Hey y’all!
I’m Jessamyn Orchard. I live in the US Midwest and I am a musician. Over the course of my adult life, I’ve had a myriad of experiences and jobs—I like to do new things and I love a good challenge. That said, I was a high school English teacher for four years, a Reports Analyst for a marketing company, a manager of a vape shop, a blogger, and most recently—a full-time musician. I’ve been a barista and I’ve been a telemarketer, too.
I’m just out here diversifying the ole portfolio.
I am engaged to my amazing partner, we have been together for ten years, who I refer to on here as The Scientist. The Scientist is awesome and helps support me and my creative endeavors so much on the daily and I support the home by cooking and cleaning (general housewifery), and if I’m not doing those things, I’m assuredly playing music, learning something new, studying the Bible, making art, or writing. I’m always drinking coffee, and I’m super passionate about Third Wave coffee (more on that below), and brewing and enjoying good coffee is also a primary hobby of mine.
I was introduced to the “other” platform in the fall of 2016 and immediately found an amazing home and community here. I was part of the OG Open Mic community, I shared a ton of music, blogged with life randomness, made art, took photographs of Weird Plastic Baby, and really desired to bring all of my friends on board to such a great platform. That’s how @jasonrussell ended up here, and I’m super proud of his accomplishments here and love how his successes have surpassed my own. He used to come to me for questions—and now it’s the opposite! I love it.
I attended the first meetup in Kansas City, Missouri a few years ago, and I was a part of the organizing team behind the first Ozarks meetup in Springfield, Missouri. It was definitely an exciting time, and I’m looking forward to more community and more excitement in our new home on Hive.
During my original tenure on the platform, I was using and abusing a myriad of drugs. Just gonna be honest with that: I was pretty messed up most of the time. I’d gone through a bunch of life stuff during that time—a bunch of my friends died in a short amount of time from various things—my grandmothers passed away, too. I was really angry, and really sad, and used lots of drugs to try and make that pain go away.
But all it did was make me angry, honestly. That anger eventually resulted in my leaving the platform—which was, in retrospect, really stupid. But, live and learn, I suppose. Maybe it was better that I took a step away, because at the time, all my blogging was doing was feeding my anger and giving me more reasons to be angry. I needed a perspective shift, and I eventually received that, thank God.
My addictions were spiraling out of control, with the climax being over the course of last summer (Summer 2019) where I was spending most of my days drunk and high. I literally think I was high for close to 10 years. Last summer is when I started daily day-drinking. While I’d had run-ins with pills over the years, I had, for the most part, kicked those habits, and was only smoking weed and occasionally drinking. Last summer, though, I started going kayaking pretty much as an excuse to drink. It started out as a casual thing, and then it ended up with me just staying drunk from noon until I passed out. I was driving drunk home from the lake after my kayak trips, I was cutting myself accidentally while making dinner, I was slipping on the hardwood floors by 6pm, and I was passing out before 9. My memories of last summer are pretty sordid—I cried a lot; I was angry most of the time. I was sad all of the time. I just didn’t want to be happy.
I started writing a poem cycle as a love song to death, and I was idealizing suicide a lot. I started to feel like the feeling of wanting to die was my normal, and really started to settle into the fact that I just wanted to die.
During this time, though, some things started to change. Even though I was raised in church, was a youth pastor and music minister in my college days, and have a degree from a Christian university, over the course of my adult life, I’d moved my heart away from the Lord and placed it on a big ole pile of anger. The church had disappointed me—people had disappointed me—and I just allowed myself to be pushed away. I started thinking about this, and things started changing.
Toward the end of the summer, I decided to get sober. Like totally sober. No weed, no booze—only my own brain and my own issues. I forced myself to face a lot of the things that had been making me angry, and my hard heart started to soften a bit. I cried a lot, but they were different tears. I was actually, legitimately, allowing myself to feel things again. It was overwhelming. I was going through withdrawals and feeling a lot of things. I grew a lot, though. What started out as just a simple “life reset” has turned into a full-on lifestyle change.
