Release: When He Was Me

I first heard When He Was Me about five years ago now. I believe it was 2018 but it very well could have been 2019. I had a session with Josh Gleave at his studio on music row. When I walked in Josh was wrapping up work on a demo for the song that Shay Mooney had just recently come in to lay down vocals on. He played me the song in whole since I was present & it immediately grabbed ahold of me. It was one of those songs that catches your breath from the first line & doesn’t let go until the final chord strikes. Time went on & I patiently waited for When He Was Me to make an appearance on a Dan + Shay album, but it never did. As soon as the track listing for the duo’s third album came out I & I saw that the song wasn’t among them I immediately texted Josh to find out if he could reach out to Shay to see if I could cut the song myself. Shay gave not only his blessing but also sent over a folder of about six other songs of which I chose two; When He Was Me & Something To Do (we’ll get to her at a later date). Then began the process.

Being an independent artist can make getting a big boy industry song cleared amongst the big boy music industry a bit of a daunting task. After a few months of my former manager not making any headway on securing the rights we parted ways (for a number of reasons outside of the song itself). The task then fell upon Evan & I, but mostly Evan who loves himself some admin work, to get the song cleared. Of which he went through multiple different sources to find the proper avenues to secure the song.

We ended up doing the recording of When He Was Me right before the pandemic hit but I found that the more I sat with the recording, the more I felt it was lacking something, specifically where my vocal performance was concerned, so once we had a dip in quarantine restrictions & covid numbers, I headed back in the studio with Josh & Greg Breal to do a different vocal take, which I much prefer to the one we initially had. We also added a few more sets of BGVs to the song & a bit of vocoder!

After the song was sent off to Jonathan Roye for mix & Mike Monseur for master it sat. For almost three years it sat. Why you may ask? Well this is one of those songs that I wanted to put out right. I wanted all of my ducks in a row & everything to go smoothly, & thus far it has! Additionally, remember how I said I was dealing with big industry things with clearing this song? Well, that was beyond true! Evan counted last night that it took 78 different emails to different people to get this song cleared. That’s not counting the direct messages, phone calls, intermediary texts to find contacts, etc. This song took this long to put out in part because of my status as an independent artist.

But alas, we’re here now! The song has been released! It is out in the world for you all to make your own & to listen to & share amongst your friends & family & in all honesty, I feel good about it. For once I’ve got a release going smoothly with more things to follow. For once I’m not at a place where I’m sick of the song by the time it’s been released & that feels good. I’m at peace with it & am ready to see what comes of it. I’ve released the art to you all to do with as you see fit. I’ve done my part in its execution & now it’s time to let it fly!

When He Was Me was written by Shay Mooney & Benjy Davis. It was produced by Josh Gleave & vocal produced by Greg Breal with drums by Lester Estelle Jr., bass/keys/programing by Josh Gleave, & acoustic/steel/electric/dobro by Devin Malone. It was released through Distrokid & promoted by Trend PR. A special thanks to all who helped this song along the way: Noreen, Patricia, Kendall, Ashley, Alison, Amanda, Ben, & Hunter. A special thanks to Evan for all of his incredible hard work & beautiful content creation & a shoutout to The Fox Bar & Cocktail Club for allowing us to use their venue for photos!

I’ll place a link to the song below though you’re more than welcome to search it on whatever your favorite streaming site may be!

Much Love As Always,

-C

Blog: Copious Content Creation

Hiya!

Over the past week I’ve had a ripple of commonality come through multiple times between multiple conversations with several different friends of mine, the issue of content creation. All parties involved, in each individual dialogue, are singer-songwriters, none of whom are signed or have any sort of team behind us pumping out content on our behalf. The complaint that we each had was just how long it takes to make scrollable content & how taxing it can be to constantly be in that mode of creation that has to be, by nature, a tad frivolous.

If you're not someone whose job depends on how many eyes are on you at a given time this whole blog may come as a surprise to you, but content, in any form takes a long time to put together. I’m going to show you a few examples along the way to help illustrate this point but just know, that’s what you’re in for on this blog.

