Blog: There Is Never Regret In Living Your Life Authentically

Hi all,

How are we on the fine (insert time of day that you are reading this here)? Grand I hope!

I genuinely struggled with today’s blog topic. To be honest, I haven’t really been sleeping all that well & where I find myself in my day currently exhaustion has started to creep in & I’m feeling a touch loopy. So, if this blog takes the shape of something akin to a NyQuil induced fever dream, now you know why. Though I desperately hope that it doesn’t.

When I am at a loss for what to put down on this here digital page, I reach out to several different spots. The first is naturally a list of blog ideas that I keep written in a notes app in my phone. Nothing in there felt like it resonated with me. Next, I typically ask Evan. He tends to keep better track of the things I’ve either gushed, ranted, or hyperfixated on throughout the week, & while he had some great ideas that have been added to the aforementioned note in my phone, all of them felt like they required a degree of tact & thoughtful navigation that I simply do not think I have in me today. So here we find ourselves at the third option. This is the option of intuition.

Typically what I do when it comes to an intuitive pick, is I draw a few tarot cards & see if the message they carry triggers anything in my brain. As I’ve said a couple of times on this blog, tarot is not magic, it is not fortune telling, it is simply having an exterior prompt that sends you searching within to find something that either you are aware of & ignoring, or as a message of reaffirming. To be entirely transparent & straight forward, my daily affirmations that I post on my instagram story all come from my tarot draws for the day & how I interpreted them for myself. So I went to the deck.

Lately I’ve been working with a stunning deck I got called the Pacific Northwest Tarot. It uses flora & fauna as the archetypes for the cards & the author/illustrator/curator of the deck, Brendan Marnell, did an masterful job on them. Today I did a three card pull with no other intent in mind other than to come up with a blog idea. I got the 7 of swords (deception, impulsiveness, evasion, dishonesty, thievery), the 9 of swords (nightmares, fear, anxiety, worry, isolation, the things that keep you up at night), & the sun (positivity, warmth, success, fun, hope, clarity, healing, living life authentically & to the fullest).

Now this is just a hodge podge of cards. A stack of three with no assigned meaning other than what is traditionally associated with them. There is no one out there saying “this exact combination of cards means this exact thing,” it’s all up for interpretation. That would also be an impossibility from a task standpoint as there are 78 total cards, each with reversals. Each can only appear once in the sequence of three & if they appear their reversals can not. That leaves 3,651,648 possible combinations of just three cards. So the interpretation is really up to the reader.

So I drew a card of the thief, the card of the nightmare, & the card of warm authenticity. How do I interpret that?

Well at first I was a little lost, I’ll be honest. It helps if I put in place the general draw (the 7), followed by a question about the general draw (what does that allude to? what would solve that? what’s in the way or causing that? etc.), but I didn’t. My third card would typically be the solution to the two or the ‘what am I still missing here’ of it all. With these I simply drew the three & went about pondering them for a couple of minutes. It wasn’t until I was ‘bad’ & wandered over to instagram that the message clicked for me.

I’m sure that most of you are unaware that September is Bisexual Visibility Month, of which is a community that I am a part of. I got some post that was sharing that information, but also was talking about how amazing it is for those who celebrate, visibly, that we are out & about living our lives authentically & boldly. Despite the current political climate in the states or around the world, despite what our friends/families/coworkers/loved ones/employers/communities might thing, despite the stereotypes associated with the label as it being a halfway point, a place holder label, a slutty ‘choice’ of sexuality, or what have you, we are out here living our lives as bi individuals & members of the queer community at large. You see, the 7 is not just stealth, deception, etc., it is also feeling like you have to go it alone or that you can’t trust those around you with something. The 9 is not just sleepless nights & anxiety, it is also being afraid to mess something up, or feeling that you have messed up & the sun, well the sun is what cuts through the clouds of these illusions & allows us to live in its radiance & its warm embrace. My interpretation, between the cards & the post, was that I was being nudged to talk about this during a month of visibility for a community that is being met with erasure across the board.

