Bitter sweet?

So I set out to start a blog different from others..but it had NO clear focus and really sort of fell flat as I began my internship. I love writing and want to continue blogging but with a clear focus on me pursuing health. I will still be working on music but that's going to be a work in progress for a while. I have been so inspired to live a healthier life by reading blogs (notice a lot of the "blogs I read" section are health blogs!) about living healthier, eating healthier and just feeling better. I have been eating and taking care of myself more in the last couple months then I have before and I am still not where I want to be but I am enjoying it so much and find myself wanting to write about it. I am sad that this blog didn't live for very long but I won't let failure stop me. I realize my mistakes and I am excited to start with a clear, new focus on something I try to achieve daily..health! So I am going to start a food blog! :) I am going to be smarter about it, and work on it for a while before debuting. So look out for an announcement in a couple of months. I am hoping for a December 1st debut. :) Can't wait. Hope you will join me in the journey. Now I must get back to my green tea! :)

Run Forest, Run!

So I wanted to write daily..but of course as I try and begin that my computer decides that the RAM it has in it already is just not good enough and kills it. Yes, the RAM died.. not an actual ram..but you get the point. So they took out the bad one and left the other one in there and it works? Until I buy some new RAM..but the good news is that it will be cheap and my computer will live to see the day. Woop!

I have been going to orientations this week for my internship and officially found out that I will be student teaching a first grade class! YAY! I love the little ones. I will not name the school just to be safe but I am really excited. The teacher seems wonderful and I know it will be exhausting but I am excited to complete my degree. To be honest I am SUPER overwhelmed, but I know God will get me through it!

In other news I have been working out everyday this week and I realize not killing myself in cardio everyday helps me to workout more days a week and I feel better overall. So I run every other day for two miles and then on the off days I do some elliptical and arms, or just arms and abs. It's really great but I REALLY need to find a gym. I think we are doing a freebie day at one Saturday which is on the way home from my school. I hope it's affordable because I would LOVE to start doing yoga/pilates and spinning..and I will need as much exercise as I can do on my new schedule. It will help with the stress.

I am so happy it's the WEEKEND(almost) I am just relaxing right now. Tomorrow I will be running three miles outside to get used to not just running on a treadmill. Adam is going with me and I am excited to check out the trail behind our place. I will try and post again tonight with pictures this time! I need to start carrying my camera more. Just another lesson in learning to blog! I really really enjoy this. I am even thinking of creating another blog, or working on vamping the concept of this one. Thanks for sticking with me.


Love Love Love,
Katy

Little bit of life, little bit of love..

So I realize as I am going that the form and shape of this blog is going to be taking place as I write. I like it better that way. I am just happy that I am finally blogging like I have wanted to for a while now!

Now, I know all 4 of you who actually read this blog will be sad to hear..(;..but music may have to be on the back burner this semester. Not the songwriting, but the voice practicing and guitar playing.

Here's why:

I am going to be starting my 40+hour/wk internship soon in an elementary school where I will slowly become the teacher and teach for a bit and work alongside the teacher as well. I am looking forward to it(especially graduating at the end of December!) but I remember even in my two-day-a-week junior internship almost losing my voice most weeks. One time I was in Publix buying some groceries and could barely talk..the cashier looks up at me and asked if I was a teacher. I was confused as to how she knew this and she told me that her daughter who is a teacher was always losing her voice.
I forgot this until recently..which means that pushing my voice another hour or so a day doing my practice sessions would not be a good idea. I am not an expert, but I have heard(and it's common sense) that if your voice is sore, or even feeling tired..then pushing it is not a good idea and could end up doing more long term harm. If you're a singer and have to, you make it happen and usually hire voice coaches, doctors, etc. to help you through it. Or they make you do this:


That would be Miss Taylor Swift..

So knowing my voice is going to be challenged enough to talk for 8 hours a day with little break, five days a week until December, I am going to have to not push my voice too much more then that. Also with guitar, it's going to be tough finding time for it. So until the end of the year I will focus on getting through internship in one piece, songwriting, and taking care of myself. I hope you will all bear with me but that does not mean I won't talk about music..I just won't be doing much more then songwriting for a while.

I think I will be posting more day-to-day things..and you can travel the journey with me! I can't wait to talk about my internship and how it goes, also I am training for a 5k that will take place in five weeks! AH!