I’m going to start with a few examples of my own. Let’s talk about blogs. These ones, these one off, ten to fifteen paragraph numbers that I do almost every week take me on average an hour & a half to two hours. If that seems like an odd number to you then let me break it down. If I’m being honest, the days leading up to Friday are spent brainstorming, coming up with ideas for what this week’s topic should be & typically going with the one that feels the most natural or that I feel the most passionate about. We aren’t counting that time in our final number here simply because my ADHD’d brain allows me to do that while I’m doing other things. It’s not dedicated time, but it is still taking up mental space. Then I set aside time to sit down & do what I’m doing right….now! right…..NOW! which is typing out the blog. If there are specific points that I want to hit along the way I’ll type them down below in the order I want to present them in so that I know which way to steer this whole stream of consciousness train, otherwise I derail. Oh look, Squirrel!

Next, after my ten to fifteen plus paragraphs are done, which usually takes over an hour, I go in & edit. After I’m satisfied with my post, or at least deem it passable, it gets uploaded to square space with tags & categories, & all that good stuff. Then I’m still not done. I have to share this mother so that you all will see it. I post it to Facebook, swapping back & forth between my personal & artist page, I make an Instagram story post, & I post it to Twitter (& now I guess Threads too). All of that amounts to the total time of an hour & a half to two-ish minimum. That’s a completely different story for travel blogs.

Travel blogs take me days. I honestly don’t know if I can calculate just how much time goes into them but I have written about this in the past as well. For a travel blog I first have to travel which, yes is fun, but the way I do it, to be able to share an experience that others will want to immolate, I do a lot of research first. I find restaurants, activities, cool locations & dives, & put together a loose itinerary for my trip, broken down (again, loosely) by day. There are certain elements that are higher priority than others on said itinerary that get shifted around as needed.

While on the trip I have to be sure I’m making content; taking videos, taking pictures, writing down where I went, what I ate, etc. I keep a running tab over my whole stay that I refer to throughout my time writing these once I’ve returned. If I’m diving I have to go through & edit the video I took, as well as take screen shots from said videos so that there’s underwater photo content to attach here. That’s usually a several hour endeavor. Then I have to repeat the above blog process all while linking the places mentioned within said blog. Then after the written portion is complete I go in with the photos, upload them, & position them so that they look all nice & pretty. Truly travel blogs take me daaaaaaays to do & that’s even after I split them up into two to three day parts.

Then there’s music. The average songwriting session lasts around three to four hours & often you don’t get to finish the song in its entirety. After that you have to go in & do rewrites for lyrics or melodies that don’t quite work. As far as production goes, there’s tens more hours thrown in. Tracking all takes place in real time but you need to do multiple takes & then also go in & edit said takes. Equalizing, adding effects, mixing, mastering, etc, etc, I would guesstimate that most songs have a minimum of twenty hours thrown into them even before you start promoting, doing photoshoots for promotional content, reaching out to different publications, playlists, etc.

Going back to what each of us were specifically talking about with content creation is video. The first conversation I had was with Leena Regan who put together little highlight videos from the writing camp that Songbird Society put together. Each thirty second video took her around five hours to complete. You have to go in, edit the clips, color correct the clips, pick a song to have them synced to, sync the cuts in the video to the beats of the song, write a personal, catchy caption, share it everywhere you can.

Kate Cosentino was talking about the same thing, about how exhausting it is to make content for scrollable sites like TikTok or Instagram that you pour hours into just to have it be seen by a handful of people. Throwing your efforts into the void, hoping to catch someone’s attention enough to engage with them, failing & having to do it all over again.

For my Tarpons video I had to find a karaoke track of Feed The Birds from Mary Poppins to sing over, rewrite the lyrics to be about tarpons, record & edit vocals, then sync my dive footage up to the beat changes of the song. Probably a good four to five hours of work & the video went nowhere.

