Not long before I retired, I was working with my tech counterpart on a thorny problem in our financial planning software that we needed to solve quickly. I had been working from home since the pandemic, and while we were working through the problem, happened to run into my husband on a trip to the kitchen to get more coffee. “Why did I get into this profession?” I asked rhetorically. My husband scoffed, “Because you’re an adrenalin junkie.”

My life post-retirement involves very little adrenalin. I work occasionally in a food pantry, menial tasks like making sure shopping carts are returned from the parking lot to the pantry or breaking up boxes or packaging diapers. I take fitness classes. I work in my garden, where I am currently establishing the hardscape for what I am calling my “secret” garden. I listen to a lot of podcasts. I read.

Frankly, only my life around Arsenal involves regular adrenalin. Watching games, I’m almost always in a state of anxiety. Maybe more this season than in other seasons, because the stakes are so high and the games have been so tight. So many games decided by only a goal. A few games lost because we let a late goal in.

In a year in which we are so close to winning the Premier League and the Champions League, imagining the good things that could happen–or the bad things–have actually made me lose sleep. It’s an admittedly stupid reason to lose sleep, but explain that to my wide-awake self in the middle of the night. It will fall on ears that can’t begin to care what you have to say about it.

My available time has caused me to build more of my habits around matches. Podcasts come out before the match, to anticipate what may happen, and come out after the match, to revisit what happened and why. So in a normal week this season, there has been a match over the weekend and a match during the week. That is a minimum of two matches and four podcasts. Plus I almost always watch more than just our match in a given week. Usually, much much more. Sometimes with high stakes for Arsenal and some not. And every day I take in news–from the club, from news sources covering football, and from blogs. Way too much from social media. I’ve learned that there are some sources that are actively bad for me and I’ve tried to cut them out or at least minimize their presence in my life, especially at a sensitive time. After a bad loss, for example, I will lean on sources that are more thoughtful and steer clear of click-bait and hot takes. But then I’m left to my own brain, which is its own fun house of histrionics.

One of the reasons I love watching matches live at the Emirates is there is counterpoint action to my anxiety. Something about shouting or singing together with others can be a bit of a change of subject as the action is unfolding before you. If I’m singing that Gabriel is the king of Brazil because of something awesome he just did, I might feel less inclined to have a fit over someone’s subsequent misplaced pass. Or I might have a defensive or protective reaction if the crowd starts to show its frustration over something that happened on field. I love this team so much; how can anyone be mean to them?

And so many things happen in a group that big that bring a smile to your face or are especially touching, like when the Arsenal fans sang to Smith-Rowe when he was injured in the Fulham match or when everyone sings North London Forever at the beginning of the match. And when things have gone well, there is nothing better than sharing that moment with a giant crowd. We overcame something together and now we’re on an adrenalin high together.

I enjoy watching football on my couch in the Chicago suburbs, or I wouldn’t do so much of it, but it’s not the same as being in the stadium.

Ever since I was able to first attend a number of matches during the 2015-2016 season, it’s been my goal to try to be at the last home match of each season. That’s because I’m always sure this is the year we’ll get the Premier League trophy and it will be bestowed upon us on that day. Because my original access to tickets involved a share of season tickets, I would make a request at the beginning of the season to have that last match. Usually, no one competed with me for that date. That was in the days where I guess no one except me thought winning the Premier League was going to happen. That got harder after I successfully got the tickets for the last home match in 2023 and Arsenal really did come close to winning it for the first time in a long time. They just kind of ran out of gas at the end and Man City won.

After that year, the demand for tickets increased a lot and for whatever reason there wasn’t room for me in the group that shared the season tickets anymore.

That’s when my husband and I joined Arsenal as “Red” members so we could participate in the ballot and, failing that, in the Arsenal ticket exchange. It’s worked out pretty well for us. We normally ballot for every match unless we know for sure the timing won’t work. When we’ve really wanted to attend but didn’t succeed in the ballot, we’ve almost always been able to get tickets on the exchange, but it requires a lot of work and repetitive clicking. And you can’t ballot until very close to the match, usually less than a month out with results being shared several weeks out. Then you have to be able to set up flights on short notice, which sometimes means big expense. We’ve mostly gotten lucky on that, too.

