.

Start the story.

Write the essay.

Begin the memoir.

Finish the book.

Tell the weird story you’ve been carrying around for 20 years.

You never know what’s buried inside you until you start putting words on the page.

🎧 LISTEN / WATCH

Born to Ramble is a humorous storytelling podcast about people, places, things, writing, memoir, midlife, motherhood, creativity, work, and all the weird little moments that become stories.

New episodes weekly. Daily-ish shorts, because apparently Nikki has things to say.

Subscribe, follow, listen, watch—and please tell your friends.

✍️ CREATIVE WRITING CLASS

Nikki’s six-week online creative writing class begins October 16, 2026.

* Six weeks

* 90-minute Zoom sessions

* Every Friday

* Small group of 10 writers

* Community + accountability

* Designed for people who want to actually make time to write

We’re writing. When? Write NOW!

Visit NikkiSettelmeyer.com for class information and registration.

📚 ABOUT THE STORY

“The Airplane Approach”Part Two of the Shitshow Universe TrilogyWritten by Aparna SangamPublished through Kramm Session / Justin Kramm’s Substack

Be sure to read or listen to Part One, “Everything We Left Behind,” before diving into this installment.

Existential Dread, Sobriety, and the Next Right Thing

It’s late September, it’s 100 degrees, my four-year-old is playing T-ball, and my brain has decided this is the perfect time to contemplate death by artificial intelligence, sobriety, money, motherhood, and the meaning of life. All at once. 

Last week, I went back to Arizona to visit my 82-year-old aunt and some friends. While I was there, I made the brilliant decision to go hiking alone at 1 p.m. in 97-degree heat.

My phone overheated and died. I was alone. I was a mile from the road. And suddenly all those warnings I had spent years dismissing started sounding considerably less ridiculous.

Then I came home and started reading about the possibility that increasingly powerful AI could pose an existential threat to humanity.

But underneath all of that fear was something more familiar: my brain doing what it does when I let it run too far ahead.

That’s why I went to a meeting.

I’ve been sober for 23 years, and I still go to meetings because sobriety isn't just about not drinking. It’s about learning what to do with your own mind. Sometimes the most important lesson is simply to stop trying to solve the next five years and figure out what the next right thing is.

In this episode, I read “Three Years Later” by Brian Smith, a personal essay about waking up in the woods after a devastating period of alcohol addiction, hospitalization, detox, mental-health treatment, outpatient rehab, and the long process of rebuilding a life.

Brian's story reminded me that recovery doesn't really have an ending. Just like I talked about last week, we’re all just iterating. 

You just have to keep moving forward.

One day at a time. One week at a time. One story at a time.

In this episode

A terrifying solo hike in the Arizona heat

What happens when your phone dies in the middle of nowhere

Existential dread and catastrophic thinking

Motherhood and realizing how much you have to live for

23 years of sobriety

Why I still go to recovery meetings

The difference between surviving and actually living

Brian Smith's “Three Years Later”

Addiction, detox, hospitalization, and outpatient treatment

Rebuilding trust after addiction

Why structure can save you

Writing as a way to untangle your thoughts

The power of doing the next right thing

What recovery looks like at one day, one month, one year, and beyond.

About Brian Smith's story

Brian Smith writes Between Detox and Daylight, where he documents his recovery journey and what happens after the crisis is over.

His essay “Three Years Later” takes us back to the woods where his story began—and then walks through the hospital, detox, mental-health treatment, rehab, meetings, work, and the first fragile months of rebuilding his life.

I’m grateful he shared it.

The takeaway

You don't have to solve everything today.

You don't have to know what the next three years look like.

Sometimes you just need to breathe, count to 500, go to the meeting, hug your kid, write the thing down, and do the next right thing.

That's enough.

Follow Born to Ramble

New episodes, personal essays, stories from Substack writers, writing inspiration, sobriety, motherhood, creativity, and whatever else I can't stop thinking about.

Subscribe, follow, and come ramble with me.

And if you’re feeling tres generous! Buy me a coffee or check out my creative writing inspiration packs!

