On a regular day, I can’t get the “Hotel California” guitar solo out of my head. This balmy Wednesday in L.A. was no exception. I was blasting Eagles jams, like “Busy Being Fabulous”, at my desk all day long (which, really anyone ought to anyways). That afternoon, I chauffeured my best friend Ashley down the dreaded 405 in her own red Mini Cooper because she had come home late from work, so the day called for makeup in the car and lipgloss in the rearview mirror. Whenever she could, she would stop to feed me my dinner: Trader Joe’s frozen potatoes (cooked, thank god) served out of tupperware with a plastic fork.

We bought tickets to the Eagles concert only the night before while out to dinner at our favorite Taco (margarita) Tuesday spot. This last minute thing is becoming a pattern for us, but we truly would have never forgiven ourselves had we missed Taylor Swift at the Rose Bowl that yer (our “Holy Ground”, if you will). We pulled up to the Forum parking lot figuring out a tailgating itinerary. This meant the order in which we’d drink whatever I had in my fridge that wasn’t Martinelli’s sparkling cider (which for the record is not just for the kids’ table at Thanksgiving). Luckily, my lovely mother had sent me home over the weekend with a care package of spiked seltzers, and I had recently stocked up on Bev rosé. It feels like there is never a time I’m not running around last minute looking for cheap alcohol and bad chaser, so this was truly a miracle. We chugged the seltzers in our parking spot, and saved the Bevs for the long walk through the Forum parking lot time machine all the way back to 1973.

Along the way, it was really hard not to notice that both we and our pink cans stood out. We were a vision, really. Cherishing our youth, saying how we’d look back and tell our kids how cool we were back in the day. Yeah, we were millennials into classic rock. Did you know Grandma Laura was a real life groupie?

We were the only twenty-something girls in a sea of balding men, both happily buzzed, prancing around in hot white leather boots with silver stars on them. Ashley had on the kind of distressed t-shirt dress that no dad would’ve understood why she paid more money for. All the dads in attendance that night were like sitting ducks, just waiting to be confused - yet again - by their daughters’ demographic.

Safe to say concertgoers didn’t take us as true Eagles fans at first glance. We all have our different dimensions, of course. Whether or not people know what those dimensions are doesn’t matter, so long as we’re recognizing and indulging different sides of ourselves. I say, as a 24 year old wise beyond my years. It feels empowering to know that your most true self can seem like an enigma from the outside.

It was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen Taylor Swift twice). And it was one of the greatest nights of my life. It’s been formally made known that “Hotel California” will play at Ashley’s funeral one day. She assigned that job to me years ago.

Some days, I might be “just too busy being fabulous”, getting caught up in trivial matters, boy drama and dinner parties. And other days I dwell on how I’ve let important things go by unnoticed, unmemorialized. But on Wednesday, everything was so simple. It was easy to soak it all in. I had my main chick, affordable wine that still made me feel like an adult, and I had great shoes that danced all night in nosebleed seats next to a middle aged couple who were presumably really high. As “60-something dad in an old rock band t-shirt” as it may sound, I think I understood that night what it means to feel alive. You know, a life in the fast lane kind of alive.