I’m not who you think I am.

When you look at my site, it’s easy to think that music comes easily to me, that I’ve always been a singer songwriter.

But that’s not true.

I’ve never thought of myself as a song writer.

Many singer song writers say that they always wanted to sing or be a song writer. They wrote songs when they were young. They kept journals through the years. They dreamed of being a professional singer.

I’m not like that.

At school, I wasn’t good at writing music. It wasn’t my focus and I didn’t understand why my songs were average or worse.

I never wrote many songs. I never dreamed about becoming a singer songwriter. I never felt like I was good at it. And I only wrote my first song in high school to a girl who broke my heart. Hahahaha, true.

Throughout most of my life, I probably wrote fewer than 10 songs.

But something changed …

In 2001, grief and loss hit my life.

I lost my father, then soon after that I lost my grandmother and the songs began to flow.

I read a couple of books on song writing, studied rhyming dictionaries. I studied how other songwriters did what they did, and watched a ton of YouTube videos to figure out how other people put a song together.

I discovered that singing and song writing isn’t magic.

I could learn how to write, how to share my ideas, how to structure my lines, how to sing in a way that engages the listener and touches the soul.

I also fooled myself …

I told myself that writing a song or poem wasn’t real writing. It was the kind of not-quite-real-writing that I could master as a regular person.

Weird, eh?

I had to tell myself I wasn’t really song writing so I could start writing.

I didn’t really know how I’d earn my money through music. Maybe some consultancy. I had my regular church job and I was planning to take a sabbatical to figure things out and recover from the years of church stress, office politics, and bruising budget fights.

I also wanted to sing and write a few songs to raise my online profile.

I left my computer science dreams at the end of December 1993, and to my surprise, I got quickly hired as a singer songwriter. It wasn’t a career I had envisioned. I still didn’t see myself as a singer song writer, and I hadn’t thought anyone would hire a non-native English speaker as a singer song writer.

And now?

About 25 years later, I have written and sung hundreds of songs, coached several hundred people, and created a portfolio of popular production courses.

I’d like to tell you this …

It doesn’t matter whether you feel like a singer song writer or not. It doesn’t matter how old or young you are. How tired or energetic. How fearful or courageous. How doubtful or confident.

You can learn to sing and write your own songs. You can learn to sing and write better, to share your ideas, to touch the soul, to inspire, and connect with your listeners.

No one is born a perfect singer songwriter.

But we’re all human, and we all have stories, experiences, and wisdom to share.

Happy singing, my friend, and thank you for reading.