Three Days In Between: From TLCC to Bourbon Women

Summer has a way of handing you exactly what you need, right when you need it. This year it handed me two of my favorite weeks back to back — well, almost back to back. There were three glorious days in between, and I've come to think of them as the best kind of gift: just enough time to catch my breath, unpack a suitcase, do a load of laundry, and repack it again before diving into the next thing.

The first stop was TLCC — the Tessitura Learning & Community Conference. If you've never been, it's hard to explain what makes it special without sounding like you're exaggerating. Thousands of people from arts and cultural organizations all over the world, all there for the same reason: to get better at the work, and to do it together. I spent the week moving between sessions, taking notes I'll actually use, and having the kind of hallway conversations that end up mattering more than the sessions themselves. There's something about a room full of people who care deeply about the same niche, complicated, beautiful work that makes you feel instantly at home, even among strangers.

And then — three days. Three days to sit with everything I'd just learned, to let the ideas settle instead of immediately stacking a new set of them on top. I didn't do anything particularly remarkable with that time. I slept in my own bed. I went through my inbox. I let myself feel, honestly, a little tired in the good way — the way you feel after you've been fully present somewhere for a week straight. But those three days did something important: they gave me space to actually notice how full my cup already was before I went and filled it again.

Because next up was Bourbon Women. Different room, different subject matter entirely, but somehow the exact same feeling. A community of women who show up not just for the bourbon — though, let's be honest, the bourbon is a very good reason — but for each other. For the conversations that start over a pour and turn into real friendships. For the encouragement, the curiosity, the total lack of pretension in a space that could easily have been full of it. I left that week the same way I left TLCC: full, grateful, and already looking forward to seeing those same faces again.

Bourbon Women Siposium

What struck me, sitting with both experiences so close together, is how much they had in common despite having nothing in common at all. One was about ticketing systems and donor engagement and best practices for cultural institutions. The other was about tasting notes and mash bills and the history of women in an industry that hasn't always made room for them. But both weeks were built on the same foundation: people who chose to learn out loud, together, instead of alone.

That's the thing about camaraderie — it doesn't care what the subject matter is. It shows up in a conference session just as easily as it shows up over a bourbon flight. And the friendships that come out of weeks like these don't stay contained to the week itself. They follow you home. They turn into texts checking in on a random Tuesday, into "let me know when you're in town," into a network of people scattered across the country who somehow still feel close by.

That's the part I keep coming back to: friendships that surpass geography. I don't get to see these people every day, or even every month. But when we're back in the same room — whether that room is full of Tessitura users or bourbon enthusiasts — it picks up exactly where it left off. No warm-up required.

Three days between two of my favorite weeks of the year turned out to be exactly enough time to appreciate both of them fully, back to back, on their own terms. Here's to the learning, the networking, and the people who make both of those things feel less like work and more like coming home.