From One Cool Chick...

I was researching an article I was writing. About myself! ha! I'm so self absorbed.

Going through old yearbooks...one from my alma mater in Fayetteville NC, the other(s) from my couple years in Huntington Beach at Ocean View and Fountain Valley.

I was surprised by the general theme, but then again, not really! I've known I was cool since I was pretty young. My Mom was so cool, how could I not be! An artist and feminist in the 1940s and 50s. A free spirit, yet responsible, smart and more. She drove an MG TD sports car, had an artist's loft with wood stove above a store, loved Ella Fitzgerald, and loved her daughters that much more! Raising us in the military town when she had two decades of gainful employment as a civil servant graphic artist at the base's training aides and printing plant.

She sure was something else! Think Kathryn Hepburn meets Georgia O'Keefe.

My sister was cool too. Of course she was, coming from such a mother. She definitely contributed to my coolness, starting at a young age.

First concert attended, America, 1975. I was 12! I was in love with Gary Beckley after that!

She gave me a guitar...a Yamaha, I remember distinctly. She had her Martin, which I coveted, but she would never part with it. Still has it! Sis had been pretty active with her music back then with gigs at different locales around town...at the rec center on base, at Rowan St. Park, even wrote a song and dedication to her graduating class performing it for all at the 1976 Centennial ceremony!

She was in the supporting cast in Cabaret at the local theater. I still remember going to see her in that! Mom and I were so proud!

Gave me my first LP. Steeley Dan, Can't Buy a Thrill.

Turned me on to the Beatles and the Monkees. I was into Donnie Osmond though.

But also turned me on to James Taylor, Jim Croce, Carol King, CSN&Y, and Moody Blues.

It was the Summer before starting 7th or 8th grade when I got the guitar. I think I spent all Summer making all kinds of different configurations of the four chords I knew...D, A, G and C. I was set.

I wrote poems and songs. I practiced in my bedroom for hours and hours.

The guitar and my music stayed with me for the rest of my adolescence and well into my young adulthood. I formed bands, tried to be the next Go Gos or Bangles. Moved to Atlanta and got ensconced in the alternative music scene of the late 80s and all of the 1990s.

Being the cool chick, guitar girl, rocker chick was my authentic self...still is. Who I am at my core. Yes, I had to play other roles to make a living like office girl, assistant, or account coordinator, but at least it was in "cool", creative businesses, following suite from my mom and her graphic design background. In advertising and marketing, even in the coveted sports marketing category which was fun, but I could have cared less...so not into sports.

It was all about the music. I even sacrificed having a family. Put it on the back burner, thinking I would have time. If I didn't "make it" by the time I was 30, then 35 and suddenly found myself pushing 40. That's when I decided to stop pursing the musical path. I had met "the one," or so I thought. And tried to have a life.

It's been 20 years since then and I've had a lot of reflection since my Mom died in 2014. I've ebbed and flowed and bumped along in this river of life. I haven't been able to be myself in a long time. The truth is, the cool chick part of me got covered up these years by having to make a living and not being able to be my authentic self, trying to be the right life partner, trying to make something work that just couldn't, getting my inner light and spirit quashed all the while.

I've figured out some things. I'm still on this journey with optimism and hope and faith. I have varied stories to tell. I am a writer above all else.

Fiction based on fact. I lived it.

Welcome to my blog!

#coolchickchronicles