🎙️ Born to Ramble

Buy me a coffee!

I’m just iterating: All the things we call “finding ourselves.”

Sometimes a life reset isn't a failure. It's just another iteration.

In this episode of Born to Ramble, Nikki talks about the surprisingly useful concept of iteration—a word borrowed from her years working in software development—and how it applies to real life, career changes, creativity, writing, and figuring out what the hell you're doing next.

In my period of self-discovery and mid-life pivot, I have tried so many things, but not everything has stuck. I keep hearing people say “fail fast,” but honestly I don’t see them as failures! They can’t all be winners! This leads me to my IDEA of the day: iterations: small versions of a bigger life that is still being built.

Now, onto this week’s short story: 

“The World's First Invisible Battery-Powered Car” by Substack writer ScaryLarryPants, from The Comedy Corner in the Round Room of Substack. The story involves Burning Man, an invisible electric car, a billionaire inventor, questionable technology, and approximately zero responsible product testing.

In other words: it's perfect.

I’m so excited about reading other writers' work on the podcast, building relationships within the Substack writing community, and creating an audience around my own writing.

The Visible Man by Chuck Klosterman.

In this episode:

Why “iteration” might be a better way to think about starting over

What losing a job can teach you about reinvention

Building a creative career one experiment at a time

Why not everything you try has to work

The importance of building an audience before pitching a book

Reading and supporting other writers on Substack

“The World's First Invisible Battery-Powered Car”

Burning Man, invisible technology, and spectacularly bad product launches

Why Nikki loves weird, funny, believable-but-not-actually-true stories

A recommendation for The Visible Man by Chuck Klosterman

If you're in the middle of a career change, mid-life reset, creative reinvention, or just wondering why you haven't “figured it out” yet, this one's for you.

you're not failing! You might just be in your XP era 🙂

Or maybe you're just on version 7.

Wanna buy me a coffee? Pretty please?

🐸 EVERYTHING WE LEFT BEHIND: Getting Fired, Finding Frogs & Other Totally Normal Things

What happens when you lose your job, question your sanity, and open your bathroom door to discover a neon-green alternate universe run by a frog in a business tie?

Welcome back to Born to Ramble, where this week I’m doing something I absolutely love: reading hilarious stories by writers I discover on Substack.

Today’s story is “Everything We Left Behind” by Aparna Sangam, a wonderfully weird, Kafkaesque office satire about Oliver, a perfectly ordinary corporate employee whose perfectly ordinary life gets spectacularly un-ordinary.

First, Oliver gets fired.

Not dramatically. Not even angrily.

His boss basically says, “Hey, we're restructuring, your entire department is being eliminated, here's your severance, please leave your badge.”

Then Oliver goes home, questions every decision he's ever made, remembers being a kid with an imagination, discovers that his $80 calendar app subscription has renewed despite the fact that he no longer has a job—and then opens his bathroom door.

And there's a frog.

In a suit.

Who knows what Oliver likes for lunch.

Of course there is.

🐸 Today's episode includes:

The Job Report, but this time we're focusing on the GOOD stuff.

My theory that there's only one thing separating self-employment from unemployment: money.

An update on my Write NOW! creative writing classes and community.

Why I've started reading stories from fellow writers on Substack.

The wonderfully chaotic origin story of Shitshow Creative.

A little background on comedy writer Justin Kramm.

An introduction to writer Aparna Sangam.

A reading of “Everything We Left Behind.”

Childhood imagination vs. adult misery.

✍️ Why I Loved This Story

There is something hilarious—and painfully true—about watching Oliver go from “I'm just trying to finish this PowerPoint” to “Why is my bathroom opening into a magical dimension where a frog knows my lunch order?”

The story takes the absurdity of modern work life and pushes it just far enough into the surreal that you can't help but laugh.

And I LOVE that.

It's Kafka meets corporate America meets LinkedIn hell.

If you've ever stared at a PowerPoint presentation and wondered where your childhood dreams went...

