Hey friends. I’m still here. I know I haven’t written anything in a while and I honestly have no excuses. I just didn’t feel like it I guess.
I actually typed this up last week and forgot to post it, so it’s going up a little late. (Please forgive me!)
I’m here now though with a cool update. Since I work for iHeart Media (old news), I was chosen to work on the digital team at the iHeart Country Festival in Austin this past weekend. I had actually been waiting for over a month to find out if I’d be able to work it and was scared to get hopeful in the instance that I wasn’t selected. Luckily, I was. I was thrilled (to say the least).
This year’s iHeart Country festival featured artists such as: Tim McGraw, Florida Georgia Line, Luke Combs, Little Big Town, Old Dominion, Dan + Shay, Chris Janson, and so many more.
The morning of the festival, my coworker and I left from San Antonio at 8am and made our way to Austin. Once we were there and checked into our hotel for the night, we went to the venue. Before this, I really had no clue as to how these types of things worked, but I learned quick. We got there around 10:30 am, helped to set up the media room (or War Room, as it was called) and looked around the venue. We were given “All Access” passes, so as the name suggests, nowhere was off limits. We wandered around a but to try to get a sense of where everything is at since we would be moving around a lot throughout the day and didn’t want to get lost.
During the day at the venue, there’s a thing called the Daytime Village. There are lower-level artists performing here from 2-5p. My group of girls was in charge of tweeting on the iHeart Country and iHeart Media Twitter accounts. We were trying to get #iHeartCountry trending! (We did.) That part of the day was really cool because we got to hang out with the artists backstage before they went on. The performers during this segment were: Russel Dickerson, Michael Ray, Lauren Alaina, Locash, and Morgan Wallen. I hadn’t heard of any of them before that day, but they all did fantastic jobs during their performances.
After that, I had some free time so I popped into the stadium during Luke Combs’ sound check and holy moly. Y’all, he sounds just as amazing live as he does on all of his recorded songs. I sat in an empty arena and listened to him for 15 minutes or so and I absolutely fell in love with his voice. (How could I not?! I basically got a private performance of Beautiful Crazy.) It was absolutely amazing. Things like that are what made the stress and exhaustion of the day entirely worth it. Believe me, although it was unbelievably cool and fun, it was also plenty stressful and exhausting. (Think: standing from 10am-12am with little breaks.)
When the doors opened and the nighttime shows started with the big artists, I spend the first few performances in the War Room working from there. When Dan + Shay came on though, I made sure to take off and catch them since they are my absolute favorites. They also sound absolutely phenomenal live–everyone did. During the rest of the festival, I responded to fans on the iHeart Country Twitter account and posted Instagram stories on the KJ97 account. It was insanely fun and we just got to run around getting content from wherever we wanted (red carpet, the floor of the arena, backstage, etc.). Hanging out in the red carpet area while the artists were in there was one of my favorite things.
So yeah. That was my day last Saturday. It was one of the best experiences of my life and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Absolute 10/10 experience.
Head to my Highlights on my Instagram profile to check out some of the footage from this spectacular day.
Take a hot bath. Don’t be afraid to use that bath bomb you’ve been saving for a “special occasion.” Now is a special occasion. Treat yo’ self. (Throw on a face mask as well if you’re feelin’ bold.)
I am fully aware of the fact that 2019 is well under-way and it’s a bit late to be doing a 2019 Resolution blog, but oh well. (Or am I still in the correct timeframe? I don’t know!) Regardless, I had been wanting to do a blog about my resolutions for the new year for a long time and I even had notes about what to write in a note on my phone. I’m so prepared, I know!
Christmas was a few days ago and New Year’s Eve is in another 3 days. It’s that weird time of the year where there are just so many holidays and festivities happening and it’s rather overwhelming. I realized that, over the course of a week, I was going to be traveling between cities like an absurd amount. It’s exhausting and I am going to need some well-deserved down time after all the holidays are over.
Sunday’s activities consisted of the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, tooling around in Brooklyn, and walking to 
Monday. Monday was spectacular. We had front row seats at the US Open in the Louis Armstrong stadium all day long. I watched Nishikori’s sweat drip off him as he beat Kohlschreiber as well as having the same intense view watching 2014 US Open winner, Cilic beat Goffin later that day. Of course, I watched some women’s tennis too and let me tell you, women’s tennis is much more intense when you’re basically sitting on the court. Some other big names you might recognize that we watched play on other courts: Nadal, Federer, Millman, Sharapova, Djokovic, and so many more. It was a spectacularly long 14 hour day, but it was the experience of a lifetime.
So you know what they say? Two steps forward, one step back? I long-jumped backwards. In my defense though, I had been running at a full sprint forwards for a while so I guess it caught up to me a bit. Performing as perfectly as possible forever isn’t realistic, I guess.
AnnaMerissa 