Listening to The Boys of Summer can be bittersweet for me, a mixture of some of my favorite memories and a few that are best described as “not so much.”
But more often than not the immediate image it evokes in my head is a beach scene and the people I spent most summers with.
It is a mix of girls and guys long before we had kids in that magical time between high school and college where the world was an endless highway of possibility.
Back in a time when I was tan enough for people to ask me if I was mixed and had a metabolism that allowed me to eat whatever I wanted with no regard for whether it would require an extra hour of exercise to insure my pants still fit.
Flash forward back to present time where not quite middle age Josh has as much hair as the tan kid he remembers being, except back then it was because I liked wearing it as a Flat Top and now it is because that is all that is left. 🙂
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Got headphones on and Jimi Hendrix singing Fire in my ears and a big smile on my face.
You might wonder if I want to turn back the clock and go back to that life I just wrote about.
You might ask if I am one of those people who wishes he could do live it all over again.
The answer is yes, I’d love to experience it all again. It was a hell of a lot of fun but I don’t think I’d want to have to go through some of the stuff that came afterwards.
Not because it was particularly bad but because I have reached a point in life where I am very clear on who I am and what makes me happy.
There is a lot to be said for knowing that and I couldn’t say that at 19 or 20.
But that doesn’t mean I am not interested in messing with the old space-time continuum now because I am and I would.
How To Stop Time In One Easy Lesson
Somewhere out there one or more of you is wondering if there is going to be a reference to Dr. Who and Time Lords.
I’d gladly do it, gladly share a comment that were we standing in person together would make us smile and share a knowing nod but I don’t have it for you now.
Don’t have that perfect reference or idea about how to stop time in one easy lesson that I can offer but that doesn’t mean I don’t have some sort of alternative to share.
A short while ago one of the guys from USB Memory Direct reached out to ask if I was interested getting a personalized flash drive in exchange for a mention on the blog.
I told them I was happy to do so and we put together the drive in the photo above.
Figured that people would be more likely to remember my name and hold onto my card if it also serves as a flash drive.
Ordering couldn’t have been easier, the only challenging part for me was trying to decide which particular unit I wanted and what sort of logo to use.
The question about what logo to use made me laugh ab0ut how some things have changed.
The other day I heard a guy at Starbucks complain that he is 23 and his personal brand is awful. That is not something I ever would have thought about at 23.
At best I worried about whether I wore the right suit and tie to an interview, but personal logos and images…not so much.
But things change and evolve and here we are.
Can’t go back in time but if you really want, well you can use your Joshua Wilner flash drive to store pictures of yourself or whomever and stop time…sort of. 🙂
“Final Words On Time”
If genetics, force of will and effort have any influence/impact upon a life span you guys are going to be stuck with me for another 50 years on the short end, might even be another 75.
So even though I am far more conscious about the tick-tock of the clock I am very aware that being able to say I should be around for decades more is pretty cool.
It is a gift and provided my health holds up as I expect you should expect that I am going to follow Coach Lombardi’s advice.
Just When You Thought The Post Was Over
The kids and I learned long ago that when you go to the movies it is worth sitting through the credits because there is usually one or even two more clips to see.
So you can consider this to be one of those post credit clips.
There are some big changes coming down the pike and I expect to meet those head on the way I always do.
I keep hearing the quote below as a whisper in my head.
Got to run now, back into the breach I go, someone has to hold the gate and that someone is me. 🙂
I loved that song Boys of Summer when it came out.
Remember the line about a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac. Well, my friends and I were driving along the beach when he heard the song and saw such a car. We thought it was the greatest thing ever!
That is pretty cool. Always thought it would be fun to have a convertible Caddy to drive around.
When I was a teenager at school and college, I always wanted to be a journalist. I loved writing and had a curious streak mixed with a stubborn nature, that would probably have come in handy had I decided to pursue that career.
But then I discovered girls, and my hormones decided that while my grades would have allowed me to take a journalism degree at one of Scotland’s many journalistic universities, what I wanted was to discover more about girls.
As I grew older, I found I wanted different things in life.
I wanted to be rich (still do, to a degree). I wanted to be famous, as in celebrity famous. I wanted to fly into space. I wanted to travel the world.
I wanted to invent something that changed the world. I wanted to be liked by all that met me. I wanted to be an author.
So, yeah. I wanted.
The thing is, there’s a big difference between want and need.
Now that I’m probably well into the second half of my life, the pursuit of want isn’t anywhere near as important to me as the acceptance of need.
And that’s OK with me. 🙂
Damn hormones do that to a lot of us. 😉
We definitely share a number of similar interests and traits. I think there is a lot to be said for need and want and understanding what those are.
I expect the second half of life should be good for helping to focus whatever pursuit we choose to engage in, be they want or need.
There is something nice about that.