All of this is not meant as a poor poor me type of thing. I write all of this to make you all aware, to show you what it looks like to be a modern artist trying to promote yourself in hopes that one day you’ll have a team behind you who pays someone else to put hours of their time into these posts instead of cutting into your already limited time. I also write all of this so that maybe you’ll be a little more loving to the content people put out, especially your friends! These videos that make you laugh or smile or cry take time & work. These songs that you put onto your shuffle & never listen to with intention again take time & love & effort & are snippets of people’s lives! These blogs, especially the travel ones, take a lot & we do it because it’s what we love, but when you’re constantly throwing yourself out there into the oblivion & finding yourself fallen short each time it gets incredibly disheartening. That’s what causes creators to stop, that’s what causes musicians & artists to sell their gear, causes creatives to get a desk job, because they have tested their metal against the void & the void has swallowed them up.

If you’re here, reading this blog I’m so grateful for you. If you listen to my music, share my posts, anything that supports me in even the tiniest bit as a creator & an artist, I thank you. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you. You never know how far a simple comment, a like, a repost, a whatever else that takes five seconds to do means to someone in our field. Please be appreciative of the content creators in your life, without them this life would be so damn boring.

Much love as always,

-C

Blog: Pre-Ji (A Pre-Fiji Blog)

For those of you that don’t follow me on my socials I for starters am not sure how you even made it here, but welcome! Give this a read & go follow me on things! Back to the thought at hand. For those of you that don’t follow me on my socials I am heading to Fiji today! In fact, at the point in which this blog is posted, I will be halfway to Fiji!

Why am I going to Fiji you ask? I’m going on a dive trip! So naturally you can also expect there to be travel blogs the next two weeks! The dive trip I’m going on is through the school that I did my course work for my initial certification through in Kansas, Midwest Aquatics. I’m unfamiliar with the vast majority of people going on the trip with the exception of Kathy, who did my classroom study & pool dives, & Darin, the owner of the dive shop. The trip is a week long & includes fifteen pre-planned dives along with any I want to add in along the way. Part of my diving will be receiving my deep water certification, my night & limited visibility certification & the total number of log dives to secure my rank as an advanced open water diver! In addition I’ll have at least two night dives & a shark dive with a fourteen foot tiger shark named Princess!

In addition to the dives we will also have cultural nights with local Fijians, several excursions to different sites around the islands, in addition to beach hangs & anything else we desire doing. As I sit on my friend Jenna’s couch writing this I am only five hours away from hoping aboard the roughly eleven hour flight.

Why is this the blog topic? Why was last week’s blog topic about why I love to dive so much? To put it plainly, I’m very excited!

Fiji has always been a bucket list destination for me. The culture, the beaches, the marine life, the cuisine, all of it has intrigued me since I was very young & it feels like I’m checking off a very large life goal box by going on this trip.

I’ve gotten the question from a few people who I mentioned the trip to regarding the fact that I am traveling “alone” but I honestly don’t mind it. I feel I’m fairly decent at being able to make friends anywhere I go & as an introvert time spent in solitude, even socially isolated. I am someone who spends a lot of time in my head & I find my time in contemplation very comforting. It allows me to narrow in on my own feelings & thoughts I dive deeper into my understanding of who I am as a person. Part of why I love diving too.

I think I’m going to keep today’s blog fairly brief. If you want to keep up with this adventure I’m embarking on please feel free to follow me on either TikTok or Instagram where I’ll be posting daily vlogs in addition to the travel blogs I’ll be writing here over the next few weeks! If you’re someone who has been missing Object Writing, don’t fear, those will return after I return to Nashville!

Much love to you all! Next time you’ll hear from me will be an ocean away!

