Critical information: remember to experience life. Get outside and do things with your family and loved ones. It is the shared experiences that will stay with all of you as life eventually pulls and tears at us.

This weekend was a good reminder for me. Saturday was more packed with activities than I would have preferred.In the morning was a ‘men’s breakfast’ at my church, then straight home to change for a wedding and then rush home again to jump in the car and drive an hour and a half for a concert.

Now, for some of you, this might be a pretty minor league. You have schedules on top of appointments all weekend long.  Good for you, if that is what you like. For many of us writing types, the need to get ‘caught up’ on our writing on the weekends means we try and have as little else planned as possible. Our craft takes time. Our craft needs solitude. But our lives need experiences.

Now, as many of us are getting ready to jump into NaNoWriMo, where we will sacrifice every spare minute to trying to get a few more words on paper, it good to remember how important scheduling experiences is.

Use your calendar. Google or Outlook or whatever you use to plan. Find those dates during the month that you need to be at.  Not just show up to, but be really present at. Thanksgiving? That should be a given, but we can still screw it up if we don’t take the time to appreciate it. Any birthdays coming up in November? Better get cracking on that too.

Why? Because these things are way more important than your book. Or your job. Or whatever  is making you too busy to have shared experiences with you loved ones.

So, my Saturday. I went to a Men’s Breakfast. I had thought about blowing it off since the rest of my day was so full. Glad I went. There were some real, heartfelt moments that morning that brought me so much closer to these guys. Priceless.

Then we went to a weding. It was being held at a ranch and it was pretty cool. The high point for me? Playing horseshoes with my kids.  Now these kids are all high school or college age. There isn’t as much play as when they were little, so this was pretty cool.

The wedding was a bit delayed, so my wife and I couldn’t stay for the reception. Leaving the kids behind (the good part about them being older!) we drove back home to change for the concert.

I had won the tickest at work. I didn’t realize the venue was over an hour away. Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea. Then my wife and I talked about it and realized we had never been to a music concert like this before. Not together or since we have been married. So we went, and it was great! We were up front (really great tickets!) and the crowd was excited and so was the band and everyone had a great time.

And we will all remember these things. Because they were real experiences that we shared.