If you've ever received an automated LinkedIn notification immediately after losing your job...

If you've ever paid for a subscription to something you absolutely no longer need...

this one's for you.

❤️ The Bigger Thing I Love About This Episode

I'm becoming increasingly obsessed with the community of writers I've found on Substack.

There are so many smart, funny, strange, talented people writing incredible stories who may not have huge audiences yet.

And I get to discover them.

Then I get to read their stories out loud.

And honestly? That makes me ridiculously happy.

So if you're a writer on Substack—or you're someone who loves discovering new writers—come ramble with me.

And if you're interested in writing yourself, come join one of my creative writing sessions on Skool 

Write NOW!

We're talking character development, dialogue, subtext, plot, storytelling and all the wonderfully weird stuff that makes writing fun.

Because maybe you don't need another productivity system.

Maybe you need a frog in a tiny business tie.

🐸 FIND APARNA SANGAM

If you enjoyed “Everything We Left Behind,” go find Aparna and read more of her work. This story is part of a series

And please check out Justin Kramm and Shitshow Creative, too—especially if you've ever worked in marketing and thought, “Surely we're all just making this up as we go.”

🎙️ ABOUT BORN TO RAMBLE

Born to Ramble with Nikki Settelmeyer is a podcast about stories, writing, creativity, career chaos, motherhood, getting older, getting weirder, and whatever else happens when I turn on the microphone.

Sometimes I tell my own stories.

Sometimes I talk about writing.

Sometimes I read stories by other writers.

And sometimes a frog becomes my boss.

You really can't predict this show.

Subscribe, follow, share, leave a comment, and come ramble with me.

And if you're a writer with a story you'd like me to consider reading on the podcast, I'd love to hear from you.

Join My Creative Writing Community

Want to write your own stories?

Join me in the Write NOW! community on Skool, where I'm building a space for people who want to write, learn, share stories, and reconnect with their creative voice.

Join my writing community, Write NOW! On Skool! 

Fun isn’t paying these bills… and Any other Questions? By Buzz Kantwrite

Welcome back to Born to Ramble, where I talk about writing, work, motherhood, creativity, getting older, and whatever else is currently rattling around inside my head.

Today, we have nostril waxing, job-search trauma, LinkedIn humiliation, an expiration date on my financial stability, creative employment, and a very funny office comedy story.

So… basically, a normal episode.

😂 The New Born to Ramble Story Club

I'm doing something new on the podcast: I'm going to start reading other people's stories.

There are so many brilliant writers publishing essays, humor, short stories, and deeply weird observations on Substack—often without a traditional publishing deal, literary agent, or giant audience.

I love the idea of using Born to Ramble as a place to introduce you to some of these writers.

First up: Buzz Kantwrite, a hilarious Substack writer whose newsletter is called The Will to Banter.

https://substack.com/@buzzkantwrite?utm_source=global-search

His description of his work?

“Mad Magazine meets Chekhov.”

Honestly, how could I NOT read that?

💼 The Job Report: I Have a Financial Finish Line

Before we get to Buzz's story, there's a new installment of The Job Report.

I'm getting more serious about finding a job because I have a financial deadline: November 1, 2026.

But there's a catch.

I don't want a job that eats my entire life.

I want to work. I want to make money. I want to contribute. But I also want time to write, create, spend time with my son, and actually LIVE.

And then—just as I was preparing to write a furious LinkedIn post about how dehumanizing and demoralizing the modern job search can be…

My phone rang.

“Hi Nikki, were you supposed to be in an interview today?”

Well.

Apparently I was.

😂

📖 This Week's Story: “Any Other Questions?”

The centerpiece of today's episode is “Any Other Questions?” by Buzz Kantwrite, a short comedy about one man's increasingly ridiculous relationship with workplace rules, catered lunch, coffee, and—most importantly—an apple danish.

It's the kind of story that makes you laugh and then makes you realize you've probably worked somewhere exactly like this.

And yes, there is a discussion of swooshing coffee around your mouth with a bite of apple danish.

