It was junior year of high school. I was in my first band, Oak Run, playing guitar terribly and thankfully not singing. We had just recorded six songs on a beat-up recording machine where we all had to huddle around the tiny microphone to record. The first song I ever wrote, “The End,” was recorded on this tape. I still remember the riff that started the song. It was a cheap ripoff of “Little Things” by Bush. I even think the chords in the chorus were the same four chords just in a different order!

So as the story goes, we made one copy of the original cassette. I got the copy. Sure enough, I had a big crush on a girl at school and I lent her my "demo" thinking she'd then fall head over heels for me. A few days passed and I still hadn’t heard anything back from her. I was devastated. Was it really that bad? But then I realized that I needed to get that cassette back - my bandmate, Chris, had the original, but cassettes can break or melt or who knows what. So I walked up to this girl with my tail between my legs, “Umm, I’m guessing the demo didn’t exactly gel with you, but is there any way I can get the tape back?” She looked disgusted. “Actually, I don’t even know where that tape is, sorry.” Walks away. She was not sorry.

Cut scene to Chris’ house. “So, dude, I got some bad news,” I said. He scrunches his eyebrows and grimaces for the inevitable bad news. “Don’t tell me,” he says right before I confess, “I lost the tape. I gave it to this girl. She...did not like it, and it's gone. I’m guessing she threw it out of a speeding car on 95.” He stared at me for a while shaking his head. Then he started laughing. “The EXACT same thing happened to me,” he said astonishingly, “except my girl said she thought it was derivative and my voice was, in her words, ‘lacking conviction.’ I’m depressed, of course I’m lacking conviction!”

This was really the first foray for either of us into making something original. Our band was a collective unit writing original songs (remember: the chords were in a different order!) that we were proud of. And we got rejected, our souls deflating on the barren pavement. Honestly though, it only helped my resolve to keep writing and creating no matter what people thought.

Creating anything - poems, pictures, melodies, shirts, shoes, paintings, and so on - invigorates the soul and keeps the right side of our brains processing. I’ve been playing guitar for many years now. I wrote an album a couple years ago while I was living in Florida. I learned the drums, bought a keyboard, wrote some lyrics, and sang. It was rubbish, but it was an experience I’ll never forget.

I’ve also consistently written poetry since I was in high school. Writing helps me deal with the problems and issues and doubts that I have in life as well as putting myself into the mindset of others and writing from their perspective. It’s cathartic, and I hope that at some point people can submit their smallest or biggest creative outlet, and we can share in its beauty together.

I plan to post some original stuff I write. There will be poems. Maybe a song. But whatever it may be, it’s a piece of me to share and hopefully entice you to go out there and create - in any aspect. Be yourself and be open with the world.