Part of my recent journey has been returning to one of my main hobbies that has recurred at various parts of my life – songwriting.

In high school, it was more poems with melodies because I didn’t actually write any musical accompaniment, but my friends and I talked about starting a band. We never did, but a few years later after I finished college, I picked up my guitar from my high school guitar class, relearned some chords and played them to a few of the songs I wrote in high school. Soon, I started writing songs again and performed them at coffee shop open mics.

I continued this for a couple of years and then after I got a job at a staff writer at a small newspaper, my writing energy shifted to newspaper articles. I occasionally wrote some songs, mainly to exorcise dating angst, but eventually stopped performing at open mics.

When I met my husband, I loved that he played guitar and we talked about  writing songs together, but we were busy with other things and after we had kids, I was mainly singing Wiggles and Raffi songs and stopped writing any of my own.

About three years ago, I started writing songs again. I was doing less writing at the paper – by that point I had been managing editor for several years and my duties were more editing, managing and getting the paper out than extensive writing, so I guess my writing energy had to be funneled elsewhere.

I’ve written many songs in the past three years – many still unfinished – and have recorded many of them to mark their existence, but not professionally. My ultimate goal is not to be a rock star or tour the world (not while my kids are young anyway), but to have professional recordings made of them to share with others.

At this point, I haven’t had the budget to do that – professional recordings can be quite costly – but because of the amazing Internet, I am still able to share them in their current state.

I thought it would be fun to share them on this blog so I will occasionally post the rough version of my songs – as well as the story behind them, as songs are often stories put to music.

The first one I’ll share is sadly a recurring theme in headlines, most recently with the Las Vegas shootings. It’s inspired by the interviews that often show up on the evening news after tragedies such as mass shootings, where acquaintances – or sometimes family members – express shock that their neighbor/loved one would do such a horrific act.

This song, “Evening News” or “Saw Your Picture on the Evening News” (I can’t decide which to go with) is one I wrote last year after a mass shooting, but it applies to this recent one as well.

Here’s the song: