Something Glorious is About to Happen — Again
Are you ready to start discovering new wines (and more) to love?
In early 2005, I started contributing to a blog called Cool Hunting that my friends Josh Rubin and Evan Orensten created a few years earlier. They sought out unique, interesting, and yes, cool things and people across art, design, music, architecture, travel, and more. I wrote a variety of posts for CoolHunting.com, mostly about music as I was still covering the genre as a journalist. I wrote about then-emerging artists, like Kaiser Chiefs, Brandi Carlie, and Cut Copy, but also Madonna; clever products; and some travel.
This was the mid-2000s, when blogging was the hot new thing. This was before everyone and their sister-in-law had a blog, but it was the beginning of the new internet where creators took back control from big media companies (or so we thought). The more I hunted for their blog, the more I realized I could start my own. I knew what I wanted to write about: music, wine, food, travel, wellness, men’s grooming — the things that I loved.
Finding a name
I then needed a name. I thought. I brainstormed. I got creative. Each time I landed on something I felt was “it,” someone had already grabbed it for their own website, company or blog. Then one day, as I drove up Lake Shore Drive in Chicago heading home, I turned up the volume on my iPod, listening to one of my favorite albums at the time, Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm. Track 3, “Positive Tension,” started. I turned it up. Louder. As the prescient line blasted out of singer Kele Okereke’s mouth, I knew I had my name. That line? “Something glorious is about to happen.” And something glorious indeed happened. I sped home, pulled up a web registration site, typed in the URL somethingglorious.com and hit enter. Much to my excitement — and surprise — it wasn’t registered. So I bought it. And launched my blog: SomethingGlorious.com.
Friends and acquaintances hit me up all the time when they needed a place for date night, a bottle of wine to uncork, a new band to check out. I thought, “Why not just put all of this online so people would read about it instead of asking me?” To this day, people still ask me and I happily reply. But SomethingGlorious became the place I would write about my discoveries. I added a tagline: Things that I love that you should love too.
That was 2006. Multiple times a week, I would post and loved sharing my finds. I started gaining more followers and traffic. Then, about a year later, I joined my friends in taking over and revamping UR Chicago magazine. I served as editor in chief and most of my time and energy went to the magazine. During that time, I posted sporadically. And then, one day in 2010, I shared my last post on SG.com, a link to a remix of “Orient,” the first single off of the then-forthcoming Foals sophomore album, Total Life Forever.
Until now.
SomethingGlorious 2.0
I never let my ownership of somethingglorious.com lapse. I felt in my heart one day I would again do something with that name. I even had someone randomly email a few years ago asking if they could buy it. I simply replied, no. Over the last couple of years, I have had the fortune of writing for Salesforce’s blog, covering a slew of new topics: future of work; digital transformation; wellness in the workplace; the digital, educational, and wealth divide; future of cities, and more brand-level, thought-leadership topics. But I still wrote about food. And spirits. And wine. And a bit of travel (despite the pandemic). I realized how much I love talking to people about these things, especially wine — and especially the emergence of American wine regions. I have talked about wanting to do something more in this space and I finally decided: Enough talk. More writing.
So, welcome back to SomethingGlorious — the newsletter. Here, I’ll discuss things I love that you should love, too. But mostly wine.
I hope you’ll join me on this journey. I, for one, am excited to grow SomethingGlorious. I may just write about some new wine I’ve discovered from Texas, New Mexico, Virginia — or even northern Italy or Georgia. But I will absolutely go deeper through conversations with winemakers, sommeliers, and the folks who make this industry run. I aim to feature a diverse cross-section of people in wine because, let’s face it, the wine world is vast and, yes, diverse. Hopefully you’ll join me on this journey.
Something glorious is truly about to happen. Again.