2015 was the final full year of AbsolutePunk. Looking back at the staff list from this year, I’m filled with many conflicting feelings. On the one hand, there’s a whole lot of outstanding music from this year that I hold fondly in my memory. That Sufjan Stevens album, Kendrick Lamar, Foxing, Noah Gundersen, Carly Rae Jepsen, Fall Out Boy, and many others continue to get regular spin in my rotation. But at the same time, 2015 was the year I knew, beyond any doubt, that I needed to change something in my life.

Beyond the abject chaos of working for a large corporation spending money in the weirdest ways and having shakeups in management seemingly every week, this was a year where the music scene itself, and AbsolutePunk in particular, became a nightmare I dreaded being a part of. This is the year where the tour manager for The Wonder Years lies to me to cover up sexual assault from some dude in some crappy band on Pure Noise Records. This is the year where Front Porch Step is allowed to play Warped Tour after allegations of misconduct. The year where I’m getting in public and private spats with bands that are doing gross shit. I’m getting messages from record labels that don’t want me to write about any of this and want to cover for it as “boys will be boys.” And there was even that whole thing with Kevin Lyman himself wanting me to come out to some Warped Tour date, and when I suggested multiple women he should be talking to instead, he just said “no.”1