If you want to get to know Jenny Dinh really well, you’re going to have to steal her songbook. Or crack open and probe her MacBook Pro.
Either one will work.
The black top wire-bound Steno Book is a microcosm of the bashful 17-year-old, who stands at 5 feet tall.
Dinh carries it wherever she goes, but she’s not obvious about it.
She doesn’t let her “diary” see much light, but she’ll remove it from shelter and bring it into the open when she has an idea to add. However, when there are others around, Dinh will use her agenda and then transcribe the idea later when she’s alone. That means you’re going to have to push past her and tunnel through books, notebooks, and art supplies in her muted silver backpack to reach the elusive little black book.
Stealing Dinh’s MacBook Pro won’t be much easier.
Infiltrating the lyrical soul of Dinh means infiltrating her room, which will take some work.
After jetting down Miller Road and taking a pair of turns, you’re going to have to stroll past her mother, Amy, at the front door of the reddish house and dart up the stairs on your left. If you make it that far, you can turn right and, lo and behold, you’ve got it.
Now that you have one, or both, of Dinh’s treasures, you’re going to have to sift through them.
Once you flip back the worn cover of the coveted Steno Book, you’ll find featherweight vertical pages which are divided by a red center line. The first 16 pages have writing on them, with a song title written in the upper left-hand corner, a personal note scribbled in the upper-right hand corner, and handfuls of stanzas and choruses precisely placed on the page.
If you have the 13-inch laptop, you’ll find Dinh’s newer creations on various documents. They mean more to her because they’re more recent and advanced than the songs in the Steno Book.
Even after you’ve stolen her things, Dinh still would rather have you see her perform the songs with emotion rather than just glancing over them on paper or a computer screen. That means you’re going to have to do some stalking.
Dinh joins a line of musicians who perform at Potbelly Sandwich Shop locations across America. If you want to see the documents from her MacBook come to life (and maybe even a few pages from her songbook), you’re going to have to catch her singing and playing her guitar at the Potbelly on Randall Road on Saturday nights, or Friday nights when she’s busy.
After you’ve read and heard the songs, you’ll truly know the girl who keeps trying.

Dinh first started playing guitar about four and a half years ago, when she grabbed one and learned Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Follow You into the Dark” with the help of a handful of YouTube videos.
Once she got a feel for the instrument, she posted covers of songs on her YouTube channel JennyD12345. The songs were, to her surprise, well-received. After a few covers, Dinh got out from behind her webcam and took to open-mic night at Borders’ cafe, where she shakily delivered a trio of songs and, to her surprise, received an ovation. After the ovation, Dinh didn’t “feel so shaky anymore” and realized that she wanted to play music.
“I don’t even know what I’d be like if I didn’t discover this passion for music,” she said.
With country singer Taylor Swift as an inspiration, Dinh continued playing at Borders until it was liquidated. Her mom helped her find a new home for her music by scouring nearby cities for possible venues. After the hunting around and a pair of auditions, the then-sophomore Dinh had a gig as a musician at Potbelly.
“I’ve always dreamt of performing at a restaurant, but I’m not going to stop there,” Dinh said. “I have bigger dreams.”
After falling short of a first-place prize at the All Indie Music Awards in Hollywood, Calif., Dinh confidently returned home. She gained experience with Potbelly gigs and three wedding performances spanned out over the past five months. Also piled onto her résumé are the 24 times she has performed on the radio, all of which she attributes to nothing more than some good old-fashioned hard work.
“I’m doing all the things that I’ve been dreaming of doing because I’ve worked for it,” she said. “It didn’t feel like I worked for it because I had so much fun.”

You can’t have a conversation about Dinh’s music without her or her mother mentioning the word “improvement.”
When reflecting upon the past, the two both focus on how Dinh has improved her abilities. You can see this in Dinh when she looks back on her early songs, mostly those in the black Steno Book. She scrutinizes them, wondering if they’re worthy of listening to. She usually avoids those, wanting people to hear her newer, more advanced songs.
Dinh even didn’t want her story to come out in the public scope of a newspaper. She felt she’d stain the ink by being “overrated” and “not ready” to be known about.
But Dinh’s relentless emphasis on improvement hasn’t been worthless.
From taking weeks to think up songs, train toward half-hour long performances, and throw together simple melodies, Dinh can now construct her best songs in under an hour, endure three-hour long shows, and compose complex melodies. Dinh’s still looking to improve.
Those bigger dreams she mentioned earlier are a career in the industry of producing music for video games, with a job as a soloist on the side. But personally, she has a dream that focuses on others. Rather than endeavoring to pack tip money into a tiny shoebox, Dinh strives to make her songs ones in which listeners feel what she’s feeling.
If you’ve stolen Dinh’s songbook, you can finger through the sheets of paper and study her lyrics. Once you digest the gobs of information she’s confided in the Steno Book, you’ll realize that it really is her diary.
Like any other musician, Dinh expresses herself through her music. If something happens to her in her life, she’ll tell details to a few friends, but she leaves the most personal parts to herself.
That’s where the music comes in.
Dinh enjoys being clandestine behind her music. She doesn’t like to brag, and she probably won’t even tell you her story. But when she does get her story out, she wants it to benefit others.
“I to keep trying different things and you find something that you like, even if you’re really bad at it, just keep trying.”
If you give it a shot, you might even end up just like her.
Except, hopefully, without the stolen laptop.