I know for an ‘introduction’ to this blog that all probably felt rather drawn out & a bit off kilter for the main topic at hand, & such criticisms may be entirely valid. But this is my blog, & I am someone who finds the curious human mind a fascinating kaleidoscope of intersecting webs, paths, & tangents ramming into one another & fractaling off into endless avenues & inspirations. I thought you all might as well. After all, you did come here to read my thoughts & words. I also think the foothills that lead to the mountains contain their own multitudes worth exploring. Alright. Enough of me, time to the topic at hand.

I want to start this off with a story, or rather a sequence of events…which I guess is a story. I came out formally on April 28th, 2018. On that day the only person I came out to was Evan. He & I had been friends for a number of years, as well as roommates (they were roommates, if you know you know). He had come out to me previously & told me that he was in love with me, which I didn’t reciprocate to him (gasp). After a while I had urged him to start going on dates. The first one that he did I found myself a wreck. I was jealous, of which I usually am not, & I was overwhelmed. I went to the gym & ended up cycling faster & farther than I ever had before or since. When he came home from his coffee date, we talked about it & we went off to our separate rooms to end the night. I didn’t sleep that night. Instead I tossed & turned entirely confused & lost until I discovered a post by another fellow Kansas Citian, Janelle Monáe, who had just recently come out as pansexual. In Janelles post she talked about the specifics of pansexuality as well as the difference between it & its often bunched with sexuality, bisexuality. I recognized myself in her posts & the next day I told Evan.

We then spent the next week talking about the logistics of a potential romantic relationship between the two of us. I didn’t know if I would ever admit to being who I am publicly for fear of being maligned by the bigoted country music industry, I didn’t know if it was an avenue I wanted to explore outside of us & a few close knit friends knowing, I didn’t know if I wanted to tell my super conservative parents, I didn’t know if I felt like I could ever be with someone of the same sex long term or romantically. There were so many ‘I don’t know’s’ floating around for days, because I had never allowed myself to face this part or me. Even at the age of 27. We started dating four days later & have been ever since.

It was about another year before I told my parents, it didn’t go well. That same year I came out publicly, deciding it was important to be open & honest about who I am with those who hear the songs I write or the blogs I post. I felt that I couldn’t expect myself to make open & honest art without being open & honest in general. The almost daily 'coming outs’ were hard for a while. People ask who you’re dating & you have that panic in your chest that fights to decide whether to lie or be honest, but it eased over time. With every passing day, week, month, year I look back on my life & I wonder how I never saw the signs. I wonder how I was so readily able to lie to myself for so long, just to save face. Now I can’t imagine it. I can’t imagine trying to squeeze back into that restrictive box. The box that told me that I had to be a certain way, behave a certain way, love a certain kind of person, believe in horrifically damaging things. It seems like a prison in hindsight. It’s not a space that fosters growth or thought or creativity. It’s restrictive & abusive, & not any way to live.

Now I think that I get more & more queer by the day. I don’t really care most days what people think about how I present or who I am seen with, because, let’s face it, most people’s limited outlook & their regressive opinions don’t matter. At least not to me when it comes to the topic of me. By happenstance I would say about 80% of the people I am close to are queer in one way or another. In fact, most days it's jarring to be around straight people. I love all of my friends, but man, that 80% are some of the most genuine, authentic human beings I can imagine. They live unapologetically & bold & they inspire me on the daily.

You see, all of this is a very round about way of getting me to the point of this whole post. That even when it sucked, even when I was fighting with my family, or getting cut off by people I thought were in my corner, there’s not a single day that I regret my honesty. Not a one. Because I am unchained. I am allowed to fly & stretch my wings up into the endless sky of possibility. I am no longer tethered to the rules of who I have to be to make other people happy or to fit into their idea of me. Besides, I’d much rather disappoint them than disappoint myself any day of the week. I also know that this is a sentiment that is not wholly & exclusively mine. Ask anyone out there who had to break out of the closet to be who they are if they regret it, they’ll all tell you no. Is it hard & scary & does it require a great feat of courage? Of course, but, my loves, the sun waits on the other side of the nightmare, of the deception. You deserve to live in the sun, to stretch upwards to meet it & bask in its warmth, not to shrink & hide amongst the shadows under the clouds.

