It is incredibly common to catastrophize (a real word I hadn't known) before a trip. My sister does it, a former boyfriend did it, I've done it. Definitely, absolutely go. Get a prescription for Ativan or something to calm you down for the trip there, but I bet you won't even need it. You will have SO much fun. The anxiety will dissipate once you get there. Have a great time. You will give so many people so much pleasure with your music.

Sometimes you can only find your intuition when you observe yourself.

Read this, for example:

"...we were a staunchly agnostic family and my parents taught me to value reason and logic above all. Faith and feeling were not a large part of any family dialogue..."

I wouldn't imagine that one of your parents could possibly have written this, let alone ever thought it. You are likely a different type of person; you are probably more enlightened than they.

You don't care as much about minutia and argument as your parents. You seem to care more about substantive, intangible things.

The reason you are probably so hesitant to listen to your intuition is that it conflicts with the values with which you were raised.

I know what you mean when you say:

"Faith and feeling were not a large part of any family dialogue..."

Even though your parents may have been loving and likely gave you all the material things you could want, you were impoverished on some level.

It doesn't mean you had bad parents. Like all parents, they couldn't give you everything you needed.

Watch what you gravitate toward. When I had doubts about my current relationship, I looked around at my house. My beloved's photo was in a spot where I could see it each day, and I loved to look at it. All the silly gifts and postcards he'd sent me over the years were also displayed. I never once wanted to remove these items. I studied how I felt in his presence, and I watched how much time I wanted to spend with him.

Get in touch with your intution by observing yourself, what you do, what you enjoy, and your surroundings. These things may look nothing like what your family enjoys or surrounds itself with. My intuition tells me that you feel it's disloyal to your family for you to go your own way. I sense that by having read what you wrote.

The 30s is a difficult decade for men and women. The 20s are fun and exciting and the 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond are for coming into our own.

This may sound hokey, but most people don't really know who they are in their 30s in the U.S. So many people do what they "should" do. This includes getting married, having kids, buying an SUV that you really never wanted or moving to some dead suburb. If you're single, you're 'dating' like mad - either online or out 'partying' like your friend - because you're trying to meet "the one."

The 30s are the best decade for moving ahead in your career and the absolute worst on a personal level. Of course this is just my opinion - but they're letting me write in this box....

You are losing your friendship, but not the friend, as one reader pointed out. You will know her on a superficial level. It is a terrible loss, but it is as normal as the leaves changing in fall (if you live on the East or in the midwest).

Both of you will grow and change over the next several years. Maybe she'll get tired of her lifestyle and change again in her 40s. You too will change.

It's bittersweet to say goodbye, but life is all about change. Nothing stays the same. Look at the watch on your wrist for 60 seconds. The hand will move. It's all in flux. What you are experiencing is just part of the deal. These losses will happen again, but you will grow for having experienced them. And you will like who you become.

Was anyone from Oprah magazine there? If not, I protest. That's as much "the press" as the New Yorker. Nothing against that mag; I sometimes read it.

The New Yorker is irrelevant except in pseudo-intellectual, East Coast circles. Honestly, very few people truly care about that moronic cover and very few people could care less whether the New Yorker, for God's sake, didn't get a seat on the plane. "Manipulating" the press? The New Yorker is not "the press." It's a vanity rag for elite, liberal bombasts. And I say that as a liberal. Did the Washington Post, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, NY Times, Time mag, Newsweek get seats? If so, then what is the problem?