Buying Symphonica tickets - part 1

I hate pre-sales for George Michael concerts with the passion of a thousand suns. Come to think of it, I hate buying George Michael tickets, period. It's very stressful, and because of my ptsd I don't handle stress well. At all! Buying tickets in a pre-sale or general sale gets filed under The things we do for George. And by "we" I mean "I"! Buying tickets is almost - but not quite - as bad as flying. Another thing I only do for George!

Now, with 7 concerts under my belt and a few more to come in Holland and the UK, I can hardly believe that I almost didn't buy any tickets for the Symphonica Tour. May - the month of the pre-sales -  was not a good time for me; I was seriously depressed and just starting on my journey of delayed grief. So when I read the email announcing the Symphonica Tour my initial thought was: "Not now, George! ".

The thought of having to deal with pre-sales stress on top of everything else was just too much. So I decided then and there that I wouldn't get any tickets, that I would sit this Tour out. For a few hours that evening the decision felt exactly right. I was so relieved I wouldn't have to go through all that stress again. But then doubt crept in. What if the show was fantastic? What if this tour really was George Michael's last tour? Would I always regret not going? Yes, I would!

And so, just before midnight on May 12, I renewed my fan club membership. With 20 minutes to spare before the deadline I signed up to receive an invite for the next day's pre-sale of the Symphonica shows in London. And I resigned myself to a few weeks of waiting for the pre-sale links to open, of trying for hours to get tickets for the most popular shows, of making costly mistakes under pressure. Pre-sale stress: there's nothing like it in the world!

My very first pre-sale was the big one: four concerts at the Royal Albert Hall. To my bitter disappointment I didn't get tickets for all shows and I didn't succeed in getting floor tickets, only stalls. I was furious with myself for doing it all wrong. That lasted until I got on the fanboards and read the angry reports of fans who didn't tickets and I realised I was extremely lucky to have gotten any tickets at all! So in the end it worked out ok.

All was fine until a few weeks ago when I got it into my head that I'd really like to go to the Royal Albert Hall on October 26 and October 29 too. Getting more and more stressed out now as I try to get last-minute tickets for the most coveted shows of the whole Symphonica Tour.