Today marks the 17-year anniversary of Pop Break, and like Michael Jordan, I’m taking this one personally.
I’m taking this anniversary, reflecting on the past 365 days more personally than ever, because this site and the people involved with it have impacted me in ways I honestly never could have dreamed of, and I have to discuss.
The past year has been an absolute rollercoaster. On this day last year, my family lost our dog Leon to dementia. While it may sound silly to some, Leon was like a son to my wife and I, especially since we were told we would never have children. Watching this lovably goofy ball of muscle suffer as he did was devastating, especially for the one he protected and loved the most in the family, my daughter. At 10, she experienced loss for the first time (she avoided my track record of funeral attendance starting at age 4), and there was a significant hole in our souls.
Two weeks later, we discovered my mom’s lung cancer – which had returned after five years of remission – was not cured by radiation treatment; it metastasized to her other lung. All year, I’ve been with her through tests, procedures, and treatments. It has weakened this fiercely strong and independent woman tremendously. I’m literally typing this from her home, as I’ve lived with her for nearly two weeks trying to help her recuperate from a hospital stint. And unfortunately, things are looking extremely grim.
And if I’m going to speak circuitously about employment, it’s been unrelenting and up until the end of July, I felt like I was literally suffocating under the sheer amount of stress and anxiety it caused.
In the past, situations like this have ground me into a fine powder, forced me down to the bottom of a bottle, and have me digging myself deeper and deeper into an endless echo chamber of depression.
Yet, I look at today not with a heavy heart. No, I’m taking this one personally because of what Pop Break has given to me.
Pop Break has given me, someone blessed with a beautiful family and a band of brothers, a team of people who have transcended “people who work at Pop Break” to a total Olive Garden “when you’re here you’re family” situation. The love, support, guidance and endless breadsticks I have received from so many of the people here throughout these 17 years, but in particular the crew that has been growing since the pandemic, is immeasurable and can never truly be thanked for enough.
And I’ve seen this bond, this support, and this love spread throughout. We lift each other up. We support each other’s endeavors on and off the site. We’ve been there for weddings, births, funerals, engagements, new jobs, job losses, and all these incredible and not-so life events. You wouldn’t believe how many people on this site are going through it right now, yet I know people from here are reaching out, making sure things are okay, offering help, sending gifts, and doing whatever they can. Pop Break isn’t some conglomeration of people on the internet doing things to bulk up their resume or check professional boxes — this truly is a huge family that looks out for each other. Cliche? Sure. But also, facts are facts.
This past year also let me finally be proud of myself. Maybe it’s a weird Catholic Irish American Matt Murdock guilt thing about my dad sacrificing so much for me to go to college to be a journalist. I’ve spent so much of my “career” in non-journalistic places that have told me I’m a failure, I’m worthless, I’m just not good enough, and that I should give up writing because, quite frankly, I was never good enough to make it “in the bigs” when I was in my 20s, and in my 40s I’m nothing but a never-was. And you know what? I believed that way too hard for way too long.
However, last year, given the sheer hard work and dedication the team at Pop Break showed, and how much people were enjoying our work, I was inspired to do what every guilt-riddled Catholic Irish American would do – give all those negative sons a bitches the middle finger and prove to myself that I just might be the Terry Funk of independent journalism … middle-aged (I guess?), crazy (obviously), and refuse to back down.
For the first time in forever, I hit goals I set for myself. No half-measures. No excuses. I wanted to write 100 solo articles last year; I beat that and did 125. In fact, if you count this article, I’ve written 200 solo pieces since January 1, 2025. It’s most I’ve written since before my daughter was born in 2014. I finally tracked down bands that I’ve been trying to interview for over 10 years and made it happen. I got into the famed AEW media scrums. I went to the Netflix House press opening in Philadelphia. Things were done, boxes checked, and man, was it fulfilling.
And again, that inspiration, came from the people of the site, who, despite no pay literally ever (we don’t make money; I’m a journalist – degree in words, not numbers or money), are here week in and week out and delivering top-notch work and they do this for the love of the game. And man, that makes you want to run through a wall in the best, most constructive way possible. It was a joy to see college writers come in and improve by leaps and bounds. It felt great to work with them hands-on, see them grow, and then go on to great internships and jobs. It felt great to see writers’ and podcasters’ confidence flourish as they continued their journey. It was amazing to see the eyes of so many of our photographers grow sharper and sharper and stand toe-to-toe with any shooter working in the mainstream right now.
I could sit here right now, and I could cry my soul out, and I’d have every right to. Things are not good in life. However, I look at today, and I take this personally. Pop Break changed my life. It’s brought inspiration, hope, friendship, motivation, faith, joy, and love into a part of my soul I never dreamed of when I hit “publish” in my Jersey Shore apartment in 2009.
Yet, here I am. A lucky son of a bitch, who is surrounded by an absolute group of aces — both as creatives and human beings — who support this wild dream I had 17 years ago, and inspire me to believe in myself finally.
And oh yeah, we hosted a panel at San Diego Comic-Con this year, never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine that.
