I've been journaling for years. Yes, I'm that dorky person. If you know me, that's not a big shock. But not in the typical way; it's always been poetry. It's always been lyrics. I remember writing what I thought was my first "song" when I was eight years-old. I remember hiding it in my closet in my diary because I used the word "love" and I knew my brothers would make fun of me if they found it. It's also a big part of why I haven't been blogging as much lately. When I have some sort of inspiration it's always in song; it hasn't just been to vent in prose form. I'm always hearing a rhythm.
For some reason tonight I decided to grab one of my notebooks from about seven years ago. It's insane to see the difference in my writing. To see the growth of poetry into lyrics. To see the kind of stuff i'm coming up with compared to back then. I've progressed a lot. I'm writing in more verse, chorus, bridge form. Pretty much everything I've been writing for the past three years has been to a song I hear in my head or at least a rhythm.
Back then I only wrote about things in my life. For the past few years I've been able to grow and write from other people's stories and other perspectives. I can hear something from a conversation and think, "man that'd make a great line." I think i'm going to use the old poetry and revamp them into songs. I can't even imagine what my 16 year old self wrote; I'm looking forward to taking a huge trip back on memory lane.
It's an amazing thing looking back on these writings. Reading about the things that were so important at the time, that have been lost to time. The moments that I was able to keep that otherwise would have been forgotten. And dammit they're going to make damn good country songs.
I've grown up so much in the past few years. Not just in age, but just in who I've become. That might seem like a dumb statement, but I'm definitely not the person I was at twenty-one. I'm still not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but hopefully it's made me into a better songwriter. I kinda skipped the whole being a typical college student thing and the going out to bars thing; sometimes I need to be reminded that those aren't the memories I want to make, at least too often. I remember when I was a teenager my mother would tell me when I'd be upset over something that, "years from now, this won't matter to you and you won't even remember that it happened."
I might have my notebooks to remind me, but I guess she's right. Sadly though, I think we forget the good things too—like slow dancing when there's no music playing. We take things for granted and we focus on the shit of the moment we're in. We lose ourselves in moments that just don't matter in the grand scheme of things. We forget the things that drive us and sometimes we lose ourselves on this path called life.
I'm keeping my eyes wide open. I want to soak in all the moments in my life and write some amazing stuff. I figure if you have to have moments that break you emotionally or build you up to where you think you can take the moon out of orbit, there needs to be something memorable and productive that comes of it.
