Tag: love
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A Merely Audible Contemplation
Lately, I’ve spent enough time alone to hear the refrigerator thinking. It’s a low hum at first, but if you sit quietly long enough, you start wondering if it’s judging your life choices. The funny thing is, I don’t remember solitude being part of the plan. Growing up in a small town, there was always…
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Turns Out I Was Pretty Good at Being Me
Once upon a time, there was a kid. A curious kid. A distracted kid. He was good at just about everything he tried, but never really great at any of it—or at least that’s what he thought. He never really knew what he wanted to be when he grew up. He considered all the usual…
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No Batteries Required: When Play Meant Something More
Yesterday, I saw something I never thought I’d see again—especially not from a high school student. I saw a group of teenagers playing leapfrog. Leapfrog. Not a phone app. Not a video game. Not some new social media challenge designed to last three days before disappearing into the digital abyss. Actual leapfrog—the same game kids…
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Commencement Season: Tassels, Tears, and One Last Trip to the Snack Bar
There’s something strange about graduation season. For four years, students spend most of high school counting down to the end of school—talking about summer, freedom, and escaping homework forever. Then suddenly, during the final few weeks, everyone starts walking around campus like they’re in the last ten minutes of a movie. People who normally sprint…
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Self-Inflicted and Poorly Supervised
I know I don’t need caffeine. That’s the first honest thing I write today, and I almost want to stop there because it already sounds like the kind of sentence people say right before they absolutely do the thing anyway. It’s not even about needing it. Not really. It’s more like… curiosity. Scientific curiosity, if…
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The Fine Art of Holding a Grudge
When we were kids, grudges lasted about six minutes.Someone stole your crayon, you cried, your mom intervened, and ten minutes later you were both eating the same bag of chips like nothing happened. Justice was swift.Closure was immediate.Snacks were shared. Then we grew up. And somewhere between paying bills and learning how to properly sigh,…
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Beneath Your Balcony
Beneath your balcony, I become music—not the kind you hear,but the kind that trembles in your chest before a single note is played. The night leans in to listen, roses hold their breath, and even the shadows softenjust to witness the way you look at me. Your hand—how can something so small carry the weight…
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If Only For A Moment…
On Sunday, Mother’s Day, during the second hour of a four-hour gig, something extraordinary happened. As I stood beneath a tree playing my trumpet, a hummingbird suddenly appeared. It circled around me three… maybe four times, hovering right in front of the bell of my trumpet while I played. Then it flew upward and landed…
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Mirror, Mirror on My Desk…
We spend a lot of time looking outward. At expectations. At what other people are doing, saying, or thinking. We compare, we react, we adjust. Most of our day is shaped by everything happening around us. But we rarely stop and look inward. There aren’t many moments in the day where it’s just you and…
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Watching Things Become
I stopped by our high school’s main campus today. It wasn’t anything formal—just a few quiet minutes between responsibilities. Long enough to stand off to the side and watch the construction crews preparing the site for the upcoming concrete pour. The ground was already undergoing transformation—leveled, measured, marked in that familiar orange construction paint, lines…
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Alone at the Happiest Place on Earth
Most people would say the Disneyland Resort isn’t a place you go alone.That doing so feels equal parts pathetic and depressing. And maybe… on paper, it is. But I did it anyway. I was there for a two-day excursion—an Arts Education Leadership Summit. Work. Professional development. The kind of trip that comes with lanyards, schedules,…
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Between Tradition and Memory: A Mariachazo Reflection
We’ve all been to concerts. We all know what it feels like to sit in a crowd, to wait for the first note, to remember pieces of music long after the night ends. We all carry our own memories of them—the sound, the crowd, the moments that stay with us in different ways. But Mariachazo…
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Life Is A Notebook
I came across this idea the other day, and it stayed with me longer than I expected— the kind of thought that doesn’t just pass through, but settles in. Maybe it’s the way we hold onto moments—like scraps of paper, like old notebooks tucked away in drawers. Every now and then, something reminds you that…
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Mariachi Me… Same Traje, Different Mileage
Being a Mariachi isn’t just about the music. It’s about what you carry before you ever play a note. The traje—sharp, tailored, unmistakable—has a way of teaching you that. At first, it feels like a costume. Something you put on to look the part. The shine, the stitching, the silver botonadura, the way it commands…
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Little-Known Facts About Me
If you look back long enough, you start to notice the strange little things that were always there. Not the big milestones. Not the obvious moments. The quieter details— the ones that didn’t make sense at the time, but somehow explain everything now. I don’t usually sit around listing facts about myself. Feels a little…