A New Evolution
Three years ago, I had an idea to let inner workings of my musical obsessions spill out on the internet for the world to see. I created Auditory Adventurer as a modest Tumblr blog, and the inescapable ravings that bubbled inside my head carried me through the adventure of my lifetime. I have met incredible people, explored undiscovered aspects of myself, and fell in love with some beautiful music along the way. Yet, my biggest regret is that while I let Auditory Adventurer lead me to new jobs and experiences, I did not carry it with me.
When I started Auditory Adventurer, I wanted to define and discover my identity. It was a place of my own where I could just be me the only way I knew how. I wrote pieces that reflected my mind. If it felt forced, I didn’t post it. If I didn’t feel something, I didn’t write something and that system felt right. As a result, the passion I hoped to capture seeped out into my writing and it paid off.
From its inception, I had no clear idea of what role Auditory Adventurer would play in my life; and I certainly did not imagine the work opportunities it has led me to. To complicate the situation however, much of the opportunities I had come across because of Auditory Adventurer seemed to be pulling me away from it. Along the line, I stopped listening to who I was and submitted to what I thought I needed to be. Suddenly, Auditory Adventurer wasn’t filled with the stories I wanted to write, but stories I thought I had to write. Eventually, I stopped writing altogether.
You never really know what makes you who you are until you are under threat of losing it. Without the creative freedom Auditory Adventurer allowed me, I have felt dangerously stuck – unsure of my footing in the world around me. It is a feeling that I have not experienced since I was a 16 year old girl clinging to the words of 30 Seconds to Mars and There For Tomorrow. I would amble my way through days and spend nights in their songs, dreaming of a day when I would channel their strength into the person I knew I was meant to be. Auditory Adventurer was the dawn of that day for me three years ago, and I greeted it with the hope of never going back.
However, the hardest lesson I am learning now is that the process of making yourself is not linear. It is a continuous cycle of making, unmaking, remaking, and the most important material used is time. As a senior in college, I am using the experiences of the past several years of my life to build the next evolution of myself. I am fortunate to have had plenty of learning experiences to guide me forward and I have Auditory Adventurer to thank for that.
I’ve been incessantly thinking about the next evolution of myself, and the one thing I do know for sure is that I want Auditory Adventurer to evolve with me. So today marks the next chapter for Auditory Adventurer. I am moving onto a new site and am moving further away from the traditional music blogger format I had subscribed to in earlier writings. One of the first things I wrote on Auditory Adventurer is that I dabble in a lot of things and I want Auditory Adventurer to reflect that.
Make no mistake; music will always be the dominant theme in all content I create here. However, I want to challenge the way I – and you – as a listener engage with music today in creative ways. I do not want to just write album reviews any more than you out there reading want to only read album reviews. Every song and album and artist contains a whole world within; and as an adventurous music fan, I am eager to use all my wits to explore every part of those worlds. Whether that exploration takes place through album reviews and interviews or something more artistically creative like poetry, stories, and film, I want to explore it all.
I do not know exactly where life is going to take me and Auditory Adventurer next, but I hope you come along with me. As heart racing as any good adventure is, it is also filled with the promise of the greatest treasures and golden memories to last a lifetime. More information and content will come over the next several weeks, but I am excited and hopeful that the best is yet to come. Strap in everyone; we’re taking a joyride!
And yes, that was a There For Tomorrow song reference.