I love working out..once I get into it..and I have started running more and really love it. I am the kind of person though that needs an end goal in mind. So I will be running in a 5k in five weeks. It will be interesting training for a race(although I am NOT looking to win or even make an amazing time, I just want to run it all the way through!) while juggling my internship but I wanted to keep working out daily anyways so it will just give me more of a push. I also notice an improvement in my voice after I work-out, which is probably why they often suggest working out to better improve performance.

I will be posting my work-outs here as well so you can see how I trained for it. I am not an expert, I am just taking things from different training programs and fitting it realistically into what I can do.

Today, I ran 2.11 miles in 30 minutes. This was a run/walk but I was excited because it was definitely more than half running. I ran ten minutes straight and for not doing much exercise in the last month that was good for me! I am doing a run every-other-day plan with cross-training on the other days and a rest day or two throughout the week. Depending on how sore I get and how my knee feels after.

I am learning to be healthier and I really enjoy it. I think it's really important and something I have always striven for, but I am more actively pursuing a healthy lifestyle now. I know it's not about music, but I think being healthy is important for my mind, my emotions, and my music. It's all connected.

OH! My pictures are done, and if you read this you probably know me and have seen them on facebook already. I will post more when I get the CD of them on the off chance I don't know you in real life! ;)

I am excited to blog about daily adventures, little surprises, and things I love. I think who I am and what I experience becomes the music in the long run. So I think it makes sense. Anyways, I hope you will keep reading and enjoy.

Thanks for reading this, whoever does! :)

Katy Love Love Love

"Let the music play.."

Went to my first Dave Matthews Band concert Friday and it was awesome! It's not just a show, it's a major event. People tailgate for Dave. It's a really amazing experience. We made it up to our lawn seats and had a decent view of the stage and waited for an hour or so until Dave came on.




It was the most amazing feeling, being there. These guys are such amazing performers and makes that ticket you bought worth every stinkin' penny..sadly my camera happened to run out of batteries(fail) on the way up and we were running late as it is so I did not get to take pictures. My iPhone camera was also an epic fail..it could barely make out anything during the show..



Again, amazing..here's the playlist from that night:

Funny The Way It Is
So Damn Lucky
Why I Am
You Might Die Trying
Crash (Into Me)
Typical Situation
Spaceman
Burning Down The House
Seven
Squirm
Jimi Thing
Shake Me Like A Monkey
Alligator Pie
#41
Dancing Nancies
You and Me
Time Bomb
_______________
Sister~
Little Thing (tease)
Grey Street

Thanks to the DMBSetlist app on my iPhone. :) They added every song as the show was going on. Really great. I actually do look at it occasionally..I think it's cool to know what they played at their shows the night before. :)

I wish they would have played older stuff..our favorite album is "Crash" and I also LOVE "Under The Table And Dreaming" but they played "Crash Into Me" and I won't lie..I got a little misty. But that's really the song I HAD to see live. And I did. That's a check off the bucket list..If I kept one of those..

I then spent the weekend with my mom and step-dad and also had some time with my Aunt Tracy, Uncle Chris and my little cousin Claire from Cali. It was so wonderful to be back home. It's strange, for a while I hated going down to Fort Lauderdale but I suddenly love it again. I think that's mainly because my mom is there!

My friend Krista and I had a fun photo shoot today. She's aspiring to get into photography as a side business in the future so she practiced on me! I am honored to be her first model but it certainly won't be the last. Here's a couple favorites(she only posted 7 so far..can't wait to see the rest!!








You will just have to wait for the others!!


Tomorrow I will be doing voice practice, and some guitar! Hoping to make progress and build calluses! Never thought I would hope for calluses..bleh..

Hope you all are enjoying your week!

Katy Love

Twelve years in the making..

Okay so I reread the last two entries and while they are vital to you getting to know me..they are pretty serious, sort of cheesy, and all around long and maybe even boring. But again, necessary.

So I’m over that. Time for me to just write about what I love: music, love and life. :)

Tomorrow night..twelve years in the making..I will be seeing The Dave Matthew Band LIVE! Why has it taken me so long? Well, my mom wouldn’t let me go with my sister when I was younger because she was afraid I would get contact high.
Okay, maybe that was a joke.

But now my wonderful husband, who is also a huge fan of them, bought us tickets. And we are going.
I can’t wait!

Oh yeah and the concert is back home and we have a hotel room for Saturday night! I am all for mini-vacays(even if it’s only for a short weekend)!

