One More Time...7/16/2024  Thursday evening I drove to New Orleans for my last jazz gig before maternity leave. This one was special because it was celebrating Bastille Day 2024 (the French national holiday, which occurs each year on July 14th) with the Consulate General of France in Louisiana. What a privilege to be a part of the Louisiana French community and to get to sing/play our history and unique connection to the Francophone world through music. Thank you to Adam Bock--a very talented, New Orleans-based guitarist and instructor at Loyola University--for joining me for this performance. With gratitude, Ashley P.S. While I'm in the last few weeks of preparation to bring a human baby into the world, I have also been nurturing a "musical baby." Be the first to PRE-SAVE my newest single, "Be My Baby," which will be released on your favorite streaming platforms Thursday, July 25th! PRE-SAVE IT NOW! 
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Start What You Want to Finish7/2/2024 In order to finish something later, you have to start it now! This time last year I made a conscious effort to practice my leadership skills as President of GSU Toastmasters Baton Rouge. I'm proud to say that my term was a successful one and just wrapped up on June 30th! In that time, as a club we achieved the President’s Distinguished Award for the 20th year in a row (so needless to say this group is a well-oiled machine). My main duties were keeping the course steady and the positive energy flowing along with a stellar team of fellow officers who truly pulled most of the weight as we celebrated and overcame challenges by working together. Here are a few words of wisdom I kept in mind throughout the year that may help you on your own leadership/confidence/life journey:
A big thank you to ALL our GSU club members for working with me to set an example of how learning things that scare you can still be fun, and best wishes to the new officer team for 2024-2025! What is one project or goal you'd like to finish by next summer that you could start working on now? In the meantime, wishing you and your family a relaxing and fun July 4th holiday! Ashley  Big Changes Ahead6/25/2024 Last week I had the pleasure of playing a luau celebration at Barclay House of Baton Rouge. It was a fun evening of tropical tunes from the Hawaiian islands and beyond! After the performance, one assisted living resident rolled up to me with her walker and said, “I visited Hawaii 40 years ago with my late husband and had a wonderful time. Thank you for helping me relive those memories tonight.” It was also lovely to see so many familiar faces for my last gig at Portobello's (Bocage) Friday night. Thank you to everyone who came out to wish Baby O and me well! I will still be cantoring at churches and for occasional funerals through the month of July but am pausing most other (more physically intensive) gigs during this time. However, if you'd like to book me for an event in Fall 2024 or later, please reach out soon for best availability! To stay in touch with the rest of our pregnancy journey, follow me on social media:
With gratitude, Ashley  One Last Evening at Portobello's6/12/2024 We got word this week that Portobello's has decided not to continue its live music as of July 2024, so my LAST NIGHT will be Friday, June 21, from 6pm to 9pm. This is, of course, disappointing news since I truly enjoyed playing there and received so many positive comments from patrons. A big THANK YOU to everyone who came out to dine, visit me, and enjoy the music! I'll be going on maternity leave soon (so the timing is strangely convenient), but I'm grateful to have been a part of this fun, local jazz effort for the last few months. If you'd like to come out one more time, June 21st may be my LAST SOLO PUBLIC PERFORMANCE in Baton Rouge before Baby O arrives! With gratitude, Ashley  I love what I do. AND, what I do scares me on a regular basis. Yes, you read that right: MY WORK SCARES ME. Because in order to do what I do, I have to consistently face my biggest fears: self-doubt and imposter syndrome. I used to struggle alone, thinking that successful professionals, creatives, and high achievers didn't second-guess themselves. I used to wait for everything to be perfect--to be able to check off ALL the required boxes before I began. Now I know that the most successful people in any field are the ones who:
My life is so different now because I strive to live into these characteristics, to BE the version of me who consistently takes small risks and makes bold actions (1% growth daily really adds up over time). Leaning INTO my struggles instead of running AWAY from them made all the difference. That's one reason why I'm so grateful for opportunities to share about the importance of mental fitness with fellow creatives, and for this incredible review from a recent speaking engagement! (Check out the full review at AshleyOrlando.com.) “[Ashley’s] dynamic speaking style and infectious enthusiasm drew us all in from the moment she took the stage. But…it was the depth of insight she brought to the table that truly blew me away. With a perfect balance of personal anecdotes, psychological research, and practical tips, Ashley provided us with invaluable tools for overcoming self-doubt and unlocking our full potential…If you ever have the opportunity to hear her speak, do yourself a favor and jump at the chance. You won’t regret it!” - Barb Braud, Sr. Art Director, Lamar Graphics Be bold. Find 1 action that can help you grow 1% today. Then take that step, and repeat daily. With gratitude, Ashley  Weathering the Storm5/27/2024  Sometimes life happens so strangely, yet coincidentally that I have to laugh.