You really just have to hear it.

📝 About Buzz Kantwrite

Buzz Kantwrite writes comedy short stories with a philosophical limp at The Will to Banter.

His work combines absurd workplace observations, everyday human behavior, and a healthy amount of ridiculousness.

I discovered him because his name made me laugh.

Then I read his writing.

Turns out, following people because they have funny names is sometimes an excellent life strategy.

❤️ Coming Next Week

Next week, I'll be reading another Substack writer:

“Everything We Left Behind” by Aparna Sangam. https://substack.com/@aparnasangam

So if you love short stories, independent writers, humor, personal essays, and discovering writers before everyone else does, stick around.

And if you're a writer on Substack with a story you think would fit Born to Ramble, I want to hear from you.

Join My Creative Writing Community

Want to write your own stories?

Join me in the Write NOW! community on Skool, where I'm building a space for people who want to write, learn, share stories, and reconnect with their creative voice.

Join my writing community, Write NOW! On Skool! 

https://www.skool.com/born-to-ramble-2584/about

🎧 Listen to Born to Ramble

Born to Ramble with Nikki Settelmeyer is a storytelling podcast about work, motherhood, creativity, writing, aging, ambition, absurdity, and all the strange stuff that happens while you're trying to make a life.

Because apparently I was born to ramble.

And apparently you're still listening.

❤️

#BornToRamble #NikkiSettelmeyer #SubstackWriters #ShortStories #ComedyWriting #OfficeHumor #JobSearch #JobSearchHell #LinkedIn #WritingCommunity #CreativeLife #Storytelling #FunnyStories #IndependentWriters #TheJobReport

In spite of my little tiff with one person on Skool, I AM opening my writing community (all things writing, craft, and practice including me yammering on about Augusten Burroughs, Raymond Carver and the MAN, Charles Bukowski) and you can find it here!

Write NOW!

Welcome back to Born to Ramble, where I write, talk, laugh, complain, overshare, and occasionally turn a medical appointment into a short story.

Today I’m hot, grumpy, unemployed, underdressed, and completely over the rules of the working world. So naturally, we’re talking about creative writing, AI, jobs, legacy, and the time I had an EEG after passing out on an airplane.

This episode is Part Two of the story that began with my airplane medical emergency. After passing out on a flight and being evaluated by doctors, I ended up needing an EEG (electroencephalogram) to check my brain activity.

Enter Edgar, my EEG technician.

Edgar turned out to be much more interesting than I expected.

He’s working 12½-hour shifts. He works weekends. He can barely get time off. He’s thinking about retirement. He’s got a diabetic cat. He’s considering simply not showing up for work during Thanksgiving week. He’s also debating whether or not to move to another planet. And, somehow, while he’s attaching hundreds of tiny wires to my head, we end up having one of the funniest and most unexpectedly philosophical conversations I’ve ever had with a stranger.

And because I’m a writer and yes, I WAS born to ramble, I was mentally taking notes the entire time.

In This Episode

* Why I stopped caring about looking “put together” to record my podcast

* My ongoing battle with The Job Report

* Why I’m trying to move my creative writing classes online

* My frustrations with one Skool moderator who triggered my distaste for authority figures

* Why I think creative writing matters more in an increasingly AI-driven world

* The connection between your hand, heart, mind, and writing

* Why keeping physical notebooks and stories may matter more than we realize

* How work can slowly separate us from the dreams we had when we were younger

* The strange phenomenon of pretending to be “excited” about your job on LinkedIn

* The story of my EEG and meeting Edgar

* Edgar’s job that looks more like the life of an inmate than gainful employment

* Cats, retirement, marriage, money, and hobosexuals

* Why I couldn’t wait to get home and write this story

The Bigger Question: What Happens to Your Story?

This episode isn’t really about an EEG.

It’s about work, identity, creativity, and the stories we lose when we’re too busy surviving.

We’re living through a moment when so much of our lives are becoming digital, automated, searchable, and increasingly AI-generated.

But what happens when the internet goes down?

