We just got back from a long weekend in Nashville, and I keep trying to hold onto it — like if I sit still long enough, maybe I’ll hear a lyric echo from a corner stage again, smell the sweet and smoky BBQ scent wafting through the air, or feel the hush of that moment in the Grand Ole Opry when the lights dimmed and silence said, “Pay attention.”
It’s always the same with us — our trips are built around music and food, like that’s how we were meant to travel through life. Not by highway signs or GPS coordinates, but by harmonies, jazz chords, and sauce-smudged menus. So it wasn’t a surprise that we spent our days wandering from stage to stage and plate to plate, soaking in sound and flavor.
We posted up at places like Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, Blake Shelton’s Ole Red, and Assembly Food Hall — where you can get everything from live music to Nashville hot chicken and bacon cheddar grits at Hattie B’s, or 100-layer donuts at Five Daughters Bakery. Flaky, rich, and impossibly layered from croissant dough — all without ever leaving the building. These are the kinds of places where people are still chasing it — still cutting their musical teeth, hoping tonight’s the night someone notices. People who haven’t made it yet — but you feel in your bones that they could. They’re out there every night, pouring heart and story into songs in front of a crowd that might not even be listening, and still, they give it all. Watching that unfold, up close, feels sacred.
At the Country Music Hall of Fame, I expected rhinestones and plaques — and sure, they’re there — but I ended up being enamoured with the notebooks. Page after page of handwritten lyrics: crossed-out lines, messy edits, tempo markings, alternate endings. Famous songs that didn’t start famous. They started unfinished. Uncertain. Inked with doubt and trial and error. Scribbled in hotel rooms, kitchens, buses, and probably the backs of napkins.
Just think. Everything we love — every polished, chart-topping, harmony-soaked song — began in the margins. In the silence. In the not-yet.
Tucked among the displays, I saw a quote from Ralph Emery about Dolly Parton:
“I’ve decided that she has the brains of a computer, the heart of an artist, and the spirit of a minister.”
Yes, that is what I want. How I long to model those same characteristics: sharp and wise, endlessly creative, and deeply rooted in compassion. That kind of presence. That kind of purpose.
At the Grand Ole Opry, we listened to legends like Steven Curtis Chapman, Riders In The Sky, Ashley McBryde, Ricky Skaggs, Erin Viancourt, Connie Smith, and Vince Gill. Steven stood on stage and debuted a brand-new song he’d finished just 30 minutes before the live radio broadcast. It wasn’t perfect. It was raw, unedited, fresh from his soul. And yet, it felt like a gift — because we were there for the beginning of something. A seed, not a tree.
The moment that hit me hardest came at the Nashville Symphony during Bluebird at the Symphony — a night of stories and songs by Brett James, Hillary Lindsey, and Cary Barlowe, the names behind the songs we belt in the car and cry to in private. They write for Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson, Bon Jovi, Carrie Underwood, Kenny Chesney, Daughtry, Miranda Lambert, Taylor Swift, Backstreet Boys, Chicago, The Fray, and a million others. Between harmonies and humblebrags, Brett James said:
“I’ve written 4,600 songs in my lifetime. Only 800 have ever been recorded.”
That’s 17%.
We only ever see 17%.
I haven’t stopped thinking about that number since. Because what about the rest? The other 83%?
- The songs that weren’t quite ready.
- The ones that were personal but not marketable.
- The ones he loved but no one picked up.
- The ones he wrote just to keep going.
It sounds dramatic, maybe — but hearing that felt like setting down a weight I didn’t realize I’d been carrying. Because I know what 83% feels like.
It’s the invisible work. The slow, unglamorous grind. And most days, it doesn’t come with applause or a spotlight. But that doesn’t make it meaningless.
That makes it real.
We’re so used to celebrating the shiny parts: when someone gets promoted, published, followed, recorded, applauded. We hold up the finished product like it just materialized, and we forget — it took thousands of unseen hours to get there.
What we create, what we offer, what we build — it doesn’t need to be seen to be sacred. The quiet work holds it all up. It’s where character is forged and faith deepened. That’s what Nashville gave me. Not just a weekend of good food and great music, but a mirror. A reminder that what I do in the quiet is not wasted.
I’ve got my own crumpled-up notebooks. They just don’t always look like songs.
My notebooks look like:
- The coursework I’m chipping away at, one class at a time, telling myself, “You’re too old for this,” while whispering back, “But maybe not.”
- The writing no one sees — notes in the margins of my thoughts, late-night drafts, voice memos I start and never finish.
- The discipline it takes not just to dream of becoming something more, but to build it — day by day, decision by decision.
And if I’m honest? I don’t always feel like I’m doing enough. It seems like others are moving faster, shining brighter, becoming bolder. But this trip changed something. Because maybe the work we do in the shadows isn’t meant to be glamorous. Maybe it’s meant to be good. And good work often goes unseen.
Maybe the world only ever catches the 17% — the polished part that rises to the surface, shared in posts, projects, or conversations. But the rest? That’s where the real story lives. That’s the 83%.
And even if no one ever sees it, that quiet work shapes everything that is. It’s the foundation beneath the spotlight, the story behind the song. Uncelebrated. Unfiltered. Unseen. But not wasted. Because that’s where we grow — in the slow, steady work no one claps for. In the early mornings, the late nights, the drafts we don’t finish, and the dreams we don’t quit.
Growth doesn’t shout. It whispers. It roots itself in the ordinary. It rises quietly — one choice, one effort, one unseen step at a time. That’s the work that shapes us. That’s the work that matters. Not because it’s perfect, but because it’s becoming.
Rachel L. Richard is a small-town farm girl turned suburbanite, a delightfully irreverent optimist, Mrs & Mama, floppy dog ear scratcher, lifelong learner, channel surfer, wanderer, believer, occasional creative, out-of-practice musician, cupcake addict, book devourer, and lover of all people.
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