As I read on the SF Girl by Bay blog the other day (do you follow her blog?  you should.  she is amazing.), it seems that with social media we tend to put out this super shiny and polished version of ourselves, giving the impression that everything is always sunshine and lollipops.  Unless something has gone horribly wrong, we don’t often see posts when people are feeling lonely or left out or sad.  And it’s easy to forget that just out of the perfect square of all of those happy Instagrams is where the tough stuff hangs out.

Not only did her post make me breathe a sigh of relief that even a blogger I really admire feels this way, I started to reevaluate the way that I take in all of the posts I see every day.  I re-read my First Rate Version of Myself post and realized that comparing myself to the successes of others was not only silly, but it was happening without opening my eyes the whole picture.  My friends with great jobs and big houses and new babies were having their own hard times, too.

We all have our own stories.  Our own versions of ups and downs.

Following through with my upswing of positivity, I thought it would be nice to show you guys a little bit of my hard work on the way back to music.  I am working on learning all of my songs on guitar so I can go out and perform them at open mics all on my own.  And I’m not a great (or even good) guitarist, but these songs are from my heart and from my soul.

So here’s a little bit of the behind the scenes, un-edited me.  I screw up a few times.  I struggle to find the chords a few times.  But I’m doing what I love to do and I hope it shows.

xoxo