Always if we’ve failed to get tickets, we’ve failed to get tickets for both of us. Usually, that failure has come for the most important matches. Matches in the quarter- or semi-finals of the Champions League, for example. Last matches of the season when the title is on the line. For example, the last match of the season in 2024, when Arsenal might have won the league if only Man City lost that day. (We could not get the tickets, but Man City also did not lose in the end.)

Arsenal’s last home game this season was to be against Burnley, a team that appeared to be headed toward relegation at the time the ballot was made available for application. But Arsenal were doing well and the ballot was especially popular. We learned we were not successful in the ballot on March 31. For about a month I tried to get tickets on the exchange with no success and really very little selling activity visible. Then Sky Sports, the broadcasting company that gets to control the world, decided to move the Burnley match from a Sunday afternoon to a Monday night. Terrible for the fans who had tickets and made travel plans, etc. And not a great time for a match.

But for us, that created opportunity since it meant the new game time might not work out for everyone who had a ticket and maybe there would be some action on the exchange.

Now that I’ve explained this, I think you might see that dealing with the exchange is a different, sick source of adrenalin in my life. I was listening to an episode about gambling on the podcast This American Life a few weeks ago and one of the things they mentioned is that a gambler who is not addicted to gambling will process a near-miss while gambling, correctly, as a loss. But a person who is addicted will process that near-miss as a win and double down. That’s how I am on the exchange. If I see a ticket for sale and I’m not successful in buying it, that will count for me as a near-miss and I will become dogged about continuing to try. Fortunately, counter to gambling as an addiction, there is not much money I can lose due to my addiction to the exchange. I usually can’t even get to the stage where I can give them my money.

Because Sky Sports is a jerk, a few tickets did come up as I anticipated and I was able to snag one within two days of the date change. On the exchange, you can designate people in your friend group and it’s possible for me to buy a ticket and assign it to anyone in my group who is eligible, in this case, myself, my husband, or my son. My son usually can’t attend because he’s a tax accountant and the Spring is so busy, but he wanted to attend this one.

I always assign the first ticket I get to myself, then work on a ticket for my husband. I always jokingly say it’s because of the airline’s admonishment to “put your own mask on first before helping others.” In reality, it’s because getting to most matches is probably more important to me than it is to him. And getting to this match, the last home game of the season? That’s my value, not his. Still, he is happy to attend, likes to attend. So, as usual, I assigned that Burnley ticket to me.

And that was it. I was never able to get another ticket despite hours of trying across 2-3 weeks. And I saw so few, I had very little confidence one would turn up late. Neither my husband nor my son were able to find a ticket either.

My husband and son only wanted to come to London if they had a ticket for the match and only I had a ticket. At some point a decision had to be made. Do none of us go? Do I go alone?

I had a fair amount of guilt about being the only one with a ticket. I second-guessed my decision to always assign first to myself. And it didn’t feel quite right going without them. I’m the biggest Arsenal fan in my household but love of Arsenal is shared with my family. It’s a pleasure partly because it’s shared.

At the same time, it’s the last game of the season. In a season in which Arsenal really might win it all and really might be awarded that trophy that night. And even if that didn’t happen, would still be an important game.

My husband was pressing me to organize my flight before fares rose prohibitively. I sat with him on the same couch I normally stress out watching Arsenal and described why I was struggling to make a decision. My husband is a good listener and as we discussed my reasons for going or not going it became clear even to me I was not being logical. At all. I didn’t have good reasons to go or not go.

I put my headphones on, started listening to the Arseblog podcast, and went out to work in the garden. The podcast was about the West Ham match we had just won, barely, and with some late drama that almost saw us conceding a goal until it was ruled out (rightly, say all Arsenal fans) by VAR. A tie would have put a serious dent in our quest for the title.

At some point, even though I still didn’t have a logical explanation, I knew what I should do. I came back in the house and booked a flight.