Writing in Cursive & Playing the Guitar
Seventeen year old Josie
Lately I’ve been writing again. Not the typing-too-slow-for-my-brain or looking-at-old-photos-to-prompt-a-story, but free-form-without-thinking-twice-cutting-loose-breaking-it-down-on-the-dance-floor-like-nobody-is-watching-(reading) writing. In cursive. Do schools still teach cursive or has it been replaced with acronyms and creative ways to think in tweets? Do I want to know the answer? Probably not.
On my drive to Iowa, I bought a leather-bound journal and now carry it with me everywhere. I have been Dear Journaling all over this town. I cannot concretely remember the last time I wrote until my right hand ached, which admittedly, doesn’t take that long anymore.
I’ve told my diary stories I wouldn’t tell anyone (yea right y’all, I’m going to scream it from the roof tops. You know me). Like how I picked up the guitar for the first time in fifteen years and still feel deep-seated regret over sabotaging my audition that one time such a long time ago.
Self-sabotage is real. You’re looking at a recovering self-sabotagist right here. Of all the opportunities I drank away, slept (with whom where or what) away, or pretended not to care about away, that one rests at the top three. I didn’t know it then but the too-cool-to-care-if-you-do-a-good-or-a-poor-job doesn’t make you look cool. You look like an ass, because the truth is most people don’t care - especially at a Miley Cyrus audition with twenty other auditioning guitar players. Nobody gives a shit. Unless that person is you.
I wish that 22-year-old version of me wasn’t so afraid because she would have enjoyed so much more from life. I wish she would have run on stage and hugged the other players and strummed out of tune and jumped in the air to a song she didn’t know. Like she CARED ABOUT IT. Not like she was afraid of it.
I know that in the coming years of my life I’ll learn a lot, lose a lot, feel a lot. I hope I don’t ever stop caring a lot. And should I ever get on that stage with a guitar in my hand again, I hope to have the courage to be terrible – loudly and proudly.
To see more photos of my time in Iowa - click here!