Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities

Coffee brings good conversation

Last Saturday, I had coffee with an in-town friend and some mutual friends visiting from out of town.

The discussions, as always, centered on new tech things, amusing things in our personal lives and what we were delaying by having coffee at the moment.

One friend was going to the UFO Festival in Roswell, which he’d never been to despite being raised in New Mexico. The other was getting a tour of the Nor Va Jak Studios in Clovis, which he’d never done despite being raised in New Mexico. I thought that was kind of great, that people would step away from the minutiae of the weekend and use it to knock out long-delayed “Why Haven’t I Done It?” items.

Guess what I did? Breakfast with a friend I always have breakfast with, at a restaurant we’ve been to numerous times, where I ordered the dish I order roughly 75 percent of the time.

I know I’m a creature of habit. I text people I haven’t talked to for three days, because I hadn’t talked to them in three days. I order the same thing at certain restaurants so often the cute carhop did a double take and asked me to confirm my order when she saw me — I’d ordered something different.

It came full circle earlier this week when I met up with a friend at another restaurant, where again I ordered the same dish I normally get. She asked what’s been up in the months since we last got together, and I had nothing interesting to tell her.

That needs to change. Maybe I’ve come around a little late to the party, but I think I need to start doing a few things just because I’ve never done those things. Matter of fact, I’ve never been to the studio for the tour; I’ve never been to the UFO Festival. The things I haven’t done within 30 miles of me could pretty easily fill the rest of this column.

For some reason, I think of the words of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Brady Quinn after teammate Jovan Belcher committed suicide, and how the immediate thought was that he could have done more. He talked about how the relationships you have with people matter, but that sometimes we are, “more preoccupied with our phone and other things going on instead of the actual relationships that we have right in front of us.”

You could easily take Quinn’s words and apply them to much less taxing circumstances. What could I have done Sunday instead of checking my email a third time that hour? What was waiting for me instead of the third time I watched that movie on Netflix?

When Andy Murray won Wimbledon on Sunday, I couldn’t help but notice how many people were taking cell phone pictures and videos. They’ll have the pictures and videos to look at later, but to me the experience seems less worth remembering because they were too busy photographing it to actually soak it all in.

I’ll keep that in mind when I make the “WHIDI” List. I’ll think of things like the UFO festival or that other dish at the restaurant, and if I have to seriously ask myself, “Why haven’t I done it?” it’s making the list.

Well, it’s list-making time. Come to think of it, why didn’t I make this list yesterday?

Kevin Wilson is a columnist for Clovis Media Inc. He can be contacted at 763-3431, ext. 313, or by email:[email protected]

 
 
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