I want to be very clear about something: this is out of character for me. On multiple levels.
Number one — I have been to very few concerts in my life. I came to live music late, embarrassingly late, and I am still a little annoyed at myself for all the years I missed. Because here’s what nobody tells you until you’re standing in a room with a thousand people and the music starts: it’s magic. Actual, inexplicable, why-didn’t-anyone-make-me-do-this-sooner magic. The kind that gets into your chest and stays there.
Number two — I bought these tickets months ago. Months. Which, if you know me, you know is not how I operate. I am not a plan-ahead person when it comes to my own life. I will move mountains for a client deadline. I will confirm a training session six weeks out without blinking. But put something fun on my own calendar in advance? Tell me what the weather will be like, what mood I’ll be in, whether everything will line up just right? I always convince myself it’s too hard to plan. Too many unknowns. Better to wait and see.
“I woke up excited this morning. Not for a meeting. Not for a deliverable. Just because tonight is not a regular Tuesday. I forgot how good that feels.”
But I bought the tickets. And tonight, I am going to see Melissa Etheridge at the Tarrytown Music Hall, and I have been pre-concerting all day — which is a thing I have decided is absolutely allowed and possibly mandatory.
Currently on repeat
🎵 Tomboy
If you haven’t heard this one yet, stop what you’re doing.
🎵 More Love
The title says everything. The song delivers on all of it.
Here’s the thing about almost turning 65 that nobody prepares you for: you start to understand, with real clarity, the difference between the things that fill your calendar and the things that fill your life. They are not always the same list.
I spend a lot of time thinking about work/life balance — building programs around it, talking to clients about it, writing about it. And somewhere in all that, I’ve been slow to apply it to myself. Slow to book the concert. Slow to plan the trip. Slow to put the thing that makes me excited on the calendar months in advance just because it might not be perfectly convenient when it arrives.
Well. Here I am. Outfit planned. Melissa Etheridge queued up. Ready.
If there’s anything I want you to take from this today — and it doesn’t have to be a concert, it can be anything — it’s this: book the thing. Put it on the calendar when you’re excited about it, not when you’re sure it will be convenient. The excitement you feel the morning of? That’s a gift you gave yourself months ago. Don’t be too practical to give it.
I’ll report back tomorrow. Assuming my voice holds out from singing along.
Messy, driven, and ready for tonight,
Wendy
Founder, BLI · Almost 65 · Concert outfit:
