Coachella, this year I vow to make the most of my time with you. Three hot, sweaty days and nights, and all within walking distance of my parents’ house — what more could a girl ask for?

Each year you shower me with the gifts of those three staggered paragraphs, that pastel gradient, those headlines receding into obscurity. And how do I repay you? By being a lazy, jaded mofo.

In the last six years of attending you, Coachella, I have missed acts I will never be able to see again. LCD Soundsystem. Gil Scott-Heron. Tupac. Then there are the countless other bands that I cast aside in favor of a shady spot in the DoLab and a delicious churro — those that are still alive but may at any moment decide to stop touring to pursue God knows what … raising families or some shit.

Coachella, I confess that on Sunday last year I went to Home Depot and bought light bulbs instead of seeing the early acts.

Coachella, I vow not to count on you resurrecting the dead via holograms.

This year, 2014, our seventh weekend together, I vow to change my ways. I vow to groove to the Knife, to grind to Chromeo, to cry with Arcade Fire, to smash lights with STRFKR (did you like that UCSB reference?), to hang out for Calvin Harris until I realize he’s not going to play any of the old stuff, to bow down to Lorde, to say, “Like, what happened to you guys?” to MGMT, to finally “get it” at Neutral Milk Hotel, to wish I had sisters and musical talent with HAIM, to be a loser with Beck and to yell at Queens of the Stone Age: “I’M FROM THE DESERT, TOO — DOESN’T THAT COUNT FOR SOMETHING?!”

I vow to dance for the entire five minutes that OutKast plays “Hey Ya,” the undisputed best song of all time. Coachella, I will lend you my sugar. You are my neighbor.

I even vow to forgive you for your faults. Releasing a lineup on David Bowie’s birthday, without David Bowie on it? Missed opportunity.

(But I know it’s time to accept the truth. I know he’s never coming to the polo fields. I know it’s time to pack up my ashes to ashes-dropping incense and the Stardust shrine in my closet. I know it’s time to stop praying to the Starman in the sky. There’s no one listening.)

Coachella: I vow to value you, to respect you, to cherish you as you value, respect and cherish each one of your fans. Jeeze. You emailed me on my birthday. I can’t say that about my own dad.

(Chancellor Yang also did not email me.)

Coachella, this is the year. Our year. I can feel it in my bones that this is going to be one for the books. A weekend I will never, ever, ever forget.

I have you to thank for that.

As long as I don’t sell my tickets to pay for a flight to Mardi Gras.