1 Year of Random Happiness

Today, the 17th of November, is my blog’s anniversary. My nickname, if you didn’t know, comes from when I was in high school.

My nickname in high school was KareBear. During homecoming week, we had Thug Day. Me and my best friend Chey made our own t-shirts. I made a Vanilla Ice shirt, which someday I will post here to show you how much of a dork I was in high school. But I digress.

At school, my friends got band-aids, and told me to put them on my cheeks, like Nelly. I did, and on them, they wrote ‘Thug Bear.’ I actually got on the best dressed list for that day.

When I was thinking up a blog name, I thought to myself, ‘I use KareBare a lot, what’s something else I could use, something that won’t get confused with anything else, something that’s just me?‘ and it hit me, Thug Bear. So, I made it more formal sound, by adding the prefix ‘Ms.’ and squished the name together. Hence, Ms. ThugBear.

Looking back, I was an awful blogger the first few months.

I tried making it a personal blog, for thoughts and feelings, some of which would include K-Pop, but not all. >_> Epik fail.

The first two or three posts were itty bitty, and along the way, I began formatting my posts, making an attempt to look professional, and then I stopped that fairly quickly. It seemed all smushed together, and forced. That’s not me.

I’m wild and free, like my hair in the wind…getting in my own face and blinding myself…not a good analogy.

I then took the blog posts from my YouTube description boxes and gave them their own pages here.

Come February 2013, I decided to be a little more professional, and Asian pop culture oriented. I still needed some work where my formatting was concerned, but I was beginning to get the hang of things.

In March is where I really changed. I started doing music video reviews, more profiles, and came my first celebrity interview, EatYourKimchi! (P.S., Thank you guys sooo much again!) I also became more ‘news-y,’ reporting on stuff that was actually relevant, and current music videos and teasers.

In April I added my fanfiction previews. I DID say on my Facebook page that I would add them there, but I think I’ve gone from that sort of ‘anything-I-want-goes’ attitude to more music oriented, and dramas. I put up my first Thai article, Vietnamese articles started in March, but that was my big move to the other parts of Asia that weren’t really Korea, Japan or China/Taiwan.

In May I posted my first K-Pop cover and music video reactions. I don’t know if I’ll ever do another cover, but reactions are still on the back burner. I also figured out how to embed videos, hooray!

June, July and August have the lowest blog postings, because I didn’t have internet, and I’d have to walk across town to a cafe to get internet for a few hours.

September brought with it, a new formatting style, and more ‘news-y’ stories. I covered several articles and new music video releases. Not only that, but I gained my first band interview, Cannibal Heart (P.S., thank you guys so much, you were awesome to work with!). I interviewed them in late September, but didn’t get it up for a bit because of school.

October is when the Cannibal Heart interview went up, and I got into contact with Minsook of Look and Listen (thank you so much, Minsook!). I was contacting bands left and right, but I’m not telling you anything else. >_> It was my most productive month to date. I also got a tweet from Paul Kim on my article about him ^_^ and my interview with BBF peoples! (I don’t know if it was PR or producers, but thank you to you guys so much!).

November. I took on a different approach for review music videos. Right now it’s just something experimental. I don’t know if I’ll keep this reviewing format, go back to the old one, or merge them somehow.

I would just like to say, that this past year has been possibly the most trying, and at the same time, the best year of my life. A lot has happened, and a lot has changed. No, I can honestly say without a doubt in my mind, that I never dreamed that a year ago, that I would now have a blog, one that I am deeply proud of, and grateful that you, my readers would come to. I know I’m not a huge corporation or anything, but it means so much to me that you’d read about a weird girl from Iowa’s point of view on Asian pop.

Thank you for this past year, thank you for today, and thank you for the future. I hope to have more anniversaries and good memories to share with you all!

And thank you to those artists whom I have had the pleasure of working with, and to anyone else I will ever work with. Thank you.

-Yours truly,

Karen