Tag Archives: experiences

Recreating the Past

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Most people who live in Chicago’s Northwest Suburbs, where I spent part of my childhood, are excited by the prospect of the Chicago Bears moving into Arlington Park. For me, the move is bittersweet. Arlington Park is one of those places of personal significance. It is the first place I ever gambled. Gambling would become a significant component of my life’s experience, with more betting on horse racing, and then, when I turned 21, games like black jack and craps.

I still remember all of those summer afternoons watching horses race on that track. I remember sitting in the stands cheering on whatever horse I had bet $5 on as they came around the curve headed towards the finish line. I remember seeing the official results post on the scoreboard at the end of every race, indicating what I had won, or what money I would have won had I made a better bet. I even remember hearing the occasional train pass by and the energy of the crowd when there was a particularly exciting race, or when someone had to make a bigger bit on something like a trifecta and won.

My April 2022 trip to Chicago brought me back to three past periods of my life.

My parents still live in the suburban home I lived in from age 11 to 17, where I learned how to work for a living, pack my schedule with activities and, of course, gamble. Experiencing the Easter holiday with my niece and nephew, ages 5 and 7, reminded me of my earlier childhood, and what holidays mean to children. Finally, the trip included two trips into Chicago, where I spent my late 20s.

In any experience like this, it is tempting to expect the same experience we had in the past. It’s tempting to get nostalgic. It’s easy to envision watching the same Easter movies I had watched when I was a child, frequenting the places I loved in my teenage years, like the Arlington Park Racetrack, and frequenting the same bars and restaurants I loved when I worked downtown as a young adult.

However, like the racetrack, which will soon appear quite differently and likely be packed with football fans, the experiences are not likely to be the same. The kids have new things the love to watch, different activities and different preferences (I’m a Cubs fan).

Establishments close and new ones open up.

Punch Bowl Social actually opened its first location in Denver in 2014

And the overall situation we find ourselves in will inevitably change.

This is the only place I saw gas over $5

However, specifics like places, activities, prices and colors do not need to change for the experience to be different. Life’s experiences and the way we progress as human beings are inherently going to change our perspectives. Even if everything I did on this trip was exactly what I had remembered, a decade, or two, or three worth of life experience would have caused me to see them differently. I noticed this for the entire duration of the trip.

One of the most beautiful things about the experiences we have early in life, as children, is the fact that we often have no prior experience to compare them with. This is why children tend to watch movies, listen to music and take part in activities with an open mind. In adulthood, especially as we get older, it is tempting to compare any new experience with one from the past. We compare today’s music to the music of our adolescence. We compare the movies our kids watch with the kids movies of our childhood. And, we compare trends in things like fashion and lifestyles with the trends that defined our formative years.

However, to give ourselves the full opportunity to really enjoy the experiences we have in adulthood, we should temper the urge to make these comparisons. The experiences we have today do not owe it to us to live up to something that happened in the past. They are going to be what they are and only when we minimize the attachment to having the same experience we had years ago can we full be in the moment and enjoy what is in front of us for what it is.

Places Extroverts Love

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It’s been hard to know what to expect the last two years. First, places that are typically lively, full of people, full of life, suddenly became empty as the pandemic shut down businesses and places of gathering.

Then, for nearly two years, our experiences became variable and inconsistent.

It felt like the whole world was suddenly subject to mood swings that are impossible to explain or predict. Maybe we are still in this period of uncertainty, but I was pleasantly surprised by the energy levels on my last two trips.

The last weekend in March, Moab was quite lively.

The town was busy! There were a lot of people out and about, walking around and having experiences. Traffic actually made it quite a challenge to make a left hand turn. People all seemed lively. The energy was just great!

The same can be said of Chicago a couple of weeks later.

The energy, the spirit of the big city could once again be felt both on a Thursday evening with horrible weather and a Saturday night with better weather. There were a lot of people, out in groups, in the bars, as well as along the street where there is typically a lot of nightlife. It felt good just to know these places are back!

These places could hardly be any any different. Chicago is a city of 2.75 million with many skyscrapers and what can seem like endless unique neighborhoods to explore.

People who visit come for a truly urban experience, doing things like going to museums, summer festivals, professional sports or visiting friends and family.

Moab, by contrast, is a town with barely over 5,000 residents adjacent to two National Parks.

Most of the people one would encounter here are tourists who came to explore the outdoors. Moab is known for Jeeping, mountain biking and hiking among other activities.

These settings, while different, warmed my heart in a similar way. There is something about seeing people out and about, interacting with each other, interacting with the world, and doing so in a way that feels joyous. It is the combination of joy and crowds that extroverts have missed so much over the past couple of years.

These recent experiences have demonstrated that there are often multiple ways to obtain the same underlying feeling, and maybe it is a good idea not to get too attached to one specific experience. There are often circumstances that require versatility. Sometimes the weather is not what we were hoping for.

Other times it’s our schedules, our health, someone else’s needs or just plain bad luck.

When this happens it is helpful to know that sometimes a different experience, but one that is feasible given whatever our circumstance is can be a really good substitute, providing almost the exact same underlying feeling we are looking for. So far this spring, I have been in lively joyous crowds both in a tourist destination surrounded by people on vacation and in a large city surrounded mostly by people who live there. Next time we find ourselves disappointed by not getting the exact thing we want, maybe we should try to think about the underlying reason we wanted it and try to find another path.

Takeaways from My Fall Road Trip

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This image provides a basic outline of where I went on my fall road trip.  I did end up deviating from this path a bit, but it still provides a good reference regarding the places I visited, and the length of time I was out of town- roughly two weeks when the time I spent in Chicago is factored in.