I hope wherever you are, whoever you are, that you are choosing to live your life authentically & if you can’t for whatever reason, I hope you’re chasing that life at least. My loves there is so much to this world, to this universe. We are specks on the timeline of known history scratching at the surface of understanding. Dare to not be confined by those who are fine living their lives with no desire for depth & understanding.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Why Not?

I think for a lot of us we really get in our own way. We over think the way that we believe others feel about us, whether true or false, but typically in the negative. Seldom do we think about a relationship of ours & think “wow, so & so probably enjoys my company,” “x,y,z, must get value in our companionship if they keep inviting me around” & of course we don’t because even just reading those, it sounds psychotic! That’s not how our brains work, that’s not how we’re all wired & I get it! I understand why. As a member of the kingdom ‘Animalia’ we are hard wired to be looking for the things that are '“wrong” in any given situation. We are programed to be constantly reevaluating the patterns of life around us in search of a change that would indicate danger. (Especially if you’re nuerospicy.) It’s a survival tactic. Even amongst our peers & our loved ones there is a part of us that must always keep up our defenses in the off chance that we have to engage in fight or flight or that our behavior finds us ostracized from our social groups.

I feel like most animals are pretty adepts at reading the body language of their fellow like species. Dogs & cats pick up on aggression cues from one another down to the smallest twitch of the ears or the positioning of the body & we humans are no different. A large number of us are so adept at picking up the interpersonal cues we share that we almost become fortunetellers, putting the pattern recognized cart before the proverbial horse. Sometimes, especially when growing up, certain situations can devolve human behavior & pattern recognition into trauma responses, often from dealing with a neglectful, narcissistic, aloof, abusive, insert your desired adjective here*, care giver. Sometimes those trauma responses come from being outcast by our peers in school or amongst age similar social groups & when left untreated all of these sheltering attributes follow us into adulthood.

Now, I’m not here to give you a sociology lesson or a psychological one. All of this pretense is simply in the way to set up something that I myself have been working through. Maybe it’s the fully developed frontal lobe that finally decided it wants to show up to work or maybe it’s personal growth. Whatever it is, I’ve found myself lately saying “why not” more & more.

If that felt like a hard left turn to a few of you reading this, I promise, the thread will come back around & we’ll tie all of this in a nice little ribbon. I am someone who has always been fairly self conscious. For a lot of you that may come off as surprising given my profession & that I get on here most weeks & spew my thoughts to the world wide web so that they may be read the world wide. But it’s true. I am fairly self conscious. I was never a classic cool kid, until high school I really only had a hand full of friends & I always felt like the black sheep of the suburban lower Midwestern world that I grew up in where people, especially in school, were never slow to voice their opinions of you. I was always taller than everyone in my class, always the weird one, all ways the one who got called ‘gay’ or ‘strange’ & those are badges of honor that take a long time to own, if you ever do. But more & more I’ve abandoned the preconceived societal norms & simply embraced life for what it is.

I think the most recent example of this came from my show the other night. It was the first time in a long time that I had done a full band set & following le pandemmy, I actually redeveloped a bit of stage fright that typically takes me the first song or two to work through. So as the act before me was finishing up, I was off to the side having a bit of a panic at which point I stopped & said to myself “why not just have fun? This is what you love doing, performing, singing, making music, entertaining people, why not just do it for the joy of doing it? If you mess up, you mess up as is human to do & you carry on. No one is here to watch you fail, everyone would rather see the best show you’re filling to give than watch you stumble timidly through a set.” & so that is what I did. I got on stage & I had fun.

Not only did I have fun, but in actually I had a blast & it may have been one of the favorite sets that I’ve done in recent memory. Me having fun allowed the band to have fun which allowed the audience to have fun & following the set I had more people percentage wise come up to me to say how much they loved my music & my energy than I have ever had before.

Another example. I’m someone who has always found themselves reserved with my emotions or the way that I feel, especially when it comes to those I am partnered with. I find myself holding back often & lately I’ve been answering that restraint with “why not?” Why not let your feelings be apparent? Who does it benefit if you hold them back? If anything all it does is create this ere of distance because there is actually self inserted space between you.

