Just over 15 years ago, a few starving artists asked “how do you measure a year?” They offered up the possibilities of daylights, sunsets, midnights, cups of coffee, inches, miles, laughter, and strife. While I have no desire to learn just how many cups of coffee it takes me to get through 12 months, the adventures I’ve taken this year have added to the 175,750 miles on my car. Most recently, an adventure out to Brooklyn to see the one and only, Hova.
If you haven’t been out to the new Barclays Center, or weren’t planning on it, change your mind. Now. Besides the fact that Jay-Z killed it, Barclays is beautiful and the energy in the venue was unreal. Sure, beers are expensive, and say what you want about Brooklyn, but at the end of the day, it’s about the music and the people listening. Some people go to church every Sunday, others practice yoga morning, noon, and night, a few pray to the gods of fantasy football, but for me, the freedom we all crave from our anxiety-filled day-to-days, is music. More specifically, live music. So if being at Jay-Z’s closing night of the Barclays Center’s opening week (3 days after my birthday) is any indication of the year to come, getting older isn’t so bad.
Mark Twain said it best when he declared, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” My adventures this past year may not have been as grand as someone else’s, but they were mine. They were my experiences to learn from and to grow from. I think we tend to get caught up in looking for the “next big thing” and we forget to pause and appreciate the small moments we have. Sometimes, the small moments can mean more to us if we take the time to savor them.
Just in case you can’t think of any of your adventures this year, you can borrow a few of mine 🙂
wanderlust 