The Mixtape That Grew from Dial-up
Picture this: It's just after midnight on a school night. The dead silence being broken up by the oddly on-beat rhythm of my dad's snores in the other room. A snore just loud enough to mask the noise of the dial-up modem booting up in my bedroom.
For the rest of the night, the world outside of that glowing computer screen didn't exist to me1. All that mattered was the new digital community I had become a part of through my first website, a fan site dedicated to the life and legacy of Tupac Amaru Shakur.
What I didn’t realize was that this experience was the beginning of my marathon into the world of media. Blogging, interviewing, curating, designing, community building… I was learning all the skills I needed to fulfil this new passion of mine. Each pixel was like a portal to my future. In nearly every way, content rules everything around me. Streams, long reads, and all.
Today, the marathon continues. Blog interviews prepared me for media interviewing, public speaking and event hosting. Curating web content opened doors to… well… curating even more web content, but also to curate art exhibits. Developing content series paved the way to become a content strategist for major brands. I kept launching random new websites for the main purpose of honing all of these skills and exploring new ones.
I guess you could say I come from the School of Hard Knocks Odd Blogs.
Each website + each project I launched was like a mixtape—a playground for my passions. A way to dive deep into what moved me.
In many ways, the web itself mirrored this experience: vibrant but fragmented, especially as social media turned our personal corners of the internet into siloed streams.
We really shouldn't need to segregate our interests though. We are diverse, multi-hyphenate, multi-passionate, multi-everything beings. Our interests are vast, and so why should our digital presence be any different?
This latest iteration of my digital outlet is intended to return to this essence and explore a variety of topics important to me. In this space, expect to engage with topics like music, art, and culture; exploring the essential aspects of healthcare and health equity; discussing deep thoughts in the realms of race, identity, belonging, and social justice; and occasionally exploring anything else that seems to capture my thoughts.
With the amount of content available to us at every given moment—some incredibly well thought out and carefully produced, and others feeling like sugar-coated empty calories clickbait—my aim isn’t to compete with any of that; it’s simply to provide a rich, diverse, and hopefully engaging content experience. For me, a personal blog isn’t meant to be static—it’s dynamic. It’s like a D’Angelo or Raphael Saadiq journey: constantly exploring new ideas and allowing yourself to move in new directions. There’s no need to show up every single day, but when you do, you offer something from your soul.
I guess, this post is more of a reminder to myself, and hopefully to you. Don’t fret about the polish of the album. Just drop the mixtape.
Now that I think about it, staying up all night due to the dial-up line using the phone line, is probably the beginning of my sleep issues.