What happens when the power goes out?

What happens to the things that exist only in a cloud, an app, a hard drive, or somebody else’s server?

I have boxes and notebooks full of stories I’ve written by hand. I have letters. Diaries. Christmas letters. Stories. Memories.

I have a physical record of a life.

And that’s one of the reasons I believe creative writing is important.

Writing isn’t just about becoming a professional writer. It’s about remembering who you were before the world told you who you were supposed to become.

Maybe you had big dreams when you were little.

Maybe you still do.

Maybe they’re buried under student loans, mortgages, meetings, LinkedIn announcements, performance reviews, bills, and the general insanity of adulthood.

I promise you: writing can help you find them again.

About Born to Ramble

Born to Ramble with Nikki Settelmeyer is a storytelling podcast about writing, work, creativity, life, ridiculous experiences, and the strange little moments that become stories.

I’m a writer, creative writing teacher, and professional rambler. I believe funny stories can contain serious ideas—and that sometimes the best way to understand life is to tell the story of what happened.

Join My Creative Writing Community

Want to write your own stories?

Join me in the Born to Ramble community on Skool, where I’m building a space for people who want to write, learn, share stories, and reconnect with their creative voice.

Join Born to Ramble on Skool

Welcome back to Born to Ramble with Nikki Settelmeyer — where the stories are true, the job search is increasingly absurd, and sometimes life decides to throw in an emergency landing just for fun.

This week, Nikki has good news and bad news.

Let’s start with the bad news.

Nikki’s job search has officially entered AI-powered hell.

After putting the green “Open to Work” circle on LinkedIn, she quickly discovered that being visibly unemployed can apparently make you a target for fake recruiters, suspicious job offers, and people who may or may not be using AI to impersonate actual humans.

And this raises a very 2026 question:

Do you need a burner phone just to apply for a job?

Nikki also takes one of those increasingly bizarre pre-employment personality assessments — the kind that promises to take 8–10 minutes and somehow turns into half an hour of choosing whether you’re more “irritable,” “cynical,” “combative,” or “hostile.”

Spoiler: Nikki is currently all four.

But then there’s good news.

World of Books is a partner, officially! Use my link and I'll get a cent or two and I'd really appreciate it :-)

World of Books

A short story Nikki wrote in 2015, “Worked to Death,” has been accepted by a literary journal and will be published in September. The story, appropriately enough, is about how jobs can quite literally kill you.

And then there’s the other story.

The Flight That Went Very Wrong

Nikki shares a previously unpublished personal story about traveling to Des Moines, Iowa when she suddenly becomes seriously ill on an airplane.

What begins as an ordinary airport morning — Starbucks, people-watching, boarding a flight, and observing strangers with giant hats — quickly turns into an in-flight medical emergency.

Nikki wakes up surrounded by passengers and crew, oxygen mask on her face, with the pilot announcing an emergency landing.

Suddenly she’s being questioned by EMTs, taken off the plane, transported by ambulance, and eventually admitted to the emergency room.

There’s confusion. There’s nausea. There’s an IV. There’s an EKG. There’s an oxygen tank that looks like it came from the 1960s.

There’s also the deeply humiliating realization that she may have peed her pants without knowing it.

And somehow, Nikki still finds the absurdity in all of it.

With Derek — her son’s father and close friend — by her side, Nikki confronts the much scarier reality that something may actually be wrong and that she needs further medical evaluation.

It’s frightening, vulnerable, funny, and very much a Born to Ramble story.

And yes, somehow the episode still ends with Nikki making jokes.

Also in this episode:

* The dark side of the modern job search

* Fake recruiters and LinkedIn scams

* AI-generated recruiting messages

* Why job applications now feel like unpaid labor

* Personality assessments that seem designed to make you question your entire existence

* Starting preschool and the chaos of school drop-off

* Nikki’s short story “Worked to Death” getting published

* People-watching at the airport

* An unexpected medical emergency on an airplane

* Emergency landing anxiety

* EMTs, oxygen, ambulances, and the ER

* The strange questions you’re asked after passing out

* Co-parenting and friendship

* Motherhood and why becoming a parent changes the way you experience frightening stories

* Finding humor in terrifying situations

* And, naturally, a puddle of pee

Content note: This episode discusses fainting, medical emergencies, emergency-room treatment, possible seizure symptoms, nausea, and urinary incontinence. It also contains strong language and adult humor.

