35 Years Later

Over the course of the last 35 years I have lived what I can only describe as an exceptionally extraordinary life. I have forged a life that not many people have been able to live and I have been blessed to live this life with some of the greatest people I have ever known. I have seen some of the most untrodden places on this earth and some of the biggest things you never even knew existed. But that life has not come without its price.

Some say life is about sacrifices and I am no stranger to sacrifice. I have had to make some sacrifices in order to live the life that I do and at times it wears on me but in the end, I am happy with where life has brought me despite it all.

This life has also not come without loss. Loss is entirely a normal and natural part of life and over the years I have lost family members, friends, colleagues and to some degree strangers. I try to celebrate life whenever I can because as I have seen and as most of you know, life is fleeting. Here one minute, gone the next. I have lost some of the most important people in my life and I celebrate their lives and legacy whenever possible. I do that because I believe the impact that people leave on our lives is important, it matters. In doing so I have found that sometimes, these people never actually leave you, a part of them will always be a part of you.

In this life, and over the course of the last several years, I have lost other important things–actual things, friendships, peace of mind about certain things, the comforts that we often refer to as “the good old days”, I have lost touch with certain people who I used to see all to regularly. One example that comes to mind is my friend Grant, better known as Goose. Funny story, he got the nickname Goose because my phone would autocorrect my fast typing of this name to Goose so often that I just went with it. And as it turns out, Top Gun was one of our favorite movies and so he became my Goose and I, his Maverick and together we were the Cory and Shawn of Circleville. Even though we both worked full time, I always felt like I spent more time with him than I did anyone else. Either I was at this place or he was at mine and if we weren’t at either of those places then we were out at the movies for five-dollar Tuesdays (or in our case $20 Tuesdays because we thought since the movie was only $5 we could spend more money on snacks) and we would spend way more money on a Tuesday than if we had just gone on a Friday night like regular people. And if we weren’t at the movies, then we were at Best Buy spending god knows how much money or we were at a restaurant eating our lives away. Once we went to an O’Charley’s to have dinner with some friends. We had a full meal and then we left there and proceeded to immediately go to Noodles & Co for some Western Mac and Cheese. Or there was one time we went to Chipotle, got our food, sat down and ate our oversized burritos and as if we knew what the other was thinking, we got up, got back in line and got another burrito.

I miss those days terribly. Goose now lives in Texas; his graphic design business is booming and he’s doing really well for himself. I’m proud of how far he’s come but I miss the days where after work, we’d decide how we were going to actually live our lives. Like the one time he randomly showed up to my house one July and handed me a box and said “okay, we’re getting PS4s, pack this crap up” and me, lost and confused, was like “Huh, we are?” as I slowly packed up the PS3 and drove to GameStop to trade everything in. Grant even traded in his family’s Wii console and they didn’t find out until they wanted to have a family game night the following Thanksgiving. But those are some of the best memories I have of that time in my life and those are some of the things I miss the most.

But in addition to that, there are some friendships that over the years, changed or dissolved and when you’re used to doing life with a person or a group of people and then that is suddenly ripped away from you, you also lose a part of yourself. And over the years, I’ve lost those and it’s made me hesitant to reestablish those types of friendships because you fear they can be taken away. It makes you hesitant to get close to people, to open up, to share your life because you never know how long it’ll last.

In this last year, I have made some new friends, I have traveled to new places, I have restored old friendships, I’ve bought real estate, I’ve gotten job promotions, I’ve done all the things I set out to do and then some. To me, 34 was a great year. It was an extraordinary year. I was blessed beyond measure. And so now onto 35.

Do I have goals? Yes. Have I set them in motion? Yes. Will I accomplish all I set out to do? I don’t know, but I hope so.

But this year is special. This year, I have a very unique goal. I don’t know how it’s going to play out, and I won’t give all the details right this moment, but I will say this–this year, I plan to finish unfinished business. I plan to “right the ship” as they say. I plan to go big, do big, and live big. We are people, and there is fault in our nature in and of itself. And if we are to make things right with our inner selves as well as those around us, we have to recognize that fault. And not only do we have to recognize it, but we must act.

The older we get, it seems, our priorities begin to shift. The things we once longed for tend to fade away and are replaced with, oftentimes, simpler things. With age comes wisdom and we use that wisdom to fight the battles that were once fought for us. We hold different things sacred, we give greater value to the most unlikely of things and the most unlikely parts of our lives.

The greatest thing we can hope for is that as we grow up we don’t lose sight of the things that are most important to us, the things that are most precious. When I started this blog, it was about sharing experiences, sharing travels and proving to an inexistent audience that I was living my best life. And now, as I look back on those days–I was in fact living, but it was certainly not my best life. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good life–no it was a great life, but it wasn’t my best. I was still confined to parameters I hadn’t quite learned how to escape and it was holding me back. Now, instead of a blog, it has transformed into something else. An essay on the year in the life of a man who has made it his mission to live an extraordinary life.

35 is a milestone of sorts. According to the TV demographics, I am no longer a “young adult”, now I fall first in line in the “adult” demographic. A place I’ll stay until I’m 54. Yikes. While I’m not excited about the prospect of getting older, I can say that I have lived well. I made good strides this past year, both personally and professionally. My aim is to make even bigger strides and no matter what happens–terrible or wondrous, I am still convinced that certain kinds of magic do exist and that sometimes the path that brought us to where we are will propel us to even greater places.

So, here’s to chapter 35, let’s see how well we live it.