Used to being big fishes in small ponds, most come to Nashville with a “plan” that all but guarantees their place next to Luke Bryan. Emboldened by admirably ludicrous degrees of self-belief, we throw ourselves in the general direction of show business, hearts worn defiantly on sleeves, primed to receive the glorious inevitable.

Of course, things seldom work out that way. Dreams change. Some lie in tatters. Mostly though, the road we thought led to a certain place ends up taking us somewhere different and wonderful.

The key is gratitude - to our younger selves, for proffering middle digits and dreaming preposterous dreams, and to who we are now, for sifting through a haystack’s worth of chaos to find that needle of truth.