Opening Thoughts
I have been toying with the idea of starting my own business since I was about 17 years old. I fell in love with music through video games, first enjoying the sound of background music, to theme songs, and then radio waves. Much like many a Millennial, I’d wait for Q101 or 97 The Zone to announce a song I loved and hit the record button on my Unlce’s Sony radio cassette player, learning how to time the start and end before a radio announcer spoke over some of the measures. The very first Christmas I really remember, I asked my parents for a laptop. I was fascinated by the old Macintosh II Mrs Klausen had in our kindergarten class, choosing to play Oregon Trail instead of playing outside with the rest of the kids during recess, and other times just typing away at that primitive word processor just to hear and feel the keystrokes of it’s mechanical keyboard. Bless my folks, there was no way they could afford a laptop in the late 90s, a bad investment on a 8-9 year old kid anyways.
I had saved up $100 the summer of ‘05 to buy an old, off brand guitar from the local thrift shop, and by my senior year of high school I was decent enough at playing it that my dad considered loaning me some money to start a production studio if I was going to be serious about it. Around 2010 or so, both my brother and I had worked enough to buy my dad parts for a new computer to help with his construction business (and yea, so we could play on it too). We even recorded the build process and had every intention of posting it, but never did. I don’t know if that footage still exists anywhere. Not long after that my brother and I discovered Justin.tv (now known as Twitch), and were fascinated by the idea of other gamers streaming their gameplay, and some even started making a living off of it. For us it naturally made sense, we had spent our childhood swapping controllers and watching the other progress the game we had rented at Hollywood Video or Blockbuster.
It’d be a total cop out to say I simply didn’t have the resources to do any of those things: how was I going to pay for recording gear to start a studio? Is our computer powerful enough to stream games? How are we going to shoot and edit videos for YouTube? There was some validity to those concerns, but the honest answer is I simply could not find the motivation to learn how to do it anyways. Yet, as the last 10 years have gone by, I never lost my personal passion for all of those things. I have worked my ass off to be where I’m at today, to afford the things I have. But it was never about the money. It was about truly finding enjoyment in trying different headphones, learning new songs on my guitar, discovering analog synthesizers, building progressively more powerful gaming PC’s, buying audio equipment for my room, and spending time playing video games I love unapologetically. I look up to creators like Mike Shinoda, Bobby Hundreds, MKBHD, Linus Tech Tips, Jonathan Morrison, Philip DeFranco, Videogamedunkey, Watsky, and so many other creators that embraced internet culture, not for the clout, but for the art and passion of it all.
So here I am. I’ve learned that it’s important to have a vision, and I will no longer apologize for wanting growth. But that growth, to me, is not about money or fame. It’s about the art of it all, to breed a creative platform for others to enjoy, and for creators to create. I don’t think any of my friends are doubters, but I know there’s a lot of unknowns. So as much as this post is out into the world, to hold me accountable, it’s also for me, to hold myself accountable.
