Hello, lovely spirits! I hope you’ve all been well and enjoying your summer so far. Today, once again, I’m bringing y’all something a little different—it’s a vlog!
I’ve been traveling nonstop in Asia during June (11 flights in one month, R.I.P. me lol), and although there were some pretty horrible parts of the trip, I definitely had a lot of fun overall. One big takeaway I got from my trip this year is that I’m solid on pursuing music in the future. I’ll be studying psychology in college, and working on music in my spare time. My parents have finally agreed to let me work on music in college, because, according to them, now that I’ve pulled through the “hardest years of my life at Lowell,” I can do whatever I want in college (no slacking off, of course). I’m just really glad that my parents have finally gone from hesitant and reluctant to supportive and accepting regarding my music career—they even said they’d pay for any music equipment I needed. Is this a miracle? I think so.
After showing “Like Stars” to my relatives, their friends, and everyone else during my trip, they were all really supportive about my passion for music, which was a really big surprise to me. Some of my relatives and their friends with a couple connections in the entertainment business said they’ll do their best to help me out, because they really think I have talent and potential; this is a huge topic for me to even consider, but I think what took me back the most was how much faith everyone had in me. What made my heart race wasn’t that I’d be legitimately pursuing and following through on my music career, but that the people around me were so genuinely intent on putting time and effort into helping my dream come true. This is the trip that’s made me open my eyes a lot more, appreciate the people around me a lot more, and have hope a lot more.
One of the stops I made in Asia was an eight-day-trip in Taiwan. My second, third, and fourth (youngest) aunts all went with me and we signed up to be with a tour group. The thing about traveling with a tour group is that you don’t really have much time to roam around on your own, and Taiwan is just one big island, so it’s considerably hard to get around without some help. We traveled around Taiwan, and were constantly on the road, even staying at a different hotel every night—it was exhausting.
Another one of Taiwan’s features that makes it stand out is how mountainy it is. I’d say we traveled in the mountains for at least five days—that’s five days of sitting in a huge, shaky tour bus going in circles as we drive up or down any mountain. Although a lot of people got sick and some even feared for their lives, I kind of enjoyed it, because of the breathtaking scenery. I was pretty lucky to not have to hurl while being flung from side to side on the bus.
Driving up and down several mountains over the course of five short days is no easy task, so, naturally, we spent a lot of time on the bus. Honestly, I’d say at least 85% of the whole trip was spent sitting in the vehicle. In that time, I either slept or listened to a bunch of albums I’d had for a while but never listened to, like Handwritten, Pure Heroine, WILD, Blue Neighborhood, TRXYE, 1989, I Love You., Badlands, Born To Die, The Gift, and more. Clearly, I had a lot of time to kill, so I also took a lot of time to do some songwriting and jot down some music ideas for Jenn’s Jams ♪.
With all the time I spent with nature and music on the bus, I took a lot of inspiration from all the scenic places we drove by, and had a lot of time to think. Although some of you may feel that a vlog has nothing to do with music, this trip to Asia—particularly Taiwan—is where a lot more of my motivation to pursue music came from, and I consider that to be of utmost importance. I wanted to share with everyone a little bit of what this incredible trip was like, so hopefully you guys will feel like you came along with me! I consider my style of video editing to be clean, crisp, and simple. I like it that way, but don’t be fooled! Just because my editing style is simple doesn’t mean it’s easy—I spent a good, full two days to edit this entire thing nonstop. Considering I had about 40 minutes of footage total, even if this vlog is a little long, I think it’s pretty good that I managed to cut it down to 10 minutes without leaving anything out. I hope you all like it!
