trtlz: exposed. sort of.

With the exception of my fascinating tweets, one of the most difficult things for me to do is share my thoughts and how I feel about stuff. I have been a huge music fan all my life and shout out to my mom who I dragged to shows my whole childhood. I mean, she even took me to hardcore and punk shows haha. I've always had this passion, especially for like underground/local bands.

There were 2 bands that I became good friends with and every time I came across money, I would buy their cds, stickers, pins, or shirts and literally give them away to people to help promote them haha. So I'm not exaggerating when I say this was my life.

As I got older, I sort of lost myself for a bit, and while I've always loved music, that part of me sadly kind of fizzled out for a while. It was recently reignited and a big influence has been the brainwormradio podcast (check that out if you haven't).

It's one thing to love and support music, but I felt like I wanted to do something else with it. So, that's how this started. I tweeted kind of jokingly (I did not expect anyone to care) if it would be weird if I just started writing music reviews and to my surprise, I wasn't completely ignored. So I got a little hyped after that and well, I took my shot.

Then after like 3 reviews, my anxiety decided to join in on the fun and I wanted to quit. It hit me that I have no idea what I'm doing and I was freaking out that everyone I wrote about would hate it and hate me for writing something of such bad quality about their music. So I quit. I tweeted that I quit, and like the 5 people who are always super supportive were like no way. I got some amazing advice, particularly from one person who's opinion means the world to me, which was that if I love doing it, I should stick with it and just be consistent and do it for me and not worry about who likes it.

So after a few days of getting myself together again, I got back into it. I had another friend who is an amazing writer and has a great blog, really encourage me about my writing and even suggested I write this.

When I started again, I received way more support than I ever thought I would. (Barely anyone knows about this, so even like 1 person is a huge deal for me.) Some people actually seemed to appreciate what I wrote and that was like jaw-dropping to me.

And then when I wanted to start adding interviews, which is something I have always dreamed to be able to do, but never had an actual reason to before (haha, what was I going to say, hey I'm a fan, can we interview just for the fun of it?). This really freaked me out because I thought everybody I asked would immediately say no because it's not like many people read this. Why would they waste their time? So I thought about a few I would want to interview and then I had to narrow it down to who I would ask to be my first interview.

I wanted to throw up when I asked, I was so nervous. Not gonna lie, I downloaded a magic 8 ball app and the app kept telling me basically asking for the interview would be a bad idea. And I got really mad and deleted it haha. But I really wanted this. So I did it anyway. And I was confused when the answer was yes.

But then, my anxiety showed up again and I realized now I actually have to speak with someone. Which was weird, because we have talked before about their music, but now that it was an interview, I completely forgot how to be a normal human. It got a bit awkward (to me) and I wanted to ask to cancel the whole thing, but they were super nice and made it so much easier for me than I was making it. (If you ever see this for some reason, thanks for that, by the way!) Then it was a nightmare getting myself to put the interview out, because I thought nobody would read it and I just wasted someone's time. But I finally did.

My friend on twitter liked and retweeted it and I instantly loved her for that haha. I was like ok, at least one person acknowledged it's existence. Then a few more came. And now today, the day I'm writing this, I got a message from that artist's label that they loved my interview. What?! One of my favorite drummers told me I was awesome today. A friend who quickly became like a little brother told me I am the homie. Another friend told me I would have fans one day haha. And then an artist who's music I really like and have been following for maybe like 2 months, just followed me today. Which seems lame to say cause it's just a Twitter follow haha, but when it comes from someone who's music you really love and respect, those little follows make your heart so full.

To be honest, I still have no clue what I am doing and EVERY SINGLE TIME I drop a review or blog post, it terrifies me and I go through this whole debate with myself. But like I said, even having one person acknowledge this is crazy to me. But even if nobody does, I do love writing about music and it gives me a great excuse to listen and find tons more. So, I think this is officially a little thing. For now at least.

Thank you for the support, even if just a little bit! Sorry this is so long.