This past summer I thought it would be like any other, I’d go back to my hometown to see my family and friends, walk down the same pier I have for the past 21 years to go to work and wait for the day I could move back into my apartment. I was SO wrong.
This past summer I did all of those things; I started a new job doing content and social media management for a startup business and rekindled with an old friend who I had not seen since we lunch monitored together in grade 1. We talked about life since being 7 years old and what we plan to do with the next chapter of our lives. She told me she wanted to work in the music media industry and my jaw dropped.
As students, we are so conditioned to learn Onome good employees for the big corporations that rule the world without understanding what the world has to offer. I did not really understand how much there was to offer until she texted me and asked if I would be interested in working on social media for Boots and Hearts.
As anyone would my jaw dropped and I left my body and came back to life before responding with absolutely, I am in. A few weeks go by, and we are off to Burls Creek, the drive was silent, but our anxiety was so loud. We were so excited for the weekend that we didn’t even know where to start.
We get to the venue and meet the team filled with women who had worked so hard to get to where they’re at with the most incredible vision for the weekend you could imagine. We went over to the goals where they took me on the golf cart and sent me out onto the grounds.
I had the opportunity to engage with campers and do interviews on their love for boots and what it meant for them to be apart from it. The consensus was that people loved the community, the music, the fashion and let the drinks be real. The more I had the opportunity to engage with the fans and die hard Boots lovers the more I fell in love with the festival scene. There is so much pride that goes along with creating a vision for months and seeing every bit of that vision come to life in the matter of days.
From fan interviews to filming content in the pit all the way to seeing some of my favorite artists perform up close this weekend was more than anything I could have ever imagined. I left with a camera roll so full I got a new phone and the passion for a career that felt so far out of reach.
To the amazing women I worked alongside I will forever be grateful to you for this experience and for the relationships that were built over my crying in Russel Dickerson’s pit and Dancing with Tucker Wetmore right over our heads. I love you all.
Needless to say, that this weekend was so much more than a random text, it was the start of understanding the power of simply saying yes to the things that scare you or that you’ve never done before because you never know where it may take you.