Good day! It’s your man Daniel, interrupting our regularly scheduled programming to bring you some musings I’m having with a little over 4 hours of sleep after a wild night at Taylor Swift’s Eras tour.

I had other plans for this week’s issue of The Vibe, but Taylor’s got me all introspective after seeing her put her life and feelings on display for 3 hours at the SkyDome in Toronto (yes, I refuse to call it the Rogers Center).

If you know me, you know my musical taste rivals that of a 14 year old girl, but I ain’t mad about it. Unlike those 14 year old girls, though, I’ve been a Taylor Swift fan pretty much since the beginning of her almost 20 year career. Now, I’m not one of those over-the-edge Swiftie superfans who obsessively pays attention to everything she says and does and divides it by 13 to find secret codes – I just think she’s one of the best songwriters the world has ever known – which is why after-market tickets to this show have been going for $2000-8000 per ticket. Talk about a cultural event.

If you know me, you also know how much I love synchronicity, so read on if you want to find out how I magically manifested free tickets to the most popular (and majorly sold out) concert in the world, and what the concert taught me about sharing our experiences.

horseshoes up the @$$

About 6 or 7 years ago at a songwriting retreat in LA, I met some amazing people. One of them was a beautiful and talented woman named Casey. She’s the kind of magnetic person that makes you feel starstruck even if you don’t know who she is. We wrote together, connected and became friends. Casey is a musical genius in her own right, but a couple years ago, she became the musical director for an up and coming artist named Gracie Abrams… and Gracie has since opened for Taylor Swift for 40+ dates on this worldwide Eras Tour.

I had reached out to Casey hoping to connect during some downtime from her tour schedule. This week on Monday, I woke up to a text from her asking if I wanted to come to the show. She told me she was going to see if she could get me and a plus one into the Toronto opening night show on Thursday. Exciting! I heard back on Wednesday that I was going to the concert! I was pumped, but now I had to decide who to take.

Immediately I thought of two of my nieces, Ella (15) and Georgia (11), who are also big Taylor fans. The problem was, I only had one extra ticket. I decided I would surprise Georgia because Ella and I had fortunately had many fun adventures together in the past and it was G’s turn. It broke my heart to call Ella and tell her I wasn’t able to take her, but she was happy for her sister. When I surprised Georgia she was in total shock. I told her she had 1 hour to get ready for the concert and we were hitting the road!

With a tight schedule to finish up the day at Vortex (thanks to my amazing staff for covering my ass!), I went home to get ready. My nervous system was totally shot from all the build-up to this event. I jumped into a 20-min NuCalm session to chill my nervous system out. The whole time I just kept meditating and visualizing me and both my nieces are the concert. I came out feeling refreshed and ready to go.

Then, mere seconds before getting in the car to head to the city, I got a text from Casey saying she was able to get me another ticket for the show! We immediately FaceTime’d Ella and I said “Listen very carefully… you’re coming with us to the Eras tour! You have 10 minutes to get ready. Put on something cute, I’m coming to pick you up.” She burst into happy tears.

After a wild ride to the city (which…by the way, Toronto, get your $#!% together!) we picked up our tickets and entered the venue. I don’t know what seats I was expecting but when we realized we were on the floor, center stage, 15 rows back… I was pumped. I looked at the crowd of 50,000 people and felt so lucky that I’d be 30 feet from the biggest pop star in the world.

Needless to say, the concert was completely epic and I have won Uncle of the Year in perpetuity for life.

life in eras

For those of you who don’t know, the Eras tour is Taylor’s biggest concert ever (and the biggest concert tour of all time) . It’s over 3 hours of songs showcased from the start of her career until present, separated by album, or era. Ms. Swift has always been unapologetically open with her life and feelings via songwriting, and this concert really made me appreciate that openness… and it got me thinking; we should all be sharing and celebrating the different eras of our lives!

While the range of feelings, emotions, and life experiences shared through her songs is a very specific glimpse into one person’s life, it’s truly representative of all the many stages we go through as humans: we all experience a varying spectrum of love, fear, anger, rage, revenge, regret, jealousy, sadness, laughter, longing… there’s so much that life gives us and, if you think about it, the years of our lives are like our “albums”… our eras.

What Taylor’s doing extremely well, and what I think we all should do more of, is sharing and celebrating our journey. Sure, she’s especially interesting because she’s set her life experiences to catchy, introspective songs, but we’re all especially interesting in our own ways. I can speak to that – I share a lot of personal stories through The Vibe and so many people relate and respond to it. I’m an almost-4o-year-old man and I have all kinds of people that I would never expect telling me how much they resonate with my words.

I’ve shared tales of my High School Era, Performer Era, Yoga Era, California Era, and more – and even though these stories and experiences are specific to me, they’ve touched a lot of people. And I ain’t no Taylor Swift!

Right now I’m in my Vortex Era (or as I call it, my Badass Wellness Boss Era) and I’m learning so much about myself in a whole new way.

the swift factor (your version)

You don’t have to be a celebrity to be celebrated. You don’t have to be an influencer to have influence. We all have our unique paths that have led us to where we are, and in sharing our journeys, we can knowingly or unknowingly help other people on their own.

It doesn’t always feel like our normal everydays could accumulate into shareable insights that can shift someone’s day (or even life) for the better, but it’s important that we never underestimate our impact.

We need to celebrate who we are and where we’ve been. Reflecting on how far we’ve come and revelling in the journey that made us who we are helps us to keep perspective in the present and catapult us into the future to make life even more interesting and impactful.

So go make a reputation for yourself. Be fearless. Be a lover. Speak now. Celebrate like it’s 1989. Okay that’s enough TS references for now…

Now go on and live a life worth celebrating and sharing.
It’s a new day. It’s a new era.