2016 marks the seventh year of HauteThought’s existence. That’s right, I’ve been blabbing in my own corner of the Internet for seven whole years. That number took me by surprise. I feel like I’m still getting my feet wet, slowly trying to figure out topics and points of focus, yet this blog has been around for longer than a college career. Time flies when you’re blogging, I suppose.

HauteThought began as a way to get myself into the music industry. I was fresh off of an internship with the music critic at the Chicago Tribune and he left me with a very nice piece of advice: start a blog. A blog, he said, would be a way for me to find my voice and to consistently write about music. I could call the shots on content and interact with like minded music critics.

Within a month, I got a comment from a music publicist who was pushing Tony Lucca. She stumbled across a post I did on him and asked if she could send me music similar to his. Given that my work dream is to be a music publicist, you can imagine how exciting this was for me. I started writing reviews on Rock Ridge Music artists regularly. I reached out to numerous other record labels to let them know that I was willing to review their artists. After all, I was always looking for content. Much to my surprise, I started getting tons of CDs in the mail. I was in music journalism heaven.

I slowly began to toss in different content over the next few years, but HauteThought had a very music focused theme until 2014. The change in focus doesn’t mean I have lost all interest in music. Blogs evolve just like personal tastes do. This platform is no different. This year has had a large focus on personal experiences and not a single music post, yet.

Having a blog isn’t easy and I’m certainly not in it for the money (still waiting for that to happen). It can be tough coming home from a regular job and sitting down to write. But blogging is a passion project and it has helped me learn and discover new things about myself. I’ve found other blogs to follow and look forward to reading their new posts. I can only hope people feel the same way about mine.

Here’s to the next seven years!