No plan, no problem, no hearing

Tuesday. 5:47pm. Alex Chen texted me ‘you free tonight?’ and I made the mistake of saying yes before asking any follow-up questions. Forty minutes later he’s at the door holding two wristbands for the Riverfront Summer Series and I am still in my post-shift clothes, making absolutely zero decisions.

No plan, no problem, no hearing

I should clarify — the Riverfront Series is that traveling outdoor festival that’s been running through the city all July, rotating stages, food vendors, the whole situation. Alex had gotten the tickets through someone at work and his original person bailed. I was the backup plan. I’m choosing to read that as a compliment about my availability and not my ranking. We spent a solid ten minutes at the breakfast bar debating which stage to prioritize, which is very on-brand for both of us — two people who have now successfully run cultural workshop programming together and still cannot make a simple decision without a small committee meeting.

The planning stage. Critical. Life-or-death decisions about which stage to hit first.

Here’s the thing about going to a live music festival on a random Tuesday in July with a friend you’ve known mostly in professional contexts: it strips everything back in the best way. No agenda. No deliverables. No follow-up action items. Just a genuinely excellent headlining set, one overpriced lemonade I do not regret, and Alex doing a full-body reaction to a guitar solo that I will never let him forget. We talked about the archive project a little on the walk back — I’ve been in the thick of coordinating with the family contacts Margaret introduced me to, and it’s turned out to be so much more layered than I expected — but mostly we just let the night be the night. Summer is short. The work will be there Monday. The guitar solo, unfortunately, will live in my memory forever.