Every New Year, I always find myself coming up with a new theme for life. Sometimes it’s the year of adventure, another year could be devoted to moving on from painful memories, and yet another could be all about living my life to the fullest. Over time, each of these themes level out and balance each other, enriching my life in ways that I had never thought possible!
As I tried to come up with a theme for this year, it had hit me: the year of making my dreams come true. In years past I have always tried to accomplish this goal along with my theme, but never quite hit the mark. But that didn’t deter me. Every year would come and go, my bigger dreams always failing to meet their mark, yet still very much alive. Fortunately, 2011 may have changed the game.
With a sense of determination & confidence, I started last year trying to figure out what I truly wanted out of life. My writing had taken a back-burner to work, fatigue, & day-to-day chores. Playing the piano overrun with more gigs and commitments than I could imagine. This needed to stop.
It took a lot of work, but things became a lot clearer once I started allowing time for the things I loved. Writing became the solace I needed to do in order to function. (Maybe not publicly to all of my readers, but at least to try and quiet my busy mind.) And when we moved into our first home, I found myself sitting down with my sheet music, blazing through each piece like I had never lost my touch.
2011 had also become a year with more time with good friends, a few getaways with my boyfriend & most importantly: having the chance to take a vacation with my best friend to Hershey Park for a concert (and some sweet rides!) There was more time spent with friends & family, more memories made outside of a gig, and what I had come to realize….more opportunity than I realized.
I took more personal pictures, branched out my music tastes, danced harder, sang louder, challenged my writing skills with new ideas and by the end of it all embraced everything I stood for. The end of 2011 was full of promise and hope for the upcoming year….ringing in 2012 meant a New Year to fill with even more wonderful moments & people!
But getting back to my original thought, while I have all of those wonderful things, I still want to reach my dreams. And with everything going in such a positive direction (since negativity got the boot last year), it’s about time I grab for something even bigger. So here I am, in 2012, writing anything and everything I can down, especially with my new music column for Stylewhipped.com (which I will share with you in another post), expanding my knowledge of different music genres through iTunes & Spotify, and giving myself an honest to God chance to prove that I can do it all.
I may say this every year, but I do believe now more than ever: This is my year.
~Jenn
(aka, aspiring music writer)
