Best Weekend Ever

John Mayer says that a "little bit of summer makes a lot of history." This past weekend Ben and I had the kind of summer fun that everyone chases from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Being the hardcore music aficionados we are, ours included live music instead of a beach. On Friday night we went to the Bangor Waterfront to see Los Lobos and Tedeschi Trucks Band. On Saturday we made our way south to Fenway Park to see Dead and Company.  One of our first dates in 2007 was to go see Phil Lesh in Connecticut so to see John Mayer play with Bob Weir and the gang was like we had come full circle. There was something really special about seeing them at Fenway (I had never been there before) and so close to the wedding. It felt like our wedding kickoff weekend.

The shows were amazing and I brought the camera that Ben got me for my 29th birthday when we went to Atlanta to visit Amy (our matron of awesome) and Matt and see Mayer play in the place where he really got started. When I went to upload the images from our weekend I saw I had taken 778 photos over two days. #GodBlessDigitalPhotography. The images included here are all raw as I haven't had the time to go through and give them the super fancy treatment but they were my favorite shots from the shows and I wanted to include them.

As I sat watching the Dead show from an awesome seat in Fenway Park, my mind wandered back to a letter I wrote to myself when I was 13. As a girl, I had a hard time focusing on anything but the future. My small town always felt to small to hold my big dreams and one day, I vowed, I would be a grown woman full of happiness, freedom, intelligence, and would have a very cute boy completely devoted to me because he saw all of the things that made me, Me and recognized that those things made him unable to live without my force in his life.

I was a dramatic kid and somewhat lonely so I spent a lot of my alone time thinking about the woman I would be. Most of this time was daydreaming but when I needed something tangible I would write and one afternoon 13-year-old Katie wrote a letter to 23-year-old Katie swearing not to open it until the decade had fulfilled or dashed its contents. I'm very proud to say that I did not open that letter but by the time I had permission to open and read it, I had misplaced it and to this day have never found it.

I assumed that I would be the woman I wanted to be by age 23 (because when you're 13, 10 years feels like forever and surely enough time to accomplish all of  your dreams). This made an irrationally large impact on me. When I did turn 23 I struggled with the idea that I wasn't the woman I dreamed about. I felt like my life had stalled and that I was floundering. I still dreamed of a happiness I still wasn't old enough to really understand yet and I was still naive enough to think that I was a failure for not accomplishing all the things I had set out to. I relived all this in my head watching the show that night and realized that if metaphysics would have allowed it, I would have sent my 13-year-old self a picture of our life that very night. The way I felt with Ben beside me and John Mayer and Bob Weir on stage was what I dreamed of all those years ago. I no longer felt like a failure. I felt like I had finally "made it." Cool job. Awesome Husband-to-be. Great taste in music. And, maybe most importantly, a healthy self-image of my body and soul that made me content. My heart bloomed with happiness and I had an overwhelming feeling of being right where I was supposed to be. I felt a direct connection with all the years of myself and could see how all of it lead me to where I am.

On the way home I thought about how I've never daydreamed about how I would age after I had made myself the woman I dreamed of being. I feel like I am shedding a skin that I get to replace by "Hanging Luce." The slate is clean from here on and with all the things I know now, I feel pretty unstoppable.

<3 The Future Mrs. Luce
23 DAYS until the wedding!