-C

Blog: Finding Peace At The Bottom Of Ocean

I just landed in Burbank an hour or two ago & now sit basking in the mid-80s summer sun, typing out this blog on an iPad, a practice in patience compared to my normal full keyboard laptop. The reason that I am sans laptop is because I have done my best to pack minimal luggage even though a part of my voyage, the current leg, is meant to be for work. My minimalist packing approach this go round is because the second leg of my trip is taking me to Fiji on a scuba diving excursion.

While still fairly green to the leisurely sport of scuba, it has become an instant fascination of mine, & something I seem to have a knack for. I’ve been certified for just over a year & some change & have logged around ten total dive, this coming week I’ll be adding around fifteen more to that total!

So why the blog about Scuba diving? Well, aside from it being on my brain (I spent last night checking all of my gear & packing it meticulously before spending the morning lugging it around airports & North Hollywood), I often get the same set of questions when conversation shifts to diving. So I figured I’d dive, pun intended, into the topic on here!

I’ve always claimed a saltwater soul, I say if I spend too long away from an ocean I start to dry out & in a lot of ways that rings true. When I’m away from the ocean I feel my muscles slowly tense, my bones ache, & my skin yearns for sun. I find my peace below the surface, drifting in the currents.

I’ve swam almost the entirety of my life & I’m rather good at it! I would also definitely say that I’m built like a swimmer, triangular body & all. I, much like many millennials, had a fascination with the ocean & thought I’d grow up into a Marine Biologist some day. I even looked at going to school in San Diego, Hawaii, or Corpus Cristi to study Marine Biology & Veterinary Science. Essentially I wanted Adam Sandler’s job from the film 50 First Dates. Naturally my life took a different course, as here I sit creative writing preparing for writing sessions & such.

I don’t know why it took me so long to get dive certified, it was always something I found myself envious of anytime anyone I knew would talk about dives they’d done. My certification came as a gift actually, a suggestion from my parents as a birthday gift for my 28th year. I immediately took to it.

I got the course work & pool dives done at the same time as my father in Kansas before getting my open water certification in Maui. After that I added a few more dives in Maui as well as a few in Puerto Rico.

The most common question that I seem to get from non-divers is “aren’t you scared?” In short, no.

I do have to admit, my first non-shore dive, my first boat dive, I was nervous, even apprehensive about plunging ‘blindly’ into the ocean below. I knew that there would be a great distance between my entry & any obstacles such as reef or the bottom but it was the slight fear of being completely ‘exposed,’ of not having the beach as a safety line or a convenient escape back to land.

Once I was in the water, 40 feet down, & fluttering along that fear quickly dissipated. Now anytime I step into the depths unknown waiting below I feel nothing but excitement! Why? Because in diving I have gone past the previous limits I had in satiating my saltwater soul & have found a peace that seeps deep into my soul.

The cool thing about scuba, the obvious things aside, is that it allows you a state of neutral buoyancy. It allows you to float suspended in the water & grants you a state of true weightlessness. In addition to the beautiful, untapped surroundings, you now essentially get to experience the most basic feeling of aquatic life. Your plain of orientation is no longer limited to where your feet & gravity allow, you are free to truly navigate three dimensional space unrestrained.

The next great fear of folks seems to be that of the wildlife, mostly where sharks are concerned. There’s a term I’ve picked up on in my limited time diving that I hear circling around from time to time. Sea Puppies. That’s what some people who spend a lot of time diving or doing ocean related research have nicknamed sharks. You see you are more likely to die by being attacked by a cow or are more likely to be struck by lightning then you are to be bitten by a shark. Not killed, bitten.

Are sharks apex predators? Yes. Should they be respected as such? Absolutely. But just because you respect something doesn’t mean you need to fear it, just know the signs & be respectful of the animals & you’ll be more than fine!

The only fear that has crept into my mind where diving is concerned is that of the unknown. I have yet to do a dive where I cannot see the bottom, I have yet to do a dive at night & if I’m being honest, both of these scenarios frighten me, but much like my first step off the boat into deeper water, I know once I’ve checked the box it will no longer be a fear of mine.

