I started with a MySpace page! It was years ago. Most may remember and a good few may ask what MySpace is.
(Plus, this piece contains a #DoctorStrange piece which is now biggie to some but might be to others.)
The Past
Blogging for me started on MySpace - It was a lot different then to how it is now. If you remember the early days of The Facebook, it was to a degree far superior - I was writing about anything that was randomly going around in my bizarre, lonely headspace as I was working in catering and those hours tend to be rather unsociable.
When I started to get the hang of it I was beginning to throw gas on my rekindled passion for writing as I had when I was at school. But for me to write about something, i had to write about something I was passionate about. The only things I ever really were passionate about with writing was creating short stories at about 9 and plagiarising articles from NatGeo for my environment project in Year 8.
Now that I was a good few years older and having lived a little, music was my thing. I went from, grunge to rock to trip-hop to trance to house to bass, over a 15 year period. A few random groups and introductions to various genres in between.
To get noticed on the biggest social media platform at the time, young musicians were asking for feedback on their material all of the time. You had friends, yes, but random people from the public signed into MySpace could leave comments on your page. Signed acts, group, and artists were all on there but because the platform was open to all, anyone with a guitar, a voice, or those in a garage band wanting to get noticed, signed up for MySpace because they were able to upload their music directly to it. Now, you upload it to YouTube and share it out across as many social media channels as you possibly can.
People were asking about what I thought of their music. So I told them straight, and they appreciated the feedback. Most of the time.
This was my angle for blogging! Mixing up two passions into one cauldron of goodness and then me ladling it out into the web. I went in hard for a bit, reigned it in, structured it more, pimped up my profile page, and in a short space of time, I noticed a rise in profile views.
But one of the best things about MySpace was the customisation of your profile page. I started playing with code at the time too and it fascinated me as much as blogging. Website's were clever. I wanted to know more. In fact, it fascinated me so much that after the introduction to Facebook, I began to miss blogging and code, I then decided to build my own my own music review website.
I saw trends, dips and spikes, and noticed patterns. I dipped when I posted about something that everyone was posting about but rises where I went on about something someone hardly anyone would have heard of. That's when I found my niche. Breakbeats.
(Funny enough, in the linked yet slightly exhaustive article going perhaps far too in-depth, there is a good few people I actually know now are mentioned. I just thought that was quite cool.)
I loved Breaks. Introduced to me by a dear friend, he jumped onto his decks as a bedroom DJ every Friday night, we got drunk and as he spun the tunes, I wrote short snappy reviews on the stand-out tunes. Sometimes, I had to get him to repeat them because I just loved certain ones that much.
This went on for about 3 years.
As time passed and life altered in the many ways that it does, I was achieving 5M hits per year and 120K page-views a month. My reviews were genuinely on the first page of Google when I did a search check for the posted artists music.
I was eventually nominated for an award for my contribution to the Breakbeat genre in the category for Best Website/Blog thanks to receiving support from record labels for supporting their artists, mingling to online radio station forums where we all shared a passion for Breaks, and it was ace.
On the night of the awards evening I got hugged and handshakes from a string of music producers and label managers whom I had never met, but they had heard of me! It was crazy. This then took me up to a different level. It was the best networking chance ever.
After another year, I got exclusives where 1 of them went to number 1 in it's Beatport category. Free festival tickets and I soon then became the Online Media Executive for an underground dance music label in the UK called Funkatech Records. I was almost living the blogging dream.
However. Selling MP3's to coincide into your blog posts doesn't get you a lot of commission if you are creating marketing content for underground artists. So, I needed an addition. Breaks was one sub-genre of dance, so I went into others. DnB, Electro and something called Dubstep which I felt was about to take off.
As I now had contacts, I also began building WordPress based websites for creative types which led me to become friends of music producers who I was in awe of, not just managing to get them to send me free tunes. This then led me to be able to get myself interviews with musicians and artists from across the world with some of them being relatively big names in their field and the odd BBC Radio 1 DJ.
I was such small fish. I hadn't made any money because i was too focused on the joys of it all rather than the business side of it all. I needed stability. But sometimes, luck changes.
The Present
A friend sent me a message saying that there was a local business needing a website being built and looked after. I'd been using the WordPress platform for building websites and blogs for some time so I thought, "**** it. I'll give it a shot".
A further 2 and a half years later, I am now, I'm the Digital Manager for a contemporary jewellery company which sells world-renowned and top designer brands. I didn't even use WordPress in the end. I had to use something entirely different to what I knew. But I gave it a shot.
I love my job. It was and still is my passion. I have the added bonus of now earning from it. At the time of writing this, I've built up the online presence for the business pretty much alone, and now it's becoming profitable. With all of that dedication in the week, at weekends it's all about escapism, and having an almost unhealthy obsession for film, music and art.
The reason I say unhealthy is because I should be doing other things rather staring yet again at a screen, as I do most days. But I like it.
The Future
What I don't like is the fact that since taking on the website building jobs all of those moons ago, is I haven't written anything with great intent since December 2013, until this very article.
I have spent a majority of the last year or so immersed into box-sets, well-known digital subscription channels and watching everything and every relating to Marvel and DC movies. However, not many people I know are quite as into all of these as I am.
I bought the Spiderman annual when I was about 4 because he then had a new black suit.
I've discovered recently that I also spend too much time in between watching all of films and shows reading about them on MoviePilot whether they be reviews, theories or trailers. I have genuinely found myself reading pretty much everything in relation to the current #DoctorStrange.
I've watched it twice. I loved it and I loved it more the 2nd time after reading theories on MoviePilot about certain Easter Eggs. One of them, I know for sure is true after spotting it myself the first time.
The Air Force Pilot who had a back injury due to an experimental suit, was definitely Rhodes. The time set was 2016 because he [Strange] has an award of some sort saying that it was awarded in 2016 above his watch drawer.
Marvel always likes their timeline to match hours. That's why it starts pretty much at the same time as Rhodsey hitting the deck and Strange crashing his car. They both had accidents on the same day. They probably went through rehabilitation for the same amount of time so where Civil War ends, Strange's journey begins, thus, after training, brings us up to modern day, so Strange was gone for about 5 months.
There we have it. A small piece of fresh content created out of the blue for the first time in almost 3 years. Shame I haven't read the Book of Cagliostro nor have the Eye of Agamotto. I could've started this ages ago.
Instead though, I'm going to start writing about something I am passionate about again. Starting from now.