I started reading my Bible again. I started praying again, and last October, I rededicated my life to Jesus and found some amazing support through some recovery ministries where I live. Life is very different for me now. For the first time in a long time, I can legitimately say that life is good. It still feels a little weird that I can even conceptualize that thought, let alone actually feel it for real—but that’s where I am now. Life is good, and reconnecting with my God has been the most positive thing in my life. I’m sober for over 6 months at this point, and while I do not feel that a person ever fully “recovers” from addiction, I am in recovery, and that feels good, too. My head isn’t the most fun place to be at all times, but it’s real, and I’m experiencing life in its fullest form again.
I came back to the platform a couple of months ago because I wanted to start writing an extended blog to accompany my new podcast, Fumbling Toward Jesus, and I’ve been doing that here since then. You can check out the first two episodes on my blog and on DSound. I’m super stoked about this project, as I’m not the “typical” Christian—because I’m still the me I’ve always been and I’m really liberal and accepting and loving toward people. I’m about the least judgmental person you could meet. We all struggle, and I’m in no place to preach at anyone, rather, I just want to share how my life has changed and maybe inspire others to have some hope. It’s a passion of mine to be the kind of Christian I needed in my life 15 years ago, and I hope to bring that forward through the podcast and the topics we discuss therein. It’s about encouragement and hope. Those are things I needed more of in my life over the past few years, so I really want to bring that to y’all through this little ministry.
► Listen on DSound
► Listen from source (IPFS)
I also have an open-forum for prayer requests if you ever have them. I believe in prayer, and on Wednesdays I have started a call-out initiative on Hive for your prayer requests. I’d love to pray for you for any needs you may have in your life, so if you ever have those—please don’t hesitate to hit me up either in the comments or at [email protected].
I also review coffees and plan to do some more stuff about brewing coffee and different methods under my Coffee Critic Culture project, with tips and tricks—and of course, I’m still playing music.
Yesterday, I started messing around with my song “Be Satisfied,” which is on my EP Consequences, which was actually shared with this community even before it was released in January of 2018. It’s been a while since I’ve churned out any new original material, and I wanted to challenge myself to remix one of my acoustic songs. I work exclusively on iOS devices, as I do not have a real computer, so I am a bit limited in my resources, but I like the challenge of making it work with the resources I have.
So, what started out yesterday afternoon as just messing around with my midi keyboard and playing with “Be Satisfied,” turned into a full remix. I did this long-form in GarageBand, and the only programmed/sampled elements are two of the four drum tracks. Everything else was recorded into the iPad DAW and then mixed and automated over the course of about 9 hours.
I’m working on remixes to some of my acoustic tracks while in isolation. This one came together over the course of a day, and it’s the first time I’ve ever actually finished a track like this. I hope you dig it, and welcome any feedback you might have. Even though I’ve produced some electronic tracks in the past (I have a side project called Electronic Cassette that I also introduced on the platform a couple of years ago), this is the first time I’m actually completed a remix of one of my own acoustic songs.
► Listen on DSound
► Listen from source (IPFS)
So...I guess that’s me. I could go on about stuff, but I have a tendency to ramble (if you couldn’t already tell). I just really appreciate the communities here, I’m excited to be a part of OCD, and I’m just generally excited about the move to Hive. I’ve always had a lot of faith in the people involved in this community, and I’m really looking forward to sharing and growing more with you all. Much love. <3
Thanks for reintroducing yourself and being honest about where you were and where you are now in life. I look forward to hearing more from you as you fumble towards Jesus.
Thanks for your support, man. I really have always felt the freedom to be vulnerable in this community, for better or worse, and I appreciate the open arms with which I’ve been accepted back into the fold. It’s inspiring, and I just really love sharing with y’all. Sometimes I think the community here just understands me more than most people, and that feels good—especially for a person who feels generally misunderstood most of the time. It’s a great sounding board, and I’m really thankful for people like you who encourage and support my ramblings and my fumblings. <3
We love you JESSO! Glad you're here in isolation with us!
Dude, you have no idea how much I appreciate you and your friendship. I also think it’s so cool we have this blockchain community in common. I’m so happy you stuck with it through it all and all that you’ve accomplished on the platform. Super proud of you. Love what you bring to the table, and love y’all! So very much! Hug Mel for me! <3
I will for sure! Tell The Scientist hello us ;)
Hi @jessamynorchard, welcome to Hive!
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tank you for sarin te story
broken keyboard lol