Doomed twice around?

For more than two centuries, newspapers have been key in spreading information. For even more centuries, music was something people would pay money to hear.

In this day and age both news and music are goods that are easy to come by for free. You read the news online, and you don't buy new albums, you download them. I'm guilty of both.

I don't have a newspaper subscription and for the last couple of years, I've only bought about twenty cd's. The other 300+ cd's in our house were bought before roughly the year 2000. Or I got them for free, because I used to work as a music reviewer for an online music magazine.

All of this is remarkable, because not only am I a journalist, I'm also the singer in a band. With reading free news and listening to free music, I'm robbing myself.

Or aren't I? These may not be the easiest times to be either a journalist or a musician, these are interesting times to be a part of both industries. People are frantically looking for new ways of making a living out of spreading news, or out of making music. It's like the search for the Holy Grial.

All we know is that the old days are gone. Even the people who make the news and the music aren't willing to pay for either one anymore.

But what if the Holy Grail doesn't exist?

The place I hate to love

I love the place I live. And I hate it.

We moved here when I had just turned 14. We used to live in a village with about 10.000 to 15.000 inhabitants, and the new village was just as small.

However, in our old town, my parents, sister and me were only six kilometers away from the third biggest city in the country. The place we went to is in a far more rural area. I can't tell you how shocked we were to go to the local bank and see and neat row of clogs in front of the radiator. The farmers were inside the building, on their thick wool socks. I felt like I been flung back in time. To the dark ages.

So I swore I was going back to the 'big city' as soon as I could. I told everyone who wanted to know - and everyone who didn't - that I hated this hick town, the way people dressed, talked, behaved and how ugly the houses were.

A lot has changed since then. Even though I was the one yelling the loudest about "getting out of this place", there is only a handful of people out of my senior class in high school who are still here. Me being one of them.

What the hell happened?

I fell in love, that didn't help. My parents are still here. The houses here are so much cheaper than in other parts of the country. Being one of the very few highly educated people who stuck around makes it easier to find a job. Stuff like that. Plus, I have to admit, the village grew, and that did do a lot of good when it comes to the really ugly parts of town. Almost all of them are gone.

But I think that the only true reason I'm still here is that we found the house where we now live. It's pretty, it's big enough, it's quiet, there's a pond with a fountain in front of our house and we both feel so comfortable here. Never change a winning team!