This is the 5,000th Post on The Obelisk
Posted in The Numbers on June 2nd, 2014 by JJ Koczan
That is a lot of posts. Five frickin’ thousand, and apart from the odd and usually shortlived column from someone else, they’ve all been by me. I’ll be the first to tell you it isn’t all gold, but I’m proud of this site and proud to be passing this mile-marker along the way.
Earlier this year, I celebrated five years since I started The Obelisk at the end of January in 2009. I’ve spent some time thinking since then about what doing this means to me. I don’t think it was ever more in my consciousness than at Roadburn in April just how much the music is a part of who I am and how baseline elemental — air, water, food, riffs — it is. After a month of dragging ass mentally for having lost my last remaining job, to go there and be so inspired felt like being renewed. There’s some comedown obviously as you return to your life and the realities that presents, but I’ve worked hard to retain that feeling as much as possible, and hopefully it comes through in whatever it might be that I’m posting on a given day.
There’s no doubt in my head that without the immense and incredible support I get week in and week out, this site wouldn’t be here. Every comment is appreciated, every retweet, every Thee Facebooks like or share or comment or whatever it is. All of it, really. It sounds like a huge ego trip, and maybe it is, but every time I see someone sharing a post from this site, or having something to say — good or bad — about a review or other piece I wrote, or even if they’re just stoked that a press release I put up has good news, it’s validating in a way that I never expected to come from doing this. When I woke up this morning, the first thought I had was cracking open the laptop and getting the day started. It’s become an important, essential piece of my existence.
And I owe that to your checking it out. If you read every day, if you post on the forum, stream the radio player, if you never read, or if you show up to hear a track stream or something, whatever, thank you. There is a real human being on the other side of these words, putting this together, and it means a lot to me that you find any level of value whatsoever in what I do.
On to 5,001.
Thanks,
JJ Koczan
