Collect memories, not possessions.

After college and before marriage and kids, I had this little window where I lived with my parents, had a decent job and few bills. I was too immature to know that I should be saving for a down payment on a house or investing for the future. No, I was busy building one of the largest collections of DVD’s in East Kentucky. This was years before the Streaming Wars and high speed internet put every movie and TV show just a few clicks away. If I wanted to watch an obscure Italian zombie movie from the 70s, I had to order it online. And I did. Hundreds of times. Today, I have more discs than I care to acknowledge sitting on a bookshelf that only collect dust. I’m not sure I even have something that plays DVD’s and BluRay’s anymore! With 20+years of life lived since then, the place that I find real joy is not with “Things” but experiences. Trips to theme parks, afternoons spent at the basketball gym or cheer competitions, weekend cookouts with friends or quiet evenings out on the deck are so much more meaningful than anything I could ever buy. Cherish moments, great or small, because they are fleeting. You can always replace something material. But you only get these moments once.