It's True! It's Damn True! The GlenBlog Is A Year Old! (So, Now What?)

Oh, It's true. As my boy Kurt Angle would say, "it's damn true".

The World Wide Glen will celebrate it's first year online this weekend.

Which beckons the obvious question (after the not quite as obvious "what the fuck?") of "So Now What?"

But in order to address that, and before we actually do, we should probably take a look back at just what has transpired in what I will deem as "Year One" of the life of The World Wide Glen (and to my friends who right about now will be chiming in with the usual accusations of being a pompous or pretentious prick--well, what can I say?)

...At least other than ...

This one's for you!

But never mind that.

For now, let's go back.

Let's go back about one year ago to be exact.

I started the World Wide Glen based largely on two things. First and foremost, was a desire to write again.

I may be pretty much useless on nearly level imaginable, but as anybody who knows me will tell you (at least if they are being honest), I can write.

And my writing, at least from my own perspective, is a gift that God himself gave me. Nothing else explains it. I may not be the worthiest individual to have received this gift, but received it I did. From the time I was reading newspaper ads at three years old to being put in third grade reading at age six there was just something a bit, well "different" about this kid.

But for whatever reasons, I chose to ignore my writing gift and stick it in some faraway little corner for the better part of about ten years. This is outside of my efforts, if you would even call them that--for a couple magazines in the nineties where my soul was simply not in it.

So at right around this time last year, I decided it was time to reawaken the writing beast within.

But this time I decided it was gonna be different.

Nothing--not a pre-determined criteria of what to write, and certainly not the limitations of some self-serving "editor", with his own agenda or (in some cases) a personal ax to grind--was gonna stop me.

Nope. Not this time. This time I would write what I really wanted to write and only what I really wanted to write. The only agenda here would be mine.

In other words, this was gonna fucking rock.

So lets get to the genesis.

First the inspiration.

The guy who really finally got me off me my ass and convinced me I could do this blogging thing was a guy named Dan Charnas. More specifically, it was when I discovered Dan's own blog, that I decided to do one of my own.

Dan's a guy I used to work with at Def American Recordings, who I not only liked a lot, but I also truly respected.

Truth be told, Dan played a major role in me getting my gig there. But beyond that, once I was actually in the door there, Dan was the one guy in a world full of people who we're basically full of shit in the most fucked up music business way you can imagine, who was always straight up and honest with me.

So one night sitting at my computer, more than likely with a few drinks under my belt, I got a wild hair up my ass and decided I wanted to know what Dan was doing these days.

What I discovered was Dan's blog and it was a mixed bag to be sure.

On the negative side, I discovered that Dan had bought into the whole New Age Transcendental Meditation thing that Rick Rubin had sold him on while at Def American hook line and sinker (and Dan, though I promise to respect your spiritual beliefs as surely as I know you'll respect mine--if we ever meet again in this life I gotta talk to you about that).

But on the positive side, I also discovered Dan was still one kick-ass writer (which was always the basis of ny respect in the first place). Especially when it came to hip hop and issues of culture and race in America, Dan's stuff was well written and about nine times out of ten, it was also spot-on.

I always loved that about my boy (and if he ever reads this, I know he wont mind me calling him that) Dan Charnas.

So anyway you can still find Dan writing great stuff at his blog Dantrification. He's not writing quite as much there lately, but it's still a great read, and one which I highly recommend. So Anyway...

What I also found was that his blog was hosted for free by these kind folks at Blogger. As if I needed any further inspiration or arm-twisting, I knew what I had to do right then and there.

Now that I had the domain, there was the matter of the name.

A year ago, I worked for Comcast.

I made decent--not great, but okay--money there. But I hated the oppressive and borderline hostile to employees atmosphere there pretty much from day one. Anyway, I don't work there anymore.

But when I did, there was this really funny company wide email that went out one day about an apartment complex called "The Glen."

Which I of course had to respond to claiming that I, and I alone, was "The Glen." This got some equally funny responses but the one saying I was "The World Wide Glen" stuck.

My Blog had a name. Well at least half a name.

It was also time to liberate a word I'm pretty sure I invented about twenty years ago, with the original intention of using it for a novel. That word is "Thoughtmare."

And I felt it was time to bring the word "Thoughtmare" into the public domain before somebody else stole away my creation for good. Because it's a pretty cool word, wouldn't you agree?