A couple weeks ago at Toastmasters, the lights at the Bluebonnet Library started flickering just as we were starting our meeting. Then they went out entirely. Then our phones started shrieking: “Dangerous weather alert!!!” I wondered, “Should we cancel?” The security guard looked at me and said, “I wouldn’t want to be outside in this.” When the library staff started sending ALL library patrons into our meeting room to shelter in place (it was the one room in the library without windows), that made the decision clear: we’d continue as best we could using our phones as flashlights. As the first speaker for the night, the whole premise of my speech project was “Managing a Difficult Audience,” so 4 or 5 people had been pre-selected by another member to “distract me” in various ways while I spoke. But since it was pretty dark and we had so many unexpected guests in the room, I couldn’t tell who was trying to distract me ON PURPOSE and who was distracting me BY ACCIDENT. It was both challenging and exhilarating to deliver a 12-minute extemporaneous speech to an audience of shadows while handling auditory AND semi-visual distractions left and right—a very real-world scenario that I would have been absolutely terrified to tackle just a few years ago. After an hour, the major wind threat passed and the library decided to close early, so we ended our meeting early, too. But I’m very proud of our GSU Toastmasters members for stepping up to this unexpected challenge and making a bit of lemonade out of a tricky situation! As we walked out the door, one of the librarians even said, “I’m so glad I finally got to attend a meeting! I’ve wanted to for years, but I’m always at the desk on Monday nights.” This will definitely go down as one of the most memorable Toastmasters meetings I’ve ever attended. If you’ve been meaning to work on your speaking/leadership/ feedback skills or are curious to check out Toastmasters in general, guests are always welcome! Our GSU club meets weekly on Mondays from 7pm to 8:30pm at the Bluebonnet Regional Library in Baton Rouge, but you can find a full directory of Toastmasters club meeting dates, times and locations worldwide at Toastmasters.org. And we’ll ALMOST ALWAYS leave the light on for ya! With gratitude, Ashley Last Week in Houston Was a Dream...5/15/2024 I'm still processing it all (more than one person has asked me, "How in the world did you get to open for JAKE SHIMABUKURO?!?!?!?). haha. I am so grateful to:
Click the image below so see a short backstage video of how it all went down. With gratitude, Ashley  If You Had 100 Days...5/1/2024 Last week I opened up my What to Expect pregnancy app to see a startling number: "100 days" (until Baby O arrives). I thought, "100 days???? There's so much left to do professionally (ex. wrapping up a few projects, preparing for maternity leave) and personally (ex. finishing the nursery, purchasing necessary baby items, etc.)" But there it was, plain as pudding, staring at me on my smartphone screen: 100 days (unless he decides to show up early, of course) Thankfully, the words of my voice coach Tom popped into my head as I remembered him telling me to "Focus on connection, not perfection." The more I thought about it, the more I realized that my body has been doing this naturally as my belly grows--gradually slowing me down to connect to the present moment and listen to what my body needs. I realized that it's time to trust my instincts and actually started looking forward to those 100 days of THIS VERSION of my life as I mapped out the priorities to tackle in that timeframe. What would you do if you knew you had 100 days before a major (positive but life-altering) change? How would you prepare? And looking back from the future, what would your elder, wiser self say is most important? With gratitude, Ashley P.S. We had a great time celebrating my mom's 70th birthday last weekend!  