I don’t even know where to begin, or what exactly I’m trying to say. But I do know that I want to at least say: I’m still here.
A year shy of thirty, I feel like I might as well be fifty when it comes to women in the music industry. If we’re not in our teens or early twenties, we’re pushed aside and put on the shelf.
I tried to reach “success” all my life, but now, I really don’t know exactly what “success” means.
My youngest sister is graduating from high school next year. Over the fourth of July holiday, I walked into her room and said the words that make every high schooler squirm uncomfortably in their chair: “Hey, can we talk?”
I didn’t know why I felt compelled to talk to her, but I did. And since my parents are divorced, and not a lot of these talks happen anymore with my younger siblings since there’s a split home situation, I feel sometimes it’s on my shoulders to shed a little bit of…I don’t know…wisdom?
“I didn’t know you liked to sing,” I opened with.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Ya know, I know all your friends are going to college next year and –“
“Yeah…most of them want to go to medical school.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. I get it. But, I just want you to know that…if you want to sing…that I’ll help you and support you, okay? I mean, the music industry is kind of in a tough place right now. There’s not a lot of money there, but I’ve never regretted it. Even now, at almost 30, still trying to pay off my old car, and still living in a tiny apartment with a roommate, I don’t regret it. “I look at her for a moment, trying to see if I’m getting through to her. I’ve always been terrible at these kinds of talks.
“I’m just saying…if you need help, I can help you. If you want to do art, you have to do art. If you want to do music, you have to do music. If you don’t, it will hurt.”
She looks at me, waiting, so I go on.
“You know what my biggest fear in life has always been?” I ask her. “Being bored.”
She starts twirling her long hair in her fingers and all she says again is, “Yeah.”
“Being bored,” I say again. “I could have gone a different path, an easier path….maybe I’d own a house now, like so many of my friends in Utah. And maybe I wouldn’t owe people money. I’d own a car. I’d have a kid. And I wouldn’t worry about next month’s rent. And people wouldn’t come up to me while I’m in town and say, “Hey…are you still trying to do that music thing?” But maybe I’d also be bored as fuck. And that’s a scary thing to me.”