cayla brooke

I made myself a promise when I started taking YouTube seriously.

One video a week for a year.

Gulp.

Not because I thought I’d be brilliant every Tuesday. Please. I’m still figuring…

I was about eight years old when I saw Funny Girl on television.

Gobsmacked.

I wanted to be Fanny Brice. I wanted to join the Ziegfeld Follies. I wanted to speak with a Brooklyn accent.

Normal childhood goals, obviously.

Here’s…

One of My Worst Gig Stories as a Working Musician

There are gigs you remember because they were magical.

And then there are the others. My worst gig ever happened when I was hired to sing jazz in an old…

Shangri-La Paradise

If you’d rather watch, here’s the full video.

I sang this for the first time at the Yardbird in Edmonton.

A proper listening room. The kind where people actually sit and hear you.

The song started out of…

For a long time, quarterly planning mostly meant work to me.
Projects. Deadlines. Gigs. The practical stuff.

I still plan those things.
But somewhere along the way, I realized that if I only planned the work, I could end up…

Some weeks fill up quickly.

A gig to play. Another one to prepare for. Piano practice. Bookkeeping.

Left on its own, a week like that can feel draining.

That’s usually when I pull out a simple page I call the…

The need for perfection still shows up in my body.

No matter how much inner work I do, that voice still tries to convince me I’m not ready to be seen yet.

If you’d rather watch, here’s the full video.

Some songs come out of joy.
This one didn’t.

“Freedom” was written during my Vancouver years when everything felt louder. More divided. More tense. I remember watching the news and thinking, this is not sitting right.

I didn’t want to…

Taking 30 Days Off Social Media as an Artist

If you’d rather watch than read, you can see the companion video here: [link to video]

I recently took 30 days off social media.

Not because I had a master plan.

…

There comes a point in life when you stop chasing love.

Not because you’ve sworn it off.

Because you’re tired.

If you’d rather watch, here’s the full lyric video.

Turns out love doesn’t always listen when you say you’re done.

…

How I Plan to Feed My Soul So It Actually Happens

If I don’t plan what feeds my soul, it doesn’t happen.
Life fills the space every time.

That’s why I plan for joy, connection, creativity, and rest the same…

Some songs take months.
Fortune Cookie took about ten minutes.

I wrote Fortune Cookie as part of a songwriting challenge, and it became one of the most playful songs I have released as an independent singer-songwriter.

The prompt was simple…