Time. It’s the one commodity that you can never get back. I’ve said it before elsewhere, you can always make more money, you can always get another job or start another business, or get into another career. You can even start new relationships, whatever flavor they may be, whether they are platonic or romantic.

What you can’t do, is get back your time, or get more time. That’s the rub, in a nutshell. You don’t know how much time you have, but I promise you, it’s less than you think. Yet time is the one commodity that we are willing to toss around and throw away as if we are going to live forever and that we have all the time in the world.

The reason that I bring up time has to do with this last week and weekend. The Village By The Lake was a smashing success, at least to me. I got to see my Brother’s Vince and TJ, and I got to meet some new, and some returning, great guys. Bacon, Nick, Amos, David West, Skelton, Joe, and even Chest Rockwell showed up. It was glorious.

It was glorious even during this period of uncertainty and having to “wear a mask.” Social distancing and the fact that many activities were either limited or outright not available didn’t slow us down. In many ways, there was too many things to see and to do, and not enough time to do all of them. So I had to prioritize. I had to choose what meant the most to me and to those with me. I had to choose what I was going to spend my time on.

While there wasn’t a lot of exercise and seeing a bunch of different things, there was enough. Most of my time was spent on engaging in enlightening conversation and getting to know my new and returning friends. That’s what I consider all of them, they are now my friends. It was well worth my time. I could have told all of them, “No, I have to work.” And I wouldn’t have had the experiences that I had. All because I would have chosen to chase the dollar. I didn’t do that because there will be plenty of opportunities for me to make more money.

I would rather hear Chesty talk about the “Sad Handy on I-80” and watch Nick trying to contact the International Space Station on his HAM radio than go and empty yet another bin of paper and shred it, only to rinse and repeat and do it again.

I would rather talk to Skelton about his journey through his life so far and the things that he has learned about himself and where he wants to go and what he wants to end up doing.

I would rather listen to Joe talk about how women will only walk alone on certain streets in Tennessee compared to women that walk pretty much everywhere alone in Salt Lake City and how you can pick out the natives vs the transplants.

I would rather understand the pros and the cons of joining a podcasting network that Amos mentioned and about how a lot of them as part of their contract will want to own the name to your podcast. Talk about a theft!

I would rather talk about family life and about how David built his own shelves for his awesome library that is in his house and how the weight of his books actually bent the hitch on the trailer that he used when he was transporting his books.

And yes, I would rather watch Bacon make a “grand entrance” and have to tell the guy that his volume is at an 11 when it needs to be down to a 5. For a younger man, he has definitely had a full life so far and has seen and done some things that even I haven’t seen or done in my 48 years of being on this planet. There’s a lot of experience and wisdom in a guy that is practically half my age. It was even fun joking/not joking with him about “my restaurant.”

Hanging out physically yet again with Vince and TJ was what all of this was ultimately about for me and like the last time when we first met at the Village By The Sea in Atlantic City, I was not disappointed. The food we prepared and ate, the cigars we smoked, the drinks we drank, the jokes we cracked and the stories we told each other will be etched in my memory forever. Even the morning coffee shits and the cat allergies couldn’t slow us down.

You can’t buy those kinds of memories and experiences. It was worth the time.

That being said, I want to bring this back to you, Gentle (or Not So Gentle) Reader. What are you spending your time on? What are you willing to do or want to do, knowing that whatever amount of time you throw at it, you’ll never get that time back and you’ll ultimately never get more time in the long run?

Where are you getting the most pleasure and what are you doing that is giving you the most pleasure for your time?

Work and “grinding it out” can be a necessary evil and I totally understand that, but what are you spending your time on ultimately? Is that what you want to be spending your time on? Is that what you want to do? Or do you want to be doing something else?

Who are you spending your time with? Is that someone that you want to be spending your time with? Are you deriving maximum pleasure from being with them and around them? If not, why are you spending time with them? What ways can you minimize that time if necessary?

Like I said at the beginning, time is the one commodity that you can’t get more of, and you can’t get back the time that is gone.

Now you’ll have to excuse me, there’s a young woman that I would like to spend some of my time with.

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