Anyway, I figured it was high time to take my unique name into the public domain before someone else did.

Hence "The World Wide Glen: Welcome To My Thoughtmare".

Because it fits. And because "Thoughtmare" is now a matter of public record as being mine. That business had to be attended to before somebody else got the idea.

So with the name established, I made one simple rule for myself as to the content:

Go Naked.

As in write absolutely blindly and honestly as though you we're writing in a personal diary (albeit one that potentially millions of people have access to).

This has made for some embarassing moments over the past year, as I've laid my soul fairly bare here more than a few times.

Anyway...

In the early days of this blog, I laid some fairly personal thoughts out there.

There are a lot of reminiscenses of my days as "The Shockmaster" of Seattle's hip-hop scene for example. I enjoyed reliving those days here on the blog a lot actually.

If there is actually a such thing as leaving a legacy, that's not necessarily the one I would have chosen (I've always fancied myself more the Dylan type to be honest), but it's apparently the one I've got and the one I'm stuck with.

And I have absolutely no regrets about that. It was a lot of fun reliving that here in the early days of the blog too.

No regrets at all. And much love to my Poi Boy Nasty Nes long as I'm on this subject.

But that's not who I am anymore at age 50. A fifty year old white guy? Who I am kidding? I mean, let's get real right?

So there came a point around last Feburary that I shifted the focus of the World Wide Glen away from the various personal issues of yours truly, and more towards what I've always thought I do best anyway--and thats reviewing records, concerts and writing articles on cultural topics and such.

The reasons for this are twofold.

The most obvious is that if I simply continued crying into my beer before a potential readership of millions, I was going to lose the far smaller actual audience I already had (though 10,000 hits in less than six months aint half bad with no publicity).

More importantly, last February, I once again, for the first time in ten years became a professional writer, doing reviews for Blogcritics, (where I just published my 50th article last week). And not just writing about music either (though I've done a ton of music articles for them), but actually writing about all the shit I love to write about. Wrestling, TV--I may even eventually get to my UFO conspiratorial bullshit--you name it.

The bottom line is there are no limits and no constraints as to what I can write about and Blogcritics is read by about 100,000 people daily.

So you do the math. Needless to say, I've rediscovered my writing muse and have fully embraced it.

So for all my good friends who loved to read the dirty laundry I hung out to dry for all the world to see in the early days of this journal a year ago--and who bitch that all I do is music reviews anymore--well I'm sorry.

And I'll also tell you that theres probably gonna be a lot more of those type of reviews in the days and months ahead.

If there is one thing this blog has done, it's reawakened me to the fact that when it gets right down to it, the one single thing I'm pretty good at is evaluating music. If thats gonna be my legacy (and I'm not at all sure its the one I would have chosen given the choice), then so be it.

I'm going with it. I'm not ignoring it any longer.

There will also gonna be the occasional foray into things like the wrassling, the weird, and the other shit I love--and yes, I may even cry into my beer every now and then.

So having said that, I'm gonna end this with one of those personal entries that my oldest friends claim to miss (for what I often suspect must be masochistic reasons). Regardless, they used to be my specialty here, so here's the last little personal nugget you'll get from me for awhile.

Lick It Up.

The good news is I'm working again.

As I alluded to above, Comcast sucked and I needed to leave that environment, and have no regrets that I did (regardless of the curcuimstances).

Anyway, I absolutely love what I'm doing right now--for anybody who knows me for the true music geek I am--this is a dream job, as what is basically a content editor for a digital music provider.

The only part that sucks--well actually theres two things--is that this is a contract position. So I have no idea of whether or not I'll still have the gig next week or month. The good news is I think they are gonna keep me around awhile.

But there is no guarantee of that. None whatsoever.

The other bad news is that the money pretty much sucks. It's barely--and I mean barely--enough to pay my bills.

I haven't been this broke since I was the twenty something year old "Shockmaster" working at Music Menu--now there's some irony.

The other side of this whole thing though, is that I can honestly say I have not been as personally happy or as relatively "unstressed" at a job in something like twenty years.

So whats the trade off? You tell me.

In the meantime, I thank the roughly 30,000 people (that's in combined hits) who have read this blog over the past year and continue to do so.

Whats next? You tell me. I'm praying for better things next year, and have faith they will come. Either way, you'll hear it here first.

Guaranteed.