Ermigersh you guys, I’m sorry. Well, I’m not actually sorry. I got sick for 17ish days and didn’t feel like looking at a computer, let alone forming thoughts and typing them out. My flu symptoms were over the day of the T-Swift concert, so I went, but then had a terrible cough and sore throat for another two weeks. This is already more information than you care about, so long story short Urgent Care works and I got meds and I am good now. Yay antibiotics!

So since it’s been a while, there have been a few things that have happened, though since half the time I was dead to the world, I didn’t feel like participating in things that might be deemed as ‘fun’ or ‘activities’ or anything that didn’t involve laying in bed with the lights off listening to home organization audiobooks, thinking ‘yesss… when I feel human again I’m totally going to do those things to my entryway closet’ (sickness riddled me with hilariously unachievable thoughts like that).

1. Friends and Photoshoots

So, remember way back to my last post–you know, the one where you probably thought “this chick likes herself WAY too much. And who the HELL has that many gowns when they aren’t the leader of a small to midsize nation?” Yeah, that one.

Well, I had some friends over and we had a lot of fun playing dress up and taking those pictures. Many thank yous to Erin, Steph, and April who helped me do all that! For a while I was thinking of it as ‘the last good weekend’ because I got sick the day after.

Also, friends, if you think that’s even 5% of the gowns/cocktail dresses/bejeweled items I own, then you are fabulously mistaken. I just want to work somewhere where it is deeply okay for me to show up in a) sweats and a Friends T-shirt or b) a strapless bejeweled purple ballgown and either is okay and not questioned. Why doesn’t this place exist? Is it because I don’t work from home? You Babblers out there in WFH world, is that beautiful existence your life?

2. I Was in the Same Room as Taylor Swift

I mean I was also in the same room as thousands of other lovely people, but they kind of all disappear as soon as Taylor starts talking.

I love people’s stories. It’s why I like to read and write. It’s why I work at a library (I literally feel like a Keeper of Stories, and I am drunk with power). It is fascinating to me when hundreds of thousands of different people all come together and share three hours of the same story. It makes me want to know the rest–how did they get from Point A to Point B? What led them here? Where do they hope to go next? Where does this shared experience propel them to?

Anyway, so I’m going to share a condensed (well, Emily’s version of condensed which involves a lot of interruptions and actually isn’t very short) version of my Taylor story (if you don’t care about stories like I do, that’s okay, you can skip what you want to! Woohoo!)

Friends, I was thirteen years old (and yes, I do get an extra spark of happiness that I was Taylor’s magical number when Taylor first entered my life) when my mom was driving me into town (we lived in the middle of farm country, so it was a common thing to ‘go to town’ when you needed anything) and “Tim McGraw” came on K102 as a new single. I stopped what I was doing (probably reading a YA novel of an adventurous love affair) and just listened. It was the first time I felt like, ‘okay. She gets it. She knows my brain.’ I mean, I was an awkward thirteen year old, I didn’t actually have any of the experiences she was singing about, but I felt this weird feeling like I was actually being understood for the first time in my life. It was like she was using her past to anticipate my future and was singing me the story in a way I could breathe in like freshly blooming lilacs in May. To this day, “Tim McGraw” is still my favorite song.

Anyway, then came “Teardrops on my Guitar,” and the summer after the entire album was released, my family took our first big family trip in a decade, out to Yellowstone National Park. We stopped at Target on the way out and I somehow managed to convince my parents to buy the 7th Harry Potter book that was released that day and Taylor Swift’s debut album. We spent hours weaving through mountain roads and open plains among buffalo, moose, bears, and elk, while listening to Taylor sing. I loved it. And I never looked back.

She grew up and I followed. She warned me about mistakes and I made them anyway. She cheered me on and I cried with her. I danced in sequins and tried to learn guitar and wanted my writing to take me somewhere like it took her. The guitar never took, but it still makes me happy to see the guitar my parents bought me when I was 16 with deep dreams sitting awake in my living room. I love when other people come through and pick her up (‘her’ refers to the guitar now, not Taylor. I do not keep Taylor in my living room. To be clear.) to play something I never could.