📚 Support independent bookselling

Nikki is excited to partner with World of Books, an online bookstore offering affordable new and used books. If you’re looking for your next read, check out Nikki’s affiliate link in the show notes.

📖 Read/Listen to “Worked to Death”

Nikki’s short story “Worked to Death” was written in 2015 and is now headed for publication. You can also hear Nikki read the story in an earlier episode of Born to Ramble.

About Born to Ramble

Born to Ramble with Nikki Settelmeyer is a storytelling podcast about life, work, motherhood, writing, getting older, starting over, embarrassing moments, weird people, pop culture, and all the ridiculous things that happen when you’re paying attention.

Sometimes it’s funny.

Sometimes it’s uncomfortable.

Sometimes it’s both.

Subscribe to Born to Ramble on Substack and wherever you listen to podcasts.

#BornToRamble #NikkiSettelmeyer #JobSearch #JobSearchHell #FakeRecruiters #LinkedInScams #AIRecruiting #JobHunting #FunnyStories #PersonalStories #StorytellingPodcast #WomenInMidlife #Midlife #Motherhood #WorkingWomen #WritersLife #CreativeWriting #Memoir #PersonalEssay #WorkplaceHumor #LifeAfter40 #StartingOver

Welcome to Born to Ramble with Nikki Settelmeyer, the storytelling podcast where memoir, creative writing, motherhood, job hunting, humor, and the occasional literal shitstorm collide.

This week, Nikki has announcements, a new segment called “Adorable Things That My Son Says,” a surprisingly philosophical conversation about storytelling and intellectual property, another installment of The Job Report, and a hilarious—and unexpectedly emotional—excerpt from her upcoming book.

💄 Adorable Things That My Son Says

This week’s wisdom from Nikki’s son:

“Why does your lip gloss smell disgusting for a long time?”

Honestly, motherhood is a gift.

✍️ The Trouble With Reading Other People’s Stories

Nikki talks about one of her favorite writers, Augusten Burroughs, and the lesson she learned after recording an episode in which she read his short story “Little Crucifixions” from Possible Side Effects.

She loved the story so much that she wanted to share it with listeners—but realized that reading an entire copyrighted story on the podcast wasn’t something she should do without permission.

The episode is gone, but clips remain available as Shorts.

It’s also a jumping-off point for a larger conversation about storytelling, copyright, creativity, literary influences, and the importance of sharing the work you love without accidentally crossing legal or ethical boundaries.

💼 The Job Report: Would a Man Take $55,000?

It’s another edition of The Job Report, and Nikki has more job rejections to discuss—including an automated rejection from a company where she had interviewed with four people.

And naturally, she has questions.

Like:

Would a man take $55,000?

Nikki explores job hunting, salary expectations, financial stability, employee satisfaction, and the uncomfortable reality of trying to find meaningful work while also refusing to accept compensation that doesn’t reflect your experience.

The larger question becomes: Can someone truly do exceptional work while constantly living in financial survival mode?

And, perhaps more importantly, why are we expected to pretend we’re thrilled about salaries that don’t allow adults to comfortably support themselves?

🤖 The S**t Circle

Then we get to today’s story.

Nikki reads an excerpt from her upcoming book:

“My Robot Vacuum Drove Through a Pile of S**t and I Basically Had to Bury Her Alive.”

Yes. That is the actual title.

What starts as a ridiculous story about a robot vacuum, a cat, and a horrifying amount of poop becomes something much deeper.

Nikki is pregnant, preparing for motherhood, thinking about co-parenting, trying to keep working, and confronting the enormous emotional weight of having to figure everything out on her own.

Then the robot vacuum drives through cat s**t.