Thanks for the L-O-V-E!4/22/2024 Like a butterfly released from its cocoon, “L-O-V-E” is out in the world today! It's amazing how long it took me to release this single (recorded Spring 2023 at Rabadash Studios in Covington), but that just goes to show you that even I am and always will be a work-in-progress on TAKING POWERFUL ACTION :) Thank you so much for your support! Stream my new single "L-O-V-E" here. With gratitude, Ashley  Your Worst Nightmare4/9/2024 Last Friday I received a $5-off loyalty coupon from my favorite Louisiana-based coffee company. I thought, "That's unusual, but how cool!" Then Saturday afternoon I got another email from them. It said, "We're so sorry--we sent that coupon in error!" :/ Can you imagine the business nightmare this created? That $5-off email likely went out to thousands of customers and could quickly become an expensive mistake. But subconsciously, people DISLIKE LOSING THINGS even more than they LIKE GAINING THEM--not a good situation to put loyal patrons in... Then I thought about the unknown human behind this blunder and wondered, "How horrible they must have felt when they realized and had to admit their mistake..." Ouch! Have you ever made a public mistake you wished you could take back? Me too. This little business snafu reminded me of a recurring nightmare I used to have: I'd be singing at an unfamiliar church, step up to the microphone, and suddenly something would go VERY wrong--ex. I'd have no lyrics in front of me, or I wouldn't be able to read the notes on the page, or I'd hear an unfamiliar song and have no idea where to begin. The feeling of panic as 827 pairs of human eyes stare expectantly at you is enough to tie anyone's stomach into knots. Night after night, this nightmare woke me in a cold sweat. But you never know how a nightmare really feels until it comes true. One day (in real life) I stepped up to the microphone at a FAMILIAR church with a FAMILAR pianist to sing a FAMILAR hymn--so familiar that we didn't bother to rehearse the intro like usual. We just mentally checked it off the list and moved on. But as soon as the service started and that hymn began, I noticed my sheet music was completely different than what the pianist was playing. What do you think my brain signaled in that moment? RED ALERT!!! My heart started pounding. Like a NASCAR pit crew lead, I only had 7-seconds to decide what to do and implement. Then the voice of my high school drama teacher, Ms. Butler, popped into my head. She said, "The show must go on!" And I started to sing. Thank goodness there's no record of what came out of my mouth that day.
Yes, it was messy, but I pulled through and lived to tell the tale (the pianist apologized later, saying, "Sorry! I accidentally played the wrong arrangement of the song!"). But the BEST part about living my WORST nightmare was that my recurring dream stopped. My subconscious had learned that even in a worst-case scenario, I could survive. SOMETIMES YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE IS YOUR BEST CHANCE TO GROW. And you can bet your bottom dollar that from then on, I made it a habit to ALWAYS rehearse intros (at least) with my accompanist so we could catch that kind of mistake in the future BEFORE it went public :) Now in case you're wondering what happened with that coffee chain I mentioned earlier... In their 2nd email, they apologized AND offered me a $1 coupon. I thought, "Ouch. But $1 off is better than nothing!" I liked that this gesture symbolized a sincere apology--they mitigated the financial damage but didn't completely let themselves off the hook for the error. Today, I passed by one of their coffee shops and decided to redeem my $1 coupon. And as I type this, I am delightfully sipping my slightly-less-expensive frozen frappe :D I invite you to think about a worst-case scenario you dread experiencing. Imagine it in your mind. And if you notice that you, too, are:
What would happen if you stopped running AWAY and started running TOWARD it? How could you embrace and possibly learn from it instead? BECAUSE SOMETIMES YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE IS YOUR BEST CHANCE TO GROW. With gratitude, Ashley P.S. I've also decided to stop running away from releasing my music on streaming (it can be scary to put new recordings out into the world), so you can now pre-save my first single, "L-O-V-E," which drops April 22!  AuthorAshley Orlando is a jazz vocalist/ukulele artist and joyologist on a mission to help 1 million women find their voice through music, inspiring stories, and communication skills. Archives
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