Confessions of a Seat Filler Addict

I live in Las Vegas, and one of my favorite things about living in Sin City is the plethora of shows that come through town. From the small off-strip amateur hours to the big-name headliners, there is never a shortage of things to do here. There is a shortage, however, of money to do it all. Therefore, about six years ago my husband and I decided to join a local seat filling service. For an annual fee, we now had access to dozens of free show and concert tickets given away by venues and promotors to help fill seats. It is a great concept, but for the consumer it is also a lot of work. I currently subscribe to three of these services (at one time it was four) and in order to catch the good shows you have to constantly check their websites for offerings. How constant? I have checked twice just since beginning this paragraph. I am addicted.

Today I finally had to check my sanity on doing this after a half hour task took me three times as long because I could not stay away from my beloved website. I am writing this because I need help. I spend more time trying to catch a ticket giveaway than I do anything else. Cooking dinner, I am checking. Watching a movie with the hubby on the couch, sneaking a peak to see if anything good is happening that night. My kids complain that I am always looking at my phone. I’m on it more than them and they are teenagers. I also have a group of friends on these services who will text me if a good show is available. So now if I hear the familiar ding of an incoming text, I do cartwheels to check if its a show. I have seen almost everything in town, some shows up to 4 or 5 times. I cry if I miss a good one, as I did today. I plan our social life around an events calendar that I clip out of the local paper each Friday. If people invite us out on a night that something I want to see is in town, I sometimes decline their invitation. And by the way, yes I have checked my favorite site once again during writing this.

My goal for the rest of the year is to stop this insanity. While we attend a lot of these shows as a family, I realize it is often not quality family time. Someone inevitable get bored, or hates the show, or backs out of going. And guess whose fault that is? My pledge, to not check for a week (okay maybe I’ll start with two days). Hey, I made it through this last paragraph without sneaking a peak. That’s a start.