And keeps going.

The result is an eight-foot s**t circle smeared across the floor.

But beneath the comedy is a story about exhaustion, financial insecurity, independence, motherhood, childhood, loneliness, and the strange ways old wounds resurface when life becomes overwhelming.

The story moves between Nikki’s present-day pregnancy and a memory from her twenties, when she was living in a tiny apartment, working, attending writing classes, struggling financially, and wondering what it would feel like for someone—just once—to take care of her.

It’s funny.

It’s disgusting.

It’s sad.

It’s deeply human.

And yes, there is a robot vacuum involved.

✍️ Coming in October: The Craft of Writing

If you’re a writer, storyteller, memoirist, or someone who simply loves understanding how stories work, October is going to be all about the Craft of Writing.

Nikki will be talking about things like:

Scene vs. setting

Story structure

Memoir writing

Creative nonfiction

Character development

Dialogue

Storytelling techniques

Finding the funny in difficult experiences

Turning real life into compelling stories

So subscribe and follow Born to Ramble so you don’t miss the October episodes.

About Born to Ramble

Born to Ramble with Nikki Settelmeyer is a storytelling podcast about memoir, creative nonfiction, writing, motherhood, midlife, work, starting over, and the absurdity of being a human being.

Sometimes Nikki talks about writing.

Sometimes she reads her own stories.

Sometimes she talks about jobs.

Sometimes she talks about motherhood.

And sometimes a robot vacuum drives through a pile of s**t and somehow becomes a metaphor for her entire life.

If you love funny memoirs, personal essays, creative writing, storytelling, literary humor, women’s stories, motherhood, midlife reinvention, and brutally honest conversations about life, you’re in the right place.

Subscribe, follow, and come ramble with Nikki.

Welcome to a special edition of The Job Report with Nikki.

Today, Nikki finally admits something she has been resisting: she’s adding the green “Open to Work” circle to her LinkedIn profile.

And she’s not celebrating.

This episode is an honest, funny, and vulnerable conversation about job hunting, unemployment, job rejection, career anxiety, LinkedIn, and the emotional toll of looking for work in a difficult job market.

Because applying for jobs isn’t necessarily the hardest part.

The hardest part is what happens when you actually meet people, have a good interview, start imagining yourself in the role—and then receive an automated rejection email.

Especially when it arrives at 5 a.m. on a Monday morning.

💔 When Job Rejection Feels Personal

Nikki talks about why automated rejection emails don’t necessarily bother her. Send her 200 in a day and she’ll keep going.

But meeting real people changes everything.

After interviewing for a position on Friday, Nikki woke up Monday morning to an automated rejection.

And suddenly, the job search didn’t feel like business anymore.

It felt personal.

This episode explores something that doesn’t get discussed enough when we talk about unemployment and career transitions: job rejection can genuinely hurt.

Even when you know intellectually that a rejection isn’t a judgment of your worth, it can still feel like one.

💼 Welcome to the “Open to Work” Club

Nikki officially surrenders and adds the green Open to Work banner to her LinkedIn profile.

It’s a small visual change, but emotionally, it represents something much bigger: admitting that the job search has become difficult, uncertain, lonely, and frightening.

She talks about the strange experience of watching friends continue on with their jobs while you’re stuck in the seemingly endless cycle of:

Apply → Interview → Hope → Wait → Rejection → Repeat.

👩‍👧 What Her Mom Had to Say

When Nikki starts spiraling, she calls her mom.

Her mom reminds her that she had to interview three times before getting her teaching job in 1989.

That story unexpectedly helps validate Nikki’s feelings.

If even her mom remembers how stressful it was to interview for a job decades ago, maybe Nikki isn’t being unreasonable for feeling disappointed and anxious about today’s job search.

❤️ “Something Better Is Going to Come Along”

Nikki also calls her son’s dad, who approaches the situation from a completely different angle.

He asks her to imagine what she would say if he called with the exact same story.

Her response?

