July 20, 2016, will be engraved in my mind for the rest of my life. This was the day of my very first concert. I had been in choir concerts, and I have been to a backyard concert before, but I had never gone to a full-blown concert by a band that I adored. This is the day that has changed my life for the better. Two weeks before the concert, I had started listening to music that I hadn't listened to in years, which included the band I saw in concert. I looked up what the band had been up to since I stopped listening to them, and found out they were going to be playing a concert in my city. I had been working for a little bit and had saved up some money and was able to get tickets to the concert just in time. I went to the concert with my best friend, and we had a blast. There was a lot of dancing, screaming, laughing, and singing along to the songs being played. I had never felt so much energy in one place before. This concert was the final straw in deciding to go full out with my band. I had been okay with the thought of being in a band, but this is the thing that made me want this dream to fully come true.

Before the concert, my dad had bought an acoustic guitar for him and me to learn how to play. The concert made me finally desire to quickly learn how to play the guitar and other instruments like the bass guitar, the drums, and to finally learn how to play the violin I got for one of my birthdays when I was younger. So far, I haven't gotten very far, but I am still trekking up that mountain. I got new strings for my violin as a Christmas gift, and I have been slowly practicing and learning how to play it, even though it might not sound too pleasant at the moment. I am very lucky and fortunate to have a father who is willing to help me make my dreams come true. He has been my biggest supporter and has been very positive and open minded to the idea of me being in a band and learning how to play instruments.

My biggest obstacle at the moment with the band is my fear of never being good enough to play the instruments or my voice sounding "good enough" to sing. I know this day in age, most singers use auto-tune and all that fancy stuff to make their voices sound great, but I don't want to be another one of those types of singers. I want to be able to listen to the radio and hear my voice, and not my voice filtered through a lot of "vocal make-up" to make it sound pretty or perfect. I know that if I don't try to just go for it, then I will never know if I am good enough. I have dealt with low self-confidence for a huge part of my life, but this is by far the biggest thing I will do within my almost 20 years of living. I am scared to death of failure, but I do see a little glimmer of hope. I hope my gut feeling is right about me doing this, and I know it will probably be a bit of a rocky road, but I do have faith that this opportunity will bring along happiness and maybe success.