I honed into this on Sunday night when I was at the Mumford & Sons concert in San Bernardino with my lifelong best friend, Cory and my co-workers, Julie & TJ. It was the perfect day, seeing an artist I adore for the first time in person, and with people I love to death. Every song they played I thought to myself, "there's no way I could ever be happier than I am right now." And then they would play another song and I'd feel myself elevating to a new level. If I had to define what absolute, unwavering happiness looks like to me, it's that. I wish I could bottle that feeling.
I think I had just gotten so used to just floating through life without really being 100% content with much around me. (How terrible is that?) I didn't really realize it until I got to the point where I actually WAS happy. A year ago today, for example, I was pretty much faking happiness on every level.
I first started experiencing these moments of bliss when I was interning a couple summers ago at UFC. It was so refreshing at the time because I wasn't excited or inspired by anything in my day to day life. That summer was like a whole new section that I had added into my world that showed me what it felt like to not feel flat. I wasn't just going through the motions - I was LIVING.
Then after my internship I continued searching for that feeling again, with no such luck for quite some time. When I started working at Digital Royalty last summer I felt it start coming back. The common denominators here? Vegas and work. But not just any work - both times I've had jobs that I absolutely adored. That's such a huge part of it. I don't ever want to be in a situation where I'm working at a dead end job, unhappy and just there because I have to be. I'm lucky that I've never had to do that.
I felt it again on Monday night - making that two big times in less than 24 hours - when they announced the lineup of the Life Is Beautiful Festival coming to my city (literally 2 blocks from my apartment) in October. I get to be a part of this brand new, inaugural festival in MY city, where some of my favorite artists of all time are going to be playing. When they announced the lineup I think I screamed louder and smiled bigger than I ever have in my entire life. And I haven't stopped smiling since. It's going to be life-changing.
The point of this is, I hope I never go back to being that static version of myself I was for so long. THIS is who I am. I started laughing at basically everything I do because I've stopped taking myself too seriously. I get to go to live shows every other week and have good friends and co-workers who I can be myself around and who really do want to spend time shooting the shit, listening to my ideas, and have respect for me as a person. I don't lose sleep over the past anymore. And I love my job, apartment, roommate, and city I'm living in. I will never take for granted how lucky I am to be young and in love with my life at this moment in time.