Obviously, she’d tell him the company was full of losers, they were probably going to hire someone’s son-in-law, and he didn’t want to work there anyway.

His response:

Exactly.

Sometimes it’s easier to believe in someone else’s future than your own.

And sometimes the people who love us can see something we can’t see when we’re in the middle of disappointment.

🧠 The Emotional Reality of Looking for Work

This episode is ultimately a message to anyone else currently looking for a job:

You are not alone.

Job searching can be lonely.

It can be frightening.

It can create anxiety and self-doubt.

And it can be especially difficult when you’re surrounded by people who still have their jobs and don’t have to think about where their next paycheck is coming from.

Nikki doesn’t have the secret algorithm for getting hired.

She doesn’t know the magic combination of keywords, applications, networking messages, resumes, interviews, or LinkedIn optimization that finally makes someone say, “You’re hired.”

But she does know this:

She is capable.

She has experience.

She has skills.

She can manage projects, work in software and technology, create marketing strategies, work in digital marketing and social media, build a Shopify store, and do approximately 700 other things.

And somehow, she’s still looking for work.

🍁 And Yes, She Can Make Pumpkin Scones

Because sometimes you have to end a serious conversation about unemployment by reminding everyone that you have marketable skills.

And apparently, pumpkin scones are among them.

Open to work.

What do job hunting, fake cigarettes, neighborhood delinquents, and a six-year-old swearing club have in common?

As always, My Life!

In this episode of Born to Ramble, I share a hilarious update on THE JOB REPORT. Spoiler alert: it still sucks! I celebrate some exciting podcast milestones, and read an excerpt from my upcoming memoir, NeverWife.

Before we dive into the story, I vent about today’s impossible job market, why every job description sounds like corporate gaslighting, and how my parents somehow managed to support an entire family by drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and using an adding machine.

That was in the mid 80s, which is exactly where our story begins! 1987

In “One Day at the Swearing Club,” six-year-old Nikki and her neighborhood friends gather in a backyard playhouse where they pretend to be exhausted adults—complete with fake cigarettes, happy hour, high heels, and plenty of colorful language. Their afternoon of make-believe takes an unexpected turn when one neighborhood boy shows up waving a very real hunting knife, leading to one unforgettable rescue by Nikki’s cigarette-smoking, cowboy-boot-wearing father.

It’s childhood nostalgia, dark humor, Gen X memories, and storytelling exactly the way life actually happened.

In This Episode

* Exciting podcast news: Born to Ramble is now available on YouTube and Amazon

* My first attempt at affiliate marketing (and why Starbucks should absolutely sponsor me)

* The weekly Job Report: corporate buzzwords, impossible expectations, and remote work dreams

* Why modern job descriptions make me question reality

* A reading from my upcoming memoir, NeverWife

* “One Day at the Swearing Club” : Growing up in the 1980s with neighborhood adventures, fake happy hours, and very real trouble

Topics Covered

* Memoir writing

* Funny childhood stories

* Growing up in the 1980s

* Gen X nostalgia

* Corporate burnout

* Remote work

* Job hunting in 2026

* Humor and storytelling

* Creative nonfiction

* Parenting

* Life after layoffs

* Neighborhood adventures

Memorable Quote

“We’re looking for someone who loves organization, thrives on communication, and gets excited about turning opportunities into appointments.”

Translation: We’d like one person to do six jobs for half the pay.

Mentioned in This Episode

* My upcoming memoir: NeverWife

* The Born to Ramble Shop

* New podcast merchandise

* Affiliate marketing adventures

* Starbucks (still waiting for that sponsorship...)

If You Enjoyed This Episode...

Please subscribe, leave a review, and share the podcast with someone who survived the 1980s, is currently rage-applying for jobs, or remembers pretending to smoke fake hot dogs in a backyard playhouse.

And if you ever had your own “swearing club,” I definitely want to hear about it.

New episodes of Born to Ramble drop regularly, featuring funny true stories, memoir excerpts, observations on modern life, motherhood, midlife, nostalgia, and whatever else my brain decides to ramble about.