I mentioned in the last post that the trip we took to Seattle in 2018 might have set off a butterfly effect for me moving there.  Let me explain.

When I was planning the trip, there were two people that I wanted to try and see if we could make it work.  One was a coworker who I’d met at a training who I really admired and worked in the area, and the other was a former customer who I’d gotten close with before he had taken a job in Washington at a site where my company didn’t have any business.  I decided that it might be cool to kill 3 birds with one stone- see both of them and build a business connection for them to use in the future (#networking).  It ended up working out to go to the last game of the series together, and we all had a great time before, during, and after the game that day.

Flash forward to the end of 2018, and I’m not super jazzed about parts of my job, feel like I’m ready for the next step, and I hear that the site my former customer friend is working at is going through a bid and my company needs a proposed site lead (the next step for me, career-wise).  I throw my hat in the ring, and after several months of hard work, stress, and tough decisions, we won the business and I was on my way to Washington!
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Now Safeco is T-Mobile field, and I get to go to games basically whenever I feel like it, and it’s easy to believe that game #3 of the series it what set that all in motion!  Now, onto the game.

Shall I address the elephant in the room?  Not that any of you out there actually got super invested in my posts, but it’s been a minute, huh?  Well, I have an excuse.  I moved for a promotion in 2019 and left the comfort of our home in Montana for the state of Washington.  Promotion meant more responsibilities and more hours each day spent working, plus I’ve been super busy exploring my new home.  Plus covid-19.  But it’s time.  It’s time to return.  Ironically enough, where I left off was a trip to the state that is now my new home.  I have a lot to catch up on! 

Now let’s talk about regrets.  Maybe it’s because I’m young(-ish.  At what age do you stop being a naïve fool? Asking for a friend), but I genuinely don’t believe people when they say they have no regrets.  I get the sentiment that your previous choices lead you to where you are now and by saying you have regrets you’re essentially admitting that you wish you were somewhere else.  However, I believe there are inconsequential decisions in everyone’s life that don’t have some crazy butterfly effect on your life path, and there’s no doubt you wish you’d made some of those decisions differently.  Like that time when teenage angst was at an all time high and you were super rude to your parents.  Or a time when you let a friend drift away.  Or when you took that extra shot at the bar when you certainly didn’t need an extra shot at the bar.  Or even that guy you dated for a minute because, well, why again?  None of these theoretical poor choices (that I definitely have never made…) would have changed where I am today and I fully believe that.  Still, though, I wish I would have changed my actions in those examples because in the moment I was an idiot.  Theoretically.  But all the regrettable decisions in my life pale in comparison to one- the fact that I didn’t sit in a club level seat until the 44th game Joel and I saw together.
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I’m pleading ignorance on this.  When I would go to buy tickets for a game, I would always try to be as close to the field or court as possible while still staying within my budget.  I never understood why second or third level tickets would be more expensive than tickets right near the playing surface.  And perhaps Seattle has a bit better club level than others, but to say it changed my whole outlook on buying tickets is not a hyperbole.  Granted, I still love sitting down a baseline close to the field and without a doubt will continue to do so, but when I’m going for a three-game series, you can bet at least one of the games I’ll be sitting club level. 
Game 2 in Seattle was a game of realization and contradictions after another day of tourist-y exploring.  As was par for the course on this trip, Seattle showed us a great time!

Fun fact: Joel and I have yet to go to a soccer game together.  The closest we came was on our Minneapolis trip for the Red Sox series in 2016, but we ended up opting for a nice dinner instead (which after a day of getting roasted in the beating sun was definitely the right choice).  It’s not that we dislike soccer, per se.  In fact, some of our favorite memories of sitting down for a game in a sports bar have been during World Cup or La Liga games.  But I’ve found that soccer fans are a different breed of sports fans that Joel and I just don’t relate to much.  First off, they’re probably going to be mad I’m calling it soccer instead of football, but football to us has touchdowns, not goals.  Second, most soccer fans we’ve met are only soccer fans.  They don’t really care much at all about any other sport.  Granted, there are folks who fall into that boat for every sport, but by and large, when we meet a fan at a basketball game, they’re also baseball fans.  Or folks sitting next to us at hockey games also closely follow their city’s football team.  And clearly, we follow all of the above.