This was the kind of trip where all of the pieces of the puzzle came together quite nicely.  I knew I wanted to take a road trip this fall.  First of all, for those of us that live in Colorado and take advantage of the outdoor activities the state has to offer, it is the ideal time of year to take a road trip.  The season for summer activities has come to an end, but the main ski season has not yet begun.  So, basically leaving Colorado in the autumn (or the spring) has the lowest opportunity cost.

More importantly though, I knew I wanted to take advantage of the spare time I have right now while I have it.  Life gets hectic sometimes, and when people get bogged down in day-to-day lives it becomes much more difficult to pull off a journey.  I hear a lot of people discuss trips they would like to take “someday”, or “when the situation is right”.  Unfortunately, sometimes years go by, with one situation after another coming up, and people lament the trip they never got to take.  This is why I was actually quite thrilled to hear that a couple of my friends back in Chicago were planning a trip to Ireland this coming spring, even if it means they are less likely to visit me here in Colorado later in the year.

I never seem to run out of travel ideas.  In fact, I could probably make a list of 100 places I want to visit in only a few minutes.  So, for me, the picture is quite different than it is for many others, who just have that one place they want to go to.  Instead of just making a plan and executing it, to visit that one place, I just need to take advantage of opportunities as they come my way, and keep coming up with new ideas for places to go within the realm of the resources given to me.  This means accepting that unless that weird long-haired guy whose picture I saw at the Museum of Science and Industry successfully develops immortality, I will most likely go to my grave with at least a few places I wanted to visit, and a few things I wanted to do, that I did not get around to.  Knowing that I am taking advantage of opportunities, trying new things, and getting creative about a bunch of things makes this fact substantially easier to accept.  I know taking this kind of trip and visiting people on a whim like this is more than most people do with their spare time.  In fact, some may consider me odd for this, but most people I described this trip to, and saw on the trip gave me overwhelmingly positive responses.

This trip also gave me what I needed during what has turned out to be a frustrating year for me.  It actually reminds me of the theme song to the show Cheers, which explains the reason the show’s characters go to the same bar over and over again.  “Sometimes you wanna go, where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.”  This is why I was quite fortunate to have had the timing on visiting all of the people I visited along the way work out (given everyone’s schedules, especially on weekdays) so that I could go to every single stop I planned to go to in this two week period.

Being new in a city whose culture and social scene ended up being more significantly different than anticipated can be a rough experience.  While I advocate fully embracing new experiences, sometimes we take comfort in being around people where we know where we stand, and being in familiar places.  I moved on, but I wanted to see many of the people that still mean something to me.  I do see friendships wither away as people move to new cities and get too carried away with their day-to-day lives to keep in touch.  So, it was quite fitting that the ONE time I had Chinese food, on this entire two week excursion, I got this fortune cookie.

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This trip confirmed this fact for me.  Reflecting on the experiences I had visiting everyone, I can safely say that all of the people I saw on this trip are still my friends, despite how long (in some cases over 10 years), it has been since we have lived in the same town.  I know this because the experiences I had were not limited to simply reminiscing and catching up, as sometimes does occur with “old friends”.  While I did reminisce, and catch up with all of the people I saw, new experiences were created as well.  This includes getting a 5-year-old addicted to The Fox music video, a plethora of jokes at the expense of Kanye West and Justin Bieber (is there an ocean bigger than Kanye West’s ego?), more crazy party antics, but also some heart-to-heart talks about real stuff, the kind of stuff that people only talk about with people they trust.

I designed this trip to have a mixture of the new and the familiar.  Chicago is very familiar to me, and so is Maryland, but I had never been to the Smoky Mountains, or Gettysburg, before, and have limited experience in places like Virginia and Kentucky.  Now that I am back in town, I will inevitably have some conversations with people about my trip.  When I give people the “highlights”, experiences like the Smoky Mountains and Gettysburg will most definitely come up, as well as the craziness that was last weekend in Chicago.  However, the more I reflect on the trip, the more I realize that what meant the most to me were some of the more simple things, like the ridiculous jokes and games.  One of the people I reconnected with in Maryland actually remembered last seeing me over three years ago, at a party in Chicago.  She recalled me describing abstract art as looking like a “raccoon having a period” while intoxicated.  Some of the best memories we have are of thing that weren’t planned.  I planned out my road trip, the timing, routes, and everything, but many of the things I will remember from this trip were not planned, but just as memorable.

Perhaps the greatest display of friendship on my road trip is the fact that on the entire trip I actually only paid for one hotel room!  I am truly grateful to everyone who let me stay over at their places.  Some of these overnights were even on weeknights, which are always a lot tougher, and some even took some time off of work.  That was a lot of money saved, but more importantly, it was also a better experience.  Being alone in a hotel room can be refreshing occasionally, but is also quite boring, and not an experience I cannot have at home from time to time.  Being around my friends was a lot more fun.

My greatest takeaway from this trip is actually something I had already known, but lost sight of over the past several months or so.

— Be Yourself  —

Pure and simple, yet a major lesson we all have to relearn from time to time.  There are many situations in the adult world where we are trying to impress people for one reason or another.  We are often times either told by others to not be who we truly are out of fear of being rejected, or lose confidence in who we truly are due to rejection.  We will often find ourselves considering how to “reinvent” ourselves to make better impression on others.  However, reflecting on some personal experiences, both recent and in the distant past, I realized that my odds are almost always a lot better when I do behave in a manner that comes naturally to me, as opposed to when I hold back, or try to conform to what is expected of me.

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No matter what reason you want to make a good impression on someone, your best bet will always be to be who you really are.  Any relationship, of any kind, based on a false persona is a poor fit that will not last in the long run.  I believe we are all generally better of without them.  Time spent continuing to try to  impress people who want a different version of you will often prevent you from finding the people, the jobs, or the situation that are truly the right fit for you.