I didn’t always like what Taylor was saying right away, or immediately understand the music, but it might be a day, a month, or a year later where something would happen and suddenly that song or album I didn’t vibe with right away clicked into focus and made perfect sense.

Sometimes I lay awake and wonder (because I think about weird things instead of productive things) what life would be life if there were no Taylor Swift. Would I still love music and words like I do now? Would I be the same person? I think after seventeen years, there are pieces of her influence so mixed into my DNA that I wouldn’t be. She didn’t make me be someone else, but she helped spark and grow what was already there. If it weren’t for her, would those things have stayed beneath the surface? Who knows.

Anyway, all this to say, I am so grateful and thankful I got the chance (HUGE THANK YOU to my friend who took the day off work to cry and scream at Ticketmaster’s website and go through that emotional turmoil to get tickets to the concert) to go to a show I’ve been waiting to go to for over half my existence. It was everything I’d hoped it would be.

At the end of the show, when a lot of our section had left, Taylor came out from under the stage and looked up at us and waved. She’s not going to remember the girl with blonde hair, red lips, and a red and gold sequin dress, but I’m going to remember that moment until Dementia steals it away from me. Just as I’m going to remember leaving the concert with my friends in the pouring rain, getting soaked as we ran back to the U campus where we’d parked, and dancing under the deserted streetlights when the clock struck midnight.

3. I Finished Writing my Fifth Poetry Collection

One consequence of seeing Taylor in person was the spark it gave me to push forward in my creativity. When I was feeling depleted at the start of the pandemic and like I would never write again, BAM, out she came with all the things and I wrote four poetry collections over the next couple years. I have been working on my fifth since September and had gotten stuck around my 30th birthday, but the concert renewed my fervor. It was so hard knowing what I wanted to do and feeling too sick to do it for a couple weeks, but I would get ten minutes to an hour here and there where I’d get a burst of energy and I spent it all finishing my collection.

I’ve only sent my first full collection off to poetry contests. The rest I just make Shutterfly books of and gift to myself and my parents, but I don’t care. I just love holding something tangible that I worked hard on that I actually finished. I am still in the process of sending poetry out and collecting rejection emails and I do plan on continuing to play that game, but this gives me something to look forward to since it’s not a very fun game to play.

4. Spending the 4th of July with Friends

4th of July, like New Year’s is an aspirational holiday for me. Like, every year I don’t really do anything and I think, “regular humans enjoy this holiday. They have fun. There’s glitter and fireworks and booze. I should like this. I should do things.’ And then I end up not doing things again.

This year we had a few friends over (woohoo, step one!) and after I completely owned at Ladderball, the rain pushed us inside to sparkling wine and a reality dating show. I mean, what better way to celebrate our Independence? Maybe, next year there will be fireworks and red, white, and blue cocktails and clam bakes and all the things I see on TV that I’m not realizing are all set in the northeast coast.

5. Annual Camping Trip with My Family

Every year around the 4th, my extended family on my mom’s side spends a long weekend at a campsite and has a weekend filled with literal fun and games. For the past ten years we have organized a tournament of 3-6 games. They involve a variety of drinking games, cards, sporting events, and obstacle courses. You draw your partner(s) out of a hat and this year it was me and my mom against the world. This year also involved five games that required some kind of throwing/tossing skill that neither of us possessed, but the sixth game was Tippy Cup. We were eliminated first round in all the games except Tippy Cup, which we ended up winning the championship. I mean, we still ended up dead last in the tournament, but at least we weren’t complete losers. I was most notorious, not for my wins or losses, but for my six outfit changes that day. I mean six competitions, six outfits, what’s not to get?

Bonus Delights: A clean crawl space, time with my nephew, landscaping, and some more organized pantry!

All right, time for bed! Here’s to hopefully not another two weeks before you hear from me again!