I’ve learned from experience that songwriters spend a lot of time looking for the “why,” the layers under the surface, the rhyme for the reason.

So why do I keep reaching for my guitar or stay up all night hunkered over the keyboard tinkering with new melodies? Well…there is nothing like finally putting down the pen and feeling power in the lyrics on the page. When you know you’ve written something beautiful and you are proud of it. When you take a step back and say, “This song is complete.”

I grew up taking piano lessons and learning the classics, but my songwriting spark was lit the moment I strummed my brand new guitar under the Christmas tree in 2018. And when I say I took that guitar everywhere, I literally mean everywhere. It wasn’t long before I started writing songs of my own.

As of now, I have three songs—Wandering (2020), Everyday (2021), and Lead the Way (2022)— out on Spotify and Apple Music. Each song is my way of expressing my emotions and responding to what’s going on in the world around me.

Songwriter or not, when we take the time to sit down and write, we will always learn something new. We might even start to see the world from a different point of view!

In the final chorus of my song Wandering, I belt out the closing line, “I’ll take my time, roll the windows down and enjoy the ride!” And that’s exactly what I plan on doing. Laughing, learning, stumbling, and wandering through life…notebook in hand.