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why songbird- a drabble (and an explanation) by avsongbird- read audiobook style on my youtube channel

I got into a lengthy discussion with one of my readers today- free write read audiobook style by avsongbird

I got into a lengthy discussion with one of my readers today.

               I got into a lengthy discussion with one of my readers today.

               He asked me how it felt to document my life's details, to share not just my work, but details of my life and of my past with people I've never even met. He said that some of the finer details of my life made him feel uncomfortable, and I get that. Some of the things that happened in my past are touchy topics with some people.

               Living through them gave me a better understanding of others who've gone through the same thing.

               I gave it a fair amount of thought before I answered him, wanting to be as honest as I could be, and I told him it's hard, sharing yourself with others like that, opening yourself to others like that.

               But at the same time, it's therapeutic, sort of getting everything out there in the open like that, it's healthy. Certainly healthier than burying it all deep inside and letting it fester, letting it make you angry and bitter and making you feel guilty.

               Doing things like that allows things like that to own you-- and that path is certainly not a healthy one to travel down. It will leave you angry, bitter, self-destructive (and possibly even destructive), and it will isolate you.

               And it's a far better frame of mind to be in when you own your past, than when you allow your past to own you.

               At the end of the day, it's important to remember that everything that happened to you, everything you've been through, made you who you are now. That you wouldn't be who you are without every decision-- good and bad.

               Without every memory-- good and bad.

               Without every regret that haunts you.

               If you went back in time and changed any of it-- any decision you made, any action you took, any regret that you had-- then came back to the present, you wouldn't be you anymore. So everything I've been through, everything that's happened to me, everything I've ever done in my life-- I am who I am because of it-- all of it.

              It's a comforting thought, to see how far you've come in your life, and to recognize that fact.

               My blog is where I post my thoughts, my poetry, my stories. It is an extension of who I am. And I know not everyone blogs the way I do. How boring would it be if everyone blogged the same? There's no wrong way to blog. Blog what you want-- write to inspire, to get opinions, to begin discussions.

               If it's judgment you're worried about-- mockery, ridicule-- and what people think, don't. You can't let that thought stop you from doing what you want to do with your life.

               People will always judge you-- by who you are, by what you do, by what you look like and how much money you do or don't have.

               People are going to judge you. And some of them will be assholes. That's just something you're going to have to face. Because not everyone you meet will be an asshole. And if you don't risk the assholes, at the end of the day you'll be left wondering if you didn't just miss out on the chance of crossing paths with someone who could just change your life-- someone who would invigorate you, change your mind, make you see the world in a way you hadn't before.

               I've always been a firm believer in the life-changers-- the walking muses. I've met more than a few people in my lifetime who've inspired different works in me for various reasons. And they shall remain nameless, with my gratitude towards them just for existing-- for being who they are, and for inspiring such thoughts in me-- for sparking my creativity, and my imagination. I love them for opening my eyes, for changing my mind.

               I've met some interesting people since I started my blog-- writers, readers, people from all over the world. I've taken criticisms and compliments, been told how they loved or hated my work. I've read the work of others who'd read mine and chose to share theirs with me. And I was flattered at the thought that they wanted to know what I thought. I've had people asking me about what side projects I've got going, stories I've already posted, and what I plan to post down the line.  

               Do I regret sharing so much of myself? So many details, even the ugly ones? No. Because I'm just starting to branch out and to have people reach out to me, to contact me, and I'm coming across incredible people I might never have met if I hadn't taken the leap into online sharing. People who've told me "Oh my God that's how I feel" or "I went through the same thing". I couldn't have had that if I hadn't been so open about my past, and my experiences.

               Do I regret it? Not even close. If it makes you uncomfortable, if it bothers you that I write the way I do, that I talk about the things I talk about, then I'm sorry, and I hope you don't let your experience here make you shy away from reading the other works of the other writers on this site or others. Some of the best writing I've read over the course of the last few years has been by people who've been bloggers-- some of them fanfiction writers (before you judge, seriously, check them out). Some of them are incredible writers, people who fall in love with stories and shows and characters the way I fall in love with stories and characters. People who want to share their love of the stories and characters with others in turn.

               I get that. As a writer, as a reader, as a lover of books and comics and movies and all things creative and imaginative, I get it. After all, what good is fantasy, imagination, movies, books, stories, if you're not emotionally invested on some level? How boring to sit back and read something or watch something and afterwards "Yup that was something" and just go about your life completely unchanged by it?

               Do I regret? No, not even for a second.

Why songbird?

               My husband asked me about my blogger name the other day.

               Why, he asked. Why songbird? He said people will think I'm a musician of some kind.