This is something I’ve tried to adapt to my life of late. I’ve written on the topic a few times now but my friend Stephen Lovegrove always says “if it terrifies you, it’s probably the right step.” So take the step. Step off the boat into the open ocean, because often times unexplainable peace & serenity await you on the other side!

So something this week that scares you but that you know is the right step, I believe in you!

Let’s me know what that step ends up being for you & as always, much love to you all!

-C

Blog: A Little Belief Goes A Long Way

Howdy folks!

How’s your day been? I’m sorry I missed you all last week,I’ve been busy, busy, busy in the best possible way! I was wracking my brain a little bit this evening on what to blog about after having finished a day of blogging for someone else. Then I thought, well, there it is!

I recently started a new job outside music/songwriting/what have you. It’s freelance work writing, I’m turning a podcast centered around production into a blog. The job is whenever I have the free time to do so or whenever my boss needs a blog to post & pays a livable wage! Imagine that! And I can’t help but feel like I manifested it into my life.

For those of you who were unaware I had to leave my previous freelance job at the beginning of COVID & was thankfully on unemployment up until recently. Our lovely, terrible excuse for a Tennessee Governor, Bill Lee, put a moratorium on the extension for unemployment benefits that was put into effect by the federal government. The date of this expiration being July 4th. Happy Independence Day!… He put this moratorium in effect despite Tennessee having one of the highest unemployment rates in the country & the highest COVID infection rates. I knew I needed to find a job stat but there didn’t seem to be anything working in my favor. Was I applying for work? Yes, but I didn’t want something soul sucking & I wanted something that would pay me what I know I’m worth, what we’re all worth, which is something you can live off of.

So the weeks passed, every one getting closer & closer to the 4th of July but instead of being stressed about that fact I found myself in a state of unwavering peace. How? Well, I had this belief that something would come along, something that allowed me to set my own schedule, that paid well, that wouldn't leave me a husk of a human, that allowed me to be creative & express myself artistically. The weeks went by, spring turned to summer & summer faded into fall, not really, but still nothing. I still kept faith. I believed in it, I believed that the opportunity I had no idea was coming was actually coming my way.

Enter the week of the 4th. Still nothing. That is until a friend of mine reached out on that Wednesday & asked if I could send a sample of these very blogs that I’d been doing weekly for heaven knows how long now. I did & asked what it was for to which she explained that her boss, to which she works social media for, was looking for someone to convert their podcasts into a blog format. It was entirely freelance, allowed me to be creative, & it paid well. I immediately reached out to the host in question, simply introducing myself. We set a time, had a meeting, I sent over a sample of my work, & I was hired! I never once doubted the job was mine, not once. Never did it cross my mind that it could be given to someone else or that I wasn’t deserving of the position, I knew it was mine because, at the end of the day, it was!

Why can’t all things in life be like that? Why can’t I have that level of belief with everything in my life? Why can’t I believe opportunity will fall into my lap like it did just a few weeks ago, unwavering & confident? It definitely goes against our human conditioning to do so, there’s no doubt in that. Why must we as humans doubt everything we work towards or are worthy of?

A friend of mine, Amanda Francis, a self made millionaire, whom I mention often in this blog wrote a book called “Rich As F$ck” that all of you should read! In RAF she says that she believes money will come to her like she believes the cars on the highway won’t randomly sideswipe her. Laws of attraction & all that. You have to believe it like you believe water will come out the tap when you turn the faucet, that the sun will rise in the east & set in the west, that your plane won’t come randomly crashing to the ground for no reason. That’s not to say, give into delusions though.

You see attracting the things you want requires work. Another friend of mine, Stephen Lovegrove, likes to give his clients that he coaches the analogy of the cheesecake. It is as follows: Say you’re craving cheesecake, have to have it, no if &’s or buts about it. There are several ways you can get the cheesecake. You can go out & buy a slice or a whole cheesecake from the cheesecake factory or another restaurant, you can go to the store & buy a cheesecake, you can get the ingredients at the store & make your own, you can have the ingredients at home & make one that way, &/or you can order UberEats & have a slice of cheesecake delivered. You know what you can’t do? Wish it into existence. You have to put in some for of effort & follow it with the belief that the cheesecake is yours, that one way or another you’re getting that cheesecake come hell or high water.

