October 27th, 2017

Happy Halloween people.

We arrived in Jacksonville about two hours early and decide that we would eat dinner at a restaurant/ café around the corner from the theatre. The night before, we checked the website of this establishment and were impressed by the images of the food. Now as a developer myself, I I could tell that they used a web template but that didn’t matter. I only care that the images are actually of the food served. This place was literally a dive bar. It wasn’t dangerous and we weren’t made to feel unwelcome but certainly not the sort of place that I would have taken my fifteen year old daughter. Anyway, the food was as advertised delicious!

A leisurely hour and thirty minutes later, we decide to walk back to the theatre to see if the lobby doors had opened yet. They were and we were treated to a beautifully restored art deco theatre. The auditorium doors opened about twenty minutes and we went down to our VIP seating which were second row seats in the auditorium. Not so important apparently but that’s neither here nor there. We were there to see Dr Neil Degrasse Tyson who is a personal hero of mine.

An orator of DR Tyson’s ilk put on exactly the type of show that you would expect. Some light hearted comedy and some seriousness capped off with a moving tribute to the Cassini space probe which reached the end of its mission earlier this year. We had such a good time that I would like to see him again next year!

My takeaway from my visit to the theatre was that I feel like I wasted my earlier professional life in some ways. I learned that there was so much more that I could have done societally speaking when I was playing professional football. I gave a lot and I did a lot but my God there is so much more that I could have done for the greater good. I promise this, I will not waste another second on crap that doesn’t matter. So the next time you let some talking head on television get you riled up over something that someone else is or has done. Ask yourself, why?