Well, here it is – my own dot com. I’m sure I’m well behind on the “making a web domain out of your name” thing but the time seems right so here it is. Welcome to ChrisAballo.com.
Let me explain why the timing is right for my own dot-com. On June 30, 2010, my friends and I began recording episodes of our half-sincerely/half-jokingly titled weekly show The Only Podcast That Matters. This gave way to a multitude of other creative outlets including weekly blogs and monthly web videos, all of which meant I had to hone some new skills. Through trial and error, I learned how to engineer quality audio recordings and then edit it them into tight, entertaining hour-long episodes. Writing a weekly editorial-style blog over a period of what became 100 consecutive Mondays helped me to sharpen my writing skills and put an ability I hadn’t been using nearly enough into regular practice. After the first year of podcasting, we began making web videos on a regular basis and since I had an affinity for editing, I volunteered to cut together some of the stuff the boys had filmed recently and post them on our YouTube channel. This inspired me to start writing scripts for more short videos, as well as filming our group engaging in real life activities.
Creating content was incredibly rewarding for me, and the positive feedback I got encouraged me to keep working at being creative. Frankly, I’d always been keen to create and aimed for having a career putting my creativity to work. For many years, that creativity was channeled through music. Since that never took off in the way I hoped, I was now developing skills which would have otherwise gone untapped. Maybe I was on to something with all of this.
After two years of regularly generating original content (along with several previous years of being frustrated by working in retail), I decided to put my money where my mouth is and make a go at getting paid to be creative. I came out to Los Angeles in September 2012 to look for opportunities. One came in the form of a voice over workshop recommended to me by friends of an actor friend of mine. I’ve always been complimented on my voice (another reason an audio podcast seemed like a smart use of it) and since I often whip out impressions and accents for laughs, it seemed wise to put my voice to work in new ways. The workshop was a great experience where I got to meet many other talented people while learning how to manipulate my natural speaking voice by reading commercial copy.
I headed back to New Jersey for the holidays in mid-December, with plans to move back to Los Angeles once I made arrangements for what would happen with the big show until I visited home again. Since I’d spent three months not doing any podcasts after more than two years of recording them on a regular basis, I knew I had to stay sharp with it this time around, so I decided to do a bi-weekly show from my adopted home of Los Angeles. That is why the time is right for launching this site.
Things are still under construction, hence the quiet launch. There will definitely be some changes and improvements made in the coming weeks so please check back regularly as I will be doing some personal blogging on this site along with Chris Aballo’s Podcast Experiment every other Monday starting today (please check out Episode 1).
In the meantime, you can still hear my friends and I having a laugh every Friday on The Only Podcast That Matters. You can also read tons of stuff I’ve written over the years on my blog Rants on TheOnlyPodcast.com, and watch the aforementioned web videos on the group’s YouTube channel.
Thanks for visiting! Take some time to look around and enjoy what is here for now. Follow the show on Twitter, like it on Facebook, and email in to let me know what you think.
Chris