The Year of Yes (and the Bull)

I’ve always thought of myself as silly and fun. But if I’m honest, I can look back and see all the moments I passed up—things I should’ve tried but didn’t. Maybe it was fear. Maybe I was too tired. Maybe I was just embarrassed. Whatever the reason, I’ve decided that this stage of my life is going to be different. This is the season of *yes*.

Recently, that mindset led to a wild little adventure.

My coworker Lindsay (at instagram briefandbooked) and I were flying out of our small-town Tennessee airport, headed to Austin, Texas for a weeklong conference. When we arrived, the airline offered us $1,000 each to drive an hour down the road and fly out of a different airport. We negotiated (because why not?) and got them up to $1,500 a person. We said yes. We drove over the mountain, caught our flight, and landed in Austin with what we considered “free money” to play with.

Now, I’m typically a creature of habit. But on this trip, Lindsay and I made a pact: we’d say yes to everything (well, almost everything) in between our conference sessions.

The first “yes” was ditching our usual bedtime and heading to a late-night comedy club. I laughed until I cried. And if you’ve ever laughed like that—really, truly belly-laughed—you know how healing it is. It’s like your soul gets a deep tissue massage.

Next up: scooters. Our town doesn’t have those rentable mobile scooters, but Austin does. So we said yes. And let me tell you, zipping around the city on those scooters was pure joy. I felt like a kid again. My only advice? Zig and zag with caution.

Then came the mechanical bull.

I’ve seen them before and always thought, “That looks fun,” but I never had the nerve. In Austin, I said yes to the bull. It took what felt like a forklift to get me on it, and I lasted maybe a blink of an eye. I landed on the inflatable mat laughing so hard I actually peed a little. I said yes to the bull—and I have zero regrets.

We said yes to Voodoo Doughnuts. We said yes to calories be damned. We said yes to late nights, new experiences, and laughter that echoed down Sixth Street.

And then—we said yes to bats.

Austin is home to the largest urban bat colony in the world, with up to 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats roosting under the Congress Avenue Bridge. We joined a crowd of tourists from all over the globe to watch them take flight at dusk. It felt like a scene straight out of a movie—thrilling, surreal, and slightly chaotic. We may or may not have felt bat guano sprinkling into our hair, but we didn’t care. It was magical.

And finally, we said yes to indulgence. We booked our first-ever scalp massage—85 minutes long at "My Head Spa" in Austin, Texas. I remember thinking, *How great could this be? And how on earth can it take that long?* But let me tell you: I would do it again a thousand times over. It was soothing, grounding, and unexpectedly emotional. A full-body exhale. A thousand times yes to the scalp massage.

This trip wasn’t just about fun. It was about reclaiming something. About choosing joy, spontaneity, and the kind of memories that make you feel alive.

So here’s to saying yes—to scooters, to bulls, to bats, to donuts, and to every moment that reminds you how good it feels to live wide open.

What have you said yes to this year that you normally wouldn't have or what is something new that you would like to say yes to?