Surreal

First of all can I just say thank you?
I love getting on here and reading people's comments. You guys make me smile. I love that I really don't even know you, yet I feel like we are friends. One of my goals next week is to visit all of your blogs and read all of your stuff. I am looking forward to this.

I woke up this morning itching to write. This one is more for me.

Today is the first real, real day that feels crazy and surreal for me. With all this music stuff. I know I talk too much and say things out loud that I am just supposed to think in my head, and I am sometimes sorry for that. I wish I could act cooler. Less impressed. Sometimes I wish I were not so honest and that I did not say every feeling that I experience. I had a friend tell me once that I lived in lala land, this was not a compliment, and I wish that sometimes I did not live there. But for some reason I am that person that needs to talk. I need to get it out, cool or not cool, politically correct or not, good or bad, I have to talk. So today...I am talking about me.

We are about to fly to Nashville for what I think is a pretty surreal week. We start off today with a media coach who will tell us how to do good radio and tv interviews. I think they watch us and critique us and tell us how to look more professional and polished, and this is clearly going to be a problem for me because I am a fly by the seat of my pants type person! They follow us around the rest of the week and watch how we do. Thursday we go to Provident, our distributor who will make sure our new album is in Best Buy and Target and all that stuff, and we play some music for their big annual get together. We play with a lot of other bands
like The Afters and Mercy Me. Then Friday morning all the radio people from across the country come to Nashville for a big convention, and we play 2 songs. Not a lot of room to mess up! I guess it is sort of our big introduction to the radio stations of America. Cross your fingers...we need them to like us!

Finally, Saturday we fly to Chicago and have been invited to open up for Mercy Me for their CD release concert...could that actually be real? I will let you know when Saturday roles around. I imagine we are playing in the lobby and selling merch and that we will not really be on the same stage opening for a band I have grown up listening to...on my BIRTHDAY!

Sometimes it sort of feels like a dream. I was seriously a dorky high school kid who was way too into my church youth group and loved to sing, but couldn't really sing all that well, in fact my choir teacher hated me and told me to just lip sync when we would go to competitions! I don't play instruments, I struggle writing songs, and I am not cool. I went to college to be a speech pathologist to work with handicapped kids until I realized you had to watch videos of tracheotomies, and then I changed my career plans. I studied religion and history and wanted to work for an orphanage or non-profit organization, I wanted to maybe be a youth minister or religion professor or history teacher...and somewhere deep inside me I just happened to be a girl who LOVED music and more than that, loved the stage.

In high school while my friends watched a concert, I was just trying to sneak back stage. Once I got back there, and I always got myself back there, either by lying, breaking in, or talking my way through, I just sat and watched people coming off and on stage...and I was overwhelmed, i loved it. They went home thinking it was a cool show. I went home in tears because something inside of me was pounding and loved the experience so much I wanted to do it, not watch it, but do it. It was always an overwhelming feeling. But that was just a dream. You don't go to college actually thinking you will become a singer. That was not on my list at all, it was not practical, and I wasn't pursuing it, but here I am.

I am not saying we are rock stars. We are not. And I wish you all knew me well enough to know that this is not bragging. It is not. This is baffling to me. Today I feel baffled. Life feels surreal. I can't believe I am flying off to Nashville and Chicago to play with other artists. I will try to play it cool. I will try not to sound like too much of a dork. I did this with Toby Mac. I told him I had been to every single concert of his since the 5th grade and that I had 12 posters, all the albums, a sweat rag that I caught at a concert...and that I knew his birthday, his kids, and wife's name.....not cool.

So this week I will try to act like I belong and try to act like it is not all some big joke being played on me. This is my life. This is real.