Music has always been a central part of my life, from learning to play the violin when I was six to singing along to my mom’s Shania Twain albums on road trips. My best friend and I have been going to concerts together for years, and even before that tradition started, I dragged my dad, brother or whoever I could to a good handful of live shows.

This spring break, my best friend and I set a new record: two concerts, two nights in a row, in two different cities. We saw Melanie Martinez in Kansas City the first night, then the following morning, we woke up earlier than I have in months to drive to Dallas for a Troye Sivan concert that night.

Ticket prices, travel expenses, and the inevitable stop at Forever 21 for an outfit all take up a majority of my spending money. But even as I tweet about how broke I am, I never regret these purchases. Many of my favorite memories happened at these concerts and on these trips.

For me, seeing and hearing an artist live is one of the greatest experiences. I love learning tidbits about how they wrote a particular song or a story from their life on the road. It’s amazing to hear how an artist will change a song when performing live, from making an upbeat track acoustic or reaching for a higher string of notes than they hit on the record itself. Plus, there’s the mystery of never knowing what song with come first, or after that, or after that. Before every show, my best friend and I always discuss what track we think will make the strongest opener, and it’s just as exciting when we guess right as it is when we guess wrong.

I can think of something special that happened at every concert I’ve been to, from meeting Zella Day in the crowd at a music festival to getting to move two sections closer to the stage at Lady Gaga’s show for free. Even just being able to say I sung along with artists like Florence + the Machine, Taylor Swift, and Justin Timberlake is one of the most exciting things.

By the end of any great show, my feet are tired, my ears are ringing, and I’m the most dehydrated I’ve ever been. And the kicker: I don’t care at all. I am always ready for the next album to drop, for the next tour schedule to be released, for the next Skype call in which my best friend and I plan out when and where we will travel to next. That's how much I love live shows.