Hi :)

Hello Mraz Women!
I’m so pleased to be part of this wonderful blog. It’s such an amazing idea to join together and spread stories of gratitude, hope, peace, love, and what’s going on in our lives to other women across the world, all connected by our love for Jason. I’m new here, so I’m going to introduce myself.

My name is Emily, and I live in Sheffield in England, (which is the greenest city in Europe, I’ve heard.) I’m 16, and I’m currently studying History, English Literature, Psychology and Music for my A Levels. I play the Piano and take singing lessons, but would LOVE to learn acoustic guitar too! I am also a huge Harry Potter fan, and have become obsessed with Glee (I got into it because of Darren Criss- Blaine- whose theatre company Starkid is another of my great loves in life.) I enjoy reading, playing music, hanging out with my friends, History (especially American), writing stories, walking, and listening to music (some of my favourite artists, aside from Jason, are Freelance Whales, Darren Criss, Blue October, Elton John, Muse, Mumford & Sons, Yann Tiersen, Matt Nathanson, Amy McDonald, Counting Crows, Simon & Garfunkel…. I’m also a big fan of Folk, Classical, World music and Wizard Rock.)

I’ve started using Twitter a lot more recently- follow me? I’d love to meet you all on there. :) I’m @moonshoesemily.

Something that I would love to do in life is some sort of roadtrip across America, the place I most want to visit in the world (because they have Jason Mraz, practically the whole Harry Potter franchise, Redvines, Jason, California, NICE WEATHER, groovy accents, and Jason, to name just a few things.) Basically, I’d love to do something like the video of I’m Yours, and just travel through all the small towns and meet people- I’m not particularly interested in the big cities like New York. Although I wouldn’t say no if someone offered to take me! My mum has a fear of flying, and so the farthest I’ve travelled from the UK is Austria, but this roadtrip WILL happen one day! Oh, and I will also visit Jason’s Avocado farm while in California, of course! ;)

I discovered Jason Mraz about 4 years ago through my friend, whose parents are a fan. She sent me a link of Sleeping To Dream and told me to listen. I liked it, but I wasn’t in love. On the related videos list, I decided I liked the look of the thumbnail for Bella Luna, which was a photo of a sunset, so I clicked on that, and I was absolutely blown away by the power and beauty of the song. I spent the rest of the day going through the Mr A-Z album on youtube, listening and favouriting all the songs, and then I bought the 2 studio albums he had then produced. My friend emailed and said “’I’m Yours’ is in the charts! We listen to popular music!” (I have never been a ‘Top 40’ kind of person, so it was funny to us when everyone suddenly knew about him- and only for one song, sadly.) Anyway, we’ve both had a lifetime’s ambition of seeing him live, and catching his hat together. There is still a lot of arguing between us about who would keep it though…!

Jason is inspiring me in many ways– some of my favourite lyrics by him are “Go make your life, not a living…” Because I feel like often we can be so caught up in the trivial of everyday life, that we forget what it is to just ‘live’ and to step back see the bigger picture. Everyone on this blog will understand what I mean, and I am grateful to Jason and others who inspire me, and show me there is more to life than the material side.

So far it’s been a pretty good year. I started at a new school and made new friends, I saw Freelance Whales when they came to England which was exciting, I am generally eating healthier (still need to start some regular exercise though, that doesn’t just consist of walking up to school from the tram stop everyday…) I have had no migraines for 3 months *touchwood*due to my improved attitude towards school that doesn’t accept ‘Oh my god I’m going to fail my homework/exam/life and now need to run around like a headless chicken’ (I used to get them pretty regular, and they’d put me in bed for a few days) and also, I dyed my hair red, which is a radical change for me as I'd never really done anything different with it, and it helped me to feel like a new, more exciting person!

Today I performed Piano for the first time in about a year in the lunchtime concert at Music Academy where I go every Saturday, and it went quite well, a big step for me because I HATE performing! Whenever I felt terrified leading up to it, I kept singing “The remedy is the experience…” in my head, and it seemed to work. In a strange way, I actually enjoyed the performance, even though my legs were shaking! I was facing one of my biggest fears, which always feels good afterwards, and I felt like I was giving the joy of music to people, even for just 5 minutes, and while I was playing, I began to think “This is actually one of the best times I’ve played it!” I have a great issue about putting myself out there with my music, I prefer to shy away in the background, watch others, and just play it for myself. But I’m slowly realising that it’s a wasted opportunity if I never perform, and it could even be depriving my friends and peers of the enjoyment and peace of Listening, so I signed up to do it today.
Just wanted to share that with you! I’m quite proud of myself, because a few months ago, I said I wouldn’t perform again after a bad experience where a performance went quite badly. I played ‘Le Onde’ by Ludovico Einaudi, if any of you are interested.

Ok, that’s enough about me; that was longer than I intended so thanks for reading... I look forward to meeting all of you through Twitter/Facebook :D It's pretty late in the UK, I should go to bed. :)

Peace, and hoping you are all well and happy too,
Em x