Welcome to Sawdust Hill’s digital home base, and to our very first post!

“Firsts” are hard for me.  I don’t like to leap without knowing exactly what waits below.  This is good practice if you’re cliff diving, but caution has a way of squashing faith when you allow it to take over.  Not to say that a healthy dose of caution isn’t a good thing; it’s just that my caution grows quickly into fear and my fear does an excellent job of distracting me from my goals.  I think of all the possible things that might go wrong and I try to fix them before they’ve even happened.  I attempt to map every twist and turn of the maze before setting foot in it, making it seem daunting and impossible.  My fear gives me a million reasons not to take those first steps, because it knows that once I do my momentum will carry me beyond its reach.  Once I’ve begun I always remember that the journey is nothing to be scared of.

Starting a website was a big “first” for me, and so – predictably – I thought about it and planned it and researched it and avoided it and worried about it for nearly a year before waking up one morning and just doing it.  The idea of creating a website for Trevor’s and my musical endeavors excited, but at the same time repelled me.  It seemed so official; it was such a loud proclamation of the fact that I considered myself a songwriter and a musician, and my fear told me I wasn’t ready, wasn’t good enough, didn’t know what I was doing.  But I wasn’t really scared of the website.  My worry was over a much bigger goal that Trevor and I had made: to move to Nashville to pursue careers in songwriting.  We had discussed it a great deal, but I remained unsure of myself.  I believed in Trevor’s ability, but not in my own, and I could hardly bring myself to tell people about it.  I kept expecting them to laugh.

So far, no one has laughed.  On the contrary, when we finally gritted our teeth and took those first steps toward actually pursuing our goal, I was overwhelmed by the flood of support that came from every corner.  When I went to my credit union to open our Nashville savings account – the very FIRST first step – the teller cheered me on.  When I played on the ferry with a sign in my case that read “Saving for Nashville,” strangers went out of their way to offer words of encouragement.  And when my parents hosted a house concert where Trevor and I shared our original music, close to fifty friends and neighbors responded with overwhelming support and generosity.

On the way home from that house concert Trevor said, “We should start a blog about our journey.”  He wanted to be able to share our progress with the people who had shown such kindness in starting us off.  So the next morning I woke up and began the website I’d been circling for so long.  Emboldened by the knowledge that there are people out there – family, friends, neighbors, and even strangers – who want to see us succeed, I was inspired not only to create the website but to own the proclamation that it implied:

“I am a songwriter, and I’m going to make my art my career.”

And just like that, our momentum builds.  We know this journey won’t be easy, but the first steps have been taken.  And for me, that’s always the scariest part.

– Sylvie