I will take lots of pictures and tell you all about it as soon as I can.
Praying that little tropical depression stays far away.
This girl needs a day at the beach.

In other news, my wonderful friend (and future amazing photographer) and I are going to be doing a photo shoot next week.

New blog, dreams to follow, photo shoots ensue!

I also have begun writing a song that I am really loving I will post some of the lyrics soon! Yay!

That's all all for a day or two..wishing you all a fantastic weekend!

Love. Love. Love.

Katy

"Squint your eyes and look closer.."

"..I‘m not between you and your ambition. I am a poster girl with no poster. I am 32 flavors and then some."

Music has a way of sinking into our souls and our minds and never leaving until we let them go (or mainstream radio overplays the heck out of them ;).

I fell in love with music at the age of ten I was home a lot in the summer and watched MTV (this is when they played more music then television shows) because I had seen two music videos and fell in love with the music that filled them. I would literally sit around all day and watch MTV for the chance to hear these songs one more time. Oh, the days before iTunes, MySpace, etc. One of said songs was The Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash Into Me”(with somewhat questionable lyrics at times, I know). I just thought the instrumental was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. Consequently that is the instrumental I walked down the aisle towards my wonderful husband too. Lyrics not included.



The other song was “Wonderwall” by Oasis. I have been listening to these songs over the last twelve years and I still get this feeling that overwhelms me. I feel something every time I hear these songs, a sign of great music.



Let’s flash forward to the present. I am twenty-two years old, a newlywed to an amazing man, finishing up school with a four-month internship and I am so completely in love with listening, creating, and playing music that it’s all I ever want to do..ever.

Again, I am not trying to become “famous”. If in the end of all of this I learn to play guitar and keyboard and can just play music for family, friends, or strangers in a coffee shop I will be happy. I am sure if I get to that point I will strive for more but for right now, my immediate goal is to just be able to play music. I have a God-given passion and the worst that can happen is that I end up not going anywhere with it. But at least I won’t look back to this time in my life and wonder “What if?” As of right now I do not play an instrument but I can sing and with persistence I will be able to get past the difficulties of learning to play an instrument. No fear, no regrets.

I will be writing about my journey to find out who I am as a musician and as a person. I am a chronic “give-upper” and I am giving THAT up. When I began this I wondered if anyone else had been in my situation and I couldn’t really find anything. Most people I notice have been singing or playing music since “before they could talk” or say they were practically “born with a microphone in their hand”(poor mothers) but that isn’t me. I hope you will take this journey with me and learn that no matter what your passion is and no matter how old you are you can begin anew and follow your heart, your passion, and your song.

Okay enough of this seriousness, now that you know why I am here, I will be writing another entry later today about something really exciting happening tomorrow!

Katy
(Title: “32 Flavors”- Ani DiFranco)

"Do you think that you could ever put it on the line? Do you think that you could even spare the time?"

I have already written the first entry but I want to just give you all an idea of what I will be writing about before I post.

What am I actually doing?:

I am working on strengthening my voice and learning to play the guitar. Also, I am saving up to buy a keyboard and I hope to learn how to play that as well. This is a blog that will be written over years of learning to play, growing as a writer and artist and learning who I am as a musician and I will be writing about it all along the way. It may come off cheesy at times and I may come off naïve but bear with me as I continue to learn and pursue music with an honest heart and passion.

Other things I will write about:

I will write about the shows I go to, songs that have impacted me, and my own songwriting. Also, I may begin featuring artists that are inspiring me at the time.

Why now?:

I have wanted to pursue music for so long but held back for the sheer fear of failing. Which has led me to lose so many years I could have been learning to play instruments I love or performing and working on my music. Now is the time, I have to give this all I have to never be able to look back and regret. God has given me a heart for music and I know He will ultimately strengthen me to give this all I have. I may fail, I may ultimately never go anywhere with this. But that’s okay. To me it is a win-win situation. I am not here to find fame. I just want to play music. I hope you will take this journey with me and learn it’s never too late.

Katy

P.S. - For your enjoyment, I have added a playlist to the left to highlight some songs I am really digging right now. You really should take a listen. I will add/take away songs as I go but please enjoy! Also, if some things are still unclear feel free to ask. The next post will overlap somethings in this post, but as I write you will learn more about me. Thanks for reading!

(Title- "Spare The Time" - Needtobreathe)