               Music has always been a big part of my life.

               When I was growing up, every morning when I'd wake up, I would find my mom had already been up for hours, and the radio would already be on.

               And it would stay on all day long.

               Big band, jazz, swing, blues, oldies, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s-- she listened to pretty much everything.

               My dad had so many records I couldn't count them all. Some of it my mom liked, some she didn't.

               Suffice it to say, I had a lot of music constantly moving through my head back then.

               I was an impressionable, curious little sponge with a pulse. And my mom was always singing under her breath with the radio-- Jim Croce, Tom T. Hall, Gordon Lightfoot (God I love his voice). Singing came as natural as breathing then. Out of everything it could've been-- my induction into the wide world of music-- it was "you are my sunshine" that ended up being the first thing I sang, and of course others naturally followed.

               Nerd that I am, growing up with two brothers-- one younger, one older-- I'm pretty sure there's a copy of a home movie out there somewhere with little impressionable sponge-like me doing the typical little-kid "look at me" stomp dance, singing the Thundercats theme song at the top of my lungs.

               Yeah, you heard me. And I knew every word by heart.

               The older I got, the more I started branching out and getting into music on my own. Of course, growing up with the music I did, I still find myself coming back to it, listening to the songs I grew up with the same way I still like to go back to old movies and old books I read when I was younger, to remember what I was going through when I first read it, and to feel what I felt back then, when I first picked them up.

               I love anything with a good rhythm, anything with a good beat you can dance to. My mom and I used to dance in the aisles in stores, and when people laughed or shook their heads, we'd just laugh and shrug them off.

               Who am I kidding? I went to visit her up north a few years back, and when one of "our songs" came on the radio, we danced like we did all those years ago. Take that, Big Lots.

               I dance in my car. Sometimes I sing backup, and funnily enough? Now that they're getting older and discovering music, my stepsons join in. It's great.

               When I was in elementary school, my class took a field trip to see some random symphony play, and I remember that being the first time I ever actually saw people play on real instruments in person.

               I decided sometime after that, that I wanted to learn how to play piano. But not wanting to bug my parents with the idea of lessons, I signed up for choir in school, figuring it would be a good way to learn how to read music.

               From that first year, I was hooked on it. I learned how to read music, how to recognize the rhythm and how to feel it more definitively. And I loved it.

               And when my parents bought me a keyboard, I labeled my keys with masking tape and a sharpie, and I taught myself a few simple songs. Nothing incredible, but enough to make me smile. Every now and again, I still find myself going back to those songs. A few years ago, I taught our youngest how to play a couple. Now he's talking about wanting to play piano, though his love is the drums.

               It might've kind of been my fault, or his dad's. My husband was a drummer in high school, in band. He still has an old snare in the garage, but he swears he's "moved past it" and that he "Doesn't miss it."

               And yet, last October, when we were at Six Flags Fright Fest, watching the live band, I could see his foot tapping to the rhythm, the way his eyes were glued to the drummer, and to the drums themselves.

               As a writer I've always found inspiration everywhere, and music was always one of my constants.

               To this day, I'll come across random songs and find myself running for a notebook, driven by the picture or the story or the scene the music put into my head.

               I've been known to listen to the same song on repeat over and over ad nauseum (On my headphones to protect my family's sanity), just to keep the idea fresh in my mind.

               Why songbird, he asked me. I was in seventh grade when I first took the name, the first email address I ever had, and my mom still gets a kick out of the fact that I came home from school telling her about the "cool new band Fleetwood Mac", at which point she proceeded to cross to the record cabinet and pull out all her old Fleetwood Mac records and lay them out on the kitchen table.

               In my defense, I thought their music kicked ass, and looking over her records, I realized I'd heard them all a hundred times before, if not more. But with all the music and all the albums and all the bands I'd grown up listening to, I couldn't remember all the names of each and every one of them.

               Growing up with a name like Jennifer, knowing as many of them as I did growing up, I remember 7th grade being the first time I had a name that was just mine, something that was just mine, the way my writing always has been.

               So when I sat down this month to start my blog, to try and get my writing out there and to give it an honest shot, and I found myself trying to figure out what name I'd use, it seemed only fitting to use songbird. Why not? I'm still the same curious, impressionable and open-minded sponge, a little older now, but still here. I still love music now as I always have. My collection is still just as eclectic, and just as rhythm and inspiration driven.

               I don't follow any specific bands, necessarily, but I do tend to revisit specific ones from time to time. At the end of the day, I go where the inspiration is, same as I always have.

               Why songbird, he asked me. I had to smile at the question.

               "Because it's who I am," I told him.