I put on music the other night, I thought why not dance? So that’s what I did. Unreserved, unrestricted, I danced freely & had a ball doing so! Why not be honest about what you want to eat when people ask where you want to get dinner? The worst they can do is disagree & then at least you’ve made the attempt & won’t spend the rest of the evening wishing you’d said something, wondering if the evening could have ended up where you wanted to go instead. I’m not saying to be uncompromising here, just telling you to be honest.

Too much of what could be life’s shimmering moments go by behind lock & key. Too many of them pass with fear & hesitation instead of with vigor & joy. If people judge you for doing the things you want, for being the person you want to be, that’s their burden to bare, not yours. Your open expression of joy is often met with the limitations of someone else’s self sabotaging prohibition. Your life is yours to live & feel & embrace, not theirs.

I hope you all have a fabulous ‘whatever point in time you end up reading this’ & will lean into those ‘why nots’ a little more. Have fun, be a shining example of freedom & joy & unapologetic expression because that’s what you deserve. Start small, work your way up! You’ve got this!

As always, much much much love to you all!!!

-C

Blog: Make A Wish, Take A Chance, Make A Change, & Breakaway

Earlier this week I received a message from my friend Jared at Country Music Allies. He’s putting on a few shows this week, CMA week, & was asking if I would be willing to host the one on Friday (today) in his place. My initial reaction was an honest one, I’ve never hosted an event before & truly don’t consider myself to be amongst the great public speakers of the world so I was hesitant. He insisted that I would make a great host & that all I would be doing is introducing & not so much M.C.ing, so I told him I’d take the night to think about it.

The more I weighed the idea of hosting in my mind, the more uncomfortable it made me. I felt I wouldn't know what to say or that I’d make a fool of myself, but then my mind proposed the question “so what?”

It’s a simple question really “so what?” It really clears the air of anxiety & hypotheticals & creates way for logic to step in. So what if I screw it up & make a fool of myself? The people performing are lovely humans, some of which I know fairly well, they’ll definitely show me some grace, as will the audience who I’m sure will be primarily compromised of those within the queer community, especially if I’m honest in voicing my discomfort. Truly there is nothing to fear in accepting this role. So I did.

I texted Jared the following morning to tell him that the idea of hosting the event made me uncomfortable as hell which probably meant that I should do it. So tonight I guess I’m hosting an event! Let’s hope that come next week we don’t end up with another blog in the same vein of how I epically failed my callback a couple of months back only subbing out the “callback” for “hosting position.”

Additionally, I’ve had a lot of content come up this week around songwriting that lives in the same vein of thought. A writer who I follow & respect dearly said she spent 10 years in the industry writing songs that felt “meh” like they were good songs but nothing she was writing was great or moving the needle. She said the moment I stopped restraining myself & my thoughts was the moment I started writing great music. Her recommendation was that if you want to write a great song about a scenario or relationship you have to be bare. Go into a notebook & write unrestrained, uncensored about the topic until you feel you’ve purged your feelings thoroughly, then, once that is done, go back & find the sentences that make you say “oh, that’s too much” or “I could never say that out loud” & put that in your song! Those are the lyrics that end up connecting deeply to an audience.

If you haven’t noticed the common thread here is taking chances. This has been a week full of chance taking for me & those around be doing the same. Last night, my friend Chris Housman premiered a new single of his called “The Bible Belt” something he was incredibly nervous to play in public because it talks about all the ways he’s still recovering from how he was beat with “the bible belt,” it received ravenous applause. I went downtown to try & convince people to pre-save my upcoming single in exchange for a keychain, basically dry soliciting, something that makes me very uncomfortable. I then, while I was walking around, ended up doing a “finish that line” karaoke thing that got me a few more followers as well!

The point is take chances! Do the thing that makes you uncomfortable, be bold & unafraid to muck it all up! Put yourself out there, the worst people can say is no…I guess aside from cussing you out. But what I seem to be finding is that if you are who you are, unapologetically, the right people will find you, the right people will hear what they need to hear, & you’ll go so much farther in life & be so much happier in the long run.

Keeping it brief today as, like I said above, it’s CMA week & it’s packed out for me!

If you’re in Nashville this weekend come find me! I play at The Bowery Vault tomorrow evening around 9PM & will probably just be around also!

I hope you have the most fantastic of weekends!

Be safe, much love to you all!

-C