I am a writer and soloist from Alexandria, Virginia, who feels a little weird about having a blog.  So self-promoting! Our whole culture is self-promoting, but when I grew up you didn’t broadcast yourself, so it still seems weird to me. But I have these two things I do–writing and singing–and people say I should have this, and it has turned out to be kind of fun. Like scrapbooking, a thing people did in the 90s, but without all the bits of paper and glue dots.

I’ve been writing since second grade, when my teacher gave an assignment to “write a sentence stating an opinion,” and I wrote several pages about three opinions. My opinions were about the perfect color of the sky at exactly five o’clock in October, the extreme cuteness of my hamster, Snowball, and how the best part of a summer day was after dinner, when it was still light out and you could take a walk and smell the “happy, hopeful smell of cut grass. ” My teacher handed it back with the same check-plus grade everyone else got, but she leaned down and looked me in the eye and said, “You are a writer, and that is not an opinion. That is a fact.” I took it to heart. I was relieved, because I had already discovered I was not good at soccer or math and would very likely never be able to climb those stupid ropes in gym class, so here was something I was good at.

I have also been singing since about the same age, when my sister and I would put on the record of the original Broadway cast of Annie and sing our guts out with Andrea McArdle. An obsession with Broadway followed, and, a decade singing in choirs and another decade of private voice lessons later, I started singing professionally, though not on Broadway. Thankfully, I sound nothing like Andrea McArdle. Mostly, I sing at weddings and funerals, and I get a kick out of singing both Laudete Dominum and Taylor, the Latte Boy, and everything in between.

Now I am a writer and singer, but I am also a wife and mother and teacher and person, learning how to do this blog thing but still kind of embarrassed by it. But now I’m hooked; it’s a way to organize my writing into something that is something, and for some reason I think I’m meant to do it. I hope you enjoy. You can reach me at paige@bernini.us