My Guilty Pleasures...

Movie: Transformers (the new one). I know this move lacks in quality story line and well-developed characters, but I can’t help but love when the transformers battle each other!

Music: Anything and everything that was being played on popular radio stations in the 90's. This can be anything from the really quality well-written stuff, to the ridiculously cheesy fluff stuff.

Food: Pizza and Taco Bell. I could never say no to either of these.

Habits: I put pajama pants on the second I get home. I write down everything I need to remember to do or even say to someone on sticky notes, so yes, there are a lot of sticky notes around. I have every episode of Friends pretty much memorized. I am addicted to chapstick.

I spent my childhood on a farm. Not the kind of farm where we used it as a business for income, just the kind where we got to use all the things we grew ourselves (the best kind). There were two different farms in my childhood, but the main one was a 10-acre piece of land that was a glorious place for a kid to be. It was complete with a big pond, a tree house, a make-shift full-size basketball court on the third story of our barn, and two rope swings. There were cows, chickens, a horse, a vegetable and fruit garden, and apple tree, a grape vine, and an herb garden. We also had a hot tub, but it was broken, so it became more of a frog hotel. At night I would fall asleep to the sound of frogs croaking out on the pond and crickets chirping in the fields. In the summer I always found some time to take a blanket and my radio out into one of the fields and sit under a tree and draw sketches. My bedroom was on the second floor of the house and there was a huge lilac bush right outside one of my windows that smelled so incredible in the summer. Lilacs are my favorite smell to this day. Sometimes I would sit out on the roof outside that window so I could really smell the lilacs.

I find it interesting that I now live in the biggest metropolitan area of my state. And while I know that Portland, Oregon is considered a small city in comparison to the rest of the country, for me it’s a big difference from when I was a kid. But, I love it. I love that I can get to any event that’s going on in a matter of minutes and that there’s always something I can go do. I live on the very edge of the Portland border in one of the cities that surrounds it, so it’s not like I live downtown or anything, but I think that’s even better. I can live my day-to-day life without the hectic style that is downtown, but I can go there any time I like. There are a lot of people from my farm days that think that the city is big and scary and that the people are unpleasant, but I have fallen in love with Portland and its people. I feel like everyone can be themselves here and still fit in no matter what that looks like.

Music….

When you became a 5th grader at my elementary school you had to choose whether to be in choir or in band. Probably 80% of the kids chose band, and I really wanted to choose band too, but my best friend talked me into joining choir with her instead. From that point on I was involved in choir every year I was in school and even through college. I was never a big talent when it came to solos, but just singing to support those who were great singing talents was always really fun for me. I loved jazz choir the most, and my involvement in it led me to fall in love with the complexities of the jazz genre.

My mom played piano and we had one at home, so I took a few piano lessons when I was in middle school, but after that I pretty much only played the stuff my mom had at the house. I tried to start up guitar in college and even bought my own guitar, but that never really caught on for me aside from learning ‘Blackbird’ by The Beatles.

I started playing with Holding Out after Scott was interested in adding a female back-up singer to the group. I didn’t want to perform with the band unless I was also playing an instrument so I bought a set of congas. I really enjoyed playing the congas, but we soon realized that it didn’t fit to have them in every song. So, I took about a month of lessons from my former high school jazz choir teacher to learn how to follow chord sheets on the piano. From that point on I played piano in the band unless it was a low-key coffeehouse gig and then I would play congas instead. In January 2006, the band’s drummer decided to leave the group to pursue other dreams and aspirations. I had always wanted to learn drums because I felt like I had a somewhat natural ear for rhythm, but I figured that someone who looks like me wouldn’t be accepted as a drummer. After a year of the band rotating out different friends we had that could play drums, I decided to get over myself and start taking drum lessons, which I began in January 2007. I started picking it up pretty quickly and loved every minute of it. I officially became Holding Out’s drummer ten months later in November 2007, and while there was and is still A LOT for me to learn on the drums, it was great fun right from the start and continues to be every day.

I hope that I can encourage other people to know that it’s never too late to start pursuing a dream and that you should never let anything hold you back from it. Even if it doesn’t turn out the way you wanted it to, at least you’ll never have to wonder what could have been.