Back To The Basics

I read on X (formerly known as Twitter) that music blogging is back for 2024. Spending the last half of December reminiscing about how much I love writing, my old Tumblr blog, and music discovery, I realized I should be hopping on this hot trend.

Ever since graduating college, I’ve never been the one to document things with writing. Kind of ironic for a person who graduated with a degree (or concentration) in Music Journalism and Cultural Criticism. The straight limbo of post-grad unemployment urged me to spend my days searching for jobs or maybe a bigger meaning in life. The rollercoaster of the politics of X/Twitter and the unknown turbulence of the media industry kept me anxious for days in and days out. It never seemed like there was solid ground for me to enjoy music as it is or to you know…criticize it.

Fast forward to today, I’m thankfully employed at a great website and have been blessed with so many opportunities to interview some of my favorite artists and go to (what seemed like endless) concerts in 2023. It’s college Lea’s dream come true, but after days of information overload on days where there was endless angles of a single topic and coming home to brainrotting on TikTok, there was a glaring hole in my heart.

There wasn’t any overwhelming passion that I was used to. If we go to the true start of my online blogging days, it was a Club Penguin blog on WordPress (full circle moment right here) where I’d meticulously screenshot every tutorial to a secret agent mission. Of course, I was also a Tumblr user during it’s peak in 2010s where fandom, writing, gifs, and pictures collided in a perfect and intesne crash.

I pursued music journalism after I realized it was a viable career (“People actually make money from this?” I would ask.) and took a life-changing course with Amanda Petrusich in my first year of college. I followed every single music writer there was on Twitter and took in their recomendations like it was gospel. What kept me going was intense curiosity and keeping up with things that maybe only thousands people would dissect in threads of discourse. Or maybe it was trying to impress that one crush. More so the former, than the latter but I won’t deny that was part of it.

What I realized in working in mainstream entertainment media is that a lot of things are based on search algorithms will dictate what a site can post. This also led to my dip of liking my favorite listens on my own time since my interests were blending in work. I’ve hit a great low on that, but I’m trying to reignite the creative side of my brain and listen with intent and care.

This blog is an outlet for weekly listenings or performances—doesn’t have to be music specifically. It’s a goal, maybe a big or small goal, to bring back my passion.