Eleven years ago today, my life changed. I got my first cell phone - a Nokia 8210.
But it wasn't the purchase of a cell phone that changed my life. It was the area code that started my new phone number: 615. Eleven years ago today, I moved to Nashville, TN.
I remember everything about that weekend. I remember the drive in my 1990 Ford Mustang (Pappy). I remember the cassette tapes I listened to on the way. I remember my parents leading the way down I-81 and across I-40 in their 1996 Dodge Intrepid. I remember arriving in Nashville on Sunday instead of Saturday like most kids, so that Mama & I could hit up one last Rascal Flatts concert in VA on our way. I remember Mama & I swaying with our arms around each other & crying while they sang "I'm Movin' On"... because I was. I remember carrying 2 tightly packed carloads of "stuff" up 2 flights of stairs to Room 308 in Hail Hall at Belmont University. I remember the smell of the dorm. I remember the buzz of the fluorescent lights. I remember the way my roommate & I had the furniture arranged. I remember meeting new faces, and greeting slightly familiar faces I'd met a month earlier at orientation. I remember the sheer excitement for possibilities that awaited me. And I remember going to Best Buy in Brentwood to get my very first cell phone.
It felt so official, so permanent. For the first time in all my 18 years, I had a phone # that was different from my parents, and the area code was 615. When people would contact me from that day forward, they would know me as a Nashville resident. There I was, this little girl from Newmanstown, PA who had traveled nearly 800 miles from the only place she'd ever known as home to begin a life all her own. In Nashville, I wasn't Noel & Wendy's daughter, nor was I Kent's little sister. I was Ashley Hertzog, and it was time for me to figure out exactly what that meant.
Throughout the past 11 years, I've done a lot of figuring out who I am. And it always seems that just as I figure out exactly who I am, I go and change again. But isn't that just the way it always goes? To be honest, I hope it does continue to go that way to some degree, because many of the changes that have taken place in me are signals of personal growth. I don't ever want to stop growing and becoming a better version of who I am. I seek to ever improve myself: learn new things, hold myself to higher standards, fine tune my character, love deeper, live more passionately, inspire & be inspired, set goals & achieve them, and grow more confident in my own skin.
I'd be lying if I said all the changes of the past 11 years have been good and easy. There's been a lot of innocence lost (starting a couple weeks after my move with September 11th, 2001). There have been broken friendships, broken relationships, broken dreams, broken promises, and broken hearts all along my path. There has been disappointment, discouragement, depression, and defeat. However, these things all generally eventually contribute to more personal growth. They are the necessary evils that teach me new things, call me to a higher standard, build character, require me to love even when it hurts, remind me that life without risk is life without passion, inspire me & help me to inspire others, shift my goals & intensify my drive to achieve them, and increase my confidence as I conquer one trial after another.
My life since 2001 has held an abundance of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Luckily, 11 years ago, it never occurred to me that anything but good would await me. Thank God for that innocence. I hadn't a clue about what I'd encounter on the road stretched out before me. And if I'd known about the bad & the ugly, I might have crawled into my parents' Intrepid and asked them to take me home. And oh, what I would have missed... Some might call my blind optimism blissful ignorance, but I'd like to correct them. As my wise freshman roommate Sarah once distinguished, "Ignorance is not knowing what you should, and innocence is not knowing what you shouldn't." On August 19, 2001, I was as innocent as I'd ever be again.
There's no going back to that time. There's no going back to that girl. I'm a woman now, and as desperately as I may long for that specific innocence, it's gone. If I tried to think that way again, it would no longer be innocence, but ignorance, for I know too much. At 29, the innocence of an 18 year old is unrealistic. But perhaps innocence as we know it just changes shapes as we grow up, and maybe, just maybe, not all is lost.
After all, I am no longer 18, but I am only 29. And here I sit again, on August 19, the road of life stretched out before me and not a clue as to what I'll encounter as I travel it. So the best I can do is pray for the appropriate amount of 29-year-old innocence to give me the courage to move forward from where I stand today. I pray for the optimism of timely innocence to keep me from running away from life's adventures. And I pray that in 2023, I can sit down and say, "I'm so glad I took that chance at 29! I'm not sure if I could do it today, but I guess 11 years ago I was just innocent enough to be blindly optimistic. For that optimistic innocence led me to the happiness I know today."
I type this blog at my home in Nashville - sitting next to a slightly more advanced cell phone with the same phone # I was given 11 years ago - having not only relished in the good, but having survived the bad & the ugly. As I type and reflect, I am moved to tears by how much I love this city, and the life I've made here. I wouldn't trade a moment of it for choosing the "safe" route. And I wouldn't have wanted to spend the last 11 years anywhere else in the whole world. I adore this city. I am grateful for my life. And I can't wait to see what happens next.
