Take Your Sweet Time | What I Learned From A Jesse McCartney Concert

My favorite feeling in the world is contained within those seconds where the lights go out at a concert just before the band takes the stage.

In recent years, I’ve become a frequent concertgoer. Some of the artists I’ve seen are newer favorites like Vance Joy, and some have been old favorites like The All-American Rejects and Derek Hough, and seeing Aaron Tveit in a production of Company (and meeting him afterward!).

I’ve set myself up for a streak of concerts over the next few weekends featuring 5 Seconds of Summer (my fourth 5SOS concert) and The Chainsmokers, Avril Lavigne, and 98 Degrees (for the third time).

But before all of that, I got to kick it all off with the very definition of an old favorite: Jesse McCartney.

As evidenced by one of the traditional pre-concert selfies my Facebook friends get subjected to anytime I go to a show, I still have my Beautiful Soul CD from 2004 when it came out.

Naturally, I brought it with me on the chance that I ran into him after the show and could have him autograph it; I didn’t, but I owed it to my eight-year-old self to have it with me just in case.

As you might guess, being able to go to this concert was a big deal. Jesse McCartney is one of the few artists that has been a staple for me musically since I was a kid.

So when I got a Facebook notification from one of the local casinos saying that they had an event in my area, and it just so happened to be a Jesse McCartney concert—once I got past the initial screaming of “Oh my God is this legit!?” and admittedly some crying—there was no way I could say no. The chance to live out a dream from childhood was too good to pass up.

Needless to say, it was an incredible night, but it also put some things in perspective about time in general and dreams and goals.

In the days leading up to the concert, I was saying it was a night fifteen years in the making and something I’ve been waiting most of my life for.

Lately, I’ve been feeling like I’m falling behind and not where I thought I would be by now. It’s been about eighteen months since I graduated from college but I haven’t managed to find a job beyond two temporary retail positions. I’m not at a point with any of my writing projects where I feel like I can begin querying agents and seriously begin thinking about embarking on the publication journey.

But the thing is, I’m not exactly like everyone else. I don’t mean this in a chosen one sense or the pretentious cliche “I’m not like other girls” vibe. I mean that my life is not like anyone else’s, and my individual journey will not be the same, but that does not mean I won’t get there someday.

If there is any one thing I can take away from the Jesse McCartney concert, it’s that everything takes time, and some things take more time than others. This is sometimes the result of one’s own efforts, but it’s just as possible for things to be the result of fate. Just being in the right place at the right time.

The same goes for writing. It’s fair to say I was pretty naive when I was first starting out, not getting to take any classes until college and not exactly being sure how any part of the process worked. In some ways, it feels like I got a false start. The novel I intend to publish first is the one I wrote second, and I’m only on the first round of edits.

But that doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen. I am still as dedicated to this as I was when I was fourteen, even if my perspective is different now and I’ve realigned my goals and plans several times in those years.

When the time is right, everything will fall into place. There is no way to know when that will be, and no way to force it. I think if you were to force it, the outcome might not be as desired or imagined.

Patience is a virtue I have come to learn is invaluable to writers.

So in the words of Jesse McCartney himself, “Take your sweet, sweet time.”

Dreams do come true. Sometimes they can take fifteen years, but they do come true.

I wrote a little bit about other dreams I’ve got in a Q&A post a while back, which you can check out here.