What follows is Eric in about five minutes: musician, owner and music director of the Epitome Show Band, twenty years of originals and covers around Atlanta, corporate rooms through to backyard parties. He tried stand-up once and calls it the hardest job he has ever had.

Then it turns. Eric has retinitis pigmentosa, and so do more than twenty people in his family, which means he has seen the whole range of it — relatives with no sight at all, relatives with only peripheral vision, relatives with only central vision. He lost his guide dog in 2020. He learned braille at the start of the pandemic and now teaches it, which he describes as "helping people to be able to learn how to live with blindness, instead of let blindness control them."

He also talks fast. Fast enough that his co-host says so on air, and Eric's defence is that this is a podcast and you can just play it again.

Find Eric at leoto.org — Living Everyday On Their Own — and at epitomeshowband.com.

Last episode I couldn't get anybody into the recording. This time I got one and a half of the people who were supposed to be here, which I'm choosing to count as progress. Eric was there — he's just not in this one. We're re-recording him next week, and I promise I've got it together now.

So this episode is Nicole. Nicole with no H, Myrick. I asked her to introduce herself in her own words, because she's smarter than me and I didn't want to open with a stupid question. She's going to sneak in a thing about Harvard. Listen for it.

Here's what she told us: she grew up in a small town in Ohio, and inherited retinitis pigmentosa from her father, who inherited it from his mother. Diagnosed around twelve. She'd watched her dad live with it, so she thought she knew what was coming — but as she puts it, you don't really know what someone's shoes are like until you begin to walk in them. Losing the chance at a driver's license took a lot with it, and for a while she was bitter about that.

Then she got a degree, had a family, started a business under the Business Enterprise Program, took classes through Harvard, and went back to school again. She has a sailor's license. She runs 5Ks. She jogs with a run group on Saturdays, travels alone, hosts a networking group of business owners in her town, and describes herself as a part-time comedian in her own mind.

Her advice, for anybody out there with any type of limitation: don't wait. The things you think aren't possible are very much so possible for you.

Eric next week. For real this time.

Watch Us Now is about technology, braille and culture — recorded wherever we land, and always circling back to Georgia. Hosted by VaShaun Jones of Fedora Outlier, with co-host Eric Smith and moderator Nicole Myrick.

It's also a solo episode, which was not the plan. Turns out having two co-hosts and having AV software that knows you have two co-hosts are two entirely different accomplishments, and I only managed one of them. Eric and Nicole were ready. My setup was not. Live and learn, loudly, in public.

So the shout outs go first this time. To Eric Smith, of the Epitome Show Band and President of the nonprofit LEOTO, Living Everyday On Their Own. And to Nicole Myrick, who keeps us vaguely on topic and does it at volume. Both of them are on episode 1.1, which is going to happen now that I've made every possible mistake on their behalf.

New episodes whenever we land somewhere with decent Wi-Fi. Watch us now.