Catching Up To The Future

It’s been a long time.

Of course, if you’re like me, you’ve just read those words and are now thinking I shouldn’t have left you, without a strong rhyme to step to.

Where was I?

Oh, right. I haven’t posted here since September. What happened to me?

Last year I was laid off from my job of twelve years, began a committed relationship, started working in an office, covered multiple film & music festivals for Austinist or as a freelance staffer, and slowly burned through every dollar that I had in a fairly meager savings account in order to stay afloat.

Anybody who spent time as a listener or staff member at WOXY knows just how special of a place it was. From my early years working in the FM studios up in Oxford to our Longworth Hall digs in Downtown Cincinnati all the way to our final journey, 1200+ miles away from home when we moved to Austin, it was quite an adventure.

Over the past year, I harbored a lot of resentment and anger over what happened in March 2010. The abrupt shutdown of our beloved station was a shock to all of us on the ground in Austin, mostly blissfully unaware of just how off the rails things actually were at the Future Sounds offices out in Los Angeles.

I still don’t understand why everything had to happen the way that it did, but I’m oddly thankful. Not only am I still standing (a small miracle), but I’m happier than I’ve been in years. I am in love (with my partner and my city) and I could never have found this path in life if everything wouldn’t have gone down just so.

To top it all off, I’m now involved in a project that is the first thing I was approached for over the last twelve months that genuinely made me excited. Anybody who has been out of work before knows how degrading and soul-crushing the interview process can be. I went after so many jobs that I wasn’t even excited about because I just wanted to be back to work.

With Music Impacts, I have had the opportunity to get involved on the ground level with a site that I believe will become a groundbreaking and thought-provoking community where music fans can share their stories of how they connect with music. My own passion for music can be traced to my mother putting headphones on her stomach while I was in utero, so I was literally born into the target audience that the site will be looking for as users.

The team of people behind this site are top-notch and I am outrageously thankful that I am a part of the team. I never gave up thinking that I would find the right fit, a job that could sustain me and challenge me in the wake of WOXY. Music Impacts is still being shaped and part of the excitement in that is not knowing where it could take me. As it grows, the outreach/charity aspects we are discussing for the site could become more fulfilling than a lifetime of playing records on the radio. I don’t intend to compare the two experiences, but one definitely led me to the other.

For now, I look to the future with an open heart and an open mind.

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