I think this job opportunity was a test for me, it was affirmation of what faith & belief can achieve, it was proof that we all attract the things we believe to be true, whether that good things or bad things. So why stop here? Why stop at my freelance job?

My advice to you in this practice is to start small, be it monetary, opportunistic, or what have you. As I mentioned several times in my Maui blogs, I have super power that allows me to get a reservation at any restaurant or find a parking spot anywhere. How? Because I believe there’s no alternative option. There is no reality that exists for me in which I have to hunt for parking or miss a restaurant I want to try because they’re booked up or in this case, have the job I want. So give it a shot, start with parking spaces or restaurants & see how it works for you. You have to believe it though which does require a good deal of faith to pull off, but once you tap into that the options are limitless!

So give it a shot!

What’s the worst that could happen?

Blog: The Rolodex of Resentment

I had this week’s blog idea come to me in a dream, no literally it came to me in a dream & much like the owner of the music industry herself, Ms. Taylor Swift, I wrote it down for all of you to read today! Congrats! In said dream I was presented with a rolodex style presentation of a lot of my memories since I had moved to Nashville except for they all had one thing in common; they were all memories that I had come to resent for one reason or another. All of these resurgences were very vivid & I got to witness each of them one by one, over & over again until I understood the message I was being given at which point I awoke.

In the still early light of the then 5 AM morning I was overcome with a great sadness. It wasn’t a “poor, poor me” type of sadness but more of a sadness from the realization that I’d been carrying all of these memories around aimlessly for the last ten years I’ve worked in this industry. I had held on to so much resentment for so many different people because I felt lied to by them, cheated by them, forgotten by them & it had grown to the point where it was beginning to affect my self esteem & creativity.

The music industry is a hard business, it truly is. It’s all about who you know & who knows you; it is truly a business built on relationships. That’s why I think a lot of these memories had dug their claws so deeply into my psyche & had such an influence on me over the years. I’d had people of influence promise to pass along projects or give things a listen just to be left in the dark. I’ve had friends go on to great success that then turn “too good for you” & leave you in the tracks before getting on a stage or getting a write up in a magazine all about how we have to “help the next person in line.” I’ve had people I looked up to, who I saw as mentors disappear out of the blue, or friends in industry positions more willing to help others than those they call their close friends & I’m certain I’ve done this unintentionally to people as well.

What’s my point in all of this? Why dedicate a whole blog to a dream & a realization? Because resentment & the emotions associated with it are heavy. Jealousy & envy are heavy, bitterness is heavy, grudges & ill will are heavy & I struggle with them. I struggle with leaving behind the weight of envy in the face of other people’s success, especially those I’m close to & if I’m being honest, I hate that. I want to be so openly & honestly proud of my friends, because they work so damn hard & are so talented & worthy of accolades & success in their own right but I always have the shadow of “why not me” lurking.

I’m trying to get over these things, I really am. I’m trying to let the past go. I’m trying to meet the success of my friends with genuine, unbothered happiness for them because they deserve that. I think this dream was alluding to all the work I thought I’d done & telling me “oh, no, no, you still have so far to go!”

I hadn’t realized I was carrying around all of this unpacked baggage, that I was letting the past or the perceived views of others no longer directly in my life have such an influence on my life, but it had. I’d gotten to the point where I started to believe crazy things about myself. I started to believe that I must not be a good artist if not even my friends are willing to help me, I began to believe that I was a bad songwriter or a bad singer & you know what, those things manifested themselves physically. I developed vocal chord dysfunction, I completely forgot how to write songs because I put way too much pressure on each thing I wrote being a masterpiece & I began to fall into the cracks of the music industry after I’d worked so hard & for so long to hoist myself up.

