Day 11: NYC Birthday Traditions - 30 days, 30 episodes

Matt Gilhooly
00:00:01

I'm Matt Gilhooly and this is the Life Shift Candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever. Hello my friends. Welcome to day 11 of 30 days, 30 episodes of the Life Shift podcast.

So here I am once again, not quite sure what I'm going to talk about. I think I know. I think I'm going to look at this list and choose the thing that makes the most sense for today. Today has been a long day.

Just to let you in on a little bit.

I have a full time job and I work in a marketing department for a mortgage technology company and I started as a writer for the team and I write most of the content, not most of it.

I write a lot of the content for what we put out on social media and what we put blog posts and articles and things like that and stuff you see around conferences if you're in the space, which you're probably not.

But in any case, a couple months ago I also took on the role of producing two in house podcasts for the company and one of them is just a monthly podcast. It has guest interviews and then it has a more timely piece and I kind of put those together and it's not as high pressure.

The other one is a weekly video first podcast, but also has the audio elements and they record it every Monday morning. And I have to edit and release both the audio and the video by the end of the day.

So usually Mondays I am a little bit tired and so I say all that to say that I'm probably going to do something a little bit lighter today and share a little bit more about me in this little 30 day adventure, which I've heard from some people and they think that I should just keep this going past November. So yeah, Emily, thank you for that suggestion. I will have a recap of what this month is doing so far.

And it's only been 10 days plus today and it feels kind of different and interesting and challenging.

And I think by 30 days I'm going to learn a lot about myself and how I can approach this and what I can do moving forward to enhance the Life Shift podcast. So stay tuned on that. So for day 11, I think I'm going to do something light. I think I'm going to talk about my birthday.

And so this is just kind of a tradition that we have started, I think we started in 2019 and every year we go to New York City around or on my birthday and we go for four days or so, four nights or so, maybe five, depends on the deal that I can find. So it becomes this kind of fun trip. First of all, I just love New York City.

I feel like if I didn't have dogs, I probably would have moved there in my 20s or 30s and tried to like make it, make it work in New York City. And maybe I will still someday.

But I just love the whole vibe of New York City and being able to go see a show and eat wherever and walk around and walk everywhere. And I something about it is really fun. So we go every year except for the pandemic year. We actually went 2020 about four weeks before the shutdown.

Of course, my 40th birthday was during 2021 when we couldn't go anywhere. So there were four people in the backyard, spaced out and trying to stay safe. But in any case, this trip is fun in multiple levels.

So the goal is to go to New York City, stay in a decent hotel for the lowest cost possible, but stay within walking distance to Times Square so that it's easy to walk to shows and go and get snacks and things like that. So one year we actually went for five days, I think five days or five nights. This might have been 2022.

And I was able to get like this one bedroom, kind of like apartment hotel room that had a kitchen. And we, there were four of us and we each paid total for the hotel plus the flights, the round trip flights to JFK, we paid $438 each.

And it was a decent hotel. Like it wasn't terrible, it wasn't the nicest, but it wasn't terrible. And it was right by Penn Station.

So we were able to walk to everything pretty easily. This year we were able to use some points and so we're going to get a really cool hotel like on the 45th, 46th floo in times Square.

So I'm excited about that.

I still haven't bought the plane tickets because I have points to use and I just want to make sure that I am using those points to get all of our flights in the most affordable way possible.

And then I will start to create a spreadsheet of all the Broadway shows that I want to see and we'll figure out how many we can see for the lowest cost. So that's just the game that we like to play.

This year I think we're gonna go for like the next tier up since we're not paying for the hotel room and we're probably not going to pay much for the flights. So maybe we'll get little better tickets.

But my whole Thought is I'd rather see more shows with crappier tickets than really great tickets to fewer shows. So the goal is to just see as many shows as we can. So that includes seeing a show every night that we are there.

And then any time there's an opportunity to take in a matinee show, we also add that to the list. So that's been really fun. We do a lot of walking.

Last year we went to the edge, and I am so afraid of heights when it comes to any kind of heights that I might fall off of. So think, you know, exposed places, high up balconies, those kind of things. So we went to the edge. I did it. I did it because we were.

I was scared about it. Nobody else was scared about it. And it was fun. We had a good time. And we like to go to be live audience members of the View.

And that is maybe something I'll talk about in the 30 days that we do this, but it's kind of fun to just go to a live show and, and see how things kind of operate. And the warm up comic, she's super cool. Regina Dico, she is just so fun. And follow her on social media.

She's super fun and she's part of the draw to go see the View live in the studio. The first year, we ended up getting some old lady lotion and some old lady earrings and some things that came along as gifts for the audience.

But that was probably the, the biggest gift that we got from being in the audience. We didn't have any of the special like Oprah's deals or anything like that. But the New York trip is always just something that I look forward to.

I plan it as soon as possible and I don't know why I'm drawn to it.

I think when I was a teenager, when I was in middle school, I guess, I guess really starting earlier than that, I liked to do theater in school, so I did Grease in high school. I was Danny Zuko and I was not good, but, you know, it was fun.

They needed someone to play Danny Zuko, so I did that and did a lot of other shows and, and had a great time and built a really great community of friends. I'm still friends with many of those people. You may or may not know Randy Rainbow.

So he's actually one that's really done super well for himself in the YouTube and traveling concert shows and books and all sorts of cool things. And it's so fun to watch him do what he does. But we met doing some shows back in, like, 10th grade. And that was really fun.

So going to New York and seeing these professionals doing these shows eight times a week and really just giving it their all, it's just, like, so fun to watch. Of course, we've seen some duds of shows, and that's so unfortunate because you figure how much money they're spending to put this show on.

And a lot of shows don't recoup their costs or their investments because they take years in development to get there. But it's just a. It's a fun draw.

And I love to go and see how many shows we can see and where we can stay and how inexpensive we can make it, but also have fun doing the other things.

I figure the least amount that we spend on hotels and flights, the more shows we can see, the more treats we can buy, which means we go to Target and we just buy lots of junk food. There's all sorts of things that we have that are just now, tradition.

We've been doing this since 2019, minus one of the years, and we've already booked next year's for my birthday. So I am excited about that.

And I don't want to create a new birthday tradition because this one is really fun and maybe more people will join if they want to meet up. My dad and his wife came one year and we got to hang out.

It wasn't a great year because I found out that I have a gluten intolerance, and that was not a great time. So that's another really great memory of my birthday in New York City. But in any case, I like to do that.

I hope you have traditions in your life that bring you joy and get you excited about the next time you go. In fact, someone texted me yesterday, do you have any plans?

And I'm just like, the only plan I have so far is for my birthday, and I'm excited about it.

So make those plans, make some traditions, Find the people in your life that you love the most that you want to make more of those recurring memories with, and go have some fun. So that's the easy day. 11 for this 30 days, 30 episodes of the Life Shift podcast.

No deep, dark story, no sad things, no moral of the story, no advice that I have for you. It's a long day on Monday, so I'm a little bit tired, but I still wanted to share an episode, share a little bit about my journey.

If you are in New York in February and you're listening to this and you want to meet up with us or go see a show with us or have some food with us, please let me know. Reach out to me on social media or send me a message@matthelifeshift podcast.com and we can connect and make those plans together.

So I will see you tomorrow on day 12 of this little experiment of 30 days, 30 episodes. Thanks again for playing alongside. For more information, please visit www.thelifeshiftpodcast. combat.