229. Choices

There’s a feeling you get when you don’t want to do something. You feel tired by the thought of executing a plan. The couch and Netflix seem so much more inviting. You just don’t want to put in the effort to go do something outside the comfort of your own home. Tonight that thing for me was going to a Wilco concert.

Wilco is probably one of my top 10 favorite bands. I have a few of their albums. I’d seen them once before. I thought about getting tickets to the concert, but I waffled and let it slide by. Then a coworker of mine said that she had an extra ticket for the show. She also said I could have it for free.

She told me she would text me this morning (Saturday) to figure out a plan. I was in Wyoming and wasn’t going to get back to St. Louis Park till the afternoon. It was also raining. I had also run a 5K that morning and I made a trip to Costco with my family. (Retail parking lots of weekends are pretty much my definition of hell.) I was reconsidering my plans. I told myself that my night was either just going to involve my new tv and Netflix, which could happen to me pretty much every night, or it would involve a concert with a band that I really liked. I chose the concert even though I desperately wanted a nap.

I finally met up with my coworker to get the ticket. For some reason I took a few wrong turns on the way home and to the place we were meeting up. (In another retail parking lot nonetheless.) That just made me even more frustrated. It was also threatening to storm again. (I also hate thunderstorms.)

I made it to Hall’s Island in Northeast Minneapolis after parking in St. Anthony and hoofing it a mile there. I got a beer and bratwurst. Even though I usually don’t like going close to the stage, I decided to do that for this show. I wasn’t with anyone.

The first set was decent. It was by Kurt Vile and the Violators. I was about three rows up from the stage. A woman standing next to me was wearing a pretty badass leather jacket with patches advertising Indian Motorcycles. After the opening act, she complimented me on Tottenham sweatshirt and I said I liked her jacket. We eventually got to talking about bands we’d seen and we had a similar taste in music. We talked a little soccer as well. It made the time between sets go a lot faster.

And then Wilco came on. I’ll describe their set like this. They made me forget that this stupid digital world I seem to inhabit more and more of. I didn’t think about memes, the twitter burns, the latest news cycle, or the general social media angst. I just enjoyed the music. In a world with billions of choices for entertainment, it sometimes is pretty nice to focus on only one thing.

The weather turned out to be ideal for a late August concert. It rained a little bit, but that kept everything cool for the evening. I didn’t have to deal with too many assholes. And I sang along to most all the songs. I made the right choice today.