Today was a weird one! I spent a lot of the day trying to figure out the reason behind the way I was feeling. I tried talking it through with several friends, and got several different (and equally valid) perspectives on the issue. Basically, I woke up with a feeling of dread hanging over my head. No matter what I did or how I tried to think through anything that’s on my mind, it wouldn’t go away for what felt like forever.

I had a really nice lunch with Lindsay, and that conversation helped. She’s the absolute best.

Here’s the deal:

I’m leaving town tomorrow for a three-day music festival. Festivals haven’t been a big part of my life for a few years now, but they sure were for a really long time. Kellie and I started attending the Hillside Festival in Guelph, Ontario sometime in the late 90s or early 2000s. We went to that each summer for 10-15 years, and that was a huge thing for us. The thing that broke that tradition was when Kellie’s grandmother died. She had been the only one we trusted to watch our dogs, and without her, it meant that any trips we took we needed to bring them with us. Going to Canada felt impossible without a dog-sitter, and so we stopped heading up there. That was a big loss, but Sage and Ivy were far more important to us than going to concerts.

But now Kellie’s gone. And now I have an incredible dog-sitter, as well as a whole bunch of incredible friends who I trust to care for the dogs when I’m not around. So I’m heading to Buffalo for a music festival and that feels very, very odd.

Music (especially live music) is a real source of joy to me. Going to a concert is such a joyful sensory experience—if food at an excellent restaurant is your favorite thing, consider music festivals a banquet or maybe a chef’s tasting menu for me. I was thinking about comparing it a buffet, but I’ve never enjoyed a buffet as much as other people do. And these days, it’s hard for me to think about eating at a buffet as anything other than a game of viral Russian Roulette. Gross.

But music festivals are a chance to watch a bunch of bands, eat some great food, and roam around for several days of just prioritizing the experience. If I don’t like a band, guess what? There are four more playing soon! It’s a special place for me, generally.

A few months ago, I started considering what it might feel like to go to a music festival on my own. It sounded like a stretch for me—I was still very early in my grief, and was trying to figure out what I might need in my life. I didn’t have a dog-sitter, I didn’t have the money for a hotel, and my parents were living with me. I had no clue what life might look like in the future. It was June-ish. I had decided that prioritizing concerts was going to be part of something I wanted to explore. But heading out of town for three days of that experience all on my own seemed like a tall order.

I was researching shows by one specific musician and started thinking about the festival idea again when I saw he was playing the Borderland Festival outside Buffalo in September. Those tickets cost about the same as the solo shows with him, and I would get to see a whole lot of other artists that were also favorites! So I bought myself a VIP pass and trusted that things would work out for me to be in a place to be ready by the time September rolled around.

And now it’s September. I’ll be driving to Buffalo tomorrow morning and going to Borderland for three days of the first music festival I’ve done in at least a decade. 31 bands, and a VIP pass. I’m doing it alone. I have one friend who’s staying with the dogs at my house all weekend, I have a second friend who’s checking in on them on Saturday afternoon, and I have Ashley coming to check in on them Friday night. My ticket and hotel room are both paid for. I’m packed and the car is loaded up. All of those things are true, and yet I’m feeling full of anxiety about this trip! Aren’t brains weird?

I know that I’ve thought through mostly everything I need to solve prior to this trip. I know that it’ll be okay if I forgot anything small. I know that I absolutely love a bunch of the bands that will be playing. I know the dogs will be okay and that I’m not over-extended financially. There’s no reason for me to be nervous right now, but my body doesn’t know that.

I think it’s likely that my body feels like I’m back in mid-June. I feel like it’s so strange to not have Kellie packing (that was her thing). I feel like everything will go wrong and that everything will suck and that I’ll miss my bed and my friends and my puppies and that everything will be awful. But I know none of those things are real, they’re just my brain and body playing tricks on me. I’ve come so far! This is a new situation and a new thing for me. I also have a whole bunch of supports in my life who didn’t exist in the same way back in June.

So I’m going to push forward. I’m going to try and sleep as well as I can tonight. I’m going to do my best to have an awesome time, and I think it’ll be incredible.

I’ll write more sometime this weekend, or perhaps on Monday. But this is a big deal for me. I’ll see you on the other side of this new milestone!

Fingers crossed for an amazing weekend (for you and me),

Matt

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What We Can

My Brain Needs to Chill Out