I attended my first concert about two years ago. I was excited about it, I knew it was going to be fun. But I had no idea it would THAT FUN. I still remember walking out of the venue with a huge, involuntary smile on my face the whole way back. I wasn’t familiar with the phrase “concert-high” but when one of my friends used it to describe what I feeling, the term totally clicked.

I wish I could live multiple lives. Some days I just want to have enough to live in a cabin by the beach, read all day, play board games with my friends in the evenings, and spend my time appreciating the calmness of the ocean waves. Other days, I want the world. I want to move to Silicon Valley, work in big tech, start my own company, and be really, really successful[1].

I used to believe that I don’t need people. Or communities. That one can be alone and still be content. I no longer believe that. I think our brains are hardwired to find a sense of belonging, a community, and we can’t be happy without that. And it can be hard. For me, finding people who were like me, who had the same interests, was hard. That’s why I guess, as a coping mechanism, I used to tell myself that I’m happier alone.