Tuesday, September 8, 2009

The one with the explanation

If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me this summer "Why Nashville?" I would be a lot richer than I am now (which isn't a difficult feat)! In May of this year, I finished up a 9-month-long internship at Disney World. It was the most fun time of my life but it wasn't what I wanted to do my entire life either (Sorry, Mickey, I will always love you though). So I packed my bags and headed home to Minnesota to try to figure out my next step (and to clean my room, because seriously, I moved home from college in August 2008, dumped my stuff in my room and jetted off to Florida the next day).

The one thing I get more excited over than anything else in the world is music. I always thought about how amazing it would be to have a job in the music business but my practical side didn't allow for my hopes to get too high. Maybe it was watching the "Dreams Come True" parade on a daily basis
(when the bosses weren't around, of course) for 9 months that changed mind but now I can't imagine NOT going for my dream job.

New York and LA, while HUGE in terms of music opportunities, are extremely out of my price range, so I considered Nashville even though I'm not the biggest country music fan. I expressed interest to a friend who lives in Nashville and long story short, I'm moving in with her mom!

Get a place to live? Check! The next hurdle is my car situation. My oh-so-giving parents lent my old but trustworthy Ford Contour to the French foreign exchange student they had living with them while I was traipsing about Disney World. Maybe cars don't overheat in France because she drove my light-blue baby numerous times ignoring the pillows of smoke that one would assume is a clear sign something is wrong. Needless to say, the car is dead. Her "smoke free air" window cling is sadly ironic now. But on the bright side, since I am moving south to a wonderful land of little to no snow, my mom is lending me her nice, white convertible for the sole purpose of allowing me to have my own mini-version of "The Hills" complete with a pink suitcase in the back seat and a ROCKIN' soundtrack. Get transportation? Check!

Get a job? Work in progress. Ideally, I would like a job working at a concert venue (I'd like own one someday!) or working at an artist management firm. At concerts, I'm constantly thinking of ways a venue could improve the concert experience and ways an artist could improve their image and interaction with fans. Unfortunately, the #1 way to get your foot in the door in the music biz seems to be getting an internship (that often leads to employment). The fact that I already have a degree pretty much closes that door. I've told a few artist management firms I'll work for free, but they used the term "slave labor" and something about it being illegal but "good luck" and all that fun stuff.

All and all, I'm very hopeful and excited for this new journey in my life. The way everything fell into place, I feel like Nashville is where I'm meant to go. I don't know the real big answer to why Nashville yet, but maybe I'll find out down the road.

Bonus Features (Like on a DVD, only better):
1.) I watched 10 seasons of Friends this summer (My job was only part-time....) and they've inspired me to name my posts like they named their episodes "The One With...." or "The One Where..." etc., you get the jist.
2.) In college, I wrote a weekly gossip column called "Allie B's Hollywood Hot Spot" if you knew that then you get the name of my blog!




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