[l1]T[/l1]oday is the 16th anniversary of this blog, the first online writing I did.
I’m an early adopter. I worked with computers in the days of the earliest programmable calculators. I built my first website in about 1994. I launched my web business in 1999.
And in 2002 I started this blog after I built my own blogging tool from scratch because I couldn’t find one that did everything I wanted. (Nowadays self-hosted WordPress, launched in 2003, is the obvious choice. Avoid Wix and Weebly. End of rant.)
An overview of my relationship with music has seen few edits since I first wrote it 16 years ago. I grew up with music the way most people grew up with television.
Over the past decade I’ve spent more time writing music than writing about it. I perform in our living room. I used to have a cover band and we performed in bars. I’ve played my music in coffee shops. Dragging all my equipment out somewhere to play for the same people who’d come to my living room quickly seemed a waste of time.
Though I don’t write about music as much as I once did I am primarily a writer. Novels, a children’s book, a bunch of business books in the past, and a dozen blog posts a month in various places.
My first post, on March 12th of 2002, was about the Irish band Hothouse Flowers. I was hearing all kinds of new music as my kids got older (16 years ago their ages ranged from 12 to 22.) All these new sounds flooding my life, and the joy of sharing them with my kids, made me want to talk about it all. But not just “I like this, that, and the other band.” Details. What made the music or lyrics special. What the bands seemed to be trying to do. What made the performers interesting.
I’ve written about famous people, household names. I’ve written about folks who have a strong cult following. I’ve written about musicians who’ve never published a single tune publicly. And I’ve shared my own music extensively.
But I don’t know what to do with this site anymore. Before writing this I reviewed the last few posts I wrote—in the fall of 2016, nearly a year and a half ago.
This site has seen long dry spells, sometimes lasting years.
I’m not sure this is that.
I’m wondering, in this and in many things, if it’s time to start thinking about an endgame, closure, wrapping things up and putting them in the closet, leaving room for the few things that really matter to me anymore.