Cultures, Creativity, and Connection: My Year of Artful Adventures
At the start of 2024, I left the United States knowing I wanted to follow my art wherever it would take me. I wanted to pick up new skills I could never get being locked into one particular area of the map. I wanted to visit new communities and cultures and gain new understandings about how the world works and my place in it.
The journey began in the Philippines. From the Philippine Islands, I spent time in Thailand, Cambodia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Turkey, and even Bulgaria! Multiples cities inside of these countries have given me contrasting experiences within any one of these given regions and I am certainly extremely lucky I’ve been able to take on this heralding and made it this far.
This journey I chose to undertake with key ideas in mind from various mentors who work in multiple spaces each with their own expertise, models, and ways of operating in the world. Now, as a 100% disabled veteran, despite having mental illness, I have been able to move forward on this journey, meeting new people, trying out new things on stage, and creating many works of musical art I can honestly say I am proud of. With the year coming to a close, as I continue these 31 days of Christmas, I just want to say that I am utterly and truly grateful for every part every person has played on this journey during this year.
The choices I’ve made whether that was to stay together, part ways, make amends, let things go, and so on have all been entirely dependent on what I felt I needed for the continuation of this journey to maintain itself without losing sight of this goal of what it means to Follow Your Art, wherever your art wants to take you.
This does not mean I have blindly chosen how to move forward but it is to say that I started this journey with a very limited view of the world and a very limited understanding of how to travel in that world. I stepped into the unknown and then I stepped into the unknown again. And then I stepped into the unknown again. And again. Each time with a little more information about how to do this thing I have been setting out to do than the time before.
I am extremely lucky and extremely grateful not only to the people but to the higher entities I have called on to keep me safe and keep me moving forward. With that in mind, this journey is not … I repeat, NOT … over. It does not stop here. This is just another starting point and crossing the halfway move of my 31 songs in 31 days right before 2025 begins, I just want to say thank you for being here. Believe it or not, there has been a difference made in my life, big and small. And I am nothing if not grateful.
Stay watchful. Stay vigilant. Life happens now.
