2010 in Review: High School Reunion

This is just one post in my wrap up of the year 2010. If you would like to read the rest, click here to the main post.

Lockhart High School's Class of 2000 celebrated our 10 year reunion this summer and it was pretty much like witnessing Can't Hardly Wait 2: The Reunion.

Some of you until now didn't know I graduated from the high school in the BBQ Capital of Texas and that's mainly because those times weren't really kind to me. I was just another introverted-awkward-super-skinny-creative girl in a small conservative town who didn't really fit in and got picked on A LOT. I know. What a cliche.

Unfortunately, Christina Aguilera's empowerment ballad "Beautiful" hadn't come out yet. Otherwise, I would have stood in front my bathroom mirror staring at myself every night singing along with "I am beautiful dammit."

So I showed up after much convincing from my family and a high school buddy and curiosity getting the best of me, but I'm glad that I did. I saw old friends, reunited with former friends and actually made new friends. Granted, beer had a big influence on all the socializing but whatever. We're all adults now.

Well according to our birthdays...

I did learn that some of these classmates still haven't left high school and apparently, I spent eight years of school with K-Fed and didn't even know.

Ok, so let me relate this back to music as this is a music blog afterall.

As you saw in this post, I've been a music fan for a really long time.

In high school, I was a band nerd marching on the field with my flute. I sang in choir. And I was rarely seen without a pair of headphones in my ears. I always carried my discman (man, remember those!?! Instead of a small hard drive spinning in today's gadgets, an actual CD was spinning), and of course, I wrote in a journal. Some things never change, huh?

It wouldn't have been surprising to anyone if I stayed with music somehow in my life after high school. However, everyone was pretty surprised/jealous/amazed/thrilled that I could actually say that my day job is being a journalist. More specifically I'm a music journalist.

And now I also carry the title of editor for my school's newspaper.

Oh but you better believe I didn't leave it as that. I totally played it up.

"So Sarah, what do you do?"
"Well, I hang out with musicians and go to shows and get paid to write about it."

WIN.

Man those reactions made up for all those years of teasing; all those years of feeling out of place for so long. Friends came up to me saying that they had been keeping track of this blog ever since they added me on Facebook. Even some random classmates who I never had a connection with told me they were so proud and happy for me that I get to do what I love. Granted, I do some random jobs here and there like work at a bookstore for extra cash, but still, editors approach me to write for them and some offer to pay.

This whole situations sounds pretty freaking cliche, right? Seriously, they could write a coming-of-age movie about this.

But after getting my start by randomly joining newspaper in high school
to becoming a journalism major at Texas State writing boring news pieces at the University Star
to leaving Texas State because of money
to being unemployed for two years,
to getting a job, my parents both lost their jobs, forcing my younger brother and I to get a crash course on adult responsibilities pretty freaking quickly by having to support four people with two part time incomes,
to starting a little personal site on Geocities which quickly blew into the site that it is now,
I think I had a really damn good reason to gloat and rub my accomplishments in those people's faces.

Score one for the underdog.