I know now these are lies that I told myself over the years. I am worthy of success, I am worthy of a thriving career in this business. I am talented both as a performer & as a writer. I am marketable as a brand, I am desirable as an artist. Dark, low vibration emotions & parasites do wonders on the body & mind, terrible wonders, but impressive none the less & I’m done letting them have an influence on me.

I want to leave this one final line for any friends of mine that may happen to read this. I am so, so incredibly proud of each of you & all of the things you’ve accomplished in your lives. I am overjoyed to see you soar & hope you know I will always be there to support you. If I have ever done any of the above listed things to you, please reach out to me & let me know.

Much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Resuming The Game

I, much like many of us were, was pretty heavily quarantined for the majority of COVID. I didn’t leave my house unless it was necessary & when I did I wore a mask everywhere I went, into every place I went, & did my best to maintain social distance along the way. Responsible, or at least what I tried to be. However, recently, we as a society, in the US especially, have started reopening our doors, doing things again, having events again, I know for some of you that never stopped (eye roll at that) but for those of us who were good, considerate humans, the transition has been jarring to say the least.

I went to three separate events over the last week of my life, all of them were music biz, network-y things that I had to be a person at. I had to put on “real” clothes, show up, & act like I belonged there, & not just sit on my couch in PJs. And you know what, it was hard. Truly.

I’m an introvert at heart, I love my people but there comes a point where I desperately need to be alone so that I can recharge my social battery. So after almost a year without use you’d think my social battery would be primed & ready to go, yeah? *Cue Buzzer. WRONG! NO, I wasn’t at all & I’m finding myself drained before I even walk in the door, not a good thing. On top of that, I’ve forgotten several huge aspects of networking in the music industry; how to dress fashionably, how to behave like an artist, & how the hell to talk to people.

I was never the most converse person, but I at the very least could do my best to turn on my Aries charm on & hold conversation with someone. No dice. I feel like I’ve completely forgot how conversations work, I feel like I’m talking like a middle schooler talking to their crush in the halls between third & fourth period. I’m tripping all over myself, failing to remember words, completely talking the conversation into a dead end or being unable to engage all together. It’s sooooooo fun.

On top of all of that I came home every night I went out over the last week completely & utterly drained. I was exhausted. I’m not sure if it was physical/mental or anything of that variety but it was definitely social. Normally I can bounce back pretty easily, spend the rest of my evening collecting my thoughts & do it all again the next day, but this time the next day I felt worse. Sapped. Devoid of any social energy what. so. ever.

So what’s my point? Why devote a whole blog to this? Is it just so I can get on here & bitch about being on the “other side” of COVID or having a social life? No. My point in all of this is that I know a lot of you are feeling the same exact way. A lot of you are finding yourself unable to be social for long periods of time because, let’s face it, a lot of us haven’t had to be for the last year. I was discussing this with a friend last night & he compared it to being in the middle of a game & having it paused just for the game to resume without any warning while you’re sitting on the bench. You have to gather as much as you can as quickly as you can & hope you’re still warmed up enough to perform the same way you were when the game was stopped initially. Or at least that’s what it feels like the expectation is.

I know a lot of us were ready for that, ready to hit the ground running & get back into life, believe me, I was too, but I’m not anywhere near warmed up. There was no transition back into the game, no stretching, no drills, no returning to where the game left off before the madness resumed. So it’s no wonder you feel you’re struggling to catch your footing. The game has resumed while you were hydrating on the bench.

Please have patience with yourself. If we’re friends, acquaintances, whatever, have patience with me. Socializing wears me and so many other introverts down, we weren’t ready to get right back in coach. The ease into it that a lot of us needed has been completely overshadowed & we’re already burning out. Remind yourself that it’s okay to say no to events, to say no to your friends & family because you matter too & your mental health, energetic health, etc. matters too.

I hope you all have a safe Fourth of July weekend